Towns and cities that fail to attract people to live and work in them, that disregard the blight of traffic and allow their urban areas to decay, will atrophy. Their failure will be even more acutely visible in comparison with towns that do take the initiative now. If towns and cities decline, those who can will flee to rural areas and the resultant damage to our countryside would produce perhaps the worst outcome for town and city dwellers alike.

When the Urban Task Force report was issued in June last year it received wholehearted acclaim from the RIBA and the other related construction professions. We take heart from the fact that already many Local Authorities are already responding positively. Some, like Birmingham City Council are consulting on new residential guidelines for the city, which reflect the recommendations of the Urban Task Force report. Swindon has just commenced a 30 year envisioning exercise for the whole town and Shillam + Smith have been commissioned to make a masterplan for the Town Centre. Housing associations and developers are beginning to build in different ways to a different brief. For example Peabody Trust has just opened their first rented live work units and Foyers for single people are springing up in many cities. These organisations are responding to the challenge, but they do so with little support from government and often in the face of considerable obstacles. Though we await a government urban white paper, its deadline seems to be continually receding.

Local Plans
Existing local plan making principles are too slow, detailed and ponderous to allow for the new urban frameworks. They concentrate almost entirely on the requirements of development control and fail to recognise the many areas of opportunity that exist within the realms of the local authority itself. For example street furniture, lighting, road design and layout. Also because local plans are biased towards the built environment they fail to recognise the joined up nature of urban decay. People will not invest in run down areas unless there is good education, access to a range of cultural and leisure facilities, shopping, good transport links, an adequate supply of doctors and most importantly economic development. Even in the internal workings of local authorities different departments jealously guard their territory. It is imperative ensure that re-allocated powers cut across traditional fiefdoms.

This infers a new plan making system. The local plan being informed by integrated authority policies, meaningful public consultation and sustained political debate.

Though we encourage longer term strategic plan making, local frameworks must be regularly reviewed. So often there is this burst of activity in the planning department, a frenzy of consultation and a short term political strategy to produce a five or ten year ‘local plan’. Then it is all crystallised until the next one. By the time UDP’s have reached statutory ratification, they are often out of date. A fluid strategy must require annual and continuous consultation and review.

New PPG’s
At the moment exemplary schemes are being delivered in spite of - rather than because of - the planning system. The Town and Country Planning Acts themselves would in our view require little amendment. What is in need of serious amendment is how these acts are administered. A new set of policies are already emerging with new and very clear national guidelines dealing with such issues as quality, modernity, density, mixed use, flexibility and car parking standards. Guidance notes should also cover the issue of efficient administration of the system, the correct use of 106 agreements and streamlining the appeals process.

These guidelines would offer consistent urban policies and provide the framework into which each authority can place their own long term plan. They would also provide developers and investors with what they crave most from the planning system - a higher degree of certainty.

Architectural Quality
In the past Planning Policy Guidance has been weak on requiring planning authorities to insist in high quality design and in defining how such design could be achieved. That we require good quality architecture is now a matter of agreement, for example the Chief Planning Officers Group has just issued guidelines to their members as to how to achieve better quality. It recognises that planning authorities must take advice from well qualified advisors, must not stifle modernity and must understand the balance between conservation and the future.

Taking national issues out of local politics
By taking the large decisions at regional planning or national levels, matters of national and regional importance would be taken outside the straightjacket of very local politics. This would free certain local authorities to spend more time considering and consulting on matters of local importance.

Change of emphasis from land use to spatial masterplan

One fundamental flaw in the way town planning is administered is the focus on land use, at the expense of the design quality of buildings and urban spaces. One relatively easy way of achieving a change emphasis is to make it easier for buildings to change their use and to create a mixed use category. It should be remembered that the decision to allow light industrial buildings automatic change of use to office use (B1) led to the re-invigoration of many ailing inner city industrial areas. However it may also have led to an over supply of poor quality office, which contributed to the office slump in the late 80’s.

The pressure for change of use today is between office and residential. However without the potential to revert back, or change to other "good neighbour" uses we may inadvertently resolve residential pressures at the cost of creating different pressures elsewhere.

For example most major mortgage companies will not lend on flats above shops, on live work units, or on ex council flats or on high rise buildings. Yet it is in these areas that most capacity exists.

Investment Funds
Similarly investment institutions are cautious about investing in mixed use developments. Most investors and developers only specialise in one building type. Because of this projects that include mixed or flexible uses are more difficult to fund. This is of course a contradiction. The greater flexibility of mixed use should deliver higher profits. Mixed use buildings can adapt to changes in the market, in a way that single use buildings can not, but they do not attract higher values because of their flexibility. Value is so often directly linked to rental value at one point in time..

Thus we have a situation where neither private nor social innovators can borrow development finance. The market moves very slowly. This limits the potential of either the private or the public sector to respond adequately to opportunities.

Here again funding for different schemes is so difficult to get. The government must provide incentives and support to broaden development finance opportunities. The irony is that innovative urban projects, both publicly funded and privately funded have the potential to be highly profitable as well as highly successful. The country could share in the development profit that would be generated. The lack of easy finance stifles innovative development as much as it can stifle any new business.

