Would you get Picasso to do your plumbing? - 4/6/2014

Below is Poundbury, the New Urbanist extension to Dorchester in Dorset. It's superb in many ways, and is by far one of the best volume build developments in the country - mainly due to the flexibility provided to the developers by the landowner who was determined to show it was possible to do better - yet so far in transport terms it's proving itself almost entirely unsustainable (barring an electric car revolution fuelled entirely by renewable energy taking place within the next few years, which seems unlikely).

What is telling about the slide below is that it contrasts the very low modal share shown by the Oxford Brookes study with the cartoon sketched out prior to the site's development by the project's main architect and masterplanner, Leon Krier. Mr Krier was well aware of this problem of "suburban mortar fire" and his response, based on his experience as a masterplanner, was to design a new village centre adjoining Dorchester based on the assumption that poly-centric urban areas create more walkable neighbourhoods: a great idea in theory, but evidently in practice entirely insufficient to reduce car use much below the worst levels in the country. 

The Farrell Review is currently causing a great stir amongst design and planning professionals who've been sidelined recently in the pursuit of growth to the single bottom line. We need to heed the lessons of the past and recognise that architects and other design professionals (like me) do have an important role to play, but are only a small part of a very big picture that requires not only eco-literate landowners and developers, but also an organic approach to development and regeneration that works within the limits of existing infrastructure, with sustainable lifestyles made a core part of the development process through cooperation and shared ownership.