The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. Why simple solutions may be best found on the far side of National Planning Framework 4 (NPF4)

In the past, one definition of an Architect was a ‘master builder’. Someone who had served their time. A journeyman – learning, through experience, from the ground up. It’s something common across all the various trades and crafts that emerged from the fundamentals of development for city and settlement.?To be able to specialize, there is a need to collaborate across all the trades involved in making and shaping the physical infrastructure of place.?

So what lessons for delivery now that NPF4 has achieved Scottish Parliamentary approval?

Historically, changes in our built environments were generally made incrementally, emerging in slow, small scale steps responding to local conditions and local needs. But there are risks with this.?Not least if there is no overarching plan of what fundamental ‘needs’ are being met and how those needs change with scale, density and location. Overcrowding, poor sanitation and the corresponding health issues are well understood, (if potentially overstated by those writing the stories).

Governance, in the form of Burgh status during the 12 century, was part of the solution. The gathering of local taxes to pay for the greater collective good, was a significant part of this change.?Interesting, considering the NPF4 debate yesterday in the Scottish Parliament and repeated questions of ‘resourcing’?

The rapid expansion of settlements and cities came with, and partly because of, developments in technology rapidly impacting rural and urban living.?Many more folks moved into our towns and cities to find work in trade, commerce and industrial manufacturing. The scale of these changes is significant and the speed of those changes ever faster, in relative terms.?

Speed became a creeping social value in parallel with the expanding concept of competition and industrial (and intellectual) exceptionalism.?For social, cultural and political contexts' matters, at least as much as physical context(s) when understanding Place and the inter-relationships with each other living in various interdependent places.

This is the big picture (or part of it anyway).?By its very nature, it requires a general understanding to allow coordination across multiple interests and via multiple specialist minds.?It takes time to listen, to understand and to research what the existing conditions are, 'what’s strong as well as what’s wrong'.

To learn those skills takes time, practice and experience – from the 'grass roots to the growing shoots' – and vice versa.?

Beware of ‘institutionalised disregard for experience’ Ed Straw, Demos.?

It matters if NPF4 is to be delivered…

Urban designers are generalists, skilled at taking the complex, at various scales, and working with others to help inform improvements.?Simple right?

The following is a map of the Scottish Planning system (Spatial, Transport & Community). The closer we get to the grass roots, the more the complexity increases (as well as the risks when making changes).?

Quote : p.30, The Dead Generalist, Ed Straw, Demos 2002.

“ In the 1970s large corporations went through a phase in which the responsibility for strategy fell to large, separate departments. This did not work. Strategies were produced without the detailed knowledge of operations. Operations staff had little or no input, and therefore commitment, to the strategies produced. In their implementation these strategies floundered or were found to be flawed. As a responsibility, strategy returned to, and was reintegrated within, the businesses themselves. The only worthwhile strategy is an implemented strategy.”

Any fool can make things more complex. But simplicity on the far side of complexity, may be the key to unlocking NPF4 and that inclusive, sustainable future - for us all.??

Note on the author: Jonathan Clarkson Bdes (Hons) PDip (Urban design) FRSA, member of the UDG, is an interdisciplinary designer, teacher and place-making practitioner with over 27 years of experience using design as a tool for, analysis, collaboration, solving problems and adding value.?Jonathan has publish a number of design articles and is a visiting lecturer and tutor at both Edinburgh School of Art and the Mackintosh school of art in Glasgow.