Quality of place

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Quality of place

• UPG Addressing City Flight conference
• Sarah Allan
• 19 May 2009

2
Introduction Capturing the urban offer
Recommendations of Regeneris report

• Cities and towns need to
• raise the profile of urban living
• enhance urban housing offer
• offer high quality local services
• develop cultural infrastructure
• push for high value employment

Nottingham Castle Wharf
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Introduction

• Good housing design a basic right for all
• On bees and urban living
• Possible approaches to quality places in the East
  Midlands

Sheffield Peace Gardens
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Good housing design a basic right for all
Sheffield Peace Gardens
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Sheffield Peace Gardens
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What is good design?
Delight Does it look good?
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What is a good neighbourhood design?
well-made decently-proportioned easy to walk
around gardens, parks and squares adaptable
doesnt have to be iconic bespoke expensive
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Rostron Brow, Stockport
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The Sinclair Building, Sheffield
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Gunwharf Quays, Portsmouth
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The CABE housing audit

• 100 schemes in each audit
• By top 10 home builders
• In average price band
• Schemes of 20 dwellings
• Completed within last 3 years
• Mix of size and locations
• Post-occupancy survey

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The national picture
293 schemes completed between 2001-2006
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Affordable housing audit headline findings

• The design quality of new-build affordable
  housing is mixed.
• 18 good or very good
• 61 average
• 21 poor
• Some aspects of the schemes were frequently
  strong architectural quality, public realm, and
  the tenure and accommodation mix.
• Other aspects of the designs were much weaker a
  lack of distinctiveness designs not responding
  to context not legible access to local
  amenities often poor.

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No more toxic assets

• Top priorities in recovery from recession
• encourage developers to take a long-term stake in
  development and support them to invest in quality
• use the public sectors market power to insist on
  good design wherever public money is being
  invested
• invest in planning for good placemaking through
  LDFs, site preparation and use of non-regulatory
  methods to set the agenda for working together to
  achieve good design

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Building for Life
PPS 1 PPS 3 Code for Sustainable Homes Lifetime
Homes Secure by Design Safer Place Local
LDFs Local SPDs
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The 20 Criteria

• Environment and Community
• Character
• Streets, parking pedestrianisation
• Design and Construction

• Use
• Amount
• Layout
• Scale
• Landscaping
• Appearance
• Access

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Building for Life in the East Midlandswhats in
it for local authorities

• meeting corporate objectives
• sustainable development
• quality of life
• safer communities
• health and well-being
• setting benchmarks monitoring progress (AMRs)
• engaging communities
• engaging private sector partners
• framing quality issues through planning/DC
• embedding in policy
• pre-app discussions
• design and access statements
• post-occupancy review

Freemens Meadow, Leicester

• CABE BfL programme for 2009-10
• training for accredited assessors
• awareness-raising work with OPUN
• working with HCA regional team

Upton, Northampton
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Setting a benchmark Building for Life audits by
South Derbyshire NW Leicestershire
Reflecting regional scores

• Some familiar problems
• quality of public realm
• dealing with parking
• streets building layout
• character identity
• detailing

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Building for Life audits South Derbyshire

• Some positive signs
• well-structured building layout homes front
  onto streets
• easy to find your way around
• pedestrian / cycle / vehicle friendly

Church Gresley scheme (David Wilson Homes)
Woodville scheme (Cameron Homes)
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Engaging Officers Members in BfLNottingham
Retrospective Reviews

• taking groups out on site
• prior BfL review of scheme
• comparing build schemes to approved drawings
• where does quality slip?
• should we have given permission?

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On bees and urban living
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Responding to global challenges

• A sustainable city...
• has an appetite for change
• has leaders who can think long term
• works across administrative boundaries
• is free to control land and assets
• focuses on whole-life value

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Sustainable development Good placemaking
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Possible approaches to quality places in the East
Midlands
SUB-REGIONAL
CITY/TOWN
SITE
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Why design mattersthe value argument

• Value of public spaceave 5 uplift in property
  value overlooking or close to a park (up to
  34!)
• Paved with gold 5.2 uplift in residential
  prices 4.9 in retail rents
• NWDA economic value of urban design increased
  rental and capital value of 15-20 in case
  studies
• EMDA study by Ecotec into economic benefits of
  well designed public space

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people want place
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permeability and global integration add value
Regression Plot
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Placemaking value is realised late
large sites may yield the benefits a quarter of a
century later
but greater residual values from sustainable
urbanism
...doesnt fit with recent short-term
housebuilding model
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Placemaking

• Place is becoming more important as a driver of
  economic growth and prosperity. As technology and
  other changes enable labour, capital and
  information to move between countries with
  increasing ease, the particular characteristics
  of places, and their flexibility to respond to
  economic trends, become even more crucial to
  economic prosperity and resilience.
• Local Government White Paper

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What are the principles of good place?

