The more one learns, the more one realises there is to learn!

If there were a profession where lifelong learning couldn’t be more true, it’s Urban Design. Since every situation and opportunity is a bespoke one, a new place, a new context, a unique community, a different set of criteria and brief and always a recipe for improving one's approach, there is never the place or time to rest easy and roll out a ‘house style’ or imagine that there is little to learn …again.

The Axminster NE Urban Extension Masterplan, which I have been working on with Hyas, PBA and Porter Planning and Economics on for the last 9 months, gained approval at planning committee this week (https://tinyurl.com/yc7ntocm). The project has addressed challenges of how to integrate new development properly with an existing town. It has been successful in evolving the Local Plan vision for the Urban Extension into something more suitable to today’s economy and community needs and it has shown that early engagement and partnership of key parties can create a good basis for an ongoing process of development control and delivery. 

Rather than close the book and be satisfied with a job well done (this is for others to judge), I’m now left considering ‘what can be done differently next time’, ‘where does current practice need to adapt and innovate’, and ‘what is there to learn’?

Just one area for reflection is that of planning for (and designing in) flexibility. At Axminster, the masterplan process pushed hard for a broader mindset on employment provision integrated with other uses and public realm in response to a strong political will for jobs and houses – and a rich, mixed Local Centre but which does not threaten the town centre, was the result. How the community and economy evolve will also shape the way forward. Local Plans and the Development Control process currently only extend certain flexibility balanced against their regulatory role and yet it is a central tenet of Urban Design that we future proof places by considering multiple dimensions, including the passing of time. There is more work to be done here and more to learn about the real evolution of places and the necessary responsiveness of design and planning to this.

Contact me at my website https://dhud.co.uk