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A RENEWAL CITY ON THE HOO PENINSULA

A Renewal City is an urban development that from the time of its foundation, and throughout its life, creates wealth to sponsor projects that are beneficial to life on Earth.

This proposal is for a renewal city on the Hoo Peninsular. The city will be designed to create and respond to the lifestyle choices of a populace that will predominantly consist of people who are profoundly concerned about the implications of climate change. Its specific project will be to sponsor carbon capture at the proposed Kingsnorth power station.

The UK should lead efforts to combat climate change

When the UK was a major manufacturing nation it emitted a large proportion of the world's total greenhouse gases. As its industrial role has diminished the proportion has reduced to the point where now we are responsible for merely a few percentage points of the total. Therefore a reduction in the UK's emissions would not represent a significant diminution in the scale of the overall problem. However, by virtue of our place in the history of world industrialization and of our reputation, still largely intact, for innovative and adventurous technical thinking it is not unreasonable to expect this country to lead the way in persuading the world to reduce its emissions and to provide guideline solutions to that end. We envisage the UK as leading the next industrial revolution; a revolution that will deliver sustainable and comfortable lifestyles without the concomitant destruction of the human habitat that is now evident all around us.

This proposal is for a major carbon-negative settlement. It will incorporate the latest thinking in eco-sensitive urban design and will provide a platform for continuing research and development. Funding for the development will be generated by a finance-stream which is currently untapped, that is the realisation of the resource value inherent in the grant of planning permission.

The finance raised in this way together with ongoing revenues from the city's income streams will be used to fund environmentally positive developments elsewhere. In the case of this project the major beneficiary will be a carbon capture scheme at Kingsnorth power station. Other beneficiaries will be the technologies that will help create a carbon-negative lifestyle in the city.

Using the value of planning permission to finance projects to combat climate change

The grant of planning permission is the key factor in adding value to land. This enhancement can multiply its value by a factor of hundreds. If "land" and "planning permission" were seen as separate components of "building land", we would find that planning permission has a much greater value than the land itself.

For quite ordinary housing schemes, the value of planning permission is now typically between two and five hundred million pounds per square kilometre (i.e. two and five million pounds per hectare). Recently, these values may have diminished slightly following downward pressure in the financial markets. However, the long-term values of property (and thus planning permission) are unlikely to fall substantially. In this regard it is notable that current climate models indicate that the UK will not suffer the effects of climate change as badly as southern Europe. The EC as a whole is likely to see a northward migration of human populations. This is likely to enhance the value of property in the UK, which, in turn, will maintain the value of planning permission.

Renewal cities

A key source of revenue for renewal cities is making better use of "planning permission value". There are several related possibilities but they all have the common theme that is, that the initial governing authority of the renewal city has the right to grant planning permission. It should also have the power to commission the design and construction of the city to achieve its founding objectives. This power to grant planning permission and to direct the design of the city will enable the authority to create several streams of wealth. One stream will come from the physical assets such as buildings, infrastructure and land. These may be sold freehold or leasehold or rented. Covenants and contractual terms will be placed on the properties in order to ensure compliance with the objectives of the city. The authority will also have the power to levy other charges such as congestion charges or derive income from the grant of operating licences for public transport.

Administrative Precedents

There are precedents for the powers of such a governing authority. The power to grant planning permission for developmental aims has

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