• Broad purpose
• Maximise opportunity for exchange
• Maximise choice
• Overarching values 
• Equal opportunities / social justice
• Cultural identity/diversity
• Environmental sustainability
• Economic prosperity

• Place as an open, connected and multi-layered
  system
• Place as an interplay of sub-areas with fuzzy
  and overlapping functional boundaries at multiple
  spatial scales
• Place as an interplay of distinctive and
  complementary sub-areas

Source McGlynn S (2008)
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What are the principles of good place?
Fuzzy, overlapping functional boundaries at
multiple spatial scales
Source Lucci P and Hildreth P (2008) City
Links Integration and Isolation, Centre for
Cities www.centreforcities/citylinks
Source Hillier B (2008)
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What are the principles of good place?
Distinctiveness and complementarity
Source Diener R, Herzog J, Meilli M, de Meuron
P,Schmid C and ETH Studio Basel (2006)
Switzerland An Urban Portrait
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Why is urban design at sub-regional spatial level
important?

• increasing emphasis on planning for functional
  areas
• Paul Hildreth Integrating different concepts of
  place
• where I live (neighbourhood)
• how I am governed (municipality area)
• how the economy works (city-region / sub-region)

These arbitrary (regional) boundaries often fail
to reflect the natural, local economies that have
formed as a result of transport links,
technological links, clusters of natural and
human resources, and the choices made by
businesses and their customers. The
Conservative Party (2009) Control shift
returning power to local communities, Policy
green paper no.9 regions are often too large
to deliver economic development
programmes effectively as they do not match up
with real economies, which are sub-regional. Cent
re for Cities (2008) The Future of Regional
Development Agencies
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Why is urban design at sub-regional spatial level
important?

• increasing emphasis on place
• people firms physical environment
• effects of globalisation and the move towards
  knowledge economies

The general diminution in transport costs in no
way disrupts the significance of territorial
divisions and specialisation of labour. Indeed,
it makes for more fine-grained territorial
divisions since small differences in production
costs (due to materials, labour conditions,
intermediate inputs, consumer markets,
infrastructural or taxation arrangements) are
more easily exploitable by highly mobile capital.
Reducing the friction of distance, in short,
makes capital more rather than less sensitive to
local geographical variations. Harvey D (2006)
Spaces of Global Capitalism A Theory of Uneven
Geographical Development
The world is spiky multiple spikes London,
Manchester, Glasgow etc
The world is spiky single spike London and
South East
Source Hildreth P (2009)
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Local distinctiveness in core strategies?

• Visions are rarely locally specific
• Good design starts with the core strategy
• Design is not a discrete issue
• Spatial strategy - prioritise what matters
• Place, not policy based approach
• Diagrams, maps and illustrations
• Monitoring and evaluation use of standards and
  indicators
• Links to SCS, LSPs and delivery
• Communication role of the strategy

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Why is urban design at sub-regional spatial level
important?

• Designing and assessing impact of large schemes

Glattal lightrail, Zurich Source Guller M (2008)
Spatial-economic framework for the Schiphol
region Source Schaafsma M (2008)
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What approach do we need to place across the
scales?
A clear and engaging story of change and an
urban design/spatial framework for delivery of
strategic objectives / projects needed
Thames Gateway
East Lancashire
Partnership for Urban South Hampshire (PUSH)
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• In conclusion

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Actions for Growthorganisations and structures

• LDF core strategies
• design championing
• sub-regional initiatives
• tools for involving people
• Respond to assets of place

• policies and tools
• leadership
• partnership and consensus
• inspiring local communities
• Scale of the opportunity

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Embedding BfL in decision-making monitoringNW
Leicestershire proposal
Planning application submitted
APPENDIX 2 PLANNING DECISION FLOW CHART
Planning application assessed against Building
for Life criteria
Score of 13 or less (equivalent to average or
poor)
Score of 14 or more (equivalent to good or
very good)
Urban design officer recommendation for refusal
Urban design officer recommendation for approval
Refused
Granted consent
Refused
Granted consent
3 or 4 star certificate issued
Appeal granted in favour of applicant
Maximum 2 star certificate issued
Appeal granted in favour of applicant
Results published on dedicated web site
Results published on dedicated web site
Informed consumer choice
Completed schemes H6 monitoring returns
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Client commitment and capability
auditing regional design infrastructure
- policy and strategy- residential guidance
standards- commitment to BfL- design
champions- member officer training-
structures for engaging with design
www.urbanpartnershipgroup.org.uk/design-audit
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Championing design exemplar projects
Nottingham Old Market Square...
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Leadership, involving the public
CABE-supported Nottingham design initiatives

• Housing quality initiative
• Retrospective appraisal (BfL)
• Design training, seminars, workshops, awards
• Sustainability handbook
• City centre urban design guide
• Sustainable Cities in 2009

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North Nothamptonshire JPU mapping sub-regions
assets
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• In the hinterlands of some cities-beginning
  just beyond their suburbs-rural, industrial and
  commercial workplaces are all mixed up together.
  Such city regions are unique, being the richest,
  densest and most intricate of all types of
  economies, except for cities themselves.
• Jane Jacobs Cities and the Wealth of Nations p45

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Thank you

• www.cabe.org.uk