We need to redesign planners

[M II A II R II K]

We need to redesign planners


16 July 2010

By Jonathan Glancey



Read More: http://www.bdonline.co.uk/comment/co...002864.article

The debate over localism and planning is one that we sorely need, and one that will last as long as we allow these islands to be smothered in junk housing and other inappropriate buildings, and tied up and tortured with witless and even destructive development plans. In last week’s BD, though, it was funny to see Robert Adam arguing in favour of localism, suggesting “architects might be forced to realise that originality is not just being wacky and shocking”. His own recent interruption of the local West End streetscape in central London –198-202 Piccadilly, a concatenation of wacky and shocking po-mo classical and Egyptian detailing – jumps from the street like a can-can dancer dressed in teasing shreds of the costume Liz Taylor wore when playing Hollywood’s Cleopatra. In the wise words of Michael Winner, “Calm down, madam!”

Roger Zogolovitch, meanwhile, is charmingly naive in believing that somehow we’ll nurture a host of saintly developers concerned wholeheartedly with beauty, imagination, new architecture and a sense of place. Money, be damned. So, what to do? One thing we can do is create a new generation of truly high quality planning schools. There should be a national standard – a very high one indeed – ensuring that everyone going into planning is trained to an equally high degree. Graduates of such schools, many of whom, ideally, would have previously undergone architectural training, or practised as architects, would bring the same level of professionalism, imagination and thoughtfulness to each and every scheme.

With such people in place, it should be possible to treat every village, town or city planning proposal as if it truly mattered and might genuinely raise the quality of life, and architecture, in any given setting. A planner able to help solve a major urban redevelopment scheme would apply the same forensic intelligence and altruistic thinking to the extension of a small town. Equally, a planner whose natural instinct might be to recommend polite “infill” buildings in an old town, might see a way to introduce new architectural blood, to champion intelligently modern design that, although modest in scale, would be as rigorously designed as some grand new museum, library or railway station in a city centre. You can find this approach in Spain, for example, but rarely in Britain.