GREEN PLANNING
papers
presented in
david jarman
paul mcternan
nick brown
michael thornley
gordon cox
drew mackie
howard liddell
ian crawley
tim birley
introduced by roger kelly
with a contribution by colin ward
SCOTTISH ECOLOGICAL DESIGN ASSOCIATION The Planning
Exchange
GREEN PLANNING
papers presented in
contents
INTRODUCTION
SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT-THEORY TO PRACTICE
- a personal view from
david jarman
HOUSING IN THE COUNTRYSIDE
- putting Moray’s policies into place
paul mcternan
-Moray’s design
approach
nick brown
GREEN SCHEMES
-
Whinhill and
Kinlochleven
michael thornley
GREEN BUSINESS
-
gordon cox
ENERGY CONSERVATION AND PLANNING
drew mackie and howard liddell
AGENDA 21 AND LOCAL EMPOWERMENT
ian crawley
SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
- A positive agenda for
planners
tim birley
NOTES ON THE GREEN PLANNING SPEAKERS
GETTING
CLOSER TO LONG LIFE, LOOSE FIT AND
LOW ENERGY (SEDA AGM 1995)
colin ward
ENERGY CONSERVATION AND SUSTAINABILITY
IN A SCOTTISH CONTEXT
(Battleby Conference1994)
USEFUL
GREEN PLANNING papers presented in
On
So the proceedings begin
with David Jarman’s sharp reminder that meeting local needs locally
depends on more than the simple disposition of land uses. His personal view of Sustainable
development from theory to practice exposes the difficulties of transposing
city-centric and rural ideas of sustainability to in-between areas like
David Jarman
says that deflecting this inherited momentum of personal preference will take
more than the little we can do under existing powers to rearrange development
locations or transport infrastructure.
It is, he argues, more a matter of education in community benefits, and
going with the grain of awareness, acceptance and self-interest. And he suspects that society will only adapt
to threats to its existing lifestyle when it meets them nose-to-window. He elaborates on the distinction between
hard and soft sustainability. He
suggests some hard new powers for government to consider. Planning authorities, he reckons, will be
left to juggle with softer issues which are difficult to be definite
about. They may be able to justify decisions
in sustainability terms only on rare occasions where site-specific reasons can
be found.
Picking up the issues raised
in his paper, from lowland crofting to central
Five years ago, Moray District found itself up against
a threat to its local environment; massive numbers of applications for new
houses in the countryside, with no consistent policy basis on which to
determine them. The story of how this
was turned round is the subject of Paul McTernan and
Nick Brown‘s presentations on putting
green planning policy in place.
Paul McTernan’s paper gives us a
fascinating insight into the difference that clear planning and design policies
can make. Slow decisionmaking,
inconsistent decisions and a rash of unsympathetic housing development across
the district -these
were Moray’s lot in 1990. The Chief
Reporter wrote of “near Delphic policies
for rural development control which have given rise to an increased number of
appeals from aggrieved applicants... ...policies invite the suspicion that
rural applications are determined by prejudice, favour or caprice.” The planning response was to put in place a
new strategy strongly focused on the community’s stated aim of regeneration and
protection of the natural environment.
This would give development controllers a proper set of tools to work
with. As Paul McTernan
says: ”we felt we had to raise expectation levels,
embrace new advancements in building technology and ecological design and move
the entire debate into the realm of the 21st century”. The planning response made full use of local
expertise. Summers were spent in
village halls and community centres exploring what policy would work to
safeguard local welfare and environment.
Councillors, community councils and associations helped to identify
boundaries, development opportunities and amenity areas for the 73 rural
communities and gave local advice on practical points of ground conditions and
drainage. Consultation was also sought
with every agent and architect in the District. The strategy has been clearly explained and
illustrated, with applicants encouraged to recycle derelict sites and reuse
existing infrastructure. Paul McTernan’s paper describes results that speak for
themselves. More is now approved, and
more quickly, because the standard of applications has been transformed.
Moray’s approach emphasises
rural communities and the reuse of derelict sites and buildings. But new housing in the open countryside is
not prohibited, and Nick Brown’s
paper takes us inside the design philosophy which informs the policies and
illustrations of the Moray plan. “A
designer, like a cook, has to establish his ingredients and recipe.” Nick Brown wants us to focus on qualities, not on the minute detail of
solitary elements. He describes the
major issues for Moray and explores the inner meaning of vernacular
architecture. What he seeks is a mindshift, a radical change in housing design practice
where the priorities are regard, respect and integration, not “decorative bedroom
balcony with panoramic views”, or ”arched entranceway with optional bullnosed reconstituted stone panels.” When, he asks, will a main elevation again
openly greet the visitor, with a front door which says “do come in” as opposed
to “welcome to my double garage”?
One of the most notable
results of the Moray design initiative has been the effect on designs
submitted, and Paul McTernan and Nick Brown showed
plenty of examples of these. The next
paper presented in
Michael Thornley is an architect who
attended the 1994 Battleby conference on Energy conservation and sustainability issues in
a Scottish context organised by RIAS, EDAS and SEDA (see notes on page
71). His presentation on Green
Schemes: projects at Whinhill and Kinlochleven
concludes that green initiatives are unlikely to succeed without the full
participation of the users in the planning process, and that emotional and
spiritual issues should not be ignored in the drive towards the functional and
economic justifications for green planning.
Michael Thornley describes the thinking behind
his approach to these projects. Both
projects are at the initial, concept stages and may or may not be implemented.
At the start of the Green Planning afternoon session, the twin concepts of ecology and
economics are brought together by Gordon
Cox of Tweed Horizons in his
paper on Sustainable business.
As business manager of this centre for sustainable technology promoted
by Scottish Borders
Howard Liddell and Drew Mackie of Gaia
Planning present the next paper: Energy conservation and planning which
parallels their approach to a recent study commissioned by The Scottish
Office. Although individual planners
and local authorities may be aware of a responsibility to encourage energy
conservation, the speakers find no commonly accepted way forward. Their presentation covers some of the key
themes they identify as most important, and offers a matrix of planning levels
and topics where action through the planning system could be valuable. Liddell and Mackie describe promising
possible actions under a number of heads: the form of development (Landscape,
landform, layout and built form); transport, mixed use; optimising compactness
(without overlooking the inevitable complications); regeneration and reuse;
agency coordination; energy partnerships; local energy management; education
and auditing. They point out that much of the work on the
relation of urban form and energy use centres on transport issues, and warn
that planners will need to take a broader view if energy conservation is to
become a fully effective concept in day-to-day work. Planners will also need to find ways of
talking about sustainability that are accessible to the general public who must
start to own these ideas if they are to be effective - simple rules of thumb that allow local people
to judge projects “in terms of how they improve or damage local
sustainability.” Starting with
professional education, they argue, energy conservation must become a normal
part of planning not the special preserve of experts. And they see Local Agenda 21 as giving a new
framework that can be used as a base for actions and initiatives.
The next paper is from
Islington’s Ian Crawley, who had
addressed RTPI’s Training Conference on Are You
Delivering Quality? at the
Tim Birley, Director of the Centre for Human Ecology at the
University of Edinburgh, presents the final paper Sustainable development: a
positive agenda for planners. With
a long record of interest in sustainable development, both in academic work and
government service, Tim Birley is emphatically
positive without underestimating the difficulties. Like Gordon Cox, he argues that sustainable
development is mainstream and increasingly part of our day to day business. Like Patrick Geddes,
he wants us to keep our sights on the bigger picture, while taking all the
small, practical steps we can to make a difference. Sustainable development means widening the
scope of consideration in any decision.
It means thinking about a long timespan. This is what planning is all about,
too. Planning can’t claim
responsibility for all of the sustainable development agenda. But it is in a special position, says Tim Birley, because of its statutory basis within the
democratic process. And the kind of
policies which have been at the heart of our planning system in
Illustrations which informed
some of the presentations on the day cannot be printed here, but Colin Ward’s address to the SEDA AGM is
intended to more than compensate.
Thanks to the participation of the Planning
Exchange and the efficiency of their organiser for the event, Jacqueline Balloch, it was a pleasure for me to set up and chair this
Green Planning conference on behalf of SEDA.
With a bow to Patrick Geddes and Rocco Forte,
we can all thank participants and speakers for making the day so
worthwhile. Read the papers and see
what you think.
·
Roger Kelly is a
principal planner with The Scottish Office Development Department.
GREEN PLANNING papers presented in
david jarman
SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT - THEORY
TO PRACTICE
A personal view from
Scotland’s Central Belt
There are no original ideas
and sustainable development is a new label on an old bottle. In 1972 for example, the President of the
RIBA, Alex Gordon, launched a seminal campaign under the banner Long Life, Low Energy, Loose
Fit. This still encapsulates what
sustainable building and design should be about. As a green student in
Only slightly daunted by
this little object lesson, I have been trying to put green planning principles into practice in a typical non-city slice
of
Of course, there is a very
good justification for this state of affairs, and its name is economic
development. When a traditional mining
and manufacturing area is hit by deindustrialisation, the lame ducks have their
necks wrung, and unemployment touches second worst in lowland
Now the wheel has turned
again, the phrase “sustainable development” has reached us, our unemployment is
happily back down to the national average, and we have
less excuse not to take that longer view.
