In yesterday's edition of The Times, economics reporter Gabriel Rozenberg provides a great critique of the British government's land use planning system and the 'Green Belt' surrounding London and other British cities (which apparently celebrates its 50th anniversary this month).

Members of British public, and particularly the elite, are horrified at the mere mention of scrapping the planning system -- yet as Rozenberg notes, chaos does not reign in other parts of the economy when prices are allowed to govern demand and supply for scarce resources. In the case of land use, 'Prices allow a much more sophisticated level of co-ordination, in which demand for houses, offices and open spaces are all stirred into the mix.'

He continues:

Planning a town, working out how to mix homes, infrastructure and open spaces, is difficult, but not impossible. The problem is that there is only ever one planner — the Government. To scrap state planning would bring about a renaissance in a forgotten world from a century ago, when private corporations bought land speculatively and created garden cities and suburbs, many with restrictive covenants to keep them from decline. Competition between planners — something the current system lacks — drove up standards of design.

For those who are interested in the history of the failure of government land use planning and the 1947 Town and Country Planning Act, I recommend reading anything by Mark Pennington, such as 'Liberating the Land' (PDF is available on this page)