An Equitable Approach to Housing Design Quality
This is one of many meanderings from the centre point of my flat, tracking an uneven radius that increases in relation to my restlessness. These walks have been a rare joy of lockdown. They make me feel grateful for my interest in urban design. What do others do when all else fails to entertain? At least we can always go outside and look at buildings. There are downsides of course – this time I got a blister; once some children on bikes jeered at me and I occasionally get odd looks, but in the main it’s a diverting and educational pastime.
This particular evening, I was matching up components of the residential streets in front of me with the pages of the recently published National Model Design Code, or, more specifically, the accompanying Guidance Notes. Street trees (page 27), well-integrated on -street parking (page 13), generous wall to window ratios (page 46), Active frontages (page 66) framing a shared green space (page 22). The content of the document is lodged firmly in my mind as myself and colleagues spent much of last year working with MHCLG, other government departments, the Design Council and a multitude of stakeholders to help create it.
The National Model Design Code and Guidance Notes provide a suggested process and a toolkit of resources to guide the production of design codes (rule based, measurable, geographically specific) and design guides (more general good practice) at local level. The document is part of a move to boost the role of design in planning and development and is supported by changes to Chapter 12 of the National Planning Policy Framework and updates to Planning Practice Guidance. The documents are intended to be read together and could ultimately become a material consideration in planning decisions, supporting the ability to refuse applications on design grounds.
When working on a project intensely, it’s common for me to feel wildly optimistic about its potential by the end. Maybe this town centre strategy will change the fate of this place forever; maybe this vision document will be the deciding factor in securing a local plan allocation; maybe this strategic spatial framework will ensure sustainable patterns of development for decades to come. And maybe, just maybe, this National Model Design Code and supporting changes will usher in a new era of housing design quality for the UK.
And I would like to focus specifically on housing quality here. There is no more emotive space than home and the pandemic has acutely highlighted the role our houses and neighborhoods play in ensuring our wellbeing. There is also an ever-present agenda to build more homes, faster. A recent House of Commons Briefing Paper “Tackling the under supply of housing in England” estimated the number of new homes needed in England at up to 345,000 per year. The tension between delivery vs quality is intensifying.
To return to my naïve optimism about the role the National Model Design Code can play in delivering that quality; I hope I’m still at a relatively early stage in my career, but I’ve been working in the industry long enough to know that good design guidance does not automatically generate good design. It would be wonderful if that were he case, but such thoughts should be quickly doused with a generous helping of cynicism and common sense.
I have encountered numerous, well structured, well-articulated documents describing the principles of good urban design generally and housing design in particular. At this point, it’s safe to say the basics have been covered…and covered…before being reframed to fit a particular agenda and covered again. Does this mean that all residential development in the UK is now well-designed?
The National Housing Design Audit would suggest not. The 2020 research by Place Alliance looked at 142 large scale housing -led development projects across the England against seventeen design considerations. It found that new housing design is overwhelmingly ‘mediocre’ or ‘poor’. One in five of the audited schemes should have been refused planning permission outright, and the design of many others should have been improved before relevant permissions were granted.
But for me the most upsetting finding, and the area I want to focus on for the remainder of this piece, is this:
“Less-affluent communities get worse design”
Let that sink in. Maybe it seems obvious to you. Good design costs money right? But think about what that means. There is a continued trend (by a factor of ten) towards delivering sub-standard design outcomes for less affluent communities. Now, I like to think that urban designers are a utopian lot; many of us were attracted to this profession because we hoped we could make the world a better place. So, we can’t possibly accept that a person’s access to a well-designed home is determined by how much they earn (or, let’s face it, inherit).
I’ll not fall into the trap here of confusing design quality with beauty. I can accept that not everyone can live in a beautiful house. But everyone should live in a well-designed house, in a well-designed street, in a well-designed neighbourhood. I have no desire for the National Model Design Code to only increase quality in areas where standards are already high. I want it to drag up standards of design in places that have historically been denied the basic principles. Doing so means acknowledging with open eyes that it is only one piece of a large jigsaw.
Let’s return to the assumption: “good design costs money”. It is true in the sense that most things cost money. However, in my working life so far, I have seen numerous examples of good design being delivered in what might traditionally be seen as a “low value” or “poor viability” areas. This perspective is supported by the Place Alliance research. They found that just because values are low, it does not mean that good design cannot be afforded. They suggest the cost factors separating ‘good’ from ‘poor’ design are likely to be a relatively small proportion of total development value. Also, low value locations may show a higher return on investment and be more profitable to develop given the lower cost of land. A minority of schemes with low market value buck the trend and achieve ‘good’ and ‘very good’ design outcomes.
Which brings us back to my wanderings around Moss Side. The development where I was playing “I spy” with all of those good design components was not exactly what a developer would call a “high value area” when the planning application was submitted in 2005. Property prices have risen in the last few decades; the Office for National Statistics found in 2016 that prices has increased by 509% between 1995 and 2015, and affordability issues in the area were highlighted in the application documents. However, even today Moss Side shows up as a rare blue blob on a house price heat map of Greater Manchester, and such conditions are ripe for a viability argument against higher design standards.
The UK Collaborative Centre for Housing Evidence report “Delivering Design Value” explores a number of reasons why good housing design is rarely delivered in practice, one of them being viability. The report states that the effect viability and the financing of housing development has on design value is significant and influences many of the decisions taken by a range of actors further downstream. Conversations with Local Authority planners confirm anecdotally that this is often a “trump card” for rejecting higher standards of design at pre-application stage.
