Speaking to The Telegraph, the architect said the decision to axe the northern section of the rail project amounted to a ‘cancellation of what would have been the greatest equaliser for levelling up’.
Foster said the move amounted to ‘short-termism in favour of building more roads and consuming more countryside and more potential for urban sprawl’.
Rishi Sunak has vowed to reinvest the £36 billion earmarked for the northern leg of HS2 on regional transport schemes. Some have argued that the money is better spent this way rather than enabling faster commutes to London, but Foster disagreed with this premise.
‘HS2 was not about moving an elite about the country and saving a few minutes,’ he said. ‘It was about taking stress off the existing networks so they could better serve regionally in terms of shorter commutes.’
Foster, 88, was speaking at the launch of his Norman Foster Institute for Sustainable Cities, a scheme that aims to bring together architects, engineers and others to create ‘a new model for cities’ tackling issues like climate change and energy supply in an urbanist context. ‘The environment is too important to be left to architects,’ he added.
He warned that the world needed an extra 111 million homes per year but that a lack of planning risked allowing cities to become bland.
‘If you plan well and involve the community, which we can now do very effectively, then you can create the most desirable environments,’ he said.
Foster added: ‘London is, in many ways, coasting on the heritage of an extraordinary background of good planning. The Abercrombie plan at the height of World War II, with its promotion of neighbourhoods and its reinforcement of the green belt, has served extraordinarily well.’
His comments on HS2 came as the devolved mayors of Birmingham and Greater Manchester met private railway bosses to discuss possible improvements to train links between the two cities.
Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham told MPs that the plans were not an attempt to revive HS2 but that with the expected growth in both cities over the next two decades, they needed better transport infrastructure.
He said: ‘If we do nothing about improving connectivity between the country’s second and third cities … we will have a major transport headache. You could argue we’ve got it now.’