who will drive