Book ReviewsBook Reviews Editor: Dr John Stillwell

ENGLAND AD 2200: HOWWOULD YOU LIKE ITTO BE? by John Barker. Gaia Watch, Shef®eld, 1998.No. of pages: 189. Price: £7.00 (paperback). ISBN0 95335320 6.

The future size and geographical distribution ofEngland's population has sparked a great deal ofinterest in recent years, largely as a result of thesigni®cant projected increase in the number ofhouseholds over the next few decades. The new1996-based subnational household projections ofthe Department of the Environment, Transport andthe Regions estimate that the number of householdsin England will increase from 20.2 million in 1996 to24.0 million by 2021 (DETR, 1999). These projectionshave raised many questions, perhaps the mostobvious being `where are they all going to live andwork?' and `how will this impact upon the land-scape in areas of house building?' John Barker'sbook on environmental and population change inEngland is therefore a well-timed contribution tothis debate.The book is divided into two main sections, along

with a prologue and epilogue. The author sets outhis aims and provides a general introduction to thebook in the prologue. The aim is to `develop a longterm environmental strategy for England' (p. 8)`with the focus on the extent and quality of thecountryside' (back cover). The ®rst main section,entitled `The Situation', includes the ®rst sevenchapters and focuses on current environmentalproblems in England. The second section, `TheStrategy', contains chapters 8 to 16 and is a personalstrategy for a wholesale restoration of the environ-ment over the next two centuries. The bookconcludes in the epilogue with the author's desiredvision of England in 2200.Reading the prologue it quickly becomes evident

that the most pronounced feature is, unfortunately,the rather poor expression, a feature which per-vades the whole book. The writing contains waf¯e.Too often vague terms are used where more speci®cones would have been more useful, such as `thesituation' and `things' in `Now it is only when youtake a long term view of the situation ± both howthings have changed in the past and how they arelikely to change in the future ± that one realises thereal magnitude of the environmental problem' (p.8). There are irritating inconsistencies in style. Forexample, the author refers to himself both as `theauthor' and `I'. Furthermore, it was disappointing

to read about `man' when the reference was topeople in general, such as: `Yet man's attitude hasnot changed. Mankind is short sighted' (p. 8). Yetunfortunate as these features are, the book does goon to engage in some useful discussions.Chapter 1, `The Global Context', gives a short

account of various global environmental trendscovering issues such as deforestation, global warm-ing, biodiversity, food production, soil erosion, ®shstocks, atmospheric pollution, and their relation-ship to population growth. The chapter provides auseful summary of environmental trends, althoughthe problems of grammar and vagueness continue:`In China, over 200 new cities have arisen in recenttimes' (p. 13). There is no indication of what ismeant by `recent times', nor is it clear where thisinformation came from. Also on p. 13 Barker states:`This loss of green land must be added to that likelyto be lost through rising sea levels caused by theªgreenhouse effectº,' although surely `global warm-ing' would have been more accurate.Chapter 2 turns to population growth. The author

describes the demographic transition of WesternEurope before going on to consider the probablefuture population dynamics of the UK. Much of thisis a useful summary of population trends, althoughit is not altogether clear how the discussion on themerits of demographic transition theory in explain-ing the transition is directly relevant. The chapterwould have bene®ted greatly from some graphicalillustrations of the population trends under discus-sion. In fact it was surprising to discover that thereis not a single graph or map in the whole book.There are, however, a number of photographs,although regrettably these are not titled as ®guresor plates.The changing countryside is the subject of the

third chapter. This goes into considerable detailabout changes in farming and the landscape inEngland since the middle part of the twentiethcentury, and is altogether more successful thanearlier chapters. However, the best part of thechapter is an aside in which the author recounts hismemories of walking in the Peak District NationalPark during the 1930s±1950s (p. 38±40). Thispersonal story describes the author's fond mem-ories of the beauty of this environment at that time,and recounts his disappointment at how it haschanged over the years. This short biographicalsection is one of the most successful parts of thebook, and is helpful in understanding Barker's

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF POPULATION GEOGRAPHYInt. J. Popul. Geogr. 5, 493±494 (1999)

CCC 1077±3495/99/060493±02 $17.50 Copyright # 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

positionality and concern for the environment inthe rest of the text.The relationships between population and the

environment are considered in the next twochapters. Barker usefully discusses the of®cialpopulation and household projections, and therelationship between the household projectionsand actual housebuilding. Unfortunately, somesentences are made rather dif®cult to read by theuse of mathematical `greater than' and `less than'symbols: `For some regions and categories, theprojection < structure plan discrepancy was ex-tended to land availability, so that we haveprojections < plan < land available' (p. 66). Inaddition, a number of small but irritating, factualerrors are present. For example, there are not 32metropolitan districts (p. 64) but 36. The followingchapter moves on to discuss transport and pollu-tion, and includes much interesting detail on topicssuch as the huge growth over the twentieth centuryof road traf®c and the resulting pollution. There area considerable number of statistics presented herewhich would more usefully have been placed intables. Furthermore, the photograph of a powerstation at the end of the chapter, entitled `Pollution'is possibly a little misleading because it mostlyshows steam coming out of cooling towers.Part Two of the book sets out in detail the

author's strategy for restoring the English country-side to its former glory. An important point is madeabout the time horizon of such a strategy in theintroduction to this section: `As far as the govern-ment is concerned, attention is most commonlyfocused on how much green land will be lost tohousing say by 2016, almost as if all the processescausing green land to be lost to housing willsuddenly stop at such a date' (p. 115). This themeof long-term planning is recurrent throughout PartTwo. More controversial suggestions are made inthe following chapter. In Chapter 9 Barker arguesthat the UK population should be both controlledand reduced ± controlled to give a stable age±sexdistribution, thus avoiding problems such aspopulation ageing, and reduced in size to lessenits negative impact on the countryside. No meth-ods, however, are proposed as to how these twoaims could be achieved. It seems that there is apossible con¯ict between the two proposals: ifpopulation size were to be reduced by restrictingfertility, then this would of course lead to acceler-ated population ageing.

The two chapters on how to reduce the amount ofgreen land lost to building and how the countrysidecould be restored are probably the most interestingand relatively well written part of the book. Theauthor demonstrates substantial knowledge of the

planning process and sets out his radical policies forfuture urban development, arguing that all futurebuilding should take place within urban areas, andfurthermore that the spatial extent of urban areasshould over time be gradually reduced. He declares`it is an obscenity that anyone should be allowed tohave a holiday home, especially one in the country'(p. 138). These proposals are radical indeed,although it does seem unlikely that the Englishpublic will accept such constraints on their lives.The issues of `Human Freedoms and Education' arediscussed in Chapter 14, and the author concedesthat his proposals could only be effected by amassive public education campaign. Some of thesuggestions in the author's strategy are very speci®cindeed ± perhaps a little off the main track. Forexample, in Chapter 15 on `Government Structure,the Law and Other Matters', Barker suggests that anew Ministry of International Cooperation beformed, which would have two departmentsfocusing respectively on the European Union andthe United Nations. These two departments wouldbe headed by ministers chosen by the EU and UN,and these ministers may well not be British. If theministers were not British and of cabinet rank theywould have to be excluded from certain cabinetmeetings (p. 173).

So how would the author like England to be intwo centuries' time? The epilogue, `Britain [sic], AD2200', paints a picture of a green and pleasant land,with a much smaller population living in compactcities, less traf®c, less pollution, 100% employment,reduced working hours, less use of computers, nosupermarkets, and community values. Undoubt-edly this is a vision of England of which manypeople would be in favour.In conclusion, there is no doubt that this book

mentions a wide range of relevant issues and refersto a considerable amount of literature. It is clear thata great deal of work has gone into its preparation,and that the author is passionate about the presentand future state of the English countryside. Butregrettably, it suffers from far too many short-comings to be recommended.

TOM WILSON

University of Leeds, UK

REFERENCE

DETR (1999) New Projections of Households to2021 (on-line press release, 29th March; accessed13th April) URL: http://www.coi.gov.uk/coi/depts/GTE/coi3641f.ok

Copyright # 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Int. J. Popul. Geogr. 5, 493±494 (1999)

494 Book Reviews