DESIGN FIRST: DESIGN-BASED PLANNING FOR COMMUNITIES
108
Figure 5.5
An extract from a planning and development brief produced by the City of Birmingham,
England. This document and others like it are produced to stimulate and guide new development and
redevelopment of critical urban areas. Note the way the axonometric drawing
is able to convey specific
visual and three-dimensional criteria in additional to programmatic requirements.
(Illustration courtesy of the
City of Birmingham)
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urban design.’ This same Guidance Note goes on to
define urban design as:
The relationship between different buildings; the
relationship between buildings and the streets,
squares, parks, waterways and other spaces that
make up the public domain; the nature and qual-
ity of the public domain itself; the relationship of
one part of a village,
town or city with other parts;
and the patterns of movement and activity which
are thereby established: in short, the complex
relationships between all the elements of built
and unbuilt space. The appearance and treatment
of the spaces between and around buildings is
often of comparable importance to the design of
buildings themselves …
The Guidance Note continues:
New buildings … have a significant effect on the
character and quality of an area. They define public
spaces, streets and vistas … They are matters of
proper public interest …
Good design should be
… encouraged everywhere. (It) can help promote
sustainable development; improve the quality of
the existing environment; attract business and invest-
ment; and reinforce civic pride and a sense of place.
(DETR, 1995, available at http://www.planning.
odpm.gov.uk/ppg/ppg1/02.htm.03
This brief synopsis describes a planning system that
diverges considerably from the American model in
many ways, and demonstrates to an American audi-
ence that there are other methods of planning for
democratic societies. This is particularly relevant in
the first decade of the
twenty-first century because
many design and planning professionals within the
USA have increasingly criticized the American sys-
tem for its failure to meet the challenges of suburban
sprawl and regional planning during the 1990s.
Without specific reference to the planning systems
of other countries, first architects in the US, and
latterly their planning colleagues, have called for
some major revisions to the objectives and practices
of the American planning process. Most of these crit-
icisms have focused on two main problems:
the sepa-
ration of planning from zoning (which we will
discuss further in the next section); and controlling
development through a system of zoning regulations
that deal only with land use without any meaningful
design content.
While critical of the American system, none of
these reforming voices have called for a major
redesign on a European model, however much they
may personally admire the results of those foreign
systems.
Such a revolution, with its necessary abridge-
ment of the private property rights embedded in
American culture, seems ideologically impossible.
Instead, architects have concentrated on reforming
zoning itself, making it based more on design con-
cepts rather than use classifications, and reintegrating
it with the process of making plans.
To demonstrate this trend, our case studies in
Chapters 9 and 10 illustrate master plans that con-
tain specific zoning ordinances,
with the new zoning
tied directly to the particulars of the plan in its design
detail, and ready for adoption by the town or city. In
this way the crippling divide between planning and
zoning is overcome; the zoning provisions are based
on design principles, and they ensure that the provi-
sions of the master plan will be followed. For the
reader to understand more easily what a major shift
in policies and procedures this represents, it is neces-
sary now to explain the
workings and drawbacks of
the conventional American system as practiced at the
start of the twenty-first century.
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