Lecture 7 - Urban Planning & Development Planning PDF

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Lecture 7 - Urban Planning & Development Planning and Urban Design – Placemaking What we are going to cover: • • • • • • •

Defining urban design Evolution of urban design in planning policy Key trends and theories in urban design Urban design policies/guidance NPPF and Urban Design Urban Design - case studies – San Francisco and EPS Further reading

Definition of Design -

Urban Design fuzzy term - difficult to pin down No national/international agreed definition ‘Design’ quite an ambiguous word in English (Cullingworth et al., 2014)

Question: Urban Design….  WHAT DO YOU THINK IT COULD MEAN IN Practice???  What types of principles and activities could it cover? Madanipour (2014:2) - ‘Urban design is the purposeful process of shaping the built environment, with all its associated problems and complexities…’ Place making:   

Placing the icing on the cake of the property industry? Fuel the engines of globalization through city marketing? Simple as creating (good) places for people?

Historical context -

Post war design referred to in term design control Regulate height & massing of new buildings (min.standards) Design often assumed to involve just aesthetics Much wider than just aesthetics (=how a building looks) Growing field within planning since 1950s Brings together architects, planners, transport engineers, landscape professionals, etc Discretion within the Development Management process Place making - public realm space of cities, places for people

Evolving urban design1960s…. • • • • • • •

Modernist era Separating out land uses, new materials & building methods Real emphasis on vehicle circulation (primacy car) Highway’s engineering Devise era – led to reinvigoration of conservation (e.g. Civic Trust) Headlong dash for progress trashing past? Return to human scale & natural materials

History of Design Policies in Planning    

Utopian visions – Park Hill, Sheffield Originally viewed light & airy, compared to dingy back to back terraces Built (1957-61) listed by EH in 2003 Now been redeveloped & gentrified?

Contextualisation How new development responds to place in which it is built -

1950s – 1960s city centre redevelopments were poor Also Design of public housing – ‘high rise’ ‘slab block’ estates Inspired by ideas of Le Corbusier – ‘streets in the sky’

Jane Jacobs (1961) The Death and Life of Great American Cities -

Greenwich Village, New York City

Modernist planning de-humanising the city – social usage tradition, ‘how people make places’.

Lynch and Jacobs – perception of people • • • • • • •

Lynch (1960) Image of the City – emphasised the importance of ordinary people – navigating cities Jacobs – attacked modernist (60s) planning for dehumanising effect Rational planning – separating uses, gutted communities Not just about building – social usage and meaning Sterile, inhuman places Ordinary people & their everyday lives, vitality of cities Community, street life, vitality

Prioritises the perceptions & experience of ordinary people Two key terms when planning: Permeability - Bentley (1985) permeability is the degree to which a person has choice and ease of movement through a city. • • • •

In its 7 key objectives of urban design, the DETR / CABE publication “By Design” (2000) recommends, in terms of permeability, ‘putting people before traffic’. A well-designed site has a network of connected spaces and routes for pedestrians, cyclists & vehicles. Contrast 1960s concrete walkways in Newcastle designed to prioritise the car to pedestrianized people friendly places like the Covent Garden Piazza in London. Covent Garden Piazza, enter and exit at a number of points

Visual Analysis Following in Cullen’s footstep planners and urban designers have used sketches to bring plans/urban design to life. • •

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Park and Doak (2012: 167) state that, ‘Cullen in explaining the idea of ‘townscape’ highlights how physical and observable components have been given priority in modern planning’. Cullen (1967: 7) states, ‘…the elements that go to create the environment; buildings, trees, water, traffic, advertisements and so on, and to weave them together in such a way that the drama is released. For a city is a dramatic event in the environment’ . Cullen’s central theme is that the whole is more important than the sum of its parts. Cullen (1961) states, ‘bring buildings together and collectively they can give visual pleasure which none can give separately’. For Cullen urban environment should be experienced and designed as if through the eyes of a moving person; concept of the ‘serial vision’.

