INNOVATION AND ENGAGEMENT PUBLIC LECTURE 2010

Urban Design and the

British Urban Renaissance

John Punter
Professor of Urban Design, Cardiff University
Design Commission for Wales
 The book

• 20 academic authors evaluating progress in

major British cities: based on city by city half
day seminars with local practitioners:
personal verdicts

• 8 Core City & 4 London case studies:

• 4 Celtic Capitals as comparators

• Introductory analysis of renaissance agenda/

achievements
• Summary conclusion and reflections
on city experiences
• Talk explores intro and conclusions
• Strengths and weaknesses of design
• Impetus for urban improvement
 Urban renaissance precedes UTF

• Manchester, Birmingham, Glasgow lead the way 1988-1998

• Developers/housebuilders alert to opportunities in booming market 1996-9

• Much strategy/policy continuity at local level: UTF report reinforced trends

• BUT doubts about LPAs’ ability to maintain quality control through boom

• Difficult to measure UTF contribution but definitely changed perceptions of cities

and increased attention to urban design

• Significant increase in design exemplars: but mediocrity still the norm

• Mix of positives and negatives, but only a decade of a 30 year project

 Key renaissance precedents

Manchester 1996

Birmingham 1989
 The UTF’s urban design agenda

• 105 recommendations: most accepted by

government: wide range and agenda:

• Key areas explored in book

• National urban design framework: 1999

2. Housing supply, quality, sustainability:

3. Public realm and the environment:

4. Resources/skills for local government:

• Design-led? a conceit? design-informed

but economic growth priorities of government

Independent Report 2005

Urban Task Force recommendation (UTF 1999)
1 Local Authority single strategies for public realm
2 Comprehensive green pedestrian routes
3 Increase densities and advise on standards
4 Environmental/running cost rating for homes
5 Spatial masterplans for area regeneration
6/94 Design competitions: regeneration projects/major public buildings
7 Develop national urban design framework and best practice guidelines
8 Demonstration projects of design-led regeneration
9 Local architecture centres in major cities
10-13 Local transport plans, modal shift ambitions, homezones, funding
19-20 Car parking standards maxima etc
21-29 Increase resources for urban environmental
management: new models and performance indicators
41-44, 47 New Development Plan system and policy support:
all new plans by 2002
45-46 Streamlined control processes
Implementation/achievement by mid 2009
Not achieved
Not achieved
Increase achieved 25-40 du/ha 2007
Little advice on density standards/design quality
Code for Sustainable Homes introduced 2006
Staged targets for carbon neutrality by 2016
Not made mandatory: improved advice and wider use
Minor achievement; more frequent use
Ongoing but largely achieved: strong design support
and excellent manuals
Not achieved: Millenium Communities continue slowly
Largely achieved
Statutory plans but targets not being achieved:
Inadequate funding but improvements evident
Modal shift minor but public transport increase
1.5 cp spaces/du set 2000, but retreat to local determination post
2006
Minor funding increases only: performance indicators reformed but
miss place quality. Success with parks via HLF
RSS/LDFs implemented but slow production and weak strategic
vision: 12% 09
2012 new target for completion. Area Action Plans an unknown
quantity
Significantly 71%LPAs meeting all 3 targets: Deregulation of
48, 54-56 Accelerate land release and ‘plan, monitor manage’ Mechanisms implemented but major supply shortfall.
to ensure supply: sequential approach Targets not achieved with local resistance and house
builders marked under-supply.

49-53 Revise planning agreements, introduce impact 40 % of schemes deliver affordable but insufficient supply
fees and review affordable housing delivery and impairs design. Community Infrastructure Levy
legislated but implementation awaited

57-62 Brownfield targets raised and increase public 77% brownfield achieved in 2007. Significant achievement
land release

64-71 Vacant land tax, CPO reforms, revolving Compulsory Purchase reforms but general land assembly
funds for land assembly more difficult through accounting matters

72-78 Improve environmental regulation for land, Some achievement but increased costs. Some allowances
water, waste and ensure remediation and simplification of licenses

79-80, 103-5 Market unpopular housing and incentivise more mixed More than 50% now owned by Housing Associations
social housing and home improvement in regeneration areas. through stock transfers and ALMOs but shortfall of social
housing supply increased to 1.67m units

