Design First Walters fm qxd 2/26/04 7: 50 pm page I

Introduction
History, theory and contemporary practice
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DESIGN FIRST: DESIGN-BASED PLANNING FOR COMMUNITIES
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local heritage. The 1999 report 
Towards an Urban
Renaissance
produced by the government-appointed
Urban Task Force, led by the architect peer Lord
(Richard) Rogers of Riverside, gave rise to the subse-
quent White Paper, 
Our Towns and Cities: the Future:
Delivering an Urban Renaissance
, introduced by the
Labour government in 2000. The White Paper iden-
tifies key points of urban policy at a national level,
focusing on redevelopment of existing ‘brownfield’
sites and improved public transportation rather than
‘greenfield’ urban expansion and the extended use of
the private automobile. Though British critics have
voiced their displeasure at their government’s per-
ceived delay and weakness in acting on the urban
principles established in its policy documents, at least
there 
is
a policy. In America, there is little evidence of
any national agenda for sustainable urban or environ-
mental policies. Quite the contrary. Initiatives to
improve the cities and the environment enacted by
President Clinton between 1992 and 2000 are being
rolled back in the Republican administration of
George W. Bush.
The United States of America is 40 times the size
of the UK, but has only five times its population.
Given this large size and low density, there is rela-
tively uncritical enthusiasm for urban growth, despite
environmental problems and disturbing social factors
such as an increasing polarization between the
(mainly white) wealthy and highly mobile residents
of the suburbs and the (mainly black and Hispanic)
poorer populations isolated in dilapidated sections of
the inner city. Calls for change can be heard as the
negative aspects of suburban sprawl – environmental
pollution, loss of open space, heavy traffic, and long
commutes – impinge on the public’s consciousness,
but the vast majority of communities continue to
grow more or less unchecked. In some fast-growing
towns that have undergone disturbing amounts of
change, citizen-based outcries have risen to halt devel-
opment altogether, but rarely in the American politi-
cal system is stopping growth a realistic option. For
the ‘no-growth’ lobby to succeed, so many constraints
would need to be placed on private property that
many legal experts believe these limits could 
not easily withstand challenges in the courts relative
to rights guaranteed under the Fifth Article of
Amendment to the United States Constitution,
which states that no ‘private property shall be taken
for public use without due compensation.’ While the
purchase of land by the state for public projects such
as road building is generally well accepted, control-
ling the development potential of private land for less
immediately tangible community benefits is harder
to uphold.
Many citizens regard government action to limit
what they can do with their land as a ‘taking’ under
the provisions of the Constitution. For example,
reducing residential density, or clustering homes to
protect the quality of water in local streams (by mini-
mizing the impermeable site area caused by buildings
and driveways) is good public policy, but it may take
away some sale value of the land compared to what
the property owner could expect under a conven-
tional sprawl scenario. While the American Supreme
Court would not agree that this partial devaluation
constitutes a ‘taking,’ (viz. the Court’s 1978 decision
in