50 years ago, the United Kingdom created policy that banned development around its metropolitan areas to preserve agricultural land and undeveloped countryside. These circular areas, known as Green Belt land, are continually under threat, despite the Campaign to Protect Rural England's attempts to save and maintain it. However, foes of the protection of Green Belt land call for its end. Dan Lewis, a writer for the Centre for the New Europe, asserts that preserving this land hurts the economic vitality of the UK, and will ultimately lead to a poorer and less biodiverse nation. Lewis calls the Green belt "one of the greatest environmental planning disasters of all time."