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West of Scotland Chapter Events: The Challenges of Sustainable Placemaking

John Walls reports
At the end of May, the WoS Chapter enjoyed an entertaining and enlightening evening on placemaking led by Scott Davidson (Halcrow), Iain Wardrop (Rydens) and Duncan Whatmore (Farrells).

Scott Davidson started the evening using a football metaphor to describe planners, i.e. they were the defence rather than the mid-field or the attacking strikers! Moving quickly on, he offered us a choice between four types of town planning: Garden City, Modernism, New Traditional or Bureaucrat. Using a variety of examples he explained how these various approaches had failed.

He then progressed and promoted Smart Growth as the way forward. Scott advised that the key elements of Smart Growth are:

• Accessibility
• Community
• Economy
• Environment

Scott described Smart Growth developments as having the following characteristics:
• Density influenced by transport choice, i.e. compact development providing a 'walk-able' community with attractive accessible public transport.
• A choice of housing, including affordable housing, to create a mixed community.
• It should have mixed uses with a sense of place which is responsive to the local vernacular.
• Open space is important but needs to be functional and accessible … and therefore an asset.
• The development should be contemporary and meet the values and needs of the 21st Century

Collaboration between professionals is critical to success. It is important to build consensus to deliver a successful outcome: in football parlance, it's all about squad work!

Iain Wardrop, in a humorous introduction, observed that he was the only speaker to wear a tie and work in square feet rather than square metres. Iain highlighted an RICS briefing note Delivery Strategies for Master Plans and Area Action Plans which gives an excellent flavour of what Surveyors can bring to the table with respect to masterplanning.

Underlining the need for professionals to fulfil audience expectations, he advised that surveyors bring awareness of costs to the delivery of development in terms of practical physical, cost, ownership and organisational issues. To put things in perspective he described property as being a three ringed circus – that is:
• Occupiers – who have a long term perspective
• Investors - who have a long term perspective, and
• Developers - who have a short term perspective

The potential for tensions and conflicts can be seen in these different expectations.
Iain stressed that there can be an opportunity cost in not maximising the potential of the site to achieve placemaking objectives. There is pressure on developers to maximise profits and this is a tension which has to be recognised by the planners.

In this regard he noted that delivering mixed use developments can impact on timescales, costs, regulatory complications (building, roads, planning) and brand dilution. The nature of other uses can raise long-term management issues, e.g. shared costs. They can also impact on the realisation of investment value.

With respect to current market trends, Iain advised that there was a synchronised slowdown across sectors. However, the occupier market is still stable while investment market returns have tumbled - therefore there is no residual value for placemaking/ planning gain. Signs suggest that the development sector re-mobilisation will be slow post-2010. However, there are some cinderella sectors such as social housing, hotels and student accommodation. The upturn may materialise in 2012 when investment, prices rents and occupier demand are expected to have stabilised.

Duncan Whatmore reflected that there is a crisis about placemaking. He asked the audience to compare and contrast holiday photo images with 'homeplace'. It was not the architecture which caught people's interest, Duncan argued, but the 'buzz' of a place. He illustrated his points with photos of Amsterdam/ modern vernacular and Poundbury/ retro-vernacular.

In his view it is the spaces between buildings which define places rather than the buildings. He compared the footprints of organic mediaeval Italian Towns with Corbusier's geometrical modern town concepts to make his point. Duncan also expressed disappointment with giant fantastical architectural concepts where people are reduced to 'dust motes'; not to mention, in a wry aside, projects in search of a budget. He also indicated frustration with road engineering detail and the negative effect it could have on the attractiveness of developments.

Duncan then went on to illustrate how geology and geomorphology influence settlement patterns. He used a plan of ancient London to show how the Thames with its tributaries and the erosion effect of current had dictated the location of the settlements along the river on the higher ground.

Duncan then focussed his attention on the preparation of a masterplan for a former open cast mine in the East Lothian area. As the land had been rehabilitated, his starting point was to look at what was under the ground to see the constraints to development. In addition, he identified the views out of the site such as to the Bass rock and the hills to the south to establish alignments and possible vistas. With these broad parameters identified, he then focussed progressively on densities, house types, courtyards, landscape, road networks and a high build centre. Crucially, the architecture came last emphasising that there is more to good urban design than architecture. He concluded that it is his aim to deliver a development which looked as if it had always been there.

At the questions and answers session, planners wanted to know how we could deliver better developments through the planning system. Notwithstanding the challenging regulatory constraints, it was felt that the limited number of national house builders, three of whom supplied a large proportion of all new houses, did not help. This is compounded by an undemanding public who are often not totally literate in house and house layout design.

The responses suggested that it is necessary to overcome the cultural barriers to change – this required engagement and collaboration and gradualist approach over time. In this regard, it is felt that there is an increasing mood to accept change.

It was observed that no where else in the world would one find so much design guidance. In this regard the Government is signed up to good quality design and have an agency A D Scotland to promote it. Despite this, good quality design has not necessarily followed.

Scott Davidson stressed the importance of the driving spirit. Good quality developments were unlikely unless the owner, developer or a local politician provided a single view as to what the vision should be.

The panel of speakers considered that there is a need for more enlightened developers. Overall it was concluded that
• New Urbanism and sustainable quality developments are often perceived as pioneering and therefore risky. Note: however, there has been an example of a high volume builder in England building a high quality specification development where units cost 20% more than the market rate – the units sold in 4 hours!
• quality development, including sustainable development, is a political issue and has to be tackled as such in order to deliver successful developments.

The evening was a truly collaborative event and demonstrated that good quality urban design is a team game involving a range of professional skills. It also illustrated the importance of having a driving vision. In this regard, Scott Davidson’s Smart Growth has a lot to commend it. The approach clearly resonates with the New Urbanism path being pursued in the North America and the underlying concepts in the Duchy of Cornwall development, Poundbury in Dorset, and possibly takes it a step further to suit the UK model.

To return to Scottish Planner Extra August 2009 close this window or click here

Author:

James Henderson

Publisher:

The Royal Town Planning Institute

Date:

31-Aug-09

Categories:

Nations & Regions 

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