1. Executive summary (100 words) 最后写
2. Introduction (150-200 words)
 The purpose of this report is to …
 Summary of the background (2-3 sentences)
 The structure of this report
3. Summary of the case (100 words)
 Summarise the background
4. Potential governance tools or mechanisms (2-3 paras per tool)
 Discuss three governance tools or mechanisms (i.e., their names,
academic definitions and explanations, advantages, and disadvantages)
5. Justification of the governance tool for …
 Justify the most appropriate governance tool or mechanism by comparing
these three tools
 Provide evidenced-based recommendations
 一定要结合你的设计要求本身
Disadvantage
Design codes are not legally binding, they are just advices, not compulsion.
They are second order mechanism: not a final blueprint
Advantage: Does go further than site analysis, typically offers typographical
adv
Introduction
The purpose of this report is to identify the best design governance tool to
support the chief planner’s case of South Lomondshire. This report will
analysis three deign guidance tools, which are design coding, design review,
competitions. The background of this report is South Lomondshire, a local
government in the west of Scotland, recently awarded Urban Design Futures
LLP a project in the public sector. They have requested that Urban Design
Future LLP study how they might improve the design quality of planning
applications they receive and guarantee that their planning system produces
the finest possible places.
The structure of this report is Executive summary, Introduction, Summary of
the case, Potential governance tools, Justification of the governance tool,
Recommendations, Conclusion.
Summary of the case
South Lomondshire's chief planner is concerned that developers often
propose new proposals that fail to fulfil the county's strategic objective to
create sustainable and well-designed places. The council's planning
department feels pressure to approve barely planned proposals because
elected planning committee members want to stimulate economic growth
regardless of design quality.
Budget cuts and personnel strained caused by financial austerity have made
it harder to approve well-designed places in South Lomondshire since the
Global Financial Crisis. South Lomondshire has one urban designer who
helps policy and development teams make design decisions. South
Lomondshire post a short declaration on intended design results in its Local
Development Plan, but not used design tools and mechanisms.
South Lomondshire has more funding for council services due to this new
funding model. The chief planner has been asked to make the case for a cash
injection for the planning department. She wants to utilise additional funding
to improve South Lomondshire's development decisions.
Potential governance tools
There are a range of design governance tools widely used by urban designers.
According to Carmona (2017), the design governance tools can be classified
to formal tools, informal tools. The formal tools include three main categories,
which are guidance, incentive, control. The informal tools mainly have five
categories, which are evidence, knowledge, promotion, evaluation,
assistance.
This report is going to analyse three specific tools, which are design coding,
design review, competitions.
Source: Carmona, M. (2017). The formal and informal tools of design
governance. Journal of Urban Design, 22 (1), pp. 1-36
1.
Design coding is a kind of tool of the formal tools, in the guidance category
(Carmona, 2017). Design codes are a collection of illustrated rules for the
physical development of a site or area. The visual and written components of
the code should be based on a design concept, such as a masterplan or other
framework for the design and development of a site or area.
Design codes can be commissioned or created by either the local planning
authority or the developer, although they are best prepared in collaboration
to ensure agreed design outputs and sustain viability, especially on
complicated sites and multi-developer schemes. They can also be developed
for smaller sites, such as self-build or custom-build projects, where codes can
be employed to retain a level of assurance while permitting design flexibility.
On big sites, it may be vital to permit the code to be evaluated as development
progresses so that lessons learned from its original implementation can be
included, provided that any changes do not undermine the overall design
objective or compromise the quality of development (CABE, 2003).
Design codes can be applied to all sorts of development, including residential,
commercial, mixed-use, open space, landscape, and public realm. They may
be adopted as supplemental planning documents or attached to a
Neighbourhood Plan, Community Right to Build Order, or Neighbourhood
Development order (Carmona, 2009).
2.
Design review is an unbiased evaluation of development plans by a panel of
diverse professionals and experts that can inform and improve the design
quality of new construction. It is not meant to replace input from statutory
consultees and advisory bodies or local authority design expertise or
community participation.
Effective design review is proportional and may be applied to both large-scale
and small-scale development, so long as the projects are big enough to justify
the required cost. The number and competence of required panel members
can be determined by the scheme's complexity and the site's sensitivity to its
surroundings.
An effective design review follows clear criteria for the appraisal of schemes,
agreed by the panel, and ensuring they work for the benefit of the public and
reflect relevant local and national design objectives; sets clear, meaningful
terms of reference to ensure a transparent, objective, robust, and defensible
process that demonstrates benefit to the public; is representative, diverse,
and inclusive, drawing upon a range of built environment and other
professional expertise; and sets clear, meaningful terms of reference to
ensure that the process is transparent, objective, robust, and Continuity of
panel members is essential to ensure consistency in approach for each
scheme reviewed, including agreed procedures to provide feedback to
applicants; considers the wider site-specific and policy context, including
relevant socioeconomic issues and physical characteristics of the site and its
setting. The report is written and delivered in a transparent and accessible
manner so that it can be understood by a broad variety of stakeholders, and
it contains procedures to represent the opinions of local people and other
stakeholders (Punter, 2007).
Design review is most effective when conducted early in the design process.
It can be revisited at later phases, including pre-application and
implementation, as projects progress, referencing and expanding upon
recommendations made in previous design reviews.