81-84 Measures to ensure empty property use, PPS 15 finally emerged but no Heritage Bill.
esp historic buildings, and harmonise VAT to Some funding for living over the shop but no VAT reform
encourage refurbishment to aid conservation/rehabilitation

85-102 Increase LA funding and simplify and Major failure to improve LA funding esp for infrastructure:
extend regeneration funding: trial PFI; PFI shortcomings for design and sustainability. Homes and
Communities Agency established as centralised and
integrated regeneration body 2008 with generous funding.
 1: National Urban Design Framework

• Major achievement: ODPM/CLG set comprehensive agenda/advice

• CABE’s research, advice, campaigns provided invaluable support

• All PPS redrafted: ‘good design indivisible from good planning’ (2005)(2007)

• Manual for Streets, Safer Cities, Accessibility, Arterials?

• Energy efficiency: CSH/green infrastructure being mainstreamed

• Place making agenda: more than a mantra? Corporate commitment? CG & LG

• Efficiency of development control improved: 71% meet all three speed targets
 Critical weaknesses
• Failures of LA leadership to prioritise place making/value of urban design

• Local Development Frameworks: only 12% in place: low priority

• Failures of community involvement: little ‘front loading’: public ill-informed

• Few plan-led, proactive, policy-backed design regimes with effective SPD

• Skills deficit in control/policy/enhancement: now CSH/MfS/BfL skills to master

• Advice overload for LPA planners: haemorrhage of talent/skill to private sector

• Density/plot ratio weaknesses (PPS3) compounded by weak tall buildings policies

• How are LPAs to be supported in up-skilling and design delivery?

 Plymouth Birmingham

Bristol Westminster
 2 Housing supply, quality, sustainability?

• Brownfield success (77%) and increased ave. densities (44du/ha)

• S106 delivers significant mix: 10-40 %: half of all affordable housing

• But tends to drive density up and design quality down

• Small apartments half of production by 2007: demand conundrum

• Decent homes programme in Council sector a major success

• Council estate regeneration in early stages: mixed success: controversies

Leeds
 2 Housing supply, quality, sustainability
(continued).

• Homes and Communities Agency: positive if belated: reinforces

quality (??) and social inclusion agendas:

• BfL monitoring reveals 18% ‘good+’ and 29% poor design:

affordable does slightly better: new CLG targets for improvement

• Good residential design practices established in some projects;

Enquiry by Design, Masterplans, Codes, etc.

• Positive introduction of Code for Sustainable Homes: delivery

challenges to 2016, and existing stock upgrade critical

• Eco-towns will advance sustainability thinking; green infrastructure

vital to urban renaissance
Manchester
Manchester: imagination ? or greed ?

South Somerset vs North Somerset

 Critical weaknesses

• Failure to boost supply drives speculation, inflation, market imbalance

• Affordability crisis and lack of social mix feeds gentrification

• Lack of social housing supply enforces inclusion: reduces innovation

• Apartment development lacks design quality/ place making

• Sustainable Communities Plan 2003 flawed but supply boost vital:

Anti-renaissance?

• SCP re-thinks envt, community, transport

• Housing Market Renewal: demolition,

design, conservation concerns

• Existing housing needs energy

programme
 Slow increase in production: 220k not achieved
Affordability crisis: FTBs pay 12x income in SE UK

Council house sales > affordable production Housebuilding 1951-2007

Apartments 2147% of production 9107: 2% >2bed

450.0

400.0

350.0

300.0

250.0

Total 200.0

LAs 150.0

100.0

50.0
Pvt
RSL 0.0

2 From
1951

1954

1957

1960

1978

1981

1984

1990/91

2002/03

2005/06
1963

1966

1969

1972

1975

1987

1993/94

1996/97

1999/2000
 Quadrant, Attwood Estate,
Birmingham

Estate Regeneration
environment vs equity

North Peckham, Southwark

 Housing Market Renewal

Chimney Pot Park, Salford

Clevedon Park, Liverpool

 3 Quality of the public realm and the urban
environment

• Major successes in city centres: public realm improvements, retail design

• Manual for Streets advances: 20mph, Home Zone progress: arterials?