But what do we make of it?
First, a criticism deflector : I am consciously not going to try and define “sustainable development”, nor give its pedigree in planning history or
official guidance. Practising planners
are far too busy to research these things; they assimilate the concept from odd
journals and seminars, and get on with using it as another convenient piece of
jargon in their daily wars of words.
In fact and slightly to my
surprise, my colleagues do not make an awful lot of it. They are all aware of it, and feel it has
vaguely positive, unthreatening connotations, a good thing to be associated
with. But they do not see it as
directly relevant to the actual planning tasks they are engaged in. It is rather difficult to incorporate in 98%
of our development control
decisions, whether as a condition, a reason for refusal, or even a planning
gain. Or in
negotiations with Local Enterprise Companies over environmental improvement schemes. Or even in the legally-scrutinised text of
most policies in our local plans, in
any way that has real meaning and added value.
We are swimming along with sustainable development as if it were a warm
bath - very comforting, but doesn’t get you very far.
My own acquaintance with
sustainable development was at this slender feel-good level until a year ago,
when by chance John Thomson at Scottish Natural Heritage invited me to be “the district
planner” at a think-in on the subject.
This panicked me into a private brainstormer
to dredge up some thoughts to contribute : and very
much to my surprise they were all of the Emperor’s new clothes variety. In mulled-over form, here they are. As a deliberate provocation to debate and an
antidote to conventional wisdom, I stand by them :
please do not take this to mean that I am opposed to the underlying
aspirations. My argument is over the role of planners and the planning
system, with the means at our disposal.
Key
thought: Planning for sustainable
development is essentially a city-focused or city-centric concept; or it is a
concept for remote areas and isolated communities. It is much harder to apply to the in-between
areas, where the growth is nearly all happening. Discuss.
PLANNING SUSTAINABLE LOCATIONS FOR
EMPLOYMENT
Time was when business and
industry were intimately mixed with where people lived, because most people had
to walk to work. One of planning’s
great achievements was to unravel all this. Thus in West Lothian we have Livingston new town with large
industrial estates dispersed around its periphery as far removed from housing
as possible, and almost impossible to serve by public transport.
Our recent notable inward
investment successes have featured large high-tech factories on green field
sites close to motorway junctions and not served by regular bus services : Sun near Linlithgow, Digital near Queensferry, Motorola near Bathgate. Each has a vast employee car park. More such sites are being promoted. (Of course, Motorola has a sustainable
long-life building, and employs a lot of people to make a low-material-content
high-value-added reasonably-durable product which might reduce unnecessary
travel, but that is not a planning matter).
Beyond
Of course, many West Lothian
residents enjoy excellent access to Edinburgh city centre by train and bus and
were able to travel sustainably to work at the
Scottish Office - until it moved to Leith (with a vast employee car park and no
Metro).
What can we do? Altering this geographical inheritance of valuable
fixed investment is a practical impossibility so long as workforces are
predominantly organised in offices and factories. The stock of sites for future employment
development in
PLANNING
SUSTAINABLE SETTLEMENT
PATTERNS
People have an astonishingly
elastic propensity to travel - whether to work, or for other purposes. Travel is widely regarded as an acceptable,
even pleasurable activity - especially in your own car with your own comforts,
communications and sound system. It
might even be seen as a
“displacement activity” -
an apparently purposeful way of spending time which postpones actually doing
something more positive. People will
therefore quite happily contemplate travelling an hour or more to work, whether
they are covering 60 miles in that time or sitting in traffic jams for most of
it.
For so long as this attitude
to travel time prevails, and for so long as the right to travel is not rationed
or restrained, it will be quite futile to plan sustainable settlement patterns,
in the hope that balanced residential and employment development will reduce
the total volume of travel to work.
In
As well as in-car quad
stereo, socio-economic factors which militate against planned endeavours to
reduce car travel to work include:
·
The growth of two-career households, whose workplaces
may be 50 (or 500) miles apart.
·
The growth of early returns to work, requiring parents
to travel to a place of childcare or school as well as a place of work (often
impractical by public transport).
·
The greater frequency of job changes, thus negating
any initial decision to live close to work.
·
Even for those who stay with one employer, the growing
tendency to relocate periodically, to operate from multiple locations (hot-desking around them), to expect staff to do business on the
road, to
operate flexible hours.
·
The growing proportion of self-employed, small firms
and consultants who take their business to the customer rather than operate
from a fixed base.
·
The growing tendency to add other trip purposes onto
the return from work - the supermarket, the cinema, the sports centre.
To what extent do we as
planners, thinking of sustainable settlement patterns, still instinctively
envisage the traditional head of household travelling in by train at a set time
from his suburban home to the bank headquarters in the city where he will
always work, and the traditional female shop assistant travelling in on the bus
to the city centre store?
The reality in central
There appear to be two counter-arguments
to justify such planning endeavours.
One derives from the law of intervening opportunities - that given equal
qualities, people will choose the nearer destination - and thus that if things
are concentrated closer to each other, total travel will be less. I would like to see this transport modelling
approach verified by empirical research:
if we plan a new housing estate opposite a high-tech factory, you can predict
that next to none of the house purchasers will actually work there. People are not naturally loyal to their most
local supermarket, hence the need for Clubcards. Nor do they necessarily follow the nearest
football team. More seriously, this
theory may work in the case of the isolated city with surrounding small towns and
suburbs (although the surge of long-distance travel around Inverness belies
this), but not in a complex urban region such as Central Scotland where people
from Fife commute to West Lothian and West Lothian residents shop in Edinburgh,
Glasgow or Stirling at will. In other
words, the simple spatial model is negated by extreme elasticity of demand for
travel, by unpredictable outcomes of interacting locational
decisions, by inflexibility of residential location making it difficult to
adjust rapidly to changes in the location of journey attractors, and by sheer
cussed human behaviour : it seems that people actually
prefer not to live too close to their work - that has the wrong social status,
as if the grass has to be greener 20 miles away.
The other counter-argument
is the Doomsday one : even if you can swan about
freely now, you’ll be jolly glad we planned your homes near the shops and
offices when the petrol runs out or the climate goes off the scale. Leaving aside how mummy-knows-best arguments
might be defended on appeal, the reality is that society will adapt to such
threats only when confronted nose-on-windscreen with them, whether physically
or through the price mechanism. Obvious adaptations will include:
·
More remote housing losing value or being taken up by
telecommuters;
·
Intensification of occupancy of centrally-located
premises and sites;
·
Changing habits to reduce travel frequency and
distance, such as shopping by touch-screen or more locally, social networks
shrinking geographically, further growth of home entertainment.
A SUSTAINABLE LOTHIAN STRUCTURE
PLAN?
The 1994 Structure Plan has
to propose a settlement strategy to meet the possible demand for another 30,000 houses
in Lothian. All other issues are really
secondary and consequential : it tacitly acknowledges
that strategic decisions on transportation, economic development and other
infrastructure are made elsewhere and to a different timescale of politics and
quango contracts.
It does not pretend to be a fully integrated development strategy (since
this is impossible in a mixed economy) and cannot therefore seek to be fully
sustainable.
Its chief proposal is a
major incursion into the Green Belt, taking out the South-east Sector. The Secretary of State’s proposed
Modifications leave this proposal essentially intact. At first sight, this is the most sustainable
location for 5,000 houses, as close as possible to
It is interesting to
speculate whether deliberately locating 5,000 houses in a free-standing
settlement at a railhead some miles beyond the city would be just as
sustainable in overall travel terms, and would influct
much less “traffic cramming” on the suburbs within the Bypass.
The main effect of the
Secretary of State’s proposed Modifications has however been to make it much
harder to locate new housing close to railway stations. This is because the Plan made the tactical
error of naming the vocal, well-heeled communities of Currie and Longniddry as favoured candidates. He blows cold on major development being
rail-served as a prerequisite, and remarkably advocates express bus routes as
just as acceptable. Given that under
deregulation these can come and go at the operator’s whim, no-one is going to
invest in a house on the strength of an express bus being there in 5 years
time. (Or does this make their
provision as a Section 50 requirement acceptable and in perpetuity?).
New settlements are almost
off the Structure Plan agenda anyway because of the market downturn, but the
Modifications perhaps wisely blur the distinction between them and planned
expansions. There has to be a large
question mark placed over the willingness or ability of the private sector to
forward fund the primary school and other infrastructure for a village of
5,000, let alone the secondary school on top for the settlement of 10,000 which
current opinion has it is the minimum for sustainability in terms of some local
self-sufficiency. For so long as
scattered incremental growth can be eked out without any one developer having
to pick up the tab for crossing a big infrastructure threshold (a Trunk
Sewer?!), this will be the unplanned pattern of settlement - and no doubt as
sustainable as any other.
