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Designing Places
poorly designed
Often development is poorly designed because those who commissioned or built
it failed to see how design could serve their own best interests
The price of poor design
Ineptly designed development continues to be built. Sometimes the reason is
that the costs of a poorly designed development falls on people other than those
who commissioned, designed or built it.
The price of poor design is paid by people who find their familiar routes blocked,
who walk in the shadows of blank walls, whose choices are limited by spaces
that make them feel unsafe and unwelcome, and whose enjoyment of the countryside
is spoiled. The price is paid by people who find themselves living in newly
built suburban housing whose designers gave no thought to the quality and distinctiveness
of the place they were making. It is paid by people whose surroundings are degraded
by the consequences of unsustainable building practices, and by those who will
end up paying a building's long term energy, maintenance and management costs.
It is paid by those who live in a place whose decline has been made more painful
by its buildings and spaces proving hard to adapt.
Often, though, development is poorly designed because those who commissioned
or built it failed to see how design could serve their own best interests.
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Sighthill, Edinburgh
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Scottish Borders
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