Scottish Government

Section 2
Delivering Better Places In Scotland - Learning From Broader Experience

Ensure good leadership
Co-ordinate delivery
Control the spatial development framework
Achieve fast and co-ordinated regulatory approvals
Exercise ownership power
Attract funding for advance infrastructure provision
Secure design quality through procurement strategies
Thereafter: continue to invest and provide stewardship over time

Summary of key lessons for Scotland

The eight case studies together provide valuable lessons about the process of delivering better places and
can provide a framework for action in Scotland. They demonstrate how critical the following elements are:

Ensure good leadership

• Good leadership matters because it drives forward action, breeds confidence, provides certainty for development partners, reduces risk for all involved and widens participation by architects and builders in the delivery. Without such leadership, place delivery relies on rules and regulations.
• Quality places have an effective place promoter - often a dynamic individual working in a supportive organisational context. In Vauban it was Wulf Daseking, the Chief Planner in Freiburg City Council, who has championed sustainability for the last 20 years. In Newhall it was the Moen brothers who owned the land and wanted something much better than previous average standard developments they had seen.
• The primary task of the place promoter is to nurture a compelling vision of what a place will be like, inspire action and galvanise support, and ensure effective delivery.
• The place promoter must foster a place-making culture. This means encouraging organisations to act holistically and work in a joined-up fashion with others to achieve a quality place rather than think and act in silos to suit their own professional interests. The European examples all had stronger place-making cultures than those in the UK and were characterised by a willingness to invest in the front end vision to achieve quality places. Their success has been recognised by others across Europe. For example, Freiburg City (where Vauban is located) was awarded the 2010 European City of the year by the Academy for Urbanism. And Stockholm (where Hammarby is located) was awarded the European Green Capital 2010 by the EU Commission.

Co-ordinate delivery

• The more the place promoter can manage and integrate five key tasks, then the greater the chance of creating better places:
  • Control the spatial development framework
  • Achieve fast and co-ordinated regulatory approvals
  • Exercise ownership power
  • Attract funding for advance infrastructure provision
  • Secure design quality through procurement strategies
• Taken together, these actions are as much about making markets as making places, since over time successful places become self-sustaining and attractive in market terms. IJburg in Amsterdam set out to create a completely new neighbourhood of 45,00 people and was a meticulously planned project with physical and social infrastructure developed in advance of building development. Hammarby in Stockholm demonstrates how a wholesale commitment to design excellence can produce a very successful place and the benefits of early installation of public transport infrastructure.

Control the spatial development framework

• A robust and imaginative spatial development framework or 'masterplan' is essential to creating somewhere that functions as an integrated place. The place promoter should oversee the process, making full use of the client brief to control its commission and ensure that what is proposed can be delivered on the ground. Adamstown is an example of how special planning designations can make it possible to deliver new more effective delivery structures.
• The spatial framework must specify how infrastructure (streets, spaces, utilities, community facilities) and components (blocks, plots, buildings) relate to each other and how together they will deliver the vision.
• The place leader must take overall responsibility for both generating and delivering the masterplan. The place leader should not delegate delivery to another party as they may deal with implementation difficulties in ways which compromise what was originally intended.

Achieve fast and co-ordinated regulatory approvals

• Conflicting requirements of different agencies can significantly delay projects. Local planning authorities therefore need to take an active role in accelerating and co-ordinating the approval process by integrating regulatory demands without compromising quality. In Hammarby design coding, controlled by the City Council, was critical in translating the strategic vision to a more local scale though a two stage "Detailed Plans" and "Quality Programmes" process.
• Design codes if adopted as Planning Guidance can speed up development. In Allerton, these provided developers with certainty and ensured faster public sector decision making on individual projects. Design codes can also secure consistency in design quality between different developers and be enforced by planners (as in Adamstown and Vauban) or by landowners (as in Newhall).

