Town and Country Planning articles from March 2004

Town and Country Planning archives from March 2004

10 years ago.(T&CP back bites)
March 1, 2004... PERHAPS THE KEY CRITICISM that can be levelled against the UK Sustainable Development Strategy is that it lacks any capacity or aspiration to inspire the public. The choices ahead--on restraining use of the car, for instance--are invariably...

5 years ago.(T&CP back bites)
March 1, 2004... THE KEY is to develop policies to redevelop (or first-time-develop) good urban sites that have gone derelict, or for odd reasons have never been developed. On those we can get a mixture of densities ranging from Unwin upwards, so long as the...

Context: news digest, February 2004.
March 1, 2004... * 2.2 "Sustainable Communities:" The ODPM publishes Making It Happen--The Northern Way, the second in a series of updates on the 'Sustainable Communities Plan', launched in February 2003. The Northern Way focuses on the progress being made...

Extending Milton Keynes.
March 1, 2004... THE TCPA has welcomed the belated acknowledgement in the Government's 'Communities Plan' that, as a matter of urgency, there must be a step change in the rate of housebuilding in the South East--and that such housebuilding should be shaped...

'Northern Way' has some way to go, says TCPA.
March 1, 2004... THE TCPA HAS WELCOMED the Government's announcement of a growth area for the north of England, set out in the Making It Happen--The Northern Way, document, the second in a series of updates on the 'Communities Plan', Sustainable...

Cherishing cowcross street.(People & Ideas)
March 1, 2004... ONE OF THE PROBLEMS of London is that of finding central venues for small informal meetings. A friend looking for such a modest place found it in Clerkenwell, close to Farringdon Underground station. This area is a survival from pre-bombing and...

Do we spend too little?(Planning World)
March 1, 2004... THERE'S A SUBJECT that has worried me, on and off, for much of my professional life--and which continues to surface almost every time I open a newspaper, it's this: do we invest too little in almost everything? We read that we've...

The captain needs a crew.(Off the Fence)
March 1, 2004... IT IS A JOLLY DINNER. Professional and business gossip, a certain amount of posturing before the barriers drop. Laughter. An elegant but loud cough. We are here to discuss the skills needed to drive forward John Prescott's 'Communities Plan',...

Priorities, priorities--rebalancing the country: Brian Robson looks at the ODPM's Northern Way document and asks: pure spin, or platform for reinventing the economy of the North?('sustainable communities')
March 1, 2004... CYNICS AND OPTIMISTS will have very different interpretations of John Prescott's recent announcement of a 'Northern Way'. To the cynic, this is pure spin. Stung by the increasingly vocal criticism of the Government's preoccupation with the...

Focus on the fringe: Peter Jones, Daphne Comfort, and David Hillier examine the consultation exercise on the future of the 'rural urban fringe' being carried out by the Countryside Agency and Groundwork.(urban fringe)
March 1, 2004... THE 'RURAL URBAN FRINGE' is perhaps most easily described as the land immediately around towns and cities, or as where town meets country. For many decades it has been contested by a variety of development, recreational, amenity, and...

Born to binge? Drawing on his long experience of devising and implementing 24-hour city strategies, John Montgomery offers a personal reflection on the evening economy, the liberalization of the alcohol licensing laws, and English cultural identity.(licensing and the 24-hour city)
March 1, 2004... FROM JUNE 2004 responsibility for liquor licensing will pass from local magistrates to local councils, taking full effect from January 2005. This is seen by the Government as a further step in the liberalisation of the UK's drink laws, and it...

Priorities for local delivery vehicles: John Walker proposes key priorities for the new local delivery vehicles operating in the 'super-growth' areas--and puts land value capture and infrastructure delivery high on the list.(financing development)
March 1, 2004... Priority 1--a co-ordinated planning process The LDV and its partners need to demonstrate how they will ensure that there is a co-ordinated planning process, to include: * co-ordination of plan-making activity between different authorities...

Sustainable communities from sub-regional spatial strategies: Robin Thompson looks at examples of current sub-regional level attempts to meet some of the challenges within the Sustainable Communities agenda and suggests some key principles for effective planning for urban growth.(sub-regional strategies)
March 1, 2004... THE DEPUTY PRIME MINISTER has set out the key requirements for sustainable communities. These lay emphasis upon integration, ownership, and co-ordination to achieve communities that have a range of household sizes, ages, and incomes and are...

