Design-led planning article published in Building Scotland
Jaimie Ferguson
Director of Urban Design & Masterplanning
0161 233 7676
[email protected]
The following article was published in Building Scotland, 2 June 2013
Jaimie Ferguson, Turley Associates’ new Director of Urban Design & Masterplanning, argues for the role of design in bringing forward small schemes.
Change is the only constant, to borrow a cliché. The places we live, although fixed and permanent on a day-to-day basis do change, usually subtly but sometimes dramatically so. This change is almost always realised in small increments.
The cumulative effect of individual investment and design decisions over time shapes our villages, neighbourhoods, towns and cities. As such, the value and indeed impact of design can be seen at all scales.
Every new development represents a unique opportunity; each site is full of potential. The developer and designer are charged with shaping a distinctive new place from relatively simple components of bricks and render, pavers and tarmac, plants and trees, reacting to the drivers of landscape, heritage and community.
To dismiss a scheme as too small to justify design input or creative thinking is to squander this potential. It is also to play into the hands of those who would block development, chipping away at the confidence of the wider community in new construction.
To deliver the homes we need, and as the gap between housing need and the rate of completions grows by the day, we must overcome people’s fears about new housing; explaining and illustrating the benefits of change. As Nick Boles (DCLG) has pointed out, good design plays a key role in encouraging communities to accept new housing. Indeed in responding to the NPPF, and wider localism agenda, our focus should be how good design can achieve better quality and consequently more timely planning approvals.
The temptation to roll out a ‘typical layout’ for smaller sites, viewing design as a risk or cost is quickly exposed as false economy. In many ways the smaller a scheme the more visible design deficiencies become. An extension of 100 homes within a village is likely to invoke more of a reaction than say a new settlement, where local residents are few and proposals remain relatively abstract.
To simply transport solutions from elsewhere, ignoring the specifics of a site, results in mediocrity and often a difficult passage through the planning process. At worst, it could create long-term physical or social problems bringing reputational damage for developers and management problems for local authorities. We have also seen that at a time of housing shortage, with pressures to permit development, a number of appeals have been refused on design grounds. Design, therefore, is important to developers as well as communities.
The masterplanning process can help to engender increased community support, or at least assuage fears. It can also aid the developer through increasing efficiency and efficacy of investment. A strong masterplan can make even small developments better connected and structured, but also more easily constructed and maintained.
Open space, for example, can be shaped and positioned to add value to sales prices as well as enriching the lives of residents in the long term. We also help to refine infrastructure; reducing linear lengths of highways, encouraging shared use of space, simplifying materials and street hierarchies. Simplicity and clarity can replace costly and confusing cosmetic interventions.
We work with a range of house builders and developers across the country advising on matters of design, responding to varying local and national standards, such as Building for Life. In some cases we have successfully helped turn around schemes previously refused permission, going back to first principles to help refine and better articulate the approach to a site.
This can be a genuine win-win process resulting in places that save costs and generate value for developers whilst also creating places that are valued by those that live there, encouraging incremental reinvestment by homeowners over generations.
Good design can help developers to shape a better future, home by home, one (small) site at a time.
Visit www.turleyassociates.co.uk for further information.