a framework for urban design skills
A framework for urban design skills
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To raise placemaking standards through training and education, and through learning on the job, we need to be able to assess an individual’s capacity. A new skills initiative is aiming to set a baseline for assessing ‘recognised practitioners’. By Rob Cowan
A London borough is seeking a programme officer to organise the public examination into its proposed development framework. ‘No previous knowledge of planning is required,’ the council explains. ‘A one-day training session will be provided to familiarise the appointee with the role.’
It is good to know that there is at least one job in the built environment that can be done after a single day’s training. Unfortunately there is a great shortage of skills in the world of planning, design, development and regeneration, and a one-day fix is rarely available.
Eighty-four per cent of planning applications are prepared by someone with no design training. They are plan drawers, surveyors, planners, builders, computer-aided-design technicians and many more. Where did that figure come from? I made it up – initially. But I verify it whenever I visit local authorities. ‘Is 84 per cent about right?’ I ask the planners. Usually they reckon it is, within a few percentage points. Often they add: ‘And even some of the people who have had some design training have no idea about how to design in an urban context.’
What skills are needed to make successful places? Sir John Egan’s review considered the skills and knowledge required to implement the government’s Sustainable Communities Plan. Its brief had focused on specialist, professional skills, but its report (Skills for Sustainable Communities, 2004) highlighted a wide range of generic skills that are required by regeneration and economic development professionals.
Egan identified these generic skills as project management, partnership working, making things happen, leadership, community engagement, negotiation and conflict resolution. One of the review’s major recommendations was the creation of a national centre for sustainable community skills, which now exists as the Academy for Sustainable Communities (ASC). Among its other tasks, the ASC is focusing on how to promote those generic skills.
The ASC has also raised the alarm about what it predicts will be significant labour shortages among professions in the sustainable communities sector (Mind the Skills Gap: a review of the skills we need for sustainable communities, 2007) within the next five years. There is an urgent need for recruitment and training programmes to provide enough people with the right skills, the ASC says.†In no sector is the projected shortage more severe than in design, particularly urban design and landscape design.
But it is not just a question of skills. Making successful design achievable is likely to depend on four factors:
1. Leadership (organisations that shape places need commitment from the top to high standards of design).
2. Policy (local authorities need policy, guidance and procedures that will support high standards of design).
3. Organisation (organisations need to be structured in ways that support design).
4. Skills (local authorities, other organisations, and people who play a part in shaping places need to have, or have access to, generic management and communication skills, and specific skills relating to urban design).
Any strategy for making successful places (or sustainable communities or eco-towns, or whatever is the buzzword of the moment) needs to take all of those four factors into account. It must also recognise that higher standards of urban design depend not just on professionals, and not just on specialist skills. Places are shaped by everyone who makes or influences decisions about development (including councillors, design champions, clients and a wide range of professionals) having better understanding, knowledge and abilities.
To raise standards through training and education, and through learning on the job, we need to be able to assess what capacity individuals have, and to plan how to develop it. Capacitycheck (the urban design capacity framework) has been devised as an aid to doing this. Capacitycheck is currently being trialled by two London boroughs, Urban Design London is using it as the basis for planning its training programmes, and the Urban Design Group will use it as the basis for its new Recognised practitioners initiative.
Capacitycheck will be made freely available within the next two months, with Urban Design Skills as its lead sponsor. Of the fours factors listed above, Capacitycheck focuses on the specific skills (or understanding or awareness) relating to urban design. It makes acquiring skills – whether by individuals or organisations – less of a hit-and-miss affair.
Capacitycheck can be used in a number of ways, in training and education:
- it can help to plan an individual’s continuous professional development (CPD);
- devising training programmes (for councillors, design champions, clients and various types of built environment professional, for example); devising education courses in urban design; in devising education courses for other built environment specialisms where it is important to increase the urban design and platemaking content;
- devising training materials; and by built environment professional institutes planning how to enhance the urban design content of their accreditation standards, their accredited courses, and their CPD events and requirements.
Employers can use Capacitycheck in deciding what sort of person to hire and drawing up a job description and person specification, and in carrying out an annual review of an employee, and discussing with them how to improve their urban design capacity.
Local authorities can use Capacitycheck to assess their own urban design capacities, creating a benchmark to check against annually. On a national scale, Capacitycheck can be used to set a minimum urban design capacity that every local authority should have. The raw Capacitycheck framework does not set such a minimum capacity, but it provides a method for deciding what that capacity should be.
Local authorities can also use Capacitycheck to set out recommended standards of awareness and understanding for design champions, and in deciding the coverage of the authority’s planning policy and guidance.
Organisations committed to improving urban design skills include the ASC, CABE, architecture and built environment centres, regional centres of excellence and, in Scotland, Improvement Service. They face an almost unlimited need for training for the whole range of people whose decisions have an impact on the quality of places. Making their efforts effective depends of focusing their resources where they are most needed.
Where does urban design begin and architecture, planning and other disciplines end? They don’t. Urban design is not another profession occupying a niche between the others. Rather, urban design is a way of working. Yes, there are professional urban designers, but many of them are also architects, building conservationists, engineers, landscape architects, planners or surveyors. Many of the new generation of professionals have more than one professional affiliation, and they expect to develop new skills and areas of expertise throughout their career. We should persuade them to think of themselves as part of the urban design movement and to practice accordingly.
The key for people working in urban design, whether they are professionals, design champions, councillors or anything else, is to understand that successful platemaking depends on different professional disciplines working together and on effective collaboration between a wide range of people whose decisions matter. That is where we must start building skills.
‘We must also recognise that higher standards of urban design depend not just on professionals, and not just on specialist skills. Places are shaped by everyone who makes or influences decisions about development, including councillors, design champions, clients and a wide range of professionals’
