Town and Country Planning articles from July 2004

Town and Country Planning archives from July 2004

25 years ago.(T&CP back bites)
July 1, 2004... THE belief seems to be that housing is not a problem which cannot be solved by a little intelligent redirection of resources in the public sector, plus further encouragement to owner occupation. The balance between these strategies, rather than...

10 years ago.(T&CP back bites)
July 1, 2004... Agenda 21 assumes that the 'process' will produce the 'content'--that if we can succeed in empowering communities they will consistently choose to reduce their energy use, avoid car use, and so on. It would seem safer not to expect any social...

5 years ago.(T&CP back bites)
July 1, 2004... DESPITE their apparent stability, suburbs are subject to changing conditions and pressures to which they may need to adapt in the interests of sustainability... Cities are not to be seen as concentrations of problems, and suburbs are not to be...

Context: news digest, June 2004.
July 1, 2004... * 1.6 Energy: A survey by Platts, the international energy information provider, reported in its Power UK newsletter, claims that 'some kind of planning delay' has held up wind farms and green energy developments with a capacity amounting to...

Creating sustainable communities through PPS1.
July 1, 2004... * Consultation on Planning Policy Statement 1: Creating Sustainable Communities. Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, London, Feb. 2004 The TCPA Response RESPONDING to the draft of PPS1, the TCPA expressed agreement with the principles set...

Relating SEA to planning.
July 1, 2004... * The Draft Environmental Assessment of Plans and Programmes Regulations 2004. Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, London, Feb. 2004 The TCPA Response IN RESPONSE to the ODPM consultation on the implementation of EU Directive 2001/42/EC...

Hankering after music.(People & Ideas)
July 1, 2004... ONE OF OUR more innocent delights for years has been sitting around in pubs, on our patch or theirs, listening to the music provided by our extended family in an assortment of groups and styles. Plenty of people still have the illusion that...

Superannuated planners of Britain, unite.(Planing World)
July 1, 2004... I DIPPED the other night into a favourite bit of a favourite bedside book, Yeats' Sailing to Byzantium. When you hit a certain age, it has a certain poignancy: at 72 you see what, at 63, he was driving at. That is no country for old men....

High noon on the high street.(Trading Places)
July 1, 2004... AT THE END OF APRIL, Dixon's, the electrical goods retailer, announced intentions to close 106 of its smaller high street stores. According to the company's property director, Martin Meech, 'Our business model works best in large formats and...

The DNA of good places.(Off the Fence)
July 1, 2004... THE DEPUTY Prime Minister and First Secretary of State John Prescott went to the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU) in Washington, DC last year. He discovered the technique of 'urban coding' and has pressed it upon the English planning system...

Saving the planet where to start?(Getting Somewhere)
July 1, 2004... IN THE MAY EDITION of Town & Country Planning, Mayer Hillman introduced his latest book, written with Tina Fawcett, about How We Can Save the Planet. (1) In it, they describe the problem of climate change and the falsity of assumptions that...

An opportunity not to be missed; the EU Directive on strategic environmental assessment (SEA) will apply to many plans and programmes prepared by planners. Clive Harridge looks at what it means for planning and argues that it provides opportunities to improve the process of preparing plans and programmes and so achieve better outcomes.(strategic environmental assessment)
July 1, 2004... THE Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) Directive was issued by the European Union in June 2001. Its full title is Directive 2001/42/EC on the Assessment of the Effects of Certain Plans and Programmes on the Environment. Confusingly, the...

SEA for real.(strategic environmental assessment)
July 1, 2004... Scottish proposals for implementation of the SEA Directive extend the scope of SEA well beyond the coverage envisaged in the rest of the UK, and so will test the efficacy of environmental assessment processes for delivering sustainable...

Territorial cohesion--an agenda that's gaining momentum: Simin Davoudi looks at the emergence of the notion of 'teritorial cohesion' in EU policy aimed at reducing spatial imbalances in regional economic, social, and environmental development.(EU regional policy)
July 1, 2004... ON 25 MAY 2004, a three-day 'Conference on Territorial Cohesion' was hosted by Ireland's Department of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs in Galway, as part of the Irish Presidency of the European Union (EU). The Irish six-month Presidency...

The beginnings of an urban renaissance? Recent migration flows into and out of English cities, as revealed in a new study, just may be the glimmerings of a new pro-urban movement.(demographic change)
July 1, 2004... TO DELIVER its hoped-for 'urban renaissance', (1) the Government has to change public perceptions of city life and make more people want to move into cities, or stay in cities, than there are people wanting to move out. Taking the largest...

The social economy route to regeneration: Peter Jones, Daphne Comfort, David Adamson, and David Hillier examine some of the ways in which social enterprise is currently contributing to urban regeneration.(social enterprise)
July 1, 2004... WITHIN THE UK there is growing interest in the role that 'social enterprise' might play in addressing the Government's regeneration agendas. There are many competing definitions and meanings of the term and many forms of social enterprise. In...

Invited to binge?(licensing and the 24 hour city)
July 1, 2004... Responding to an earlier article by John Montgomery, Phil Hadfield argues that, while extended alcohol licensing hours can be a good thing as long as their control really is made flexible and responsive to local conditions, the 24-hour city...

Gross omission.(Connections)
July 1, 2004... ANY DISCUSSION about housing--at least, any discussion in what used to be called the Home Counties--rapidly descends into a debate about numbers. For example, the East of England Regional Assembly has more or less accepted a regional planning...

Good or bad?(Connections)
July 1, 2004... DEMOLITION is also on the minds of the sustainability brigade. Dr Brenda Boardman--high priestess of the housing energy efficiency lobby (actually, head of the Lower Carbon Futures team at the Oxford University Environmental Change...

Just an aspiration.(Connections)
July 1, 2004... OF COURSE, most people see the Building Regulations, not the planning system, as the key to sustainable construction. Their faith is misplaced: not only are UK Building Regulations still behind the standards set in much of the rest of...

Warped priorities.(Connections)
July 1, 2004... THE WAY that transport infrastructure is funded is becoming increasingly daft. At least, that is my conclusion from having sat through the East of England Regional Assembly's debate on its spending review bid. Everything is all very...

Caring for quality.(Design Matters)
July 1, 2004... FOLLOWING a gathering hosted by the Minister for Parks and Open Spaces to discuss steps to make our public spaces cleaner, safer, and greener, I stepped out of the ODPM offices at 26 Whitehall and immediately thought, this street sums up much...