• Greenspace/green infrastructure now on urban agendas

• HLF fund improves best parks dramatically (x 6 Green Flag)

• Only modest success in improving management and maintenance and

general liveability

• Poor/unsatisfactory neighbourhoods fall from 68% to 53%! (20017)

 Quality public realm
‘shared space’

Seven Dials, Camden

Grey Street, Newcastle

 Critical weaknesses

• Single public realm strategies unrealised

• No major funding for green space programmes: ‘non statutory duty’

• Failures with congestion charging via referenda: London 1:25

• Minor increases in walking and cycling: some public transport revival

• Reliance on CCTV (78% crime budget) & ASBOs for policing

• Counter-terrorist design supplement: cure worse than disease?

• Community Empowerment Bill (2008) too little too late: needs resourcing
Bristol ‘Legible City’
 4 Resources/skills for local government
and regeneration
• Improved funding for local government (UTF and Lyons recommendations)

• Adequate infrastructure funding: CIL?

• Reforms of VAT to encourage more rehabilitation/conservation

• LA leadership on, and commitment to, planning and design

• Positive use of land disposal powers

• Improved s106 processes and levies

 Critical weaknesses

• None of UTF/Lyons mechanisms to improve LA finances implemented

• S106 and CIL ambiguities around infrastructure funding

• Developers and LAs ratcheting up land values, maximising development

for s106 funds and capital receipts: setting undesirable precedents

• LAs prioritise tax base and s106 receipts not proactive planning

• Skills haemorrhage to private sector: wider skills challenge not met

• Service cuts and retrenchment to statutory functions

• Positive environmental enhancement lacks funding: future funding bleak

Overall: spatial renaissance in the cities?

• City centre focus: consumerist emphasis, expanded centres, public realm

improved: dramatic re-population

• New dense apartment complexes but rarely neighbourhoods

• ‘Decent homes’ progress but estate regeneration slow/variable results

• Extensive gentrification, studentification: recession brings rental diversity

• City centre rim vs inner city benefits

• Mature suburbs neglected: NIMBYism cripples positive planning/ intensification

• Edge city reduced

 Neglected areas

Suburbia everywhere

‘Rim of discontinuity’ Leeds

 Local responses and distinctive regimes
• Each city has distinctive strengths and weaknesses: successes and failures

• Nottingham: land use, transportation, conservation, design integration:

integrated thinking, strong officer continuity and leadership: good use of
design strategies and briefs: ambitious design initiatives (comparisons with
Edinburgh)

• Liverpool: Liverpool One achievement: Grosvenor and Urban Splash plus

URC and CABE: but World Heritage tight rope with many schemes

• Sheffield: ‘a miserable disappointment no more’: Heart of the City officer-led,

now successful partnership; project and public realm focus but inner city,
apartment, equity concerns

• Manchester: ‘entrepreneurial, opportunistic, market oriented’: no LDF or

strategy: Code now SPD: consultant briefs/negotiation: erratic quality control
with CE interventions, but dynamic and forward thinking

• Birmingham: no longer in the vanguard: weakening control: towers: Big City

Plan more boosterism/branding than design strategy? mould-breaking LDF?
Liverpool One Digbeth, Birmingham

Sheffield Nottingham
 Local responses and distinctive regimes

• Leeds: lost its way with design strategy, apartment oversupply, tall buildings:
policy and strategy ambiguities and weakening quality control: lacks direction

• Bristol: design disappointments/compromises with three major projects:

transport weakness and LDF rejection: lacks resources for public initiative but
avoids apartment blight

• Newcastle: city centre and Quayside successes but contested spaces: bold
residential strategy aborted: deliverable and sustainable? Vibrancy vs
inclusion?

• London: extremes and inequities: congestion charge, policy pragmatism and

collaborative partnerships: iconic towers: masterplan/gentrification (Kings X)
Global capital, privatism and limited trickle down (Isle of Dogs):
strategic urban design potential everywhere unrealised
Bristol Newcastle

London Leeds
 A typology of design commitment

• Strong consistent control actively shaping development:

WESTMINSTER, CAMDEN, EDINBURGH, NOTTINGHAM
•
• Sophisticated controls vs entrepreneurial ethic
MANCHESTER, CITY OF LONDON, SOUTHWARK

• Strong focus on key city centre projects: laxer elsewhere

LIVERPOOL, SHEFFIELD, NEWCASTLE?

• Strong design ethos waning

BIRMINGHAM, LEEDS, GLASGOW, BRISTOL?

