To implement these objectives we need a national framework for urban design founded on a set of guiding principles which guarantees public participation at a regional, local and community level.

A process of fragmentation

In England, we seem to have lost the art of city-making, which was part of our urban tradition.

Before the Industrial Revolution we created urban areas of great beauty and lasting quality. Still today, the cities of Bath, Edinburgh, Oxford or Cambridge provide a model of urban excellence with elegant buildings surrounded by generous open spaces, crescents, parks and squares. The pioneering 'garden suburbs' at Letchworth or Bedford Park, with their tree-lined avenues and spacious villas, provided similarly innovative solutions to the urban problems at the turn of this century. With a few notable exceptions, such as the post-war Roehampton Estate in London, the remainder of the twentieth century has failed to deliver spaces and places of similar architectural and urban distinction.

For most of this century English towns and cities have become more fragmented. Recent development has not only been typified by loosening urban form and lower intensity of land use; it has also featured a growing segregation between different uses and different users.

The landscape of the inner city has been changing. We have been losing the quality of mix and variety, the 'fine urban grain' of the city that contributes to street life and vitality. The dense and varied rhythm of the traditional street is being replaced by larger housing, business or shopping developments, increasingly zoned into single-use ghettos.

The fringes of our towns and cities have similarly been transformed by free-standing enclaves, surrounded by car parks and access roads. While the design of residential developments in England has not reached the extreme forms of ghettoisation of many American suburbs, housing layout is moving in the same direction.

This growing separation within our urban districts has actively undermined sustainability in economic, social and environmental terms. From the less mobile resident isolated in a sea of houses, to the commuter forced to drive to work, it is obvious that single-use zoning detracts from the very qualities which make more mixed urban areas work so well.

Many of the current problems in English towns and cities lie within the development professions and businesses, and those who regulate them. There has been an over-reliance on rigid planning standards and controls like zoning, parking and density limits; which have stifled creativity. We have tolerated a lazy over-use of off-the-peg designs and layouts. We have allowed highway and traffic requirements to dominate urban layouts. And we have been willing to allow developments which undermine the coherence and viability of the towns that do "work", without giving careful thought to the effects on the coherence, logical hierarchy and balance of the whole urban structure.

This process of fragmentation reflects profound changes in economic, political and social structures. The redevelopment of recycled urban land can play a critical role in reversing this process. Due to their size, location and distribution, brownfield sites play a major role in the regeneration of our cities. They have the potential of linking together parts of cities which for generations have remained divided by industrial activity and physical barriers.

Architecture and urban design

Our analysis of successful urban case studies emphasizes how deeply; quality of urban life is affected by good design and clear policies to achieve such design. Urban design -- the art of city making -- plays an important civic and social role. It determines the shape of the streets and public spaces of our urban areas. It influences how easy and pleasant it can be to move from one area to another; how much daylight, landscape and beauty we can enjoy. Architecture determines the shape, function and aesthetic quality of the buildings that make up our collective urban experience. By weaving together the natural with the man-made, architecture, landscape and urban design establish a balance between people and their environment.

Well-designed public spaces should provide an uplifting aesthetic experience for urban dwellers. People respond to beauty in cities. They choose to walk from one destination to another along favoured routes, lined by vistas, trees and plants, monuments and buildings. Good design should be a stimulus to the senses through choice of materials, architectural form and landscaping. Equally, areas starting to show signs of wear and tear can often be efficiently turned round with modest investments in good landscaping, lighting, street furniture and materials.

Increasing the quality of design in English towns and cities is certainly within our grasp. At the end of the 20th century British architects are internationally celebrated. Yet, their skills have not been applied to urban planning and housing design, which has often been seen as an unrewarding endeavour. The Task Force is convinced that a concerted effort is required, through the education system and the professional design bodies, to involve emerging and talented architects, urbanists and landscape designers in transforming the coincidence of growth in housing demand and availability of recycled urban land into major design opportunity to create sustainable urban environments.

Greenfield sites and suburbs

This renewed commitment is not just directed at brownfield sites in existing towns and cities. It is also applicable to greenfield sites and existing suburbs. Some English suburbs are amongst the most popular and successful urban forms of the twentieth century. They exist in dozens of varieties, and have adapted and changed over time. Many suburbs, however, were never designed around principles of sustainable development. They will benefit, in social and environmental terms, from being analysed and rethought against the urban design principles set out in this report.

