The protest groups came from Curborough (Staffs), Elsenham (Essex), Ford (West Sussex), Hanley Grange (Cambridgeshire), Marston Vale (Bedfordshire), Middle Quinton (Warwickshire), Pennbury (Leicestershire) and Weston Otmoor (Oxfordshire.)

On College Green they were met by MPs from the constituencies affected, and the Shadow Minister for Communities and Local Government, and later in the day attended a public meeting in the Houses of Parliament.

Five eco-towns, zero-carbon brown-field housing developments using recycled materials with local facilities such as shops, schools and leisure facilities were an election pledge for George Brown, and at the Labour Party Conference he doubled their number to at least on in each region and a total of 10.

These eco-towns would each have between 5-20,000 homes and would each act as an exemplar in at least one area of environmental technology. Although original government intentions were good, if possibly poorly thought out, they soon deteriorated through the usual kowtowing to the construction industry.

In May, 15 locations were identified for possible eco-towns, and almost all (if not all) fail to satisfy the original criteria set by the government. As well as those represented at the rally there are:
Bordon (Hampshire), Coltishall (Norfolk), Imerys nr St Austell (Cornwall), Leeds City Region (Yorkshire), Manby (Lincolnshire),
Rossington (South Yorkshire) and Rushcliffe (Nottinghamshire.)

One key area that eco-towns are supposed to address is car use, aiming for only 40% of journeys to be by private car (25% in an exemplar eco-town.) At the moment around 10% of the adult population (including myself) choose not to own a car. To increase this, eco-towns need either to integrate into an existing conurbation with extensive public transport and facilities that can easily be accessed by it, or to be self-sufficient centres providing virtually everything their residents need - and with good transport links, including mainline rail to a major city for the rest.

Simply on the ground of car use, all or almost all the proposed sites fail. Most are too small, too remote and without adequate transport links. Building any of them would be guaranteed to result in an increase in private car use.

Eco-towns were also meant to be on brown-field sites, but again most of the proposals are for land currently in agricultural use. Most are green field sites in villages in the countyside and even where they are "brown-field", such as former airfields or other military land, are now largely green open space, often under cultivation.

Most appear to be fairly typical commercial development proposals that are trying to masquerade as eco-towns to get round planning restrictions.

The government needs to think again about what would constitute genuinely green eco-development and search for new sites. Most suitable sites would probably be in or on the edges of existing large towns and cities, linking in to the existing public transport systems. The current concept of eco-towns needs to learn from the post-war 'new towns' rather than repeating their mistakes (and I lived and worked in one) and I'm certainly not alone in suggesting that some rethinking is needed. Richard Rogers recently called it "one of the biggest mistakes the government can make" and said "They are in no way environmentally sustainable".

In fact Rogers has already, at government request, done the necessary thinking. In 1998 the government invited him to chair the Urban Task Force, and then seems to have ignored its report published in 2005. As it recommended, we need to create high-density developments around a high-frequency and efficient public transport system.

If the government are short of ideas, I can identify one prime site ripe for eco-development, a huge acreage (1200 hectares) around 12 miles to the west of London. Most of its land area is currently underused, although there are a few strips of concrete that would need to be dealt with. It already has good road and motorway links, several underground stations and a currently underused (and overpriced) rail link, and would be suitable for a sizeable development, probably more homes than the proposed 10 eco-towns on a single site. Its redevelopment would also be accompanied by a huge environmental gain from cessation of current use. There seems little doubt that Heathrow is the country's most suitable site for an eco-city development.

More pictures from the event on My London Diary shortly:  http://mylondondiary.co.uk/2008/06/jun.htm#eco