Human reaction - Cullen goes on to state, ‘there is a reaction to being hemmed in as in a tunnel and another to the wideness of a square’. Designing based on natural human instincts & reactions. 70s also saw rise of Pedestrianisation     

Main shopping streets free of traffic Broad paved areas for shoppers Street furniture – benches, bins, etc Urban design coming into its own Urban design simply about moving from car-based planning to pedestrian?

Successful places 5 characteristics of successful places (totality of place): 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Places meant for people Well-connected and permeable places Places of mixed use and varied density Distinctive places Sustainable, resilient and robust places

(Source: Adams & Tiesdell (2013:11), Shaping Places – Chp 2 directed reading) By Design (CABE) 2000 Urban Design not a blueprint for creating successful places, understanding what people feel about places. Closest thing to national urban design policy but was deleted in 2014 Key objective of urban design: -

Promoting character Continuity and enclosure Quality of the public realm Ease of movement Legibility Adaptability and diversity

New Urbanism       

Early 90s US Architects Sick car orientated urban sprawl Recreate compact walkable communities Mixed use, parks & squares, integrated well connected streets Inspiration traditional settlements before car UK – Urban Villages, Poundbury, Dorset Move on 15- or 20-min Neighbourhoods/Cities

New Labour era Urban Taskforce report in (1999) • • • • • •

Compact, well connected cities Live, work and play in adjacent quarters Revitalize inner city Higher density private housing 30-50 dph Recommended national urban design framework CABE – Commission for Architecture & Built Environment created

NPPF – Comments on Urban Design • • • • • •

Original NPPF had 4 pages on design Doesn’t use term urban design ‘Good design indivisible from good planning’ LPAs ‘avoid unnecessary prescription’ Can the two statements (above) be complementary? Design Review & Design codes

Question: •

Why might a government want to avoid overly prescriptive design guidance??

Design – code, review and policies Design Review – advice from panel design experts (regional panels), major applications, can become material considerations (CABE, 1999) - £1500 for 1hr review Design guides for buildings – design guides can cover such topics as shopfronts, building extensions & signs, dealing largely with the appearance (details & materials) and scale (massing). Design code - is a set of illustrated design rules & requirements which instruct & advise on the physical development of a site/area. The codes are detailed and precise, build upon a design vision such a masterplan or a design and development framework for a site or area. Detailed visual examples Building Better, Building Beautiful • •

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Commission reported on 30 Jan 2020 Ask for Beauty. Beauty includes everything that promotes a healthy and happy life, everything that makes a collection of buildings into a place, everything that turns anywhere into somewhere, and nowhere into home. It is not merely a visual characteristic, but is revealed in the deep harmony between a place and those who settle there. So understood, beauty should be an essential condition for planning permission. Refuse Ugliness. Ugly buildings present a social cost that everyone is forced to bear. They destroy the sense of place, undermine the spirit of community, and ensure that we are not at home in our world. Ugliness means buildings that are unadaptable, unhealthy and unsightly and which violate the context in which they are placed. Preventing ugliness should be a primary purpose of the planning system. Promote Stewardship. Our built environment and our natural environment belong together. Both should be protected and enhanced for the long term benefit of the communities that depend on them. Settlements should be renewed, regenerated and cared for, and we should end the scandal of abandoned places, where derelict buildings and vandalised public spaces drive people away. New developments should enhance the environment in which they occur, adding to the health, sustainability and biodiversity of their context.

Conclusions/Issues • • • • • • • • •

Due to Austerity – Design teams in local authorities decimated CABE emasculated merged with Design Council 2005 PPS 1 Delivering Sustainable Development ‘Good design, indivisible from good planning’ kept in NPPF Place making – central under New Labour era as was designing sustainable communities Never really been a national urban design policy framework Much stronger in some LA areas than others (e.g. Essex) Patterson (2012:p.147) Some LAs avoided strong design policies –Impedes development & jobs Heading back to the 80s – Design undermined? 2010-2019 2020 onwards Planning White Paper – Design making a comeback?...