• Weak design frameworks: development priority

THAMES GATEWAY, CARDIFF, BELFAST

• Generally place marketing eclipsing place making

Many different models of planning and design over time, weak plans
 Whose city centre?
Liverpool

Sheffield
Sheffield
Birmingham

Leeds
 Urban design
vs the iconic:
the search for
the
‘Guggenheim
effect’

‘Starchitecture’, ‘Blobitecture’, ‘Bling’ and ‘Primarni’ design

 Conclusions: the positives
• Major city centres boosted: retail: repopulation: night time economy

• Strong brownfield emphasis and significant average density increase

• Strong national urban design framework: good design ‘indivisible’

• Enhanced major parks/public spaces

• Significant improvement of extant

• council housing stock

• Increase in design exemplars

• Energy efficiency/low carbon priorities

firmly established in new construction
 Conclusions: compromises
• Neoliberal governance emphasises development facilitation not quality control

• Competitiveness ethos widens inequalities/ environmental externalities

• City centres monopolise limited public resources : affluent consumer/tourist focus

• Housing supply shortages: social exclusion, gentrification, widened inequalities

• Development industry increasingly split niche vs volume builders on design quality

• LA’s development priorities driven by

capital receipts/ economic priorities

• Over-development defeats deeper renaissance

 Conclusions: place marketing not place
making
• Much boosterism: lip service to ‘quality’ (icons,
towers etc) but little consistent urban design

• Few LA leaders/councillors have planning/

design awareness or commitment

• LDFs / policy frameworks not a LA priority:

perceived to subvert innovation/investment

• DC often lacks proactivity: close corporate

working essential to quality place making

• But coordinated action and PPPs have

delivered key projects/public realm
 Key priorities for the future

• LA’s need adequate tax base, infrastructure/enhancement funds

• Meeting housing demand and affordability: socially inclusive, energy efficient

urban design a priority: NB CABE vs HCA on design standards

• Delivering on sustainability, renewable energy, traffic restraint and green

infrastructure in all development

• Widening renaissance to inner and outer

• suburbs: tackling disinvestment and
• NIMBYism respectively

• Community involvement underdeveloped:

• often hi-jacked by NIMBYist negativity

• Dearth of LPA design/sustainability skills:

corporate design training required

BowZed
 A closing window of opportunity?

• 1999-2009 was an opportunity largely missed: ‘initiativitus’

• Rising market drove renaissance but quality control not widely

maintained

• Future public spending cuts will subvert much necessary enhancement

• LA impoverishment will intensify and design will be further sacrificed

• Improved resourcing/skills in LPAs very unlikely: HCA abolition?

• Housing supply will be sacrificed to NIMBYism: key design role?

• Widening inequalities expressed in differential design achievement:

urban design reflects political economy
 Cardiff: Renaissance City?

• 88% brownfield 2007: 100% to 2018

• 70-85% apartments: most of poor urban design
• Ratcheting up of heights and densities: 1336 storeys: 100320du/ha (450)
• 14% affordable: 6,775 families on waiting list: a sound LDP?

• Strong place marketing growth vision: ‘competitive city’ Vision

• Megaproject mentality: from Bay, Ultra, Sports Stadia/Village to SD2, Station & WIBP
• Focus groups not community empowerment and engagement
• Economic development insecurity/priority

• A lack of commitment to good design and planning for a sustainable city

• Special projects team promises delivery not planning intervention
• Cardiff needs to match European provincial cities quality of life/environment
• Struggles with weak infrastructure, tax base, and its cross-subsidy role for Wales
 World Class Places (CLG 2009)
a confusion of place marketing with place making?
Affirms some of the book’s conclusions

1, 3, 5 Strengthen central government leadership, policy, design

2 Encourage local civic leaders/government to prioritise quality of place:

better assessment methods, ensure quality assessed in new CAAs, focus
CG investment, train civic leaders, awards for quality places

4 Put public and community at the centre of place-shaping

public involvement in visioning, engagement in public building design,
community upkeep of public realm, engage in new home/neighbourhood
design: what resources? tokenistic

6 Encourage higher standards of market-led development:

clear LDF place ambitions: early joint working on apps; promote value of
UD: proactive control

7 Strengthen quality of place skills, knowledge and capacity:

strengthen advice, encourage skill sharing between LPAs, up-skill officers
and councillors, but how?
 Bennie Gray, Birmingham Urban Splash, Liverpool

George Ferguson, Bristol Igloo, Leeds