In 1995, the CPRE and the former Countryside Commission published some work on Tranquil Areas. This study used GIS to plot areas of the country that were for a minimum distance away from locations like motorways, power stations, airports etc. The definition of ‘tranquility’ is essentially arbitrary, but still gives a good picture of what happened between the early 1960s and the early 1990s.
According to the criteria a Tranquil Area lies:
· 4 km from the largest power stations.
· 3 km from the most highly trafficked roads such as the Ml/M6; from large towns (e.g. towns the size of Leicester and larger); and from major industrial areas.
· 2 km from most other motorways and major trunk roads such as the M4 and Al and from the edge of smaller towns.
· 1 km from medium disturbance roads i.e. roads which are difficult to cross in peak hours (taken to be roughly equivalent to greater than 10,000 vehicles per day) and some main line railways.
· A Tranquil Area also lies beyond military and civil airfield/airport noise lozenges as defined by published noise data (where available) and beyond very extensive opencast mining.
Not surprisingly, areas of tranquillity had reduced over that period. More importantly however the remaining areas had also become more fragmented.
In the 1960s the study estimated that there were about 92,000 sq km of ‘tranquil areas’, declining by 21% to the 1990s figure of 73,000 sq km. The average size of these tranquil areas declined much faster however from 193 sq km in the 1960s to 52 sq km in the 1990s – a reduction of 73%.
The criteria take no explicit account of visual intrusion however. It is probable that if this were to be included, the change between the 60s and 90s would have been shown to be greater and perhaps even more fragmentation. Even so, the data shows just how far the impact of urbanisation has spread across the UK. This impact is much more serious I think than any loss of land to housing and other urban development.
What seems most important is some form of recognition for the concept. Despite the efforts of the Countryside Agency and the CPRE, I am not aware of any Structure Plan or Local Plan that includes explicit policies designed to protect or enhance existing tranquil areas. In practice I don’t know if there is anything we can do to recreate tranquillity in the areas that have gone – I suspect not. That makes it even more important to protect the tranquillity we have managed to keep so far.
