Urban sprawl in England ‘forgotten disaster of last 50 years’

Urban sprawl in England is the forgotten disaster of the last 50 years

Successive governments over the past half century have not just allowed, but actively enabled, urban sprawl into the countryside. Our new report PARKING – a guide for Planners, Transport Planners and local campaigners June 2026 shows why parking policy is key to putting a halt to it.

Urban sprawl means building low-density housing outside of towns, on green fields, and far from shops, schools and surgeries. Developments are ‘car-dependent’ with little or no bus service. At the same time, more and more space in town centres is allocated for car parks.

They say this has led to loss of buses as people don’t use them. Local and regional economies have suffered as poor public transport means people can’t get to work or shops. People who are unable to own or drive a car have become isolated.* More car trips mean more pollution, carbon and poor health. And town centres have lost out to out-of-town retail and become unpleasant car-dominated places.

Alice Roberts of CPRE London said: “Despite the devastating impact of urban sprawl being well-known, we’ve really been asleep at the wheel in terms of letting it happen.

“But people are fed up. Bus services are gone. Productive agricultural land is being lost.

“And this is not a complex problem to solve. The vast amounts of land in towns given to car parking could instead be used for houses, shops, offices, schools, surgeries and more.

“Leeds has 200 hectares of car park, half of that is in the centre. Leicester has well over 100 hectares. Southampton, Fareham and Portsmouth have over 300 hectares. There’s over 8 hectares in Bournemouth central alone, 80 hectares in Exeter, over 30 hectares in Newbury, Colchester over 60, Norwich over 90, Newcastle and Gateshead well over 100, Bristol 90… I could go on.

“If these sites are used for development, instead of using countryside, residents don’t have to own a car, and people coming into town will be more likely to use the bus, reducing traffic and increasing fare income. Councils can use new bus franchising powers to improve bus services.

“If the council owns the car park, it can be used for much-needed social housing.

“Urban sprawl is something we all get taught in geography but then forget about. It’s time we realised how much damage it’s done to this country over the past half century and do something about it.”

*ONS mapping showing % of households without access to a car  https://www.ons.gov.uk/census/maps/choropleth/housing/number-of-cars-or-vans/number-of-cars-5a/no-cars-or-vans-in-household