And yet, here I am walking around a housing estate which displays many of the components of well-designed neighbourhoods set out in the National Model Design Code, in a relatively low value area. In addition to the features I listed above, the blocks are well laid out, making connections into the surrounding street network. A good density is achieved through a mixture of apartments and modern terraces that take cues from the surrounding typology without veering into the realm of the pastiche.
From what I can glean from the planning application documents an emphasis was placed on local people being able to access homes in the development, so a proportion of the properties were made available for Low Cost Home Ownership. The outline application also included a primary school, health centre and some retail; not a bad haul in housing estate terms.
This is not just my jaded industry perspective talking. I spoke to a resident of the scheme who explained they had originally been attracted by affordable family homes with above average garden sizes. The area has “everything you need” on the doorstep, including a decent size supermarket, butchers, bakers, good public transport, schools and parks (one within a 5 minute walk and another within 15).
She said her and her family like the design of their house a lot. She praised the wide door frames and staircases (designed to meet accessible standards but providing a spacious feel that not all new builds have), designated parking, large windows and generally good build quality. She described the houses as “aesthetically lovely” from the outside, though noting that the white render on older properties suffered discolouration from the dust created by the construction of the more recent phases.
My partner, from whom I often solicit opinions on new development and who is generally unimpressed, was also pretty effusive about the Maine Road scheme – “I don’t always know what you’re talking about when you point out good design, but I can see that this looks nice”. He described it as having a “community feel” and pointed out a row of terraces fronting onto the central green space. It was with great pride that I realised my descriptions of passive surveillance have not been falling on deaf ears.
I spoke to another resident of a more recent development in Moss Side. She moved into the nearby Clockworks scheme around the start of the pandemic with her partner, taking advantage of a Rent to Buy arrangement. She was attracted to the mid-rise, red brick apartments by the small private garden, larger communal garden, the extra space provided by 2 bedrooms and the light from decent sized windows.
To be clear, both schemes also have their issues. Residents mentioned components of the development that remained unfinished years after they were supposed to be completed, maintenance and management issues, and some ill- considered layout choices (e.g. kitchen/dining are too close to a bathroom and entrances too close to a bin store). But on the whole, the housing seems to be providing a good quality of life: “I’m really happy here, this is a really nice place to be”.
So, what does it take to achieve this? and how can we ensure the current national design focus provides the structures and support to achieve it on a wider scale? We saw earlier that good housing design can be achieved on a shoestring budget, in the right circumstances. So how do we create those “right circumstances”? The CaCHE report makes the following recommendations:
- The housebuilding industry must stop receiving a ‘free pass’ on design: It must be held better to account by the planning systems in all four nations.
- Good design should be cast as a crucial public good: The responsibility to deliver well-designed places must be understood as a shared responsibility between the public and private sector.
- Future planning reforms must put design at their heart: The four UK governments must do more to translate positive policy rhetoric on design into actionable, measurable and well-funded design governance solutions that lead to the creation of sustainable and enduring places.
To my mind, Local Authority involvement and empowerment is key in the success of these schemes and in delivering housing quality generally. The potential role of Local Authorities in delivering good design is being woefully undervalued, and I mean that in a literal sense.
Who is best placed to hold the housebuilding industry to account? Who is in a position to apportion responsibility for delivering public good? Who can help to translate design policy into actionable governance solutions? Local Authorities.
Except they can’t. Not as things currently stand. A phrase from those CaCHE report recommendations stands out to me: “well-funded”. Not a phrase that any sane person would use to describe UK public planning and development services in recent years. Austerity hit and continues to hit planning departments hard. The Centre for Cities “Cities Outlook” in 2019 noted that departments including planning had borne the brunt of cuts in order to protect frontline services. The 2019 RTPI report “Resourcing Public Planning” showed that the real term investment by local authorities in planning has been reduced by 42% since 2009-10 and was low compared to other countries to begin with.
Oh, and it’s worse for poorer areas too. A report by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation showed that in England, general cuts have been much greater in proportionate terms for more deprived authorities. The most deprived all-purpose authorities saw cuts of more than £220 per head, compared with under £40 per head for the least deprived. That RTPI report also showed huge regional differences in spending on planning per person within different areas of the UK; In 2017-18 total spending on planning per person living in the South East and East of England was double the spending per person in each of the regions in the North of England or the West Midlands.
So, to recap: as we learnt earlier that less affluent communities get worse design. Less affluent communities also experienced harsher austerity cuts overall (which have disproportionately fallen on planning departments across England) and receive lower spending on planning per person.
Correlation does not equal causation as my physicist partner tell me (see, we’re cross pollinating!) but come on? It doesn’t take a scientist that realise that underfunding the structural components of delivering high quality housing leads to worse outcomes for people on the ground.
If we want to talk about good design, then we have to talk about the mechanisms that make good design happen. And if we want everyone to have it, then we need to make sure those mechanisms are properly funded everywhere and are working for everyone.
If we continue along our current path, we will experience the disappointment of expecting luxury outcomes at affordable prices. There are around 22,000 planners in the UK, or around one planner for every 3000 persons. By contrast, the Netherlands, which is known not just for excellent planning, but great standards of housing design quality, has one planner per 1100 persons. We’re at risk of enacting the designer knock off of public spending, a Primarni planning system if you will. We want it to look beautiful and cost nothing. But like fake designer clothing, it’s a false economy – it might look good for a while, but ultimately things will fall apart.
We have so many pieces of the “good design jigsaw” in place. We’ve got these great national policy changes, we have new design coding guidance, a process, a toolkit. Now, let’s really build back better and invest in our underfunded local planning authorities.
Originally published in URBAN DESIGN159 Summer 2021 - The Northern Powerhouse
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