Or, an ode to good placemaking
“More than three quarters of all planning applications in the UK are prepared by someone with no design training.” – Urban Design Group
Name: Urban Designers
Age: Somewhere between c10,000 years – since people started congregating in cities – and 47 – the Urban Design Group was founded in 1978. We got there eventually.
Appearance and temperament: Varies from the ultra-serious urbanist dressed in head-to-toe black silk Armani suit (dark colours are best) to jeans and tweed jackets and every colour and material combination in between. Likely to have a strong distrust of planners and engineers who wear shoes that look like Cornish pasties.
Why is any of this important? It turns out that developers – some of them at least – actually value urban designers! The Urban Design Group have recently published a report “Urban Design: what Developers really want…” and it turns out that some of things they like about urban design are what I and other urban designers have been rambling on about for years:
✅ Investing in good design will increase the value of your scheme!
Find out how this could possibly be so in this week’s Sketch…
#placemaking #urbandesign #urbandesigners #officeforplace #urbandesigngroup #udg #manualforstreets #walking #cycling #nowheresville