Recommendations from design review panels can be utilised to support
application decisions; therefore, development plans must demonstrate how
they have examined and handled these recommendations.
3.Competition
Competitions are widely acknowledged as laboratories for aesthetic and
spatial design experimentation as one of the preferred techniques for
selecting designers for projects of exceptional prominence. The decision to
sponsor a design competition, often undertaken by a public agency or a
wealthy private sponsor, is frequently prompted by a desire for publicity
because competitions tend to attract numerous and often unique solutions to
complex design challenges. International design teams and celebrity
architects are frequently attracted to competitions, garnering media attention
and public curiosity.
Justification of the governance tool for this case
1.
Design codes are not a new thing, it is widely used in architectural history, the
use of codes can be traced as far back as Roman times. In contemporary,
design codes are also be used to design well-planed cities, such as Seaside
in Florida, and Revelstoke in Canada.
In the UK, the use of codes can be certainly traced back to Georgian times
and the period of the Regency terraces in London and the designs for the city
of Bath, city of Edinburgh.
There is a town called Poundbury in England, which justified the benefits of
design coding. It is built on Duchy of Cornwall land according to the
architectural and urban planning standards established by HRH The Prince
of Wales. Poundbury is a mixed-use, mixed-income community inspired by
the vigour and vibrancy of our most prosperous historic cities and villages. To
present, around 3,500 people have been provided with 1,700 homes, of which
35 percent are inexpensive homes that are integrated with and
indistinguishable from market housing (Lei,2012).
Its intention is creating a walkable community, pedestrian-friendly
environment where the majority of daily needs may be addressed on foot
rather than cars. Another principle of Poundbury is integrated affordable
housing. Affordable housing for rent, shared ownership, and discounted sales
account for 35 percent of dwellings. Affordable housing is blended with
private housing and constructed to the same high standards, rendering
Poundbury "tenure blind." This contributes to social cohesiveness and the
development of a balanced, mixed-income community (Rohnbogner& Lewis,
2017).
2
Academics and practitioners generated substantial critiques of design review
processes in the late 1980s and early 1990s. By integrating and extending
these critiques, it has been feasible to build a set of best practise standards
that can serve both as an international framework for analysing existing
systems and as a method of developing better systems of design regulation
in general (Punter& Carmona, 1997).
According to Kim and Forester (2012), Design review plays "four key roles"
that are frequently overlooked in scholarly writing. Reviewers can assist
parties involved in a design project in navigating 'many challenges, ranging
from legal limits to design features' as part of the design review as an
educational process. Second, is design review a platform for encouraging
"deliberative interactions that enable parties to perceive each other and their
design options in a fresh light”? Third, is design review a therapeutic
procedure that addresses "developers' and community members' worries and
anxieties"? Fourth is the function of design reviewers as "ritual convenors"
who enable parties to "develop relationships, listen, and learn".
Design assessment has a long history in the United Kingdom, dating back to
the Committee of Taste in 1802 (Carmona and Renninger, 2018), and has
steadfastly remained informal, outside of legislative regulatory structures. In
this context, informal design review is an evaluation mechanism aimed at
enhancing the design quality of advancements prior to obtaining formal
regulatory approval. This method was created via decades of direct
government support of design evaluation. This occurred under the
supervision of the Royal Fine Art Commission for 75 years, after which the
Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE) continued
and developed the practise until 2011. CABE also played a pivotal role in
developing a regional network of Architecture and Built Environment Centres
(ABECs) around England with the mandate to perform design evaluation in
their respective regions.
3…
Urban design competitions are spatially distributed by their very nature. From
district-wide masterplans to public realm concepts, they virtually always
contain a combination of architectural and non-architectural aspects that can
be addressed at different sizes (Sagalyn, 2006).
In general, urban design contests demand the expertise of a multidisciplinary
consultancy team, as opposed to a single designer or team of designers.
Most urban design issues necessitate neighbourhood- or district-scale
strategic spatial thinking that challenges the prevailing urban fabric
arrangement (Lehrer, 2011).
In 2006, Toronto Waterfront held a design competition. The competition had
four major phases and 11 stages. The case of the Central Waterfront
Innovative Design Competition illuminated some of the organised ways that
participation might be integrated into a decision-making process and
proposed a set of techniques for strengthening the public's role in future
design contests in Toronto and elsewhere. Although laypeople did not directly
influence the jury's decisions on Toronto's waterfront, the conditions were set
for locals to have a constructive role in the competition. This result was
bolstered by the prominence of the public forum held in downtown Toronto,
the substantial press coverage of the public displays, and the integration of
the competition with the TWRC's broader iterative public consultation process
(White, 2014).
Recommendations (100 words)
After all the evaluation about those three tools above, the researcher thinks
the optimal design governance for Lomondshire’s proposal is design codes.
Because it can provide specific, detailed parameters for the urban
development of this county. And because of the existing thriving example---
Poundbury, or regularity of a London square, variety of Seaside Florida,
coding justified the superiority.
Nevertheless, the reason researcher ruled out competition and design review,
is because the lack of evidence to underpin these two tools.
Conclusion (150 words)
This report’s objective is to support the chief planner’s idea of designing
Lomondshire. And after the analysis of advantages and disadvantage, and
their application in real life of three mainly used tools, the researcher chose
the design code as the optimal tool for Lomondshire.
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