Live/work--what's the use? Although live/work units are widely seen as 'a good thing', the uncertainties that planners often feel in dealing with live/work applications would be best cleared up by national guidance.(live/work units)
March 1, 2004... THERE IS NO DOUBT that building live/work units is seen as a good thing by most planners. However, planners often have difficulty in categorising and controlling them--for example, few local plans outside of London contain specific policies on...

A 'third' Cambridge Phenomenon.('third sector' action)
March 1, 2004... The growth and success of Cambridge's high-tech economy has not been without accompanying threats to the environmental quality of the city and its surroundings. But in response, and echoing aspects of the famous 'Cambridge Phenomenon', the...

The sad tale of Crystal Palace Park: David Boyle looks at the 'slow decay' of parts of Crystal Palace Park and explains how mutual ownership and community management could provide a way forward for parks--and for other public services besides.(public space)
March 1, 2004... WITH GRIFF RHYS-JONES having recently appeared on television striding through many of the most beautiful ruins in Britain, spare a thought for all that remains of one of the most remarkable buildings in the nation's history. Because the...

Environmental justice and planning--a Scottish perspective: Barbara Illsley looks at the environmental justice agenda emerging in the wake of initiatives being undertaken by the Scottish Executive.(environmental justice)
March 1, 2004... THE ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE debate in Scotland has, in Agyeman's terms 'moved from the margins to the mainstream'. (1) Speaking at a conference at the Our Dynamic Earth visitor attraction and exhibition in Edinburgh in February 2002, Jack...

Not all Eurocrats and fat cats: John Zetter looks at how brownfield land reclamation and redevelopment are being used in a positive way to stimulate growth in the South Luxembourg region and divert growth away from Luxembourg's capital city.(planning in Luxembourg)
March 1, 2004... WHICH EUROPEAN UNION member state is a constitutional monarchy and has an over-heated housing market; considers immigration a major political issue; has an over-dominant capital city; has the lowest unemployment rate; and rates brownfield land...

PPS1--six of one and half a dozen of the other.(Design Matters)
March 1, 2004... AS Planning Policy Guidance 1: General Policy and Principles transmutes into Planning Policy Statement 1: Creating Sustainable Communities, does the re-branding offer the step-change promised in the Planning Green Paper, or is it a step hack to...

The 'glory of the British planning system'.
March 1, 2004... Planning by Consent: The Origins and Nature of British Development Control By Philip Booth Routledge, 2003, ISBN 0 419 24410 7, HB, 60.00 [pounds sterling], 224 pp., index THERE ARE a good number of books on the practice of development...

The 'c' word.
March 1, 2004... Making Sense of Community By Victoria Nash with Ian Christie IPPR, London, 2003, ISBN 1 86030 205 X, PB, 12.95 [pounds sterling] NATIONAL government policy is increasingly couched in terms of thriving, inclusive, sustainable communities....

Buchanan re-revisited.(writeback)(Letter to the Editor)
March 1, 2004... NOT ONLY DID Stephen Marshall's well illustrated assessment of the Buchanan Report, 40 years on (T&CP, Nov. 2003), remind me of early campaigning for a better urban environment, but it actually led me to dust-down my 40-year-old, well-thumbed,...

Erratum.(writeback)(Correction Notice)
March 1, 2004... THERE WAS an error In the table 'Population change since 1981 for England's main conurbations and their principal cities', on page 20 of the January 2004 issue of T&CP, in my article 'The Census and the cities'. For Greater Manchester, the...

Rural broadband.(Future Work)
March 1, 2004... IN A knowledge economy, access to the information superhighway is essential for anyone-or at least for any business--who wants to remain a part of the internationally competitive global economy. The analogy I like to use is that of...

What's on.(Future Work)(Calendar)
March 1, 2004... March 26 The Future of Britain's Rural Branch Lines. Conference, Peterborough. Details: Association of Community-Rail Partnerships (ACoRP), Huddersfield. T: 01484 549737. E: hazel@acorp.uk.com 26 Building Confidence in High Quality...

Some good news for Los Angeles.(Inside America)
March 1, 2004... IT IS NOT OFTEN, these days, that one hears good news from Los Angeles. America's second largest city and metropolitan area continues to be beset by problems of smog, immigration, poverty, a failing school system, budgetary crisis, and, of...