< Previous | Contents | Next >

Designing Places

Royal Scottish Museum, Edinburgh

skills
More intensive effort needs to be made to raise standards of urban design skills

Design skills

Higher standards of design depend on the attitudes, knowledge and skills of everyone involved in the development process. The necessary knowledge and skills include those associated with the built environment professions such as planning, architecture, landscape design, surveying and engineering. They also extend to project management, community development, development finance, transport planning and much more.

Preparing an urban design framework, a development brief or a master plan, is likely to require creative collaboration from a wide range of people. These will include those who interpret policy; assess the local economy and property market; appraise a site or area in terms of land use, ecology, landscape, ground conditions, social factors, history, archaeology, urban form and transport; manage and facilitate a participative process; draft and illustrate design principles; and programme the development process. Those who take the lead in this work should be those who are skilled in promoting collaboration among professionals and everyone who has a hand in shaping our cities, towns and villages.

More intensive effort needs to be made to raise standards of urban design skills.

Professional training

There is scope for the quality of generalist and specialist professional training to be improved. Planners, architects, landscape architects, engineers and surveyors should be encouraged to study urban design at postgraduate level. Some will become professional urban designers. Others will gain a new perspective on how to practise their own specialisms.

Future generations of built environment professionals will need different ways of working to those of the past. They must have a deep understanding of how towns and cities work and how urban design can cope with complexity. Working collaboratively must become second nature to them. Some of them will come from other backgrounds and illuminate the subject with their own distinctive outlook and experience.

Glasgow School of Art, Glasgow

It is essential that urban design is included in the education and training curriculum for all the built environment professions. Continuous professional development should introduce a wide range of professionals to the essentials of urban design and should provide others with a high level of skills. Awareness raising and skills training should not be confused - a one day course cannot make a planner, an engineer or an architect into an urban designer.

Improving skills and raising awareness of the value of good design is as important in the private sector as it is in the public sector.

Local authorities

Local authority officers need to become more skilled and more aware of how design can help fulfil their corporate aims. A number of councils already support their staff in taking design courses. Every planning authority needs, ideally, to have an urban design team with a range of skills, including landscape architecture. At the least, it should have one member of staff with an urban design qualification or skills. Training should also be provided for councillors to help them become aware of the importance of design and the impact of their decisions.

Public bodies

Every public body commissioning a new development or otherwise influencing the design of places will be expected to demonstrate how it has raised standards. It should also consider nominating a design champion to focus these efforts.

training
It is essential that urban design is included in the education and training curriculum for all the built environment professions

< Previous | Contents | Next >