Exercise ownership power

• In the European case studies the public sector led the implementation either by acquiring or historically owning the land. And the case studies demonstrate how quality development would not have happened without the willingness and determination of landowners to develop a high quality place on their land.
• Effective place delivery often involves consolidating multiple land ownership to ensure subsequent co-ordinated development. It also allows operational flexibility in selling/leasing land - in size, location and the conditions applied.
• Achieving ownership control produces clarity and confidence in the market and ensures development happens at the time, location and quality desired. In this context, land consolidation and disposal, as described above, should be seen as place-shaping and creating sustainable value. Allerton, on a brownfield site in what had been the village colliery, would not have seen development without public sector investment and its designation as a Millennium Community. By way of contrast, Castlefield shows what an enlightened developer, with a long-term development strategy based upon enhancing overall place value, can achieve through well judged interventions and building projects.

Attract funding for advance infrastructure provision

• Quality places work well because the necessary physical and social infrastructure is planned and provided as an integral part of the overall development programme. In Ijburg, utilities were installed alongside other physical infrastructure, and co-ordinated through its "red carpet" system (the name given by the Ijburg projectbureau to the project co-ordinating the construction of bridges, cables and pipes), to ensure continuing dialogue between the City's "Projectbureau" and the multitude of utility companies.
• This kind of approach requires an effective place investment model which enables initial costs of infrastructure provision to be borne by the place provider, but subsequently recovered from developers and investors.

Secure design quality through procurement strategies

• Even when land ownership is consolidated at the start, the place promoter should encourage a range of developers to participate to ensure variety, creativity and innovation in the built form. Smaller projects, implemented over different time frames by different developers using various designers, can encourage a range of styles and a diversity of owners. In Vauban land was released in small plots and favoured transfer to "Baugruppen" (self develop, owner co-operatives) rather than corporate housebuilders.
• This requires procurement strategies that reconcile potential conflicts between financial bids and intended design quality. Smaller land parcels are more prevalent in the mainland European case studies and demonstrate how land sub division and release strategies address the longer term needs of the place and not just shorter term development implementation issues.

Thereafter: continue to invest and provide stewardship over time

• Delivering better places takes time and demands long-term commitment to place quality, rather than short-term conventional speculative development
• Once development is completed, places need to be cultivated over time to ensure continued positive reputation and attractiveness. Proactive after-care ensures that place quality is maintained and enhanced and that property values increase. At Upton, English Partnerships set aside money to establish the Upton Management Company which will charge every unit a management fee to cover the maintenance of the area. And Stockholm City council has taken on direct responsibility for after care at Hammarby.

Key lessons, challenges and the way ahead

• Delivering better places demands leadership, particularly from the public sector to create certainty, reduce developer risk and in turn encourage developers to become more innovative and more strongly committed to place quality. Bringing innovative Planning and Placemaking approaches more into the mainstream of wider Community Planning in Scotland may offer new insights and rewards for all the partner agencies and for local communities.
• Public-sector commitment, expertise and investment can be recouped in the longterm. It can also help deliver development at faster rate than the private sector could do alone. In Scotland, new delivery models such as Local Asset Based Vehicles and Deferred Receipt Mechanisms are being examined and may provide solutions to this challenge.
• If we want to create better places in Scotland more often than we have in the past, policy makers and those charged with delivery need to engage with both making markets and place shaping strategies - especially by rethinking public sector commitment to and investment in place quality. Better connections between "Place" interventions such as those described above and "People" interventions, particularly where "Total Place" type initiatives are being put in place may produce better and more sustainable outcomes for places in Scotland whether they are in growth, transformation or regeneration contexts.
• SCR, RICS and A+DS are exploring all of these ideas as we carry out a dissemination programme during late 2010 and into 2011. This will provide opportunities for a wide variety of stakeholders to discus the lessons summarised here and examine whether they have relevance, merit and applicability in Scotland. SCR's Mixed and Sustainable Communities Learning Network will provide detailed information about this work as it progresses and offer a variety of events and activities for participants to engage in and contribute their perspectives and views.