It didn’t take long for the people of West Sussex to work out that inserting the word ‘eco’ before ‘town’ in order to promote a new development was no more than greenwash.
It didn’t take long for the people of West Sussex to work out that inserting the word ‘eco’ before ‘town’ in order to promote a new development was no more than greenwash. Developers had been trying to build on greenfield land near the historic town of Arundel for some time, so when Brown began to mention ‘eco-towns’ they seized on the idea.
The tiny village of Ford was to be transformed not into a new town, but into an eco-town. Birds would sing, rabbits would hop and butterflies would flutter… and 5,000 houses would be built on open countryside, a flood plain and Grade 1 agricultural land. What’s more, it turned out, the houses would be built to lower environmental standards than other developments.
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