Land use change

What’s going on?

By sealing the natural environment’s surface beneath concrete, the ability of the built environment to cope with issues like flooding and overheating is decreased.

The destruction of virgin land – by quarrying, mining, and deforestation – to produce building materials is an obvious example. But road building is also a key deforestation driver.

Connecting habitats and the risk of linear projects – such as new roads or landscaping schemes – segregating habitats, are another major concern.

While some projects – cable laying, for example – allow land to go back to the previous state within six months, other larger projects do not involve such set targets.

One major challenge for the UK construction business is that it is hard to balance changing land use with the growing demand for affordable housing due to the national shortage.

Another is that any change in land use for a project is dictated at the design stages of the work. It is important, therefore, for all stakeholder groups involved in the lifecycle of a project to work together from the outset, enabling collaboration on environmental topics.