IHBC Director Seán O’Reilly welcomed the focus by CABE – England’s built environment design advisers – on the ordinary places in English towns and cities, where more than 80 per cent of people live.
Seán O’Reilly said: “CABE’s debate is a timely reminder that conservation skills are central to the key tasks and challenges in place-making for people, as it highlights the importance of visual literacy; participation; engagement & project management. These are all distinguishing features of successful conservation, central both to the IHBC’s conservation standards and, of course, our membership criteria.
In the week following the publication of England’s new planning guidance on the historic environment (PPS 5), it is especially appropriate that CABE should be giving such a high profile to valuing those ordinary places we already have. In their own distinctive ways both CABE and CLG are acknowledging that conservation-based area funding and programmes regularly demonstrate best practice in sustainable development for local communities and businesses.”
Seán O’Reilly continued: “CABE’s four headline reasons to care about ordinary places – people, economy, climate change and use – are what IHBC members balance in their professional advice. Whether delivering high-end regeneration projects or, as here in CABE’s discussions, looking after change in the ordinary places, the conservation and urban design services in a local authority lie at the heart of good places as well as great ones. As pressures on front-line public services increase, government at all levels must focus on maintaining local capacity in place-management and place-making.”
CABE says:
‘Ordinary Places sparks a debate about how we respond to the needs of the residential areas around big city centres, smaller post-industrial cities and the suburbs. While city centres have improved beyond recognition over the past ten years, many ordinary places still suffer from ugly commercial development, heavily trafficked roads and badly designed new housing. CABE believes that with the right actions, these places can also enjoy a similar resurgence.
Ordinary places offers new ideas on the ways in which ordinary places can be improved. First, it advocates compulsory training in public participation for architects, planners and other built environment professionals, and the guarantee of funding for public engagement. CABE’s design review panel, for example, rarely sees schemes that include information on the views of local people.
Second, teaching all young people visual literacy, so that they can articulate what they think about a place, how it works and what would make it better. In CABE’s experience, many of the people who make decisions about design – such as councillors and clients – have never learnt about it. Teaching visual literacy is one way we can start to change this.
CABE also gives 4 reasons to care about ordinary places:
- They are where most people spend most of their time, and so have most influence on quality of life;
- Our economic future depends on the skills, networks and social capital they will generate;
- They hold the key to mitigating and adapting to the effects of climate change;
- We need to appreciate what we already have and make better use of the existing buildings and spaces we inhabit every day.
Above all, we know this matters to people: 87 per cent of the public believe better quality buildings and public spaces improve their lives.
Other ideas include setting minimum design thresholds for all public building projects (not just schools), and asking local authorities to track the progress of ordinary neighbourhoods by introducing a way to measure the quality of a place.’
