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Planning Policy Guidance Note 1: General Policy and
Principles
(DETR, 1995), as ‘development that meets
the needs of the present without compromising the
ability of future generation to meet their own needs.’
This definition is taken from the 1987 report 
Our
Common Future
, by the United Nations World
Commission on Environment and Development and
CHAPTER FIVE
●
GROWTH MANAGEMENT, DEVELOPMENT CONTROL AND URBAN DESIGN
105
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reflects the increasing importance of sustainable
development in the planning and design ethos of
the British government as set out in the 1994
report
Sustainable Development: The UK Strategy
(DETR, 1994).
In addition to sustainable development, the
quality of architectural and urban design has also
been given greater weight in determining planning
applications during the 1990s. A 1992 version of the
British government’s 
Planning Policy Guidance Note 1
(later reissued in 1995 [DETR, 1995]) made design
an explicit ‘material consideration’ in determining
planning applications. This focus on higher design
quality and sustainability came about as a reaction to
the loosening of planning controls during the 1980s
under the direction of the then Prime Minister,
Margaret Thatcher. Thatcher’s government intro-
duced vestiges of the American system, characterized
as ‘planning by appeal,’ where the significance of
structure and local development plans was consider-
ably reduced. Developers were implicitly encouraged
by national government to initiate new proposals,
often in contradiction to the plans of communities,
and the government-appointed planning inspectors
at that time gave favorable consideration to a wide
variety of ‘plan-busting’ proposals. These included
large out-of-town shopping malls that sucked the life
out of small town centers, and new developments in
the previously safeguarded green belts of agricultural
land around towns and cities. For several years a
purely capitalist market-driven ethos dominated
planning in Britain. Planners existed to facilitate the
proposals of developers, basically the American
situation today.
At the same time the British government was
diminishing local government authority by disman-
tling regional and local plans in the 1980s, it was
centralizing power in national government by taking
very proactive positions regarding the redevelopment
of key urban sites in major cities. In many instances
the national government bypassed local plans, plan-
ning staff and elected officials and set up ‘Enterprise
Zones,’ administered by appointed officials, and
based on the concept of leveraging large amounts of
private investment by spending modest amounts of
public money. In these zones, mainly urban areas that
were deemed in need of urgent redevelopment,
planning was ‘streamlined’ in the national or regional
interest at the expense of local politics and grassroots