The Design Dimension of Planning (20 years on)

The relation between governance processes in our cities and the public aspiration for better design quality has long been a contested arena.The debate turns on a number of often repeated tensions, between property rights and public interests, between design freedom and public taste, between those with design skills and those with none, between one definition of good design and another ¦. the list goes on.

Yet despite the tensions, the desire for the state to have a role in how places are shaped through planning and other means remains popular, and largely universal. So can the public sector legitimately influence design for the better and if so whose design and how?This is the key question asked in this talk which will look back over the last 20 years of the response made by planning in the UK to this conundrum. In doing so it will make the case for a legitimate design governance.

Book via Eventbrite here

Matthew Carmona is Professor of Planning and Urban Design in The Bartlett School of Planning, UCL. His research has focused on the policy and development context for delivering better quality design in the built environment. Between 2003 and 2011 he served as Head of The Bartlett School of Planning and now leads on urban design across the Faculty. His most recent book is Capital Spaces: the multiple complex public spaces of a global city (Routledge, 2012) with Filipa Wunderlich.