Paul Drinnan

My present role is one of heading up a team at Fylde Council in Lancashire that deals with a broad range of urban design projects, acting as a design advisor to development management colleagues, regeneration and renewal projects, public realm scheme design and implementation, tree strategy work and conservation policy.

The renewal of town centre's is a present key aspect of the team's work as this is a priority of the Council, with a number of projects completed and bids put forward for renewal in a market town under the Heritage Action Zone and Future High Street Fund.

A key part of the work of the team is one of preparing a borough-wide design strategy following the publication of the National Design Guide, Building for a Healthy Life and the White Paper on the streamlining of the planning system, notably the principles of design coding, distinctiveness and contextual design of the genius loci.

My work involves dealing with a variety of projects from large scale greenfield allocations to the development of sensitive sites in the urban context. I am fortunate in many cases to deal with a number of creative developers, architects, and landscape architects although the standard of some submissions leaves significant scope for improvement.

Whilst urban design moves forward there remains a great deal to be gained by the re-study of some of the great urban design and townscape advocates of the past including Thomas Sharpe, Roy Worskett, Kevin Lynch, Christopher Alexander, Leon Krier, Gordon Cullen and of course Francis Tibbalds - but to name a few.