 Other Issues

Urban Capacity
The continuing debate about the percentage green to brownfield land we need misses the point. The capacity of our urban areas to accommodate more residential units is as much dependant upon the densities we decide to build to, how much redevelopment and intensification we decide to entertain and what types of housing we produce. These issues should be underpinned by a government instruction to each local authority to review their residential design guidelines. There should be no maximum density. Some of our finest and smartest residential areas are very high density - for example the Oxbridge Colleges. The key in density may be in a redefinition of our understanding of housing. We must look beyond the traditional three bedroomed house and invent new urban living types that can respond to the new needs.

But how we accommodate those increased units must be the subject of public debate. Each locality will have its specific needs, its own potential and its own characteristics. Solutions will be varied and should respond to those local nuances.

The Urban Profile
It is often held belief that a section taken through a city will have its densest development at the centre, petering out to low density in the suburbs. This is however a relatively new phenomenon, which has developed in parallel with increasing car ownership. If we look at medieval cities, like Sienna, the great Renaissance cities like Florence or Beaux Art Cities like Paris they each maintain their density to the historic edge. They are constrained by the value of the land, and in the case of the earlier cities by the need to cluster for security. Our modern requirement to keep cities compact and to save a green belt around them, should if planning restrictions on density were relaxed result in similarly compact modern models.

Brownfield Land
Much of this brownfield land we refer to is owned by the recently privatised utilities. In London alone Railtrack and British Gas are huge landowners. At the moment the land is classified in their books as derelict; it is often undervalued. If it were to be re-valued as development land it would - at a stroke - increase the book value of the companies and thus the profits of these already unpopularly profitable giants.

Local Authorities are at liberty to re-define land uses. The government should ensure that these re-defined brownfield sites are correctly valued and taxed. In this way there would be more incentive for the landholders to bring them into productive use.

Many of our finest architects receive more commissions from abroad than from this country. By our reluctance to utilise home grown talent we continue to lose highly skilled professionals to other countries as we continue to waste precious land, by building immodestly on green space.

Encouraging diversity in competition
The imperative to deliver the urban renaissance via local plans should allow for regional variety and local debate. These are serious issues which require public consultation - annual and continuous consultation and review. They should result in a local agenda which is special to the particulars of each place. Each town and city will have different aspirations and particular challenges. But all plans should be informed by an aspiration to create inclusive communities, embracing a wider definition of family to include the young, the vulnerable, the single, all ethnic groups and the elderly as well as the nuclear family.

It is the holistic achievement of all these ambitions, which is crucial to the delivery of a sustainable urban environment. Physical regeneration alone is not enough, it must be supported by social and economic regeneration. Neither is this imperative the domain of only failing neighbourhoods or run down areas. Those areas that are currently successful, will be under more pressure in the future and must be equally ready to face the challenge that that pressure will present. To ignore the pressure will turn a successful town into an unsuccessful one. On one level the failing towns, with their lower land values and more capacity for change (and for government support) can be seen as offering the greatest opportunities.

The North/South Divide
The North South divide is a product of the "Capital Focus" that has been part of our culture for many years. For example, all roads and railway lines today lead to London. However the internet, the increasing international flavour of business and the diversification of culture linked to the very serious problems that the capital has to face, may well eventually favour towns in the North of England. It will especially favour towns which respond with innovation to the new challenges. Market forces and the restrictions of building on greenfield sites, should naturally create a market led re-balance between development hot-spots and more sluggish areas.

Local Governance
Regional and local differences and diversities should be encouraged. The solutions will not be the same in each case. England benefits from a very diverse population. Our culture has been enriched by immigration from our former colonies and is now benefiting from the freedoms of movement enshrined by the Treaty of Rome. The communities that make up towns and cities can become create a cultural force which in turn can power economic and social regeneration.

The priorities for each community can only be gauged if Local Authorities take the lead in encouraging local debate and interest.

Public consultation, to commence the process and public involvement in its delivery is vital. The very act of personal involvement in a renaissance process can be empowering. The potential for capacity building, particularly in areas of high unemployment, by taking an active part in regeneration projects is often overlooked.

I think that government will find that the population is ahead of them in matters of sustainability of the environment. Young people in particular are very aware of green issues and seem to want to live in an ethical and sustainable environment. It is amongst the youth, who will inherit the results of today’s environmental decisions, that much support can be gained. It may be difficult to persuade older people, who are more set in their ways, to change their lifestyle. For the youth their lifestyle has not yet been set. Walking and cycling, recycling, living and working in the city are all easier for the young to embrace.

The younger generation are the colonisers. They do not expect perfection from their urban environment, and traditionally are happy with vibrant cultures and affordable - if not perfect - housing. But these young people will become the parents of tomorrows generation. By that time the challenge must be to have improved our towns and cities enough to discourage them to move out of the center when they have families of their own.

Special Development Areas - financial incentives
Financial incentives can be blunt instruments. We see great potential to use special development areas to test and fine-tune fiscal incentives. Incentives whether they be fiscal or a relaxation in planning requirements can be set tested on a small scale before widening them to the whole country. Special development areas can also be used to test innovative architectural ideas, particularly linked to:

Rural/Urban balance
However by attacking the urban challenge we can also provide relief for rural communities. Like Yin and Yang the Urban Renaissance could also stimulate a Rural Renaissance. No longer need rural settlements feel pressured by insensitive development. Improvements in public transport and improved access to the towns will be as useful for rural dwellers as it will be for their urban cousins. To bring new life and activity, particularly to market towns, will be of immense benefit to the rural communities. By tackling the urban issues the government can also invigorate the rural areas.