Urban Green Belts in the Twenty-first Century

Planners internationally have employed green belts to contain the explosive sprawl of cities as varied as Tokyo, Vienna and Melbourne during the twentieth century. As yet, no collection has gathered these experiences together to consider their contribution to planning. Juxtaposing examples of green belt implementation worldwide, this book adds to understanding of how green belts can be effected in theory and how practitioners have adapted them in practice. The book provides a typology of green belt implementation and reform, enabling planners to grasp why these policies are employed and whether they are relevant to twenty-first century planning.

Contents: Preface; Green belts: a 20th-century planning experiment, Marco Amati; Part I The Coalition of the Un-willing: Landowners and the Green Belt: The abandonment of Tokyo's green belt and the search for a new discourse of preservation in Tokyo's suburbs, Takashi Watanabe, Marco Amati, Kenya Edo and Makoto Yokohari; Issues with green belt reform in the Seoul metropolitan area, Jekook Kim and Tae-Kyung Kim. Part II Falling Out of Favour: Deregulation and Green Belts: Protecting Melbourne's green wedges - fate of a public policy, Michael Buxton and Robin Goodman; The green belt that wasn't: the case of New Zealand from 1910 to the 1990s, Caroline Miller and Marco Amati. Part III Re-Forming Greenery: From Green Belts to Green Nets: The Adelaide parklands and the endurance of the green belt idea in South Australia, Christine Garnaut; Ottawa's greenbelt evolves from urban separator to key ecological planning component, David Gordon and Richard Scott; Instruments to preserve open space and resource lands in the Seattle, Washington Metropolitan Region - a US alternative to green belts, Alon Bassok. Part IV Works in Progress: Patching Together a Flexible Green Belt: The Vienna green belt: from localised protection to a regional concept, Meinhard Breiling and Gisa Ruland; From green belts to regional parks: history and challenges of suburban landscape planning in Berlin, Manfred Kuhn and Ludger Gailing; Controlling urban expansion in Italy with green belts, Guilio Senes, Alessandro Toccolini, Paolo Stefano Ferrario, Raffaele Lafortezza, and Pasquale Dal Sasso; The Paris-Ile-de-France ceinture verte, Nicolas Laruelle and Corinne Legenne; Index.

Dr Marco Amati is a lecturer at the Graduate School of the Environment, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia.