My father, Alan Evans, who has died aged 85, worked throughout his career to find solutions to the problem of unaffordable housing. His research focused on the realities of greenbelt areas, and on the inflation of house prices and the pricing out of people in areas where there are employment and opportunity.
In books and papers published in the 1970s, 80s and 90s, Alan highlighted that many greenbelts do not preserve biodiversity because they are largely used for monocultural farming, or are fenced off by wealthy landowners. He argued that artificial market conditions created by conserving greenbelt land made accessible green spaces in cities, such as parks and gardens, more likely to be built on – increasing homelessness, poverty and poor living conditions in urban areas.
