Beyond Beauty

The bothersome word ‘beauty’ has been dropped from the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF), much to the relief of many within the profession who have had to battle with its subjective interpretation. Under Labour, can we now hold a sensible conversation about how we plan well for, and deliver, high quality new and regenerated places that will be home to many thousands of people?

There is of course nothing inherently wrong with the concept of beauty per se, but the old adage that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” is never more true than in a planning context. The assumption that ‘beauty’ is limited to how something looks, whether it be to a trained or untrained eye, is a wholly insufficient indicator of whether it constitutes the type of development that residents want to call home, retire to, or raise their children in, let alone whether it can continue to be ‘beautiful’ through good governance and management practice over its lifetime.

There is a surprisingly wide yardstick to determine what passes for ‘good quality’ development; while a great many schemes are genuinely striving to be exemplars that serve their communities well, others fail to meet even the most basic needs of their residents.

Given the length of time we have been engaged in an industry-wide conversation about design quality within the built environment (CABE was established in 1999, and its vast and valuable library is still available from The National Archive), the number of poorly designed schemes that still manage to secure planning permission is a clear indication that there is still a lot of work to be done.

The National Model Design Code (NMDC) provides a consistent framework for coding, but coverage and efficacy remain patchy. The NMDC Pilot Project revealed that to code well across a whole local authority area is extremely costly. If good codes; which include a requirement to be easy to implement, cannot be achieved with the money that is available is it better to use scarce public funds to support other focused activity, such as Design Review, to secure better design outcomes?

In the meantime, more easily understood and measurable indicators of place quality are needed. It is not inconceivable that by working some existing best practice into the intended national development management policies, alongside bold government moves to rid the system of outdated obstacles and ‘silo thinking’ in individual departments, could help us to take some great strides forward to achieving civilised places where civic pride may be fostered. This might include, but need not be limited to:

• Mandate for ‘Active Design’ to embed and prioritise active travel into new places or, for smaller schemes to facilitate financial contributions to settlement-wide improvements for walking and cycling.

• A mandate for ‘Putting Health into Place,’ to bring many desirable planning outcomes together in one document.

• Reintroduce and pass the Healthy Homes Bill, and embed its requirements in national planning policy. It so narrowly missed being passed last time parliament voted on it, and it is impossible to argue against the improvements it is seeking to secure in law.

• Radically overhaul the Manual for Roads and Bridges, replacing the ‘roads bit’ with a Manual for Streets. We could all save a lot of time and emotional energy from this one change alone.

We are heartened that the new NPPF signals a move away from a ‘predict and provide’ approach to transport mitigation, to one of ‘vision and validate’. Conceivably, this could see a material change away from the current obsession with ploughing a disproportionate level of s106 obligations into highway network capacity increases, towards support for public transport and active travel initiatives which have benefits for local communities far beyond those generated by additional roadbuilding.

We question also whether a small fraction of those highway cost savings might be spent engaging great architects, urban designers, landscape architects and sustainable mobility experts, so we could lift the quality of each and every housing scheme. Then we might after all end up with more beautiful places.

Each of these measures would help to bring together objectives of a range of government departments in a co-ordinated matter, and without doubt would result in better use of public funds in the longer term. If through these changes we can refocus planning as the ‘nexus’ of the built environment, then we stand a much better chance of delivering well designed, beautifully functioning places.