In particular, this means that some suburban areas could be 'retrofitted' or 'recycled' with better local services at focal points, better public transport, allowing development densities and provision of facilities to be increased in order to attract and integrate new residents within existing communities. The management and maintenance of such areas, as in the case of inner city decay, is an issue for urban policy and management.

We now turn to the key physical aspects, which impact, on performance of successful urban neighbourhoods, towns and cities.

The compact and well-connected city

A well designed, compact and connected city is open and flexible. Even the most apparently unplanned towns and cities have a clear urban structure, which relates the parts to the whole. The 'structure' of public spaces not only connects different quarters, neighbourhoods and communities to each other across the city; it also links people within them to their homes, schools, workplaces and basic social institutions.

Compact urban development sustains appropriate levels of economic and social activity around urban centres and local 'hubs'. It also ensures that all parts of the city -- even the more remote, quieter neighbourhoods -- are within an acceptable distance from basic transport and social facilities. It is precisely this level of integrated development that is missing from the dispersed and fragmented urban developments of the post-war era.

This type of urban structure underlies the complex reality of everyday life in many successful towns and cities. It applies equally to radial cities and linear towns, which have grown organically along historic communication routes, resisting the tendency towards urban sprawl. London is an example of integrated urban development, where the inhabitants of local district centres -- whether they live in Ealing, Hampstead or Stratford -- can benefit from local facilities on the high street and participate in the metropolitan scale of activities that take place in the central districts and the West End.

Creating a network of public spaces

In most urban settlements, public space adds up to more than half the total area of land -- the rest is occupied by buildings and infrastructure. In England, this valuable 'common good' is predominantly owned by public or quasi-public bodies and institutions. The public sector -- through its elected representatives and policy guidance -- must act as the custodian of the public realm.

The network of public spaces provides alternative routes for people moving through and across a city and its constituent parts. It is a web of connections that offers people a range of choices when deciding to make local Tourneys in the course of their daily lives: from home to work; from school to the shopping centre; from the work-place to the cinema, from the station back to the home. It also affects how people move through the city at a metropolitan level, choosing different modes of transport to reach their destinations -- the airport, the conference centre, the arts complex, the trade fair -- in as efficient and direct a manner. It is the interplay between the local and metropolitan level that makes cities work: that ensures a sense of direction and richness of choice without causing confusion or loss of orientation.

Most compact and well-ordered cities are designed around a well-connected pattern of streets and public spaces. New urban developments -- whether infill or new build sites -- should do the same, with a clear hierarchy between the major through-routes and the more subtle structure of local streets and alleyways.

Many contemporary residential developments in England, based on estate layouts and poor urban design, lack this level of urban richness and integration. By contrast, there are excellent English examples of towns that have successfully absorbed new neighbourhoods and communities over time, creating a seamless continuity between the old and the new. A popular example is Brighton and neighbouring Hove. Sandwiched between the Downs and the sea, the 18th and 19th centuries created these adjoining towns as unique, popular, multi-purpose places with many special areas, much beauty and style, and a robust and long-enduring form and fabric, which still house many different activities and a wide mixture of housing tenures.

Achieving urban integration

To achieve urban integration means thinking of urban open space not as an isolated unit -- be it a street, park or a square -- but as a vital part of the urban landscape with its own specific set of functions. Public space should be conceived of as an outdoor room within a neighbourhood, somewhere to relax and enjoy the urban experience. This means thinking about its role as a venue for a range of different activities from outdoor eating to street entertainment; from sport and play areas to a venue for civic or political functions; and most importantly of all as a place for promenading or just sitting-out. Public spaces work best when they establish a direct relationship between the space and the people who live and work around it.

The traditional street plays a key role in the formation of community. It is where children grow up; where young and old enjoy being part of public life. Yet, in many English towns and cities, the street has become a place of fear and crime. If one wanted to make a real difference to our towns and cities, the reestablishment of the street as an urban focus would make an immediate impact on people's lives. Streets with a continuous frontages, lined by building entrances, shop fronts and overlooked by windows, provide a natural form of self-policing for local and non-local people. The continuous presence of passersby and the informal surveillance of people looking out of windows combine to create the blend of urban vitality and safety that is characteristic of so many successful urban areas.

Safe, well maintained, attractive and uncluttered public spaces provide the vital 'glue' between buildings, and play a crucial role in strengthening communities. But not all public space in English towns and cities is like this. Some urban areas have too much public space, much of which is poorly designed, managed and maintained. Many 20th century residential developments have a public realm, which is simply "SLOAP" (Space Left Over After Planning) -- soulless, undefined places, poorly landscaped, with no relationship to surrounding buildings. A key task in these areas is to re- configure public space so that all parts of the public realm contribute towards achieving a high quality environment.

