Planning in London

UDAL conference report (ePiL October 2004)

Creating Successful Communities by Judith Ryser

The good news is that design quality matters and is not simply 'fluffy on top'. If the Minister of State for Transport Tony McNulty who has just moved from being 'Minister of design champions and joined-up government' at the ODPM it must be true.

Or at least good design has the blessing of the government. The question is how to persuade the 'money making machines', developers, land owners and financiers of that? At the Urban Design Alliance (UDAL) conference many agreed with the Minister that well intentioned bypasses and urban motorways, even railways with their stations are cutting up communities and strangulating inner cities.

Let us not forget that they were the key to urban growth, the planners' recipe to urban well-being in the sixties and seventies.

The problem with dynamic urban growth is the moving boundaries within and at the edge of the contiguous urban fabric, and beyond when contained by green belts.

Ideally, according to some participants only benign dictatorship exercised by an agency which owns the land, holds the planning powers and has or controls the finances can deliver the high quality built environment which would generate sustainable and successful communities. New Town Corporations were evoked and autocrats like the Medicis.

For designers like George Ferguson mixed spaces for mixed use will deliver multicultural communities with mixed purchasing powers. He admitted though that masterplans can be good and bad and do not guarantee either implementation or good communities as its outcome.

Even with comprehensive masterplans in hand, widely seen as a necessary prerequisite for the creation of sustainable communities, what matters most is to mobilise public private partnerships to deliver liveable urban places and high quality urban spaces, provided they share a vision and master regeneration techniques and urban management according to Michael Ball.

Drawing on his experience with the construction industry for delivery success Vassos Chrysistomou advocated a steady supply chain and well trained human resources to deliver quality and profit. What he omitted was effective control over the delivery process and the secret of how to avoid poaching of a well trained workforce.

As could be expected in an educational establishment Richard Hayward considered the teaching of urban design skills crucial for a better built environment.

The spectacular setting of Christopher Wren's Royal Naval College where the conference took place during Urban Design Week should rub off its quality on his students.

Yet, teaching cannot replace talent and the real issue is to attract talented people to the built environment professions. Perhaps the profession itself and those who regulate design may be it fault here. How can a talented student be expected to get enthusiastic about design codes and prescribed design guides?

What about letting designers more leeway in the creation of the built environment.

This raises another hurdle, namely taste.

Who is the judge of whether a place is beautiful, let alone whether it functions and is able to adapt to changing functions a long time hence like the Naval College?

Can the urban dwellers trust the developers or the state to deliver good design, or should urban communities be entrusted?

Of course communities would have to be given a say, for example on the night time economy as explored by Hannah Mummery in a Civic Trust research project. Public consultation most certainly contributed to the successful turn around of Birmingham for which Les Sparks was the responsible planner. But what about places which are created more or less from scratch on brown field sites from which communities have long vanished or on green field sites where they are still to settle?

Even the best written questionnaires will only collate individual opinions which may be more pertinent about an existing place than a future one.

After all, volume house builders are producing 'what sells' which should reflect the taste as well as the purse of the purchaser. Causal links between successful communities and good urban design are yet to be demonstrated.

Besides, today's mobility of people and jobs are not conducive to steady neighbourhoods.

At best developers produce 'generic' buildings and spaces in between which they anticipate to reflect prospective buyers of housing or commercial property. In pursuit of some indicators of success, planners and designers are once again establishing wish lists such as good schools near new neighbourhoods and other facilities provided at the outset, together with good access preferably by road and public transport.

For those who have been around in the sixties, they may recall that these criteria were laid down in prescriptive documents as well as performance specifications.

In the real world, they were often delivered late or not at all.

What will guarantee that things will be different in the vast area of Thames Gateway at a time when the public purse is slim and developers expect healthy and fast profits? How for example should mixed communities emerge? Those in need of affordable housing will move to where it is provided, but what about those who can chose?

Why should high income people settle in the middle of nowhere when for the same money they can move into leafy villages with ancient buildings, an existing community life and high quality services?

One solution advocated by the panel on successful community development in Thames Gateway was to attract well educated higher income commuters.

In the longer term they, and especially the women after child raring would attract workplaces in turn. But is this simply urban sprawl in another guise?

And an environment of dynamic footloose job opportunities a flexible workforce may have different choice in mind during their busy lifecycle.

Perhaps the last word has not yet been said and the best ideas have not yet been found about how good planning and design can contribute to sustainable and successful communities.

Judith Ryser, CityScope Europe, London, September 2004.