Fighting back against the black hole at the centre of the planning system

Rebalancing local resources & taking back control

A lot has been said and written about the current gap in urban design skills  – particularly within the public sector –

We are not disputing this. What’s more, we strongly advocate for a more design-focused approach to local planning. It is highly unlikely, however, that local authorities will become rich with resources any time soon, so the question of how we can better use the resources we already have still remains.

Local Planning Authorities that benefit from in-house design skills and staff have a clear advantage, but even then, there are ways in which these skills and opportunities can be put to better use.

My experience as an urban designer working with Local Authorities is that the one constant quantitative target against which I have always reported annually is the number of planning applications to which I have submitted a consultation response.

Yet this metric has nothing to do with quality. We all know that genuine spatial planning is much more than a numbers game and deals with the physical form and attributes of places and new developments.  

Thankfully my work isn’t just reactive, it’s also proactive, incorporating development site briefs, masterplans, and design codes and guidance.

However, when push comes to shove, in a system skewed towards the numbers rather than the location and physical form of the development, it is the work related to processing planning applications that is seen as having the greatest value. 

Here is part of the reason the design skills gap feels so wide. Even when the skills are present, they are not fully appreciated, and too often devoted in the wrong places. This is not to say Heads of Planning don’t appreciate the attributes at their disposal, but rather, that we’re all experiencing a black hole-like force that is pulling resources towards the endpoint in the planning process – the point at which a return on investment in resources and skills can be quantified in the number of applications determined and/or permissions granted.

This has resulted in an end-loaded planning system in which local planning authorities are geared up to exert control over the details of planning applications, while landowners and developers are being allowed to dictate the location, layout and form of new development in our cities, towns, and villages.

In-house design resources are being exhausted too late in the process in an attempt to compensate for the lack of design input at the strategic design stage, when decisions over the location and form of new development are being taken.

Skilled, design-focused planners and urban designers can – and will – make marginal gains at the detailed design stage, but the truth is no amount of tweaking in the appearance of standard volume housing estates can address the fundamental flaws in their underlying design principles: poor connectivity, social exclusion, car-dependency, and low density.

We talk often about the benefits of working and thinking about design and planning over a range of spatial scales: strategic (whole place); neighbourhood; and human (detail). Yet we’re working within a system in which the scales are tipped towards the end of the process where design input can have only partial impact.

Part of new reforms to the planning system should be to make sure that Local Planning Authorities are supported, incentivised, and rewarded for relinquishing some control over the detail of new development in exchange for being more prescriptive over the location and form of new development.

Genuine and positive reform will only happen when greater control is taken over the location and physical form of new development, and by including design input throughout the planning process from beginning (strategic) to end (detail).