Often, local authorities will need to work together in defining their strategies. One priority for all our towns and cities should be to create networks of public space which provide the basis for longer journeys for pedestrians and cyclists in attractive surroundings, linking these connections to the centre of the city and the surrounding countryside. A second approach is to create networks around cities -- green inner rings that supplements the outer Green Belt by creating breathing space close to inner urban neighbourhoods

It is not just human demands, which need to be satisfied in the provision of open space. Networks of open space must also be considered in terms of wildlife requirements, with the aim of increasing the habitat range for other species. Clearly parks and gardens cannot answer all of these needs.

Less formal areas such as greens and commons, local nature reserves, small woods and coppices, and multi-use wildlife corridors all need to be considered. Landscape design plays a critical role in establishing a balance between the pressures to preserve nature and the ecology, and the needs and requirements of contemporary urban living.

Towards a public realm strategy

To create a public realm with positive amenity value requires a comprehensive approach to planning, urban design and management of the public realm, which gets over the current fragmentation of statutory roles and responsibilities. A Public Realm Strategy, which requires local authorities to plan comprehensively for all aspects of the public realm should either form part of the Local Plan or should have a clear relationship with it, possibly as Supplementary Planning Guidance. The strategy should specify a clear network and hierarchy of open space provision based on a combination of nationally agreed standards and guidance and a careful interpretation of local need.

Density and Intensification

To achieve a more sustainable level of urban development and meet the government's targets for housing on recycled urban land, we must change our attitudes and perceptions on density. In this section we illustrate how it is possible, through good design, to create liveable and attractive urban neighbourhoods designed on higher densities than currently allowed by planning legislation.

Urban densities vary enormously from city to city, from district to district, from one urban area to another. The most compact and vibrant European City, Barcelona, has an average density of about 400 dwellings per hectare. Dispersed suburban development or high-rise point blocks surrounded by open space can drop to between 5 and 10 dwellings per hectare. The density of some sought- after and lively inner city areas in English towns and cities, such as Bloomsbury and Islington in London, can rise as high as 100 - 200 dwellings per hectare, but is generally much lower, particularly outside London. Well-designed English towns, such as Brighton and Harrogate, contain examples of sought-after residential locations, which exceed the level of density allowed by planning regulations.

Increasing the intensity of activities and people within an area is central to the idea of creating more sustainable neighbourhoods. "Intensity" and "density" carry connotations of urban cramming too many buildings and cramped living conditions. Perhaps because of this, the norm for post-war house building in this country has often been translated as car dependent mono-cultures built down to standard densities of between 20 - 30 dwellings per hectare. The problem with parts of English towns and cities -- particularly the rebuilt areas of the 1960s and the car-based suburbs if the 1980s and 1990s -- is that the densities are too low.

Yet there are many spacious, uncluttered environments which use land and buildings very much more intensively, and to much better effect. What seems to be happening at the moment is that many of the measures which we are so wedded to as professionals -'residential density', 'overlooking distances' and 'car parking' -- are being used in an overly simplistic way to dictate design. The result is that insufficient attention is paid to how we can design quality urban environments -- and hence promote a better quality of life -- alongside a more intensive use of space and buildings.

Creating pyramids of intensity

Developers, local planning authorities and planning inspectors need clear guidance on the relationship between urban design, density and quality of life to achieve the government's targets for housing on brownfield land. Such guidance will need to be based on a range of values whose application would be directed by local circumstance. Imposing universal minimum standards is not the solution.

Location is a vital factor in creating a more flexible density policy. There are certain areas where the priority should be to increase the intensity with which space is used. Transport hubs and town centres both justify higher population densities and a more diverse mix of uses. There is, therefore, a strong case for promoting 'pyramids of intensification' in urban areas, subject to the provision of appropriate transport, social facilities and local amenities. Because of their location in our towns and cities, many brownfield sites are ideally suited to this form of intense and integrated development.

Mixing uses

One of the main attractions of city living is proximity to work, shops and basic social, educational and leisure uses. People enjoy living in areas where they can benefit from access to local services. Yet, they tend to complain if these very facilities disrupt their daily lives. Unacceptable levels of noise or smell of a local pub, caf6 or take-away may offset the benefits of proximity for a family with young children but may suit the growing category of younger, single urban dwellers. In all cases people tend make choices about where they want to live and what their priorities are on the basis of lifestyle, location and proximity of key services.

