CONTENTS DIARY OF EVENTS - The Urban Design Group

multiple challenge – higher densities, more affordable housing,
sustainable construction and performance, and new ways of
building – without repeating the mistakes of the past.
With the lead set by the Essex Design Guide, house builders have,
with gritted teeth, accepted continuous frontage and enabled
the achievement of more than 30 dwellings per hectare. The
challenge of town centre development is to maintain the design
ethos and get much higher densities. Local authorities and house
builders outside the metropolis are learning on the job, and this
needs a new set of tricks, devices, standards and guidance, and a
critical yet championing attitude amongst local authorities.
How secure is urban design as a part of the place-making
process? Still far from being an integral part of planning, urban
design is vulnerable. The CABE audit shows that house builders
do not transfer the lessons from good schemes to other locations.
The perimeter block is seen by some developers and architects
as a planners’ way of stultifying urban form with old townscape,
rather than representing a set of workable objectives for public
and private space, permeability and urban form. Urban form is
also vulnerable to the sheer urgency of building sustainability
which takes designers’ eyes off the public realm.
The encouragement of off-site manufacture means local
authorities are now tackling approaches from developers
who have one specific modular system that cannot go around
corners or up and down slopes. Unite Group, a market leader,
does not produce family housing. The influential Homes 2016
(James Woudhuysen and Ian Abley Blueprint Broadsides 2004)
envisaged housing in the Thames Gateway produced like cars
and is disparaging towards any sense of the importance of public
space and properly designed urban form. In 2016, “site-based
planning has given way to planning for manufacture”. Off-site
manufacture will revive the attractions of standard building
types, which is where this article began. “Volumetric elements
are completed with bespoke, planning-approved architectural
treatments built around them”. So, design in planning becomes
a superficial aesthetic issue again, and this is a worrying concept,
especially in the hands of the volume house builders.
In the development process, local
authorities and developers are
simultaneously both partners and
opponents
Given this futuristic vision, the
positive role of local authorities will
remain vital to the consolidation of urban
design in the planning process and the
delivery of good places.
DEVELOPING GOOD PRACTICE IN THE
EAST OF ENGLAND
1. Chelmsford’s website on making better
places in practice was launched in March
to offer material from its Beacon Council
year as an on-going resource for councils:
www.chelmsfordbc.gov.uk
2. Essex County Council with EEDA
and CABE launched the ‘Essex Design
Initiative’ in January 2005 - a programme
aiming to influence the quality and
sustainability of housing growth: www.
essexcc.gov.uk/edi
3. Inspire East, the Regional Centre of
Excellence will support best practice
in the development of sustainable
communities. Launched in December
2004, it is funded by EEDA and the ODPM:
www.eeda.org.uk
Roger Estop, Principal Urban Designer, Chelmsford
Borough Council
Left Chelmsford Borough Council highway engineer and
planners worked with Wimpey’s team to achieve a
building-to-building shared surface disguising the
line between private and adopted space.
Above Housing audit - assessing the design quality of
new homes, front cover of the CABE publication
Urban Design | Spring 2005 | Issue 94 | 25
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