Tesco Spring Hill and the demise of local shops

Here’s a puzzle that I’d like answered: You take a boat out to really deep water. On the deck of the boat is a really really heavy anchor on a short chain. When you throw the anchor into the water, does the anchor keep going and drag the boat after it ?

I ask because part of Birmingham, Spring Hill, has a proposed shopping development and part of it, a supermarket, is to be The Anchor. Why is a supermarket an anchor anyway ? Could you wake up one morning to find a parade of small shops blocking the street because it was not properly anchored ?

Birmingham FOE has its own local Shops campaign that expresses concerns that building yet more supermarkets usually means that local shops are lost. There aren’t black and white cases as items in a supermarket may be cheaper than in the local shop – price savings at the shop, but the customer has had to travel and that travel has taken up more time. The customer can solve this by living close to the supermarket. There may be a downside: streams of cars heading to the supermarket car park.

If you have got as far as reading this blog, you have more time than many people and could also go through the following website and make a comment on the planning application… http://www.birmingham.gov.uk/GenerateContent?CONTENT_ITEM_ID=67548&CONTENT_ITEM_TYPE=0&MENU_ID=12189 website and look at Application number: C/02037/08/OUT
Location: Spring Hill / Icknield Street / Camden Street / Ellen Street, former Brookfield Precinct, Hockley, Birmingham, Proposal: Erection of foodstore (Class A1), 8 additional retail units (for A1, A2, A3, A4 or A5 use) with offices above (B1 or B2 use), 6 three-storey dwellings and alterations to Spring Hill Library, associated parking, landscaping and highway works, redevelopment of Birmingham Central Baptist Church to provide reconfigured and extended accommodation. In the development, the supermarket is to be ‘the anchor’.

Birmingham FOE’s planning campaigners have so far said:
Outline Planning application C/02037/08/OUT, Spring Hill, Camden St, Ellen Street,

The proposal to provide housing in a location close to existing facilities and services is welcome. However, the housing is a small part of the development that is dominated by a Supermarket. Does the whole development work, and does it comply with the planning rules ?

FOE have concerns about the Sustainable Development issues such as set out in paragraph 3.14E of The Birmingham Plan 2005. In particular the supermarket carries a 316 space car park with entrances and exits on Camden St and Ellen St that will considerably inconvenience pedestrians. FOE ask for seating spaced at suitable intervals on routes that radiate out from the shopping centre as it is claimed people will walk there.

FOE further state that the size and height of the proposed development provide an opportunity to collect energy from the sun through the use of solar water heating and/or photovoltaic cells on the roofs and the southerly facing facades. This to be in accordance with The Birmingham Plan 2005 paragraph 3.79.

On transport FOE ask where taxis and minibuses will wait / set down staff and customers and suggest this will need to be covered in a Travel Plan.

Tesco, the supermarket in this case, does not, however, consider the availability of the planet’s resources. Is it right that we fuel-prosperous Brummies take long drives past adequate but smaller shops closer to home, which leads to the demise of our local High Streets and corner shops?

John Hall

Poverty & climate change

Last Monday I was invited to speak at the Diana Stableworth Memorial Lecture by UN Association Birmingham. As a humanitarian aidworker by day and an environmentalist the rest of the time, I chose to combine the two: talking about poverty, climate change and the role of the UN. The main cause for people to be poor (not just financially, but genuinely and fully poor) in the majority of countries is environmental: loss of livelihood due to forest being chopped, loss of life and property due to desertification, floods and landslides. Landslides are often exarcerbated by loss of forest as tree roots no longer hold the soil together. And these forests are at great risk of being chopped and sold off cheaply to pay for international debts, debts often incurred by previous regimes (of dubious integrity) and with eye watering interest rates. This means many countries spend more on servicing debts than they spend on healthcare, education or sanitation. This in turn means next generations have less opportunities to escape debt and poverty through education and good health.

The UN has laudable aims (see UN charter preamble and article 55 for instance) and positive plans (e.g. 8 Millennium Development Goals, incl. halving hunger and ensuring environmental sustainability, all in SMART objectives to be achieved by 2015). Achieving these objectives doesn't come cheap (a few billion here, a few billion there). However, these amounts pale by the amounts we even spend on make-up in Europe, or pet food in the US, let alone spend on the military!

So what are our priorities? What will truly compel us to action? Is it when climate refugees become a 'security issue' (which some Governments are starting to call it)? The UN has a role, but WE ARE the UN, and the poor didn't choose to be poor, nor did we have much say in being lucky enough to have been born in wealthier parts of the world. So come on, let's BE HUMAN, let's care for our joint future and take ACTION (think what difference millions of 2p can do, together!).

In peace, Rianne

Birmingham going green with plastic bags!

Not sure if anyone else in Birmingham has had the same problems but we have been dutifully in our street putting out our green bags and it has been 4 weeks and they are still waiting to be collected.
I called up the Recycling hotline run by the council and was told that the council are behind in their collections. This is the same council encouraging us to "go green". If you come down my street in Yardley this seems to be by not collecting all the green refuse bags as the street is littered by them!! Its very de-motivating to turn into my street and to be confronted daily by all these bags. I know they don't have any hygiene issues, but maybe rats and mice might find them nice places to nest in and so I don't envy the bin men that have to collect them.
It is very commendable that the council is running this campaign and running a week long Climate Change festival, promoted as the first in the country. However actions speak louder than words and if they cannot cope with the current recycling collections then how are they planning to increase our recycling rates.
Birmingham Council is performing badly in the UK with the bottom 20 councils in the UK in the recycling league tables, how do they propose to improve the recycling rates when they cant manage the collections they already have!

Mary

Food waste dilemma

In a week where there has been a lot of media coverage about food wastage in Britain, here's a puzzle I'm often faced with while going about my shopping : my local co-op regularly puts out 'reduced' items, which are past their sell-by date. I've asked the staff, who tell me that what isn't sold ends up in the skip - so I've been in the habit of buying such items which I can use, rather than let them go to waste. But I wonder : in helping to reduce their waste, might the store merely be encouraged to continue over-ordering?

Aldo Mussi

Tropical Birmingham...

I spent Saturday night in the Accident and Emergency Department at Selly Oak Hospital, accompanying a friend who had been bitten in many places by mosquitoes in her back garden in Harborne. Her leg had become infected, was swollen and incredibly painful... quite impressive for someone already on opiate painkillers! What was significant was the stark comparison of my times sitting in A+E Departments in African countries just two years ago. 3 hours in an overheated A+E full of people wearing flip flops, shorts and skirts with insects flying all over the place and a patient needing treatment as a result of a tropical insect felt remarkably like the times I spent with malaria patients (of which I was one) in Africa.

I can't help thinking that the apparent rise in mosquitoes in the UK has got something to do with climate change. While we have some wonderful weather at the moment (no complaints from me), there is certainly a downside.

Chris

Low Carbon Cars? The King Review

Prof. Julia King Vice chancellor of Aston Uni. 15 April 2008

The King Review was ordered by Gordon Brown, as a follow up to the Stern Report.
Its object was to look at the potential to reduce emissions from road vehicles.
This did not look at having fewer vehicles, or using them less, or sharing them, or at a shift to public transport. Just focussed on the engine and the fuel source. King presumed that everyone wants a car of their own. A technical fix was sought.
Prof. King is an engineer, who used to have a senior position at Rolls Royce.
Proposed 25 years to decarbonise road transport in Britain.
Assumed that a 60% cut in emissions will be needed by 2050.
In UK, 22% of emissions are from transport; 13% of emissions are from private cars.
Traffic projection shows a doubling by 2050 (Eddington report). So, a 90% reduction per kilometre is needed from road vehicle efficiencies.
If UK can do this, there will be huge export opportunities in India, China and the 3rd world where car use has to be decoupled from carbon emissions to prevent dangerous climate change.

Conclusions of the review
1. There is huge potential to reduce emissions from cars. Available technology could reduce by 30% if it was used in all cars. Today, you can buy a model in all types that produces 125 gms per km. If everyone chose the most fuel efficient that would be a 25% reduction in average emission per km for traffic.

2. There is scope for further gains. Hybrid cars emit half the emissions and are on sale, though the price needs to come down.

3. Problem is that fuel efficiency has been a minor consideration in how cars are sold and how people choose them. People still want powerful cars. Rising fuel prices may change this preference in future. Fuel efficiency of cars should be clearly labelled in the showroom. The tax system needs to incentivise people at the point of purchasing a new car to go for low energy models.

4. Example of EU regulation on diesel particulates suggests the industry will respond but only when forced by regulation. There is an agreed EU target for all cars to be 130 gms/ km by 2012.

5. Biofuels may generate CO2 in production that greatly reduces positive effect on CO2. They conflict with human food. Tropical deforestation for biofuels is a disaster and strong sustainability criteria have to be worked out. Only bio-fuels made from wastes, that don’t require new land are likely to be acceptable. Message of slow down on bio-fuels from King Review. Bio-fuels may be required for aircraft, where liquid fuel seems essential. See Scharleman and Laurence Science 4/01/08 for latest estimates of fuels and their greenhouse gas emissions. Gallagher Review is coming on bio-fuels.

6. Oil from tar sands will need much more energy to extract.

7. Electric vehicles depend on the carbon content of electricity. There will have to be plans to ‘decarbonise the electricity supply’, if electric cars are to be widespread. The same argument obtains for hydrogen cars. Novel high density batteries are being developed.

8. Oil provides a dense and portable store of energy that is hard to duplicate from any other source. Alternative energy sources all need a lot of development, but King is optimistic that they can catch up in performance.

9. A new way of calculating life cycle emissions, not just at the exhaust pipe is needed.

10. Would people compensate for increased fuel efficiency by driving further? A big unknown...

Wider reflections on the King Review – from discussion and questions
There seems to be the technology to achieve big reductions in the emissions of road transport, but does the government have the political courage to “incentivise”, or force the industry to offer highly efficient vehicles and drivers to use them (but over-use them) ?

Making car engines more efficient is only one aspect of making the transport system more efficient. Measures to restrain driving, e.g. by road pricing were not part of their remit. Nor measures to change modal split between car and public transport, cycling etc. Nor potential to substitute electronic communication for physical travel.

The huge demand for driving coming from the developing countries will feed through the price mechanism. This year’s steep rises in oil price and soon perhaps a peak in oil production with demand over-shooting could be important new factors... i.e. the space for ever-growing fuel consumption by private motorists may be disappearing fast. The car will have to get much more efficient, or die.

John Newson

Farming - Start them young

A few little fields and some smiling faces – first impressions from the Woodgate Valley Urban Farm. Those faces are mostly of children who can visit the farm to see the range of shapes and sizes of domestic animals that are all too often cartoon characters. Undeniably the Urban Farm has educational value and it is one of Birmingham’s assets. Tucked away at the western edge of the city at Clapgate Lane (though very close to the 23 and 002 bus routes), it should perhaps be a model to be copied elsewhere in the city. Birmingham people need to eat and yet the city dashes to ‘develop’ green areas that could support allotments, chickens, ducks, and perhaps even sheep. Shouldn’t we get more food locally ? The dilemma is where to develop. A city functions better and can be based on facilities within walking distance of homes, if people are densely packed. To incorporate parks and urban farms can improve human well being but does it cost us convenience ?

At Woodgate, short term, there is a Thursday volunteer scheme at the farm (sponsored by CNSW) that could be a sampler for people thinking about outdoor work, details at www.wvurbanfarm.org.uk. Meanwhile I will think some more about the development dilemma. I don’t have the answers but see an urban farm for yourself (there is also one at Balsall Heath).

John Davison