Whether we are talking about mixing uses in the same neighbourhood, a mix within a street or urban block, or the mixing of uses vertically within a building, good urban design should encourage more people to live near to those services which, they require on a regular basis. At the same time we need to look beyond the concept of uses, at the potential to mix tenures, age groups and household sizes in the creation of mixed income neighbourhoods.

Many activities can -- with careful design and good urban management -- live harmoniously side by side. Except for certain industries or activities that attract very high traffic volumes or create noise at unsociable hours, most businesses and services can co-exist with housing.

Successful urban neighbourhoods integrate a range of services near residential areas without creating single-use zones of shopping, business and housing. There is a greater concentration of public amenities -- shops, schools, community and business facilities -- around the streets and public spaces near the centre of the town or urban district. The mixed-use principle should extend beyond planning for the immediate locality: Because local services, drawing on a local catchment, are more likely to work if the plans also restrict the supply of sites for big-scale big-catchment services.

Naturally, some areas will never show the same potential for accommodating such diversity. It may remain very difficult (and ultimately undesirable) to introduce significant non-residential uses to whole swathes of suburbia. But even here, well-located local shops, community facilities and a more flexible approach to live-work units can be encouraged. Since a growing proportion of urban residents will work in the neighbourhood in which they live, their requirements for local facilities will also change and adapt. Having access to photocopying facilities or computer printer ink cartridges, for example, is as important to a predominantly live/work environment as the corner shop is to a typical residential community.

In both outer and inner urban areas, achieving more mixed and balanced communities, with convenient local services, will often require a readiness to restrict any further expansion of services that draw on a wider and predominantly car-borne catchment. Otherwise, there will be no market for the local services we want to mix within the neighbourhood or district.

A number of research studies are currently exploring the issues connected with mixing uses. This should provide a basis for new national guidance on the benefits, the practicalities (such as separate access for homes and businesses,) and the limitations of promoting mixed development.

Long-life, loose-fit, low energy buildings

To ensure sustainability in urban development, new housing must be designed to respond to the interlinked concepts of 'long-life, loose-fit and low energy'. This family of concepts ensures that buildings are designed to last, by considering buildings as long-term investments, employing durable materials and efficient systems; that they are designed to adapt to changing user demands and lifestyles by providing flexible and cost-effective layouts, finishes and materials; and, that they are designed to be resource efficient by reducing energy use through building massing and configuration, exploiting passive energy design and employing appropriate environmental techniques.

The Task Force's visits to recent residential developments in Spain, Germany and The Netherlands confirmed that in these countries the quality of thinking and the quality of implementation in housing design is significantly more advanced than in England. Houses, flats and apartments -- built by the private and public sector alike -- are designed too much higher architectural and spatial standards. This does not mean more expensive materials or a refined 'aesthetic', but a better understanding of the 'fit' between housing design and user requirements.

This sometimes translates into apartments with a lower level of specification or fit-out than we might expect in England but increased adaptability and reduced capital costs. Fixed elements such as kitchens, bathrooms, wall and flooring materials may be excluded or left 'raw', allowing occupants to make their own functional and aesthetic choices, investing their own money in the design of the domestic environment.

Much of the contemporary Dutch housing visited by the Task Force provided more generous space standards in the size of rooms, allowed greater flexibility of layout to respond to changing lifestyles, ensured better access to natural daylight with larger and well-insulated windows, and offered its inhabitants an improved relationship to the exterior through balconies, terraces and communal spaces. Average floorspace in new German homes can be as much as 50% greater than English equivalents with much lower construction costs.

The challenge of reducing construction costs and increasing quality in housing is central to achieving an urban renaissance. Proper research and development, together with the benefits of mass production, have brought innovation and value to the consumer in other industries, such as car manufacturing and the electronics industry. The English housing sector must respond to the new demands with similar investment in research, development and experimentation in order to respond to the changing needs of the market and achieve higher goals in terms of sustainability and value- for-money. We need to keep in kind that the use of a building changes much faster than the life of a building.

These practical lessons should be assimilated from overseas practice and gradually built into the design, construction and procurement of new housing in England, focusing on the following areas:

• Generosity of space: increasing floor-space areas and allowing for higher ceilings. The present planning system usually encourages the lowest level of floor-to-ceiling by fixing a height and then allowing the developer to optimise the area in between. The developer then seeks to cram in as many floors as possible. It would preferable to allow more generosity in terms of overall height and, instead insist on higher minimum floor to ceiling heights for individual floors.

• Quality of construction: focusing on getting the basic design and quality of construction right, and relaxing specification standards on interior finish and the provision of fitted kitchens, carpets, etc.

• Optimise off-site construction: gaining efficiencies by expanding the use of off-site construction of the basic housing shell, adding design variety through the facade and the external finishes.

• Flexible building: establishing a housing sales policy based on amount of floorspace rather than just the number of bedrooms, making more use of flexible partition walls so that internal space can be re-configured to meet the changing needs of a household -- such as an extra bedroom for a new arrival or extra space to use as work area.

Key principles of urban design

Our analysis of towns and cities confirms that they can offer a range of different types of urban living, to satisfy a very varied range of needs. They can and do allow people different "trade-offs": between, say, liveliness and calm; mix and uniformity; high and low density; private gardens or nearby parks. The people who can exercise such choice do so: they move to the "best" bits of town, they enjoy the possibilities that are offered. Our task is to widen that choice -- so that many more people can have the opportunity to live in lively, successful, enjoyable towns, built to the standards and qualities of the best.

Having considered examples of best practice and the different needs of various types of urban form, the ten principles below are our framework for making better and more liveable places. They cannot guarantee successful places: that also needs excellence in leadership, good schools, a strong local economy and a sense of social well-being. They cannot even guarantee good design: that relies on good architects, landscape and urban designers. But they can provide a set of ground-rules for starting to think about a site or area -- whether an empty brownfield or greenfield site or the refurbishment of an existing housing estate or urban area -- and they can work as criteria for assessing plans and proposals, and how they have been developed.

1. Site and setting. The layout of a development site must recognise its social, physical and metropolitan context, and integrate with existing patterns of urban form and movement. Design proposals should recognise that each location is different; that each place relates differently to the town centres, facilities and transport routes in its hinterland.

2. Context, scale and character. Designs should respect local traditions and relationships, and draw on them to inspire and guide new forms of development. Re-using existing buildings and consolidating existing public spaces will contribute to achieving continuity and integration.

3. Public realm. Priority must be given to the design of the public realm. From the front door to the street, to the square, the park and on out to the countryside, designs should create a hierarchy of public spaces that relate to buildings and their entrances, minimising the negative impact of the car.

4. Access and permeability. A user-friendly public realm should make walking and cycling easy, pleasant and convenient by keeping the size of urban blocks small, with frequent pedestrian cut- throughs to make a new development permeable and accessible to the existing neighbourhood. Car dependency should be minimised and integration with public transport maximised.

5. Optmising land. The design potential of vacant urban sites and buildings should be optimised by intensifying development and uses in relation to local shops, services and public transport. Any development, and particularly those designed around higher densities, should take account of privacy, sound insulation and safety.

6. Mixing activities. Diversity of activity and uses should be encouraged at different levels: within buildings, streets, urban blocks and neighbourhoods. Careful planning, design and siting can be used to resolve potential conflicts.

7. Mixing tenures. To avoid single housing tenure, of whatever kind, designs should offer a wide choice of tenure options at urban block, street, and neighbourhood level, in a way which does not distinguish tenure by grouping or type. New development should also be used to bring balance into existing mono-tenure areas.

8. Building to last. Buildings should be designed to be durable over many generations and through changing social and economic needs, providing adaptable and flexible environments that are not fixed in single-use, single-occupier roles.

9. Sustainable buildings. Buildings, landscape and public spaces should be designed and built to high standards, aesthetically and structurally, with durable materials, appropriate technology and orientation that minimise energy use and encourage recycling.

10. Environmental responsibility. Land should be regarded as a scarce finite resource. Development projects should enhance the environment, not just limit damage, by respecting biodiversity, harnessing natural resources and reducing the call on non-renewable resources.

Improving the Design Process: The Spatial Masterplan

A major commitment is required to implement a new framework for quality urban design, to ensure that these core principles are translated at a national and local level. This requires a careful appraisal of the planning and development process, identifying the tools that can be used to promote successful and sustainable urban environments.

The planning system handles design issues best when the design principles are made explicit and the planning process brings conflicting interests into the open to be resolved through a mixture of negotiation, consensus building, participation and democratic political decision making.

The spatial masterplan is a synthesis of the design-led approach to urban development. As such, it is a fundamental ingredient in achieving an urban renaissance in English towns and cities. Most successful urban projects analysed in this report -- Barcelona, Rotterdam and Greenwich, for example -- have been based on implementing a spatial masterplan, which has driven the development process and secured a high quality design product.

Unlike conventional two-dimensional zoning plans (which tend to simply define areas of use, density standards and access arrangements), the 'spatial' masterplan establishes a three-dimensional framework of buildings and public spaces. It is a more sophisticated visual 'model' that:

• allows us to understand what the public spaces between the buildings will be like before they are built;

• shows how the streets, squares and open spaces of a neighbourhood are to be connected;

• defines the heights, massing and bulk of the buildings (but not the architectural style or detailed design);

• controls the relationship between buildings and public spaces (to maximise street frontage and reduce large areas of blank walls, for example);

• determines the distribution of uses, and whether these uses should be accessible at street level;

• controls the network of movement patterns for people moving on foot, cycle, car or public transport;

• identifies the location of street furniture, lighting and landscaping; and,

• allows us to understand how well a new urban neighbourhood is integrated with the surrounding urban context and natural environment.

The spatial masterplan is therefore the overall framework that allows many of the key issues -- design, management, participation and employment -- to be tested against design, environmental, social and economic criteria. As such it requires the involvement of a range of different design professionals -- architects, landscape and urban designers, engineers, planners, project coordinators -- as well as the key stakeholders. It therefore plays an important part in building consensus and support for a project, by involving development agencies, landowners, local government, developers and the local community in its preparation. In summary, to be effective the masterplanning process must be:

• visionary and deliverable: it should raise aspirations for a site and provide a vehicle for consensus building and implementation;

• fully integrated into the land use planning system but allow new uses and market opportunities to exploit the full development potential of a site;

• a flexible process, providing the basis for negotiation and dispute resolution;

• a participative process, providing all the stakeholders with a means of expressing their needs and priorities; and, equally applicable to re-thinking the role, function and form of existing neighbourhoods as creating new neighbourhoods.

Promoting public involvement

Securing high quality urban environments has as much to do with the public level of awareness of urban design as it is about the skills of the professionals involved in the day-to-day management and implementation of schemes. Increasingly, the design and land use planning system will work on the basis of pre-project preparation, based upon mediation and negotiation. This will apply to the preparation of development briefs, masterplans and supplementary design guidance. We will therefore need additional institutional capacity to manage the interface between politician, professional and public.

The Task Force's visits to both Spain and the Netherlands highlighted the success of local architecture centres in this context. These provide venues for exhibitions, community planning events and day-to-day advice on development issues. The Dutch example includes a network of 30 centres, (one in each major town), fully supported by central Government. In Spain, there is an architectural gallery in every provincial capital sponsored by the professional design institutions. In Bordeaux and Paris, for example, there are several public architectural venues, funded by central ,and municipal government that play an important role on the cultural lives of their cities. By comparison, the existing network of such centres in England is patchy. It is made up of a scattering @of different local and regional bodies, all on a different footing and with varying priorities.

Local urban design or architecture centres will play an important role in achieving an urban renaissance in England. With a strong public agenda and independent status, architecture centres are the natural custodians of the debate on the future of the public realm and are uniquely placed to nurture a progressive, critical, cross-sector dialogue. They also play a crucial role in sustaining the active participatory processes needed to ensure urban regeneration schemes and projects are successful in the long term.

In summary

The form and layout of our towns and cities is more than a backdrop for urban life. The way in which we design buildings, neighbourhoods and districts directly impacts on how well we live in cities. While we are not recommending a single blueprint for good design, we can identify a clear set of design principles, which provide the basis for successful local development. These in turn impact upon the urban form by promoting more compact, mixed and integrated neighbourhoods. In some instances we will be able to plan and develop new settlements along these lines. Elsewhere, we will have to intervene in the existing urban structure to encourage a closer links between uses and users. This will require a re-appraisal of how we deal with issues such as urban density and the mixture of uses and users within development.

This paper demonstrates how an understanding of what constitutes good urban design and an improved process for procuring and delivering urban design, could work together to raise design standards in England. By developing a national urban design framework, the Government can provide the level of leadership and commitment, which will be needed to turn around over twenty years of erosion of urban design skills.

Professor Richard Burdett
Director, Cities Programme, London School of Economics
Member, UK Government Urban Task Force