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DESIGNING COMMUNITIES IN 
DIFFERENT CULTURES
From an American perspective, working as an urban
designer in Britain seems like a rather privileged
position. We know this will raise hoots of derisive
laughter from British urban designers who battle
daily with government intransigence and client inep-
titude, but remember, one of the authors is English,
with experience on both continents, so there is a
basis of reality in this observation. We don’t contend
that urban design in the UK is easy. We are simply
affirming that British professionals operate in a dif-
ferent world than their American counterparts. For
example, there are British government policies on
urban design, manifested through publications such
as Planning Policy Guidance Notes issued through
the 1990s. Nothing like these exist in America. There
are government-backed regional centers for architec-
tural and urban excellence in Britain. Unheard of
in America. The British government’s new-found
wisdom on matters of urban design has been largely
influenced by the professional organizations compris-
ing the national Urban Design Alliance, including
the Royal Institute of British Architects, the Royal
Institution of Chartered Surveyors, the Royal Town
Planning Institute, the Institution of Civil Engineers,
the Landscape Institute, the Civic Trust and the
Urban Design Group. No such interdisciplinary
professional consensus can be found anywhere in
the USA.
5
Growth management,
development control
and the role of urban design
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DESIGN FIRST: DESIGN-BASED PLANNING FOR COMMUNITIES
98
Before we begin a more detailed discussion of how
growth and development is managed at the commu-
nity level in both nations, one obvious fact has to be
stated: America is a very big place, and this vast differ-
ence in scale accounts for some of the variations in
government structure and focus. England and Wales,
for example, will more or less fit inside the state of
Oklahoma. The nation of France is about the same size
as the state of Texas. America has 50 states, comprising
a complex collage of cultures, climates and attitudes.
Given this disparity, it’s not surprising that one of
the most obvious contrasts is at the level of national
policy. In Chapter 4, we noted the publication by the
British government of reports entitled 
By Design:
Urban Design in the Planning System
(2000), and 
By
Design: Better Places to Live
(2001), topics close to the
heart of this book. This is a level of consensus regard-
ing policy and expectations at a national level that’s
not easily imaginable in America at the start of the
twenty-first century. There is simply a large void of
official concern and policy at national and state levels
regarding the design of American towns and cities.
This is not so much by neglect, but a matter of ideol-
ogy: the American planning system in general works
on the presumption that policies and regulation are
primarily a local matter. This devolution is an excel-
lent concept in the abstract, but in the absence of any
clear guidance about national themes or priorities, or
regional issues, from the federal or state governments,
most planning remains introverted and local in scale,
and competitive with adjacent municipalities rather
than collaborative.
This competitive attitude between local govern-
ments is a crucial weakness in the American system,
but it has deep roots; in large part it’s based on money,