PLANNING FOR SUSTAINABLE
RETAIL & LEISURE DEVELOPMENT
Livingston’s Almondvale expansion will bring it to only 400,000 square
feet, anchored by BhS/Asda. All our residents
therefore have to travel 10-30 miles for their higher-order shopping, to
Edinburgh, Falkirk, or the Gyle (which with its
M&S is still not of course a recognised sub-regional centre, it just draws
trade from the west half of the Region).
On the face of it then to
approve a Factory Outlet Centre in
But hold on. Are we not daily urged by our LECs, Tourist Boards and politicians to promote leisure and
tourist developments in pleasant rural locations? Country Parks, Heritage Centres, Holiday
Villages, motor rally circuits, new out of town football stadia,
and of course those elusive private funded Theme Parks such as Legoland - we must have chased half a dozen such concepts
in West Lothian alone, and are still pursuing feasibility studies for a major
leisure project. Car-served almost
exclusively - even out of town shopping centres tend to spawn regular bus and
coach services.
Why is a family or a bunch
of friends in a car on a weekend shopping-for-pleasure trip wrong, but on a
weekend trip to
Stray thought: Some of the most sustainable people are the
unhealthy computer nerds and Internet freaks.
Some of the least sustainable are the mountaineers and ornithologists
who drive hundreds of miles at weekends to bag a Munro or twitch a rare bird,
after religiously cycling to work all week.
LOWLAND
CROFTING - SUSTAINABLE RURAL DEVELOPMENT?
No discourse on
It was heavily criticised by
colleagues in Strathclyde for being, among many other crimes, unsustainable -
an excuse for suburban lifestyles in the countryside. Leaving aside energy-efficient buildings,
woodlands, and reed beds to focus on travel, the interesting question is
whether the crofters make the same number and type of journeys as
town-dwellers, but travel more miles, or whether they spend the same number of
hours in their several cars and 4-wheeldrives, thus making less short
repetitive journeys to collect little Johnny or a forgotten item of
shopping. Research is needed.
Already half of them are
running some kind of business from their crofts - is this good, in reducing
peak hour journeys to city work, or bad in generating business traffic in
country lanes? There are no easy
answers in sustainable thinking.
PLANNING FOR TRANSPORT
Ten years ago we reopened
the railway to Bathgate. The
consultants predicted that it would draw 300,000 passengers a year, mainly from
the buses, some from cars. In fact it
carries three times that number, without reducing the frequency of the parallel
and still commercial bus routes, and without any detectable relief to carborne traffic and congestion. Much of the travel simply did not take place
before - whether new opportunities for work or education, or OAPs taking coffee
in Jenners.
Good for the community - but how sustainable?
Even more interestingly, not
one of the purchasers of a hundred adjacent Wimpey
houses in Bathgate had done so because of the railway, and few used it
regularly. Likewise, there has been no
clamour to build around the Livingston North Station. Yet the three stations’ car parks are having to be doubled and tripled in size.
Deterministic assumptions
about improving public transport facilities must be avoided. Quite often they may be
counter-sustainable. The Bathgate area
is now accepted as part of the
By contrast, we in
TRAVEL TO SCHOOL
In the unitary
One early example concerns
travel to school. There has been,
nationally, an extraordinary surge in the proportion of children ferried to
school by car. Ostensibly this is because
of concern over road safety (now there’s a vicious circle!): I suspect there are media-fuelled fears of
attack and abduction, and also (especially among new car owners) a wish to
flaunt it, and an inability to say no to little Morag
on a wet day.
Breaking into this means
education (of parents, teachers and children), which means awareness,
consciousness-raising, prioritisation, motivation, and peer-group acceptability
(street cred).
It means incentives (prizes for posters, awards to school funds). It
means putting personal benefits - health, social contact, learning to cope with
traffic - alongside the community losses - pollution and twin-peaks traffic
congestion. Last and least it means
physical facilities - cycle routes and lockers, safer pavements and crossings,
bus services; human
facilities such as “walking buses” are more important.
There are clear parallels
here for development planning. It is
not a question of where houses and schools are located (let alone of catchment area reviews to save crossing main roads!). It is
only marginally a question of transport infrastructure. It is certainly not achievable by ordering
people about. It is a matter of going
with the grain of awareness, acceptance, and self-interest (pecuniary and other
personal rewards).
Key thought: There is no such thing as sustainable
development. In the sense of new
buildings and works on new sites, it is a contradiction in terms. Therefore the only truly sustainable thing a
planner can do is to prevent development.
We have made a small start in Linlithgow, where the Reporter to the
Local Plan Inquiry accepted that the town had reached (arguably, exceeded) its
long-term limit of acceptable size.
Discuss.
HARD AND SOFT SUSTAINABILITY
or SUSTENTION AND MUDDLING ON
I
came across a really useful word recently which no-one else has heard of. Not being an academic, I don’t have the
source on a file card, but I think it came from Canadian forestry practice. The word is sustention. It has to be thought about a bit, like this:
Sustain -
sustainability (Can you keep it going
continuously?)
Retain - retention (You have held it
up, you have not lost it, you continue to have it). Thus:
Sustain -
sustention (You are keeping it going
continuously).
The point about sustention
is that it is a hard concept, it is definite and measurable :
if not necessarily a guaranteed outcome, it is at least a clear, operational
intent. By contrast, sustainable
development is a soft concept.
Sustention or “hard
sustainability” applies where there
is substantial control over the system, particularly its direct inputs and
outputs, within a natural and political environment which may introduce some
unpredictable variations. Thus if
landowners so choose, or if governments so regulate or incentivise,
farming, forestry, fisheries and wildlife habitats can be operated on
sustention principles, disrupted from time to time by flood, fire, or changes
in EU subsidies. Sustention forestry
simply means timber extraction without reducing the diversity, quality and
productivity of the forest.
Certain man-made systems can
also be closely regulated to achieve “hard sustainability”. The railway system has a maintainable
infrastructure, and for a measured input of affordable subsidy gives an output
measured in a national timetable, subject of course to natural and political
disruption from time to time. Water
supplies, telecommunications and (depending on time frame) power supplies are
likewise. In
Where, however, a system
operates primarily by free market forces, comprising a myriad of individual
decisions which cannot readily be regulated or even influenced, then sustention
cannot be practiced. This is the realm of “soft
sustainability” in which development
planning struggles to find its niche.
Society is not like a farming system, where the inputs of organic
fertiliser and outputs of wheat can be determined, and quotas can be set : the
inputs of house purchases and outputs of trips to work can be measured, but in
a human behavioural system we cannot hope to ordain either the fine detail or
the total outcome of who buys and works where.
In Robert Owen’s New Lanark, the place of residence, of shopping, of
education, and of leisure time of each worker was controlled, for the
sustention of a great manufactory for so long as the external environment
remained favourable. In
PLANNING’S ROLE : WHITE KNIGHT OR FALL GUY?
Progress from soft
sustainability aspirations towards hard sustention of our living environment
can only be made with public support.
At present, energy is far too cheap, and travel is too cheap, and
aggregates are too cheap. Arguably,
housing is also too cheap : the Sustainable Structure
Plan of the future would permit no negative-net-impact
But the government is under
pressure internationally to be seen to be sustainable, and there is also a
groundswell of public concern over the environment so long as it doesn’t effect
what I do. The government needs some
apparently bold initiative which is politically harmless - a cosmetic, a
placebo.
At last year’s PTRC European
Transport Forum, the chief author of the English PPG13 told delegates “we can’t rely on techno-fixes or
pricing, but we can now take decisions about where we put things”. My fear is that the planning system is that
convenient cosmetic or placebo. And
that when our plans don’t yield reductions in travel, we will be blamed just as
we were for tower blocks and motorway spaghettis.
In touching at last on what
we think of as the sustainability guidance note, it is worth remembering that PPG13 is simply entitled “Transport” (for which there is still no Scottish
equivalent). In this paper I have dealt
almost exclusively with the location of development as it affects total travel. The Local
Agenda 21 approach is a quite different matter, exploring the corporate
ability of the Council to tackle sustainability - again with planning having a
rather marginal contribution to make.
If the government were to get serious about the role of planning, it
would arm us with (inter alia):
·
Powers to require zero-energy building design.
·
Powers to regulate sustainable sourcing of
construction materials.
·
Policies to integrate new commercial and business
developments into streets with limited, shared parking and multiple uses.
(Instead of the present pavilion blocks and retail sheds in seas of tarmac).
·
Powers to regulate all forms of public transport.
·
Powers to offer incentives to non-car travel, and to employers to recruit locally.
·
Requirements to prepare local energy self-sufficiency
plans, on the Danish model.
PPG13 now has an accompanying glossy Guide
to Better Practice subtitled “reducing the need to travel through
land use and transport planning”.
Those words - reducing the need - are worryingly prescriptive. Skimming through it on the odd train or two confirms
my expectations - it is heavily city-centric, with a gesture towards rural
areas, and leaps from vague rhetoric to examples of the most minor impact. Only one case is given which is relevant to
high-growth hinterlands such as
PUTTING IT TO THE TEST
The real test of whether
sustainability can hold up as a valid aim of planning comes of course on
appeal. The legalistic approach is to
push aside the broader policy aim and to demonstrate that the site in question
cannot be proven to have the adverse consequences on travel or other aspects of unsustainability
claimed by the policy. In consequence,
the planning reaction is also to push aside the inherently unquantifiable and
uncontrollable policy argument, and to rely on hard and site-specific reasons
for refusal, such as infrastructure and landscape quality.
We believe Linlithgow is the first town in
Scotland to be defined as reaching its
“limits to growth” - yet this now
prevents us from promoting local employment sites to try and reduce its heavy
out-commuting. If we zone a site in a
good, motorway-accessible location for employment, we run the risk of losing it
on appeal to yet more housing - because there is no proven demand for business
space (no existing supply!) and no evidence that new local businesses would
employ mainly local people - Sun Micro certainly doesn’t.
If developers go along with
sustainable development policies, it will either be because they are releasing
land in locations where the market wants to go (South-East Edinburgh), or
because the requirements of the policy (commuted payments in lieu of parking
space - or cycle racks in front of the retail warehouses), are financially
tolerable.
It will be easier to secure
apparently tough sustainable policies and decisions in sectors such as
retailing - where John Gummer has made town centre protection fashionable again
- and mineral extraction - where landscape and NIMBY pressures rather than
principled sustainability will push towards recycling and foreign sources of
supply.
I look forward to seeing a
hard line taken and sustained through appeal on a contentious residential or
business park development, where there are no traditional contra-indications
and no easily-developed acceptable alternative sites.
DECLINING SUSTAINABILITY:
In January 1956, passenger
services were withdrawn from the railway between Edinburgh and Glasgow through
Bathgate. This was way before Beeching (in 1963) and also way before the M8 started. It signified the self-contained nature of
the
The settlement pattern of
This sustainable pattern of
home-work relationships and local service economy began to disintegrate in 1960
when the
In January 1996,
The settlement pattern today
is recognisably that of 1956, fattened up, plus
In our Local Plans (for I
must make one mention of them) we have been campaigning vigorously for the M8
Corridor of central
But in reality, if current
trends continue, I find it difficult to see that locating yet another 10,000
houses in central
Only in the last few months
we have begun to see chronic congestion creeping into the road network around
“Contributors from around the world debated
the prospects for sustainability in the future. Their conclusions reminded one of the Scots
legal verdict, Not Proven”
(PTRC conference report).
A QUESTION OF SCALE -
My own experience of
It is tempting to take
refuge behind SNH’s concept of “the precautionary principle” - if in
doubt as to whether development is sustainable, refuse it! This is perhaps easier to apply and to get
away with in relation to the sustention of natural and semi-natural systems
than to the soft sustainability of urban systems. (I commend SNH’s attempt to define the S-word in their mud-brown paper
Sustainable Development and the Natural Heritage).
It is also tempting to
conclude wearily that more research is needed (for appeal-proof evidence) and
more education (of ourselves, our politicians, our
public).
As a congenital optimist and
believer in public service planning, it grieves me to have penned such an
unremittingly negative paper. How much
easier to praise the virtues of public art or geomorphological
authenticity! I turn for final positive
inspiration to the Geddesian injunction that we must
plan at the right scale. I
believe that:
·
Efforts to achieve sustainable development primarily
through land-use and transport planning at Local and Structure Plan levels are
futile, being of marginal impact and unpredictable in their consequences.
·
The settlement pattern of developed Scotland is
largely fixed and is capable of adapting to more sustainable modes of operation
by technological, economic and social evolution in response to governmental,
free-market and community pressures.
·
The relevant minimum scale on which to plan for
human-system sustainability is
·
The relevant minimum scale on which to plan for
natural-system sustainability (including energy and minerals) is the whole of
·
The appropriate bodies to pursue sustainable planning
and policy are therefore those at Scottish level and higher.
Local Planning Authorities
owe their prime responsibility to their own local communities,
unless and until central government instructs that there is an over-riding
national priority. As a local
government planner, I should therefore not be surprised if I progress from
promoting economic development and growth at all costs to raising the hurdles
higher and higher in front of developers, in response to a maturing and more
prosperous community.
The most successful regions
in the
Late extra: Scottish Office sources say that our
version of PPG13 on Transport is due out for consultation by mid-1996. A spokesman opined that “land use planning
can help to reduce the need for travel in an incremental way at the margins
over a long timescale”.
·
David Jarman is Head of Strategic Planning and Transportation,
West Lothian Council.
GREEN PLANNING papers presented in
paul mcternan
HOUSING IN THE COUNTRYSIDE
Getting Moray’s policy
into place
Perhaps the most appropriate
context in which this conference can consider the
green credentials of Moray’s approach to the subject of housing in the
countryside, is the recently published Scottish Office White Paper on the Rural
Environment. Articles in recent
planning journals have raised the age old question of the compatibility of a
strategy for the sustainable development of the rural economy with increasing
public demands for greater protection of the rural environment.
In Moray we did not set out
on a green agenda. Rather, the
challenge we addressed was heavily directed by a social and cultural agenda
demanding a response to the structural decline in rural services and population
levels we had witnessed in Moray for decades, the need to promote regeneration
and the compelling desire to improve standards of practice in the design and
procurement process through which this regeneration could be achieved. Having been invited to address this
conference therefore, on the back of winning a commendation from the Saltire/Sir Patrick Geddes Award
in 1994, and winning outright the APRS Award for 1995, we would hope to argue
the case that there is no discernible difference between a green agenda and the
social and culture agenda under which we embarked in Moray. The issue is one of managing human
interaction. The skill is one of
finding balance.
Housing in the Scottish
countryside is an enormous issue spanning subjects as varied as social housing
policy, living standards and conditions, access to employment, access to
services and facilities, transport and immobility, cultural traditions and
regional identity, affordability, architecture, environmental protection and
landscape impact.
I suppose that what we, who
practice the art of country planning are seeking, is a pragmatic and positive
approach to the paradoxes that have perplexed planners for a generation; how to
balance job creation with protection of the rural environment; how to meet
local housing needs whilst recognising that new technology and increased person
mobility mean that commuters want to live in the countryside too; and how to
reconcile the desires of those who see the countryside as a place to be wrapped
in aspic and rural dwellers who depend on it for their livelihood.
In their recent guidance to
the new Councils on rural strategies, COSLA made the important recognition that
rural sustainability should not be seen to reinforce the “no development” ethic
in the countryside. It must be
recognised that sustainability is about safeguarding the future of communities
and not simply an environmental issue.
It cannot for example be interpreted as narrowly as to relate only to
the need to reduce the use of motor vehicles.
The fact is that school children require transport, health care has to
be provided and bins must be collected.
These services are not necessarily going to be made efficient or more
secure by less people using them. By
their very nature services must be provided to serve a geographically dispersed
population. This is the price of a
living countryside. The alternative is
to condone de-population, a minimised service provision and the lack of support
for the future of our more remote rural areas.
The preparation of Moray’s
policy document took almost 4 years. It
was in draft form before the Scottish Office issued Planning Advice Note 36 (Siting and Design of New Housing in the Countryside), and
preceded the publication of the excellent “Tomorrow’s Architectural Heritage”,
supported by the Countryside Commission for
The challenge was to produce
a Planning policy for housing in the countryside which reflected the peoples
express wish to permit regeneration and new house building, yet gave a lead in
establishing new standards of environmental sensitivity rarely seen outwith Britain’s national parks. To do so required a fundamental
re-assessment of the Planning approach which departed from the usual
restrictive practice of “a presumption against” to a positive acceptance of
change, within the context of a strategy to sustain and revive a vibrant rural
culture at ease with itself and its natural environment.
Work commenced on a review
of policy in 1989. The late 1980’s
witnessed a significant increase in pressure for house sites throughout rural
Moray causing the numbers of planning applications submitted to rise by over
200% between 1987 and 1989. With
hindsight this increase can now be attributed to 3 primary factors: Firstly the
de-regulation of agriculture, which reduced levels of protection afforded to
agricultural land for its productive capacity, and introduced the concept of
diversification, encouraging farmers to become multi-disciplined businessmen
seeking to supplement farm incomes from a variety of sources. Many farmers believed that housing was the
new cash crop and sought to develop as many “awkward corners” of their existing
landholdings as
possible.
Secondly, the market for
rural house sites was being fuelled by the arrival of new households from outwith the district borne of the southern property boom,
seeking “the good life” opportunity in Scottish Highlands. Commuting trends locally were also on the
increase. In a survey of new house
buyers in 1992, we discovered that only 5% came from rural Moray. The majority of households were affluent (2
cars, 4 bedrooms) and this was to be their first experience of rural living.
Thirdly pressure was brought
to bear by the activity of a number of local housebuilders
and developers, who spotted an opportunity to profit from this market and
actively set about acquiring rural farms, selling off the buildings, planting
subsidy crops on what productive land was left (one such farm was the first to
attempt to grow commercial cannabis in Scotland), and trying to get as many
housing consents on the remainder as possible.
These were subsequently marketed these in publications such as Country
Life, The Daily Telegraph and even in Spanish Estate
Agencies on the
The Planning problem was
assessed as a combination of 4 main components.
1. There was a complete absence of a clear
Planning strategy. We had little
knowledge of what changes were actually occurring in the countryside, how
communities were affected and what effect this level of development activity
could have on existing economic social and environmental structures.
2. The Development Control
policies which were in place were poorly communicated and reactive in
nature. These policies were not aiding
consistency, failed to provide definition and were constantly causing problems
at appeal.
3. There was the restricted
ability of local agents. In Moray we
estimate that 90% of all applications submitted are by agents who are not
qualified architects. Hence the skills
base is low and perhaps this helps explain why the majority of houses built are
procured from limited range of kit house brochures. There was little general awareness of the
sensitivity of building in the rural area and a notable lack of awareness of
developments and practices in ecological design.
4. The inherent vagaries of
the political system. The elected
members were unclear as to what kind of countryside they wanted to create. A minority amongst them favoured a totally
laissez-faire approach and were successful in breaching policy on many
occasions. Matters reached a peak at
one particular Planning Committee in 1990 when the Planning Committee approved
14 consecutive applications for individual houses contrary to the Directors’
recommendation. Such inconsistency was
rife and thereafter, until the new policy was put in place, the Director of
Planning issued a memo to all Planning Staff advising that they were no longer
in a position to offer the public advice on what the Council’s policy was and
that enquiries from the general public should be directed to the individual
elected members. The situation was
probably best summed up by the Scottish Office Chief Reporter Sandy Bell who
commented on one of the many planning appeals lodged over this period
“Moray District Council has
been muddling along on near Delphic policies for rural Development Control
which have given rise to an increased number of appeals from aggrieved
applicants.......The present policies invite the suspicion that rural
applications are determined by prejudice, favour or caprice. The framework for objective decision taking
is lacking.”
The Planning impact was
therefore assessed as:
·
An absence of control; proliferation of house building
activity unrelated to social, economic or environmentally sustainable
principles.
·
Housing by Mail Order : The
widespread procurement of standardised suburbia eroding local distinctiveness
and Regional identity.
·
Cumulative environmental impact: combined threat to
landscapes, the natural environment and local bio-diversity.
The Planning response was
first to establish and put in place a strategy strongly focused on the
community’s stated aim of regeneration and protection of the natural
environment. As a key element, the
strategy would have to embrace change, not reject it. A new set of statutory policies was required
which would give Development Controllers a proper set of tools with which to
work, providing definition and clarity and being devoid of ambiguity.
Good communication was
essential to change attitudes, hence the requirement for the production of
comprehensive guidance to educate, inspire and inform. If we were to initiate a fundamental change
in direction, it was vital that we brought the community with us through every
step. To raise awareness requires
education, to pioneer advancement requires inspiration and to do both
effectively requires quality information.
We felt we had to raise expectation levels, embrace new advancements in
building technology and ecological design and move the entire debate into the
realm of the 21st century.
The method to deliver this
change was quite clearly through the review of the development plan. We decided that the one way we could raise
awareness of this change of direction was in the production of a separate and
fully inclusive document on the subject of housing in the countryside. All policy information and guidance would be
contained under one cover which could be detached from the main body of the Local
Plan and distributed independently. As
a communication medium the document had to be top quality with full graphic
expression. Black and white photocopies
with simplistic sketches and “do’s or don’ts” graphics would not be good
enough. We invested £20,000 in the
production of a document over 100 pages long, in full colour and heavily
illustrated. We printed 500 copies in
March 1993 to find that 2 years later we were completely sold out, (at £10 per
copy). It has proved excellent value
for money.
The consultation exercise on
the Plan was vital to its success and subsequent passage through District
Council Committees. After the first
draft was published, the Summers of 1991 and 1992 were
spent in village halls and community centres throughout rural Moray, exploring
with Associations and Community groups what policy would work and safeguard
their welfare and environment.
Councillors, Community Councils and Associations helped in the
identification of boundaries for the 73 rural communities. They participated in the identification of
gap sites, renovation/restoration opportunities and amenity areas and provided
local advice on practical matters such as ground conditions and drainage. Consultation was then sought with every agent
and architect in the District in order to understand the communication
interface between applicants and developers and the practical difficulties they
experience in the design and procurement process. Wider views were sought with professional
bodies representing planners, architects, surveyors, environmentalists and
ecologists. The help of universities
was enlisted;
The strategy which evolved
centred around 3 distinctly separate forms of development or “Options” as we
refer to them in the document:
·
Option 1: Rural Communities
·
Option 2: Re-use of derelict sites
·
Option 3: New-build in the open countryside
Option 1 was a settlement
based strategy using the well established methodology of the settlement
envelope identifying boundaries, opportunities for infill and redevelopment,
and allowing for the protection of spaces and features of environmental
amenity. The second option centres on
the spirit of renewal and the considerable opportunities that exist to restore
and renovate in preference to new build.
Moray, like many parts of remoter
THE STRATEGY
The “options” relate
directly to the main choices open to prospective applicants. Although clearly inter-related, they have
been identified as mutually exclusive in terms of the Planning policy and
guidance. I will deal here with the
first two options, Nick will deal exclusively with the
third:
Option 1 - To target existing communities as a
preferred location for new housing in order to maximise social benefits and
help sustain essential services (schools, halls, shops, bus services etc.).
Moray’s distinctive rural
personality was found in its small villages and rural communities. They exhibit the imprint of history, record past fortunes and express the modest
character of Moravian identity. Like
many rural communities in remote areas of
In its first 5 year
lifespan, this option of the strategy will enable people to take advantage over
350 housing sites identified in 73 rural communities throughout the rural
area. The objectives set are quite
clearly to encourage people wishing to build in the countryside to locate
within existing communities, and to meet the demand for housing sites within
the rural area in a more efficient, community orientated and planned way.
In terms of the impact on
the local environment, development will precede on the basis of the most
sophisticated analysis of character and location for such small communities
contained in any development plan. Gap
sites, new-build and redevelopment opportunities have been pinpointed with
specific reference to the distinctiveness of the locale. The character
descriptions, which identify dominant architectural styles and specify the
protection of local amenity, (burns, watercourses, trees, hedgerows etc.),
combine to give direction on how to introduce new development sensitively.
Option 2: Re-use of derelict sites and buildings -To seek the
restoration and re-development of the built heritage of the rural area by
encouraging the re-use of sites and buildings thereby sustaining the historic
settlement pattern and utilising existing infrastructure.
The technological advances
on employment changes during this century have left their toll on the
countryside and many 18th, 19th and 20th century structures lie vacant. Empty cottages, farmhouses, steadings, mills, churches and schools feature in the
landscape as monuments to a previous epoch.
The prime emphasis on this
aspect of the strategy, lies with renewal. Applicants are encouraged to re-cycle
derelict sites, re-using existing infrastructure such as roads, water supplies
and drainage facilities. It encourages
the uptake of existing capacity in the settlement pattern and avails of
established sites with ready provided access and very often, shelter. The Local Plan document provides guidance on
all aspects of the re-development process, the re-use of materials and specific
advice is provided on best practice in respect of the conversion of mills,
churches, schools and farm steadings.
IMPLEMENTATION
Implementation of the policy
was measured in a survey of applications spanning an 18 month period between
January 1994 and July 1995. Over this
period a total of 240 applications had been received, from which 176 decisions
had been taken. The Council approved
132 applications (75% were refused 44 (25%).
ANALYSIS OF APPROVALS
Option 1: Rural Communities |
51 (38.5%) |
|
Option 2: Re-use of buildings and
sites |
46 (35%) |
|
Option 3: New building in the open
countryside |
35 (26.5%) |
The analysis of approvals
suggests that the strategy has been successful in meeting the central objective
of directing development away from the open green field sites to regenerative
opportunities primarily in the rural communities. At 38% of approvals, Option One applications form the majority quoted under the policy,
suggesting that the practice of actually identifying building opportunities on
plans contained within the policy document has been particularly
successful. Furthermore the planning
methodology of identifying and retaining the built character of these areas,
through the identification of character features and architectural styles, has
proved particularly effective - (100% of detailed applications have been
approved under this option).
Option 2 applications
(re-use of derelict sites and buildings) have accounted for 35% of approvals
(46 houses) indicating a relative success in directing demand towards
restoration and redevelopment opportunities.
In quality and quantity these applications have been impressive and
indicate a spirit of revitalisation and renewal of both settlement pattern and
built heritage, previously absent in the year’s preceding the policy. Changes in VAT regulations for the renovations
and conversion work have assisted the economic advantages of this option, but
the quality of a number of developments recently completed vindicates the
emphasis devoted to this strand of the strategy.
Option 3 proposals (the new
house in the open countryside), accounted for only 25.5% of approvals over the
survey period. As this option would have
accounted for the predominant number of approvals prior to the policy, (perhaps
as much as 75%) it represents a notable success that the plan led strategy to
highlight opportunities elsewhere in the countryside and to raise the awareness
and sensitivity of careful siting and design has been
effective.
The improvement in overall
quality of applications is most notable under Option 3. Due to the detailed advice offered within the
policy document, a period of consistent decision taking by the Planning
Committee, (only 3 applications overturned in the last 10 Committees), and the
adoption of greater sensitivity on the part of agents and applicants in the
selection of house site and design, the overall quality of applications has
much improved. It is therefore not
surprising that the rate of approval has seen a steady increase as predicted.
APPROVAL RATE
|
1992 |
1993 |
1994 |
1995 |
|
51% |
66% |
75% |
79% |
KEY FINDINGS
·
The plan-led strategy is working. The policy has put in place a strategy for
rural development hither to absent from previous Local Plans, placing existing
communities at the heart of re-generative strategy aimed at sustaining fragile
rural services and facilities and safeguarding the natural environment.
·
Pressure has been directed away from open countryside
sites to existing communities and redevelopment sites. Siting and design
controls coupled with better guidance for applicants and agents, has reduced
the number of poorly sited and designed new dwellings. Thanks to the success of Options 1 and 2,
attracting potential applicants to choose sites in rural communities and
derelict sites, an estimated 73% of new
development has taken place on the existing settlement pattern, i.e. 73% of
proposals have utilised sites and infrastructure are already established in the
countryside.
·
86% of refusals under the policy one for new build
(Option 3) indicating the dominant consideration afforded to landscape in the
natural environment.
In terms of the Development
Control policies I would highlight a number of minor points:
·
There are no exceptions for need. Should a case for personal circumstances
arise the Members are encouraged to use the departure process to allow
consideration.
·
On re-use of derelict sites the Council operates a
defined level of evidence, i.e. old maps, and old photographs will not be
acceptable as justifications for replacement proposals. The building on the ground must be
substantially in-situ.
·
All new sites must have established boundaries (not
artificially created).
·
Detailed applications only will be entertained for proposals in Areas of Great Landscape
Value and for applications for groups of houses. This minimises speculation and encourages the
comprehensive treatment of sites.
·
Finally in terms of ground water pollution and the
accumulation of septic tank drainage, all proposals must undertake a soil
porosity test to establish the suitability of ground conditions at outline
stage.
Finally,
in these days of performance targets, a word about efficiency and decision
times. As I have already pointed out, one of the
enduring benefits of such a detailed and applied approach to rural housebuilding is the increase in quality of application
submitted. Quality in terms of site
selection, landscape treatment, orientation and of course design and material
finishes.
Communication between
officers, agents and applicants has benefited greatly from this. Those long protracted negotiations which
were so much part of the decision process in the past (and arguably achieved so
little) are no longer so commonplace today.
Pre-application advice is easier to give and is much more consistent. As a result decisions and recommendations
are more straightforward and applications are being dealt with more quickly
(i.e. within the 8 week target).
Approval rates have increased (a stated aim at the outset) and Member
support has consequently been sustained.
The success of this policy
in winning a commendation from the Saltire
Society/Patrick Geddes Award for 1994, and winning
outright the APRS Annual Award for 1995, is a measure of how Scottish
professional planning opinion has judged Moray’s approach. Success in these awards has come as a result
of the policy’s ability to be both ‘green’ and ‘sustainable’, demonstrating
that change in the countryside can be managed in a manner that promotes both
opportunity and restraint.
·
Paul McTernan is a Senior Planning Assistant with Moray District
Council
GREEN PLANNING papers presented in
nick
brown
HOUSING IN THE COUNTRYSIDE
Moray’s design
approach
Let us say that a building
occupies land, that can obviously feed people, support wildlife, or simply
provide visual pleasure,
and let us say that this
building gives nothing back - tarmacs the ground, replaces hedgerows with solid
walls or fences, plants no trees and shows no signs of self-sufficiency in the
way of vegetable plots, wind generators, rainwater butts, reed bed waste
systems and so on,
and moreover, say this
building occupies a prominent position without social justification,
deliberately contrasts with the context of its siting,
and worse still defies and injures nature by cutting parts down and remoulding
its surface,
and finally let us say that
this building also overshadows its neighbours, fails to offer any sculptural or
poetic expression and generally makes no attempt at integration, then this
building will at the least cause the viewer some displeasure.
A building displeases
because someone sees and feels that it benefits the owner at their or somebody
else's expense. Disregard, disrespect,
thoughtlessness, ignorance, unfriendliness, call it what you may, are all
behavioural symptoms which cause discomfort when vented publicly. These feelings are exacerbated when the
behaviour is displayed by a member from outwith the
tribe. As in the case of rural Moray I
don’t necessarily mean Roger and Mandy from Chipping Sodbury,
more likely I mean Gail and Kevin from a nearby town who have made good and
want to move only a matter of a few miles out into the country.
It is therefore necessary
for us as planners to recognise the causes of displeasure eg.
the spoiling of a view or landscape, the wilful destruction of natural habitat,
incompatibility of context, flagrant disrespect for neighbours and so on and to
root them out of the design process.
This rooting out however is a negative approach and human beings possess an inherent defensive reaction when told not
to do something.
A more positive approach is
to expound the causes of pleasure in building with all its physical,
psychological and economic benefits.
But before embarking on measures to achieve this aim we,
as a planning authority, need to establish and understand several points:
·
1.
Design is a thought process, not a product. The art of design is the art of problem
solving. PAN 36, The Scottish Office’s
design advice document for Housing in the Countryside, talks at length about
chimneys, dormers, windows, eaves, verges, porches. This is not design advice, this is
stylising. It's like suggesting to the
Greeks that they build with a bit of Corinthian column simply because its a traditional image we approve of.
·
2. We must understand the dangers of seeing
design merely as a product that pleases.
In avoiding what is offensive, do we not instinctively resort to the aedetic images we know are pleasurable, that is those
ingrained in our psyche from childhood. All of us will probably recall the
symmetrical elevation of the
·
3.
A designer, like a cook, has to establish his ingredients and recipe,
that is, in designer terms, to form his brief.
Good design is very much a manifestation of an assiduously compiled
brief coupled with an appropriate response.
Some ingredients eg. climate,
geography, environment will remain static and it is these which provide the
genius loci. Other ingredients such as
technology, affordability, building skills, client's taste are much more
dynamic and it is these which provide the sense of time. Good contemporary design is a happy blend of
these so joint effort by planners and architects to
raise public awareness about this would be a welcome start in order to create a
more thinking culture and a client base committed to long-term values and a
healthier environment.
·
4. Moray is an
incredibly diverse district. In areas
it is spectacularly beautiful, in others it is predominantly agricultural,
underdeveloped, coastal, undulating, exposed, wooded. A district which is diverse must surely
require diverse responses, probably very different from the responses in other
districts.
·
5. Buildings in the
open countryside should have different design responses from those in cities or
suburbias.
Isolated buildings in the countryside are manmade statements of human
settlement living in a natural environment whereas buildings in clusters, or
villages or towns, are manmade statements in manmade environments. The contexts are very different. The symbiosis of a manmade structure with
the natural environment is unfortunately much harder to achieve than with a
manmade environment and this is why catalogue housing developed for suburbia is
so often incongruous in rural situations.
·
6. There is a dichotomy
of on the one hand satisfying the requirements of the indigenous people,
renowned for their plain living and high thinking and on the other hand dealing
with the requirements and desires of a new breed of immigrants escaping from
the hustle and bustle of city life in search of a rural idyll, ignorant perhaps
to the fact that they could be party to its irrevocable demise by living a city
style life in a rural setting.
The significance of the six
points just mentioned is that they form the framework for understanding the
subject matter. They reveal that in
order to preach assuredly about pleasurable appropriate buildings, we should
know our locality intimately so that our assessment is historically, visually,
ecologically and socially analysed within our planning capacity as only minor
players in the overall construction process.
The writer Brunskill describes architectural character as being “easy
to see, difficult to explain, hard to recreate and even harder to extend”. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder is it
not? As Dutch architect Aldo Van Eyck said at a recent conference “good and bad buildings
are like the difference between pornography and erotica”.
Our decision is therefore to
analyse the design of new houses not so much in terms of the style and taste,
preferring to focus on what we consider to be the major issues for Moray and
not to get bogged down in the minute detail of solitary elements. In an attempt to elucidate these issues we
have identified six key headings.
The first is location. Due to advances in
construction techniques and technology eg. JCB’s, timber framing, double glazing, electricity, etc.
houses can be erected faster than ever before and in locations where previous
buildings feared to venture eg. hilltops. The pattern of settlement of mass housing is
today therefore not seriously restrained in the way it used to be but
unrestrained development can have a costly effect on, amongst other things,
ecology, productive land, the character of the
landscape, services dispersal and road safety.
Designers and applicants are
therefore now requested by our policy to select a site (which if it is not
recycling a former site), mitigates the planning concerns ie.
to elect a site which will have the minimum impact on other humans, the service
infrastructure, land use, flora, fauna, the earth’s surface and the earth’s
atmosphere whilst at the same time utilises the positive aspects of the natural
environment to the best energy and economic advantage. In doing so, designers are also asked to
view a location in terms of forming part of a much wider landscape rather than
a focus merely on an individual site, which is the next heading,
Siting. Designers are
requested to pause and consider siting from the
points of shelter, solar gain setting, the environment and social integration
rather than simply the current approach of selecting where the best view may
be.
If a designer is responsible
for selecting a high impact location, or is hand-tied by his client’s choice of
such a location, careful siting within the location
might alleviate the impact of the building.
Bad decisions on both
location and siting should make an application a
non-starter and we should not be mollified by an exciting product if these two
fundamentals are wrong.
The third heading is Scale.
Size and stature equates with
dominance and superiority and in many respects these are characteristics,
understandably yearned for by a high percentage of today's rural house
owners. As in nature, however, the
reverse of dominance and superiority is a feeling of fear and awe, surely no
longer an acceptable fate for the current inhabitants of the countryside to
pay. If we feel the scale of a house in
wrong, in terms of overshadowing, context, social integration and so on, is
there any point in beginning to consider the next heading:
Form. Unlike nature, human creations and buildings are based
on geometric shapes such as rectangles, triangles and circles. They are rarely amorphic,
a notable exception being the work of Antonio Gaudi
but there are not many like him in Moray.
Curvilinear shapes are smoother, gentler causing a sense of repose,
could this be why the peaceful inhabitants of the Findhorn
Foundation enjoy their round houses?
Most housing however in
When accommodation needs and
resources changed, restricted by the ability to span great distances, buildings
were heightened, lengthened or added to in the form of right angled
extensions. For several centuries,
building throughout
And what is wrong with
this? Would not our forefathers have
embraced these new abilities given half the chance? It is likely that they would have, so why do
we have a problem accepting this form?
Is it the obvious culture shock, the overt display of our Scottishness, what ever that is, being rapidly diluted in
our drift towards internationalism? Is
it the insensitivity of siting buildings of a form
and scale significantly different from the existing palette, leaving us in no
doubt about the current level and attitude of migration? Or is it simply the embarrassment to witness
an apparently sophisticated animal still living in such a crude box? The search for national characteristics in
art and architecture may however have something to do with an uncertainty about
the future in the face of a new millennium and a search for security in an age
characterised by rapid uncontrolled change.
Nevertheless, the proportions of new mass housing are
important if they are to bear a more evident physical relationship with the
existing buildings which seem to integrate well with our countryside. Having already identified the reasons for
having wider buildings than ever before, it can be witnessed that there exists
a potential conflict between the natural advancement of building houses and the
contextual relationship of new and old.
Yet it can be seen from the
various studies by Fladmark, Evans, Richards and the
RIAS that modern needs and desires can easily be
accommodated within houses which are contextually appropriate with little or no
capital cost implications. Indeed in
some cases, John Richards argues it can be cheaper.
One of our responses to this
conflict is to try and demonstrate Moray’s problem in evolutionary terms and in
an attempt to reconcile this departure in relationship we offer an obvious
solution to contextualisation which is easily understood at all levels. This solution is rooted in the production of
plan forms as perceived on the gables of houses which directly relate to 18th
and 19th century housing and as a result, demonstrable changes are occurring in
the submission of self-build designs to our authority during the past 18
months.
Moving
on to materials. It can be said that nature
commands our consciousness with respect to materials and colour. Sameness is the rule, variety is the
exception. Dull tones convey inertia,
repose and majesty and are associated with large objects such as the oak, the
mountain, the stag.
Bright colours convey dynamism, alarm and attention and are associated
with the small or the ephemeral such as the wasp, the flower. Charming though colourful cottages may be,
as a controlling authority we may have justified reservations about Professor
Charles McKean’s bemoaning of the use of “cowpat
colours”.
Nevertheless, we will always
encourage natural materials selected from the locality since they will
inevitably assist the building integrate and relate with its landscape. If the materials are local and natural, they
will also cut down transport costs, reduce the embodied energy in a building,
reawaken employment in craft skills and raise a building’s quality in numerous
ways but for the time being we, as a planning authority, have to admit the
current forces of transport and economy and accept the use of manmade
materials.
We should however continue
to make the market contemplate the viability of reopening the lime, slate and
stone quarries and planting trees for construction purposes. We should be much more active in influencing
the market than allowing the market to influence us, should we not?
OVERALL APPROACH
And so having identified
these six aspects as being the key public issues of design, we now have to
translate these into a design policy.
Would you agree that it is
commendable to try and retain the strength of our built culture in Moray? We do.
Would you actively encourage the building of traditional rural houses? We do, we have it in our policy but what
exactly do we mean by “traditional building”?
Well for 14 centuries after
the Romans it certainly was not stone and slate. Until the 16th Century, stone was still very
much confined to the buildings of the great chiefs. A cast through the history books reveals the
extent of rural houses built entirely, or in combinations of turf, earth, clay
and thatch. Even the 1951 Statistical
Account still refers to the numbers of buildings constructed using timber cruck, clay and bool, timber and
crinkly tin. Humble buildings such as
these are being lost on a daily basis yet the timber tradition survives in
other countries equatable to here such as in
By demonstrating fitness for
site and context, houses which respond regionally to the evergreen sheltered
glades found in Speyside, will inevitably have
differences to those responding to the dramatic contours of the
Final years of centuries
seem to have encouraged cultural introspection with the promise of a national
style. In our nationalistic quest for a
rural Scottish House, could an unending stream of repro 18th and 19th century
houses not lead us towards a building culture on an admirable parallel with
other national icons such as the drunk Glaswegian, Bonnie Prince Charlie, the
Alexander Brothers and so on.
Is true Scottishness,
not so much a set style as an attitude, buildings being the outcome borne of a
determination to maximise resolutions appropriately often in spite of less
resource than others. Thus our
buildings have always reflected contemporary expedience and aspiration. Is it
therefore not so much the product as the spirit which is important in current building. Will a
future to be proud of not be designs which readily acknowledge the context, the
environment, the tradition and the society yet still achieve an original
spatial response to the living needs and desires of the times of a particular
area or region?
Anyway,
enough effulgent ponsy crap, how has the public
reacted to all this? How has the design
strategy operated? Unfortunately design
is intangible, subjective and perceived from different standpoints so it is
difficult to accumulate equivocal statistics.
It is however reasonable to cite the following:
·
The approval rate for new housing is up, suggesting
that the design quality of submissions has improved.
·
The involvement of professional designers has
increased, suggesting that the procurement of agents has altered.
·
For the first time in recent recollection, submissions
are being refused solely on design grounds.
·
Appeals against refusal on design grounds are being
upheld.
·
The public appear to endorse the objectives.
·
Architects and agents appear to be able to work with
the objectives.
·
Developers are changing their product range.
·
Other Councils, the DOE for
·
The document has been commended by the Saltire Society and subsequently received a Patrick Geddes award. It
recently received an APRS award.
With
this document in place our planning authority should be able to act with
consistency and not have applicants frustrated by individuals using the system
of power to fulfil personal ambitions or preferences of taste, hence the
success of our formalised policies and guidelines.
This aside, not all design matters can be elicited by empirical rules. If this were so, planning and architecture
would cease to be arts. Within the
confines of established principles, consented objectives and analytical
criteria, there must always be room in both professions for skilful judgement
and the breaking (or rather the unlearning) of rules in order to enable the art
of building to advance and to ensure that the monotony and anonymity which
pervades as a problem today, is not simply recreated under a different guise.
This is not a talisman of
the times, this is simply good design practice.
·
Nick Brown is a
Senior Planning Assistant with Moray District Council
GREEN PLANNING papers presented in
michael thornley
GREEN SCHEMES:
PROJECTS AT WHINHILL
AND KINLOCHLEVEN
The two main conclusions of
our work on the planning of housing at Whinhill in
·
Green initiatives are unlikely to succeed without the
full participation of the user clients in the planning process.
·
Emotional and spiritual issues should not be ignored
in the drive towards the functional and economical justifications for green
planning.
·
Both the projects examined are at the initial, concept
stages and may or not be implemented.
STRONE FARM,
Strone Farm is a housing estate
that lies high above
The housing is on a steep
north facing slope, the greatest of which is steeper than 1 in 7. Existing housing has substantial underbuilding. The
prevailing wind is funnelled between the blocks that run parallel with the
contours and the site is severely exposed.
An initial phase of development has taken place on the most favourable
part of the site, reducing the possibilities for improving the road layout and
casting shadows across the site - a case of short term thinking that has
compromised the long term replanning of the area.
Initial Response
Our initial response was to
contact EDAS with a view to carrying out a study on solar access, shadowing and
improvement of the external environment by way of reconfiguring the buildings
and by the introduction of planting as shelter.
The work on solar access
indicated that, in winter, the solar door is slammed shut at about
Minor re-orientation of the
principal facades towards the east (about 10o away from the
orientation of existing buildings) creates significant benefits while a
movement in the opposite direction condemns many houses to potential
darkness. Similarly, a relatively small
reduction in height of the
ridges, for instance by split level housing, has major benefits
in reducing the length of shadows down the slope. More difficult to address, because of the
lack of introduction of techniques, are the benefits or otherwise of
reconfiguring the housing layout and shelter to reduce air speeds.
"Green" Issues
At first sight the replanning of a semi derelict housing estate did not appear
to offer much scope for "green" interventions. With social and economic issues at the top
of the agenda, "green" issues might be seen as an intellectual luxury
that cannot be afforded. Fionn Stevenson's paper presented at the SEDA event at Battleby in November 1995 gave the lie to this. Agenda 21 from the Rio Summit and the EU 5
Action Programme shows that we need to see environmental impact in terms of
social concerns for potentially vulnerable groups such as women, children, the
elderly and indigenous populations. All
of these groups are represented in housing areas such as Strone
Farm where the impact of changing consumption patterns are all too evident.
Clearly, at present, Strone Farm is not a sustainable human settlement. Yet the Communally Based Housing
Association has the potential to recognise and tap into the human resources of
the local people and their community.
There is a clear relationship between technology, ecology and not so
much culture but rather the social and economic objectives of area
improvement. Thus there are real
benefits in looking at, with the residents, the replanning
of their area in terms of ecosystems and in a holistic way rather than in terms
of a narrow vision of new housing.
The Way into The Process
Given our absence of
detailed knowledge on green planning and green architecture, we fell back on a
search through literature to identify possible interventions that may be
considered as part of the physical planning process. These are set out under the following
headings:
Building
·
Reuse of existing structures
·
Grouping of buildings to increase comfort levels
·
Passive solar energy
·
Insulation and weather sealing
·
"Vernacular" buildings where material issues
are considered first
·
Space planning to reduce heat loss
·
Space planning to utilise heat gain from occupants
activities
·
Space planning for home based work
·
Energy efficient heating and lighting systems
·
Eco labelling and use of materials with low embodied
energy
·
A toxic free environment
·
Sourcing materials and labour locally
·
Reduction of waste in building process
·
Exemplary building systems
·
Gardens
·
Self Build
Enabling
·
Resident participation
·
Local employment initiatives
·
Access to health care
·
Access to school facilities
·
Access to shops
·
Access to housing management
·
Access to day care for young and elderly
·
Access to sheltered accommodation (refuges, hostel and
grouped homes for special needs groups)
·
Access to support structures within the community
(lets)
·
Breaking down barriers/making connections
·
Planning and building solutions that are implemented
and tested in small increments
Services
·
Water storage
·
Reed bed sewerage systems
·
Separating soil/waste and rainwater run off
·
Solar power
·
Wind power
·
District heating
·
Reuse of existing services (roads, drains cables
etc.?)
·
Low energy public lighting
·
Recycling of waster material (space for 3 bins)
·
Proximity to public transport
Site and Landscape
·
Recycling of demolition materials
·
Preparation of existing topsoil
·
Protection of soil from erosion
·
Traffic calming
·
Encouragement of pedestrian power
·
Planting as shelter to increase comfort levels
·
Planting as habitat creation
·
Planting as forestry enterprise
·
Planting for psychological benefits
·
Recycling of waste materials (composting)
·
Outdoor space for leisure activities and play
·
Outdoor space for pets
·
Sites for community facilities
It was interesting for the
residents and myself to recognise that many of the
possible interventions were relevant to the replanning
of Strone, some of which could be included as a
matter of course. The exercise had
helped us highlight the importance of a number of key issues that, if we had
not gone through the process, would have remained implicit and unclear.
KINLOCHLEVEN: The Site
Kinlochleven lies at the head of a deep
fjord like sea loch. It is dominated to the
north by the fine hill walking ridges of the Mamores
and to the south by the Aonach Eagoch
ridge, an interesting scramble in summer which can turn into a major
undertaking in winter. Until 1900 there
were only a few houses and a shooting lodge at Kinlochleven
which was reached by a track that ran along the north side of the loch. The attraction of the site for the British
Aluminium Company was its relative proximity to two rail heads, access from the
sea and, most important of all, the water to create hydro electric power.
Construction commenced on
the Blackwater Dam, while the pilot project for what
would be the first aluminium works in the world was established on a nearby
site that, traditionally, had been a smiddy. A graveyard close by to the dam stands
testament to the men who died in constructing the dam. Water is delivered down huge pipes to the
power house which contains a line of turbines that feed electricity directly to
the cells on the factory floors, to which bauxite is brought from the large
bunkers on the site.
In the 1930s expansion and
upgrading of the factory was thwarted by a dispute between the
In order to explore the
possibilities of life after British Aluminium a community business was
established to look at alternative ventures that might be attracted to the
area. The strengths of the area were
identified as the abundance of the good clean water, which had originally
attracted British Aluminium, and its close proximity to Glencoe and
Out of this analysis has
developed a strategy aimed at encouraging "green" businesses that
would benefit from the environmental qualities of the site. Also a hill walking centre will be promoted
to capitalise
on Kinlochleven's location on the
Initial Response
The aluminium works were
constructed on a flat site dug out of a hillside. It is about 2/3 of the size of the
The site is bound on two
sides by the River Leven and this strong natural edge
is reinforced by the long structure of the Power House and tail race that runs
through a deep concrete slot back into the river. The southern half of the site is covered by
the aluminium works housed within a 1 storey steel structure. The northern half is dominated by the
bauxite bunkers which stand like a fortress overlooking a number of other
structures, some of which are currently being removed.
To the north is a slag heap
or rather a steep embankment that was created when the site was cut into he hillside. A burn
runs in at the south west corner and is channelled through the concrete base
that covers the whole site. To the west
of the site is a tall flat roofed building used by the army as a base for
training activities. An isolated plug
of rock which acts as a grandstand lies within the site. The entrance to the site is to the north, at
the point where the housing in Kinlochleven and the
aluminium works meet at the road by bridge over the River Leven.
Initial ideas suggested the
creation of a garden, along the lines of the Bells Garden in Perth, that could
provide a setting for both the new companies that it is hoped will be attracted
to Kinlochleven and, at the same time will be a draw
for visitors as well as an amenity for residents. (There is no major garden on the west coast
mainland between Arduaine, south of Oban, and Inverewe in the far
north). Out of this grew the idea that
the natural regeneration of the flora on the site might become a symbol of the
economic regeneration of Kinlochleven itself.
The Way into the Process
An analysis of the slag heap
reveals at its base, large stones lying in a matrix of soot. However, further up the slag are signs of
regeneration with herbaceous material such as digitalis (foxgloves). Grasses emerge on top of the slope where salix (dwarf willow) spread over the larger boulders. The grassland merges at the south west
corner with natural birch and oak woodland that clings on to the steeper ground
on both sides of the burn. The cutting
of the site into the slope has created two areas of water, or issues, one on
the slag heap and another adjacent to the burn at the point where it merges
into the site. Above this the woodland
gives way to the area of rank grass that terminates abruptly at the edge of the
small cliff faces that forms the boundary of the site.
In contrast to the natural
shapes of the mountains and woodlands is the strong framework of the
manufacturing plant which for design purposes was projected over the whole site
to provide a planning grid.
Precedents and Inspiration
While the site analysis was
carried out a number of precedents were being considered, including Geoffrey
Dutton's "
Another related precedent is
the movement in
Proposal
Applying
all these thoughts to the project the following solution presented itself. First, the building structure should be
maintained for reuse. Certainly the
main columns could be left to support a new structure in the future or to be
overgrown by the plant life. Water can
be brought into and across the site from the existing burn, carried in channels
attached to the columns, like alpine "bisses". The existing concrete that covers the entire
floor of the aluminium works could be broken up where necessary but rather than
be removed from site could be heaped up against the slag heap to form a ridge
or moraine capped by the minimum amount of imported stone. The slag heap, now connected to the site by
the ridge, will be fenced to allow natural regeneration to take place without
interference from sheep and deer. The
final outcome of this intervention is not known.
The existing woodland
provides the nucleus for expanding the woodland cover with new trees planted
across the rank grassland to provide, in time, protection for exotic
introductions. The wet areas will
provide a habitat for native plants with heather on the ground above. In contrast a much more formal landscape is
envisaged for the aluminium works site itself with trees replicating the
existing steel columns and hedging following the line of the existing grid to
create compartments, within which new commercial initiatives and other
activities can take place.
Thus a
The Outcome
The project is being developed by the Local Enterprise Company and may be the subject of a Millennium Fund Bid. The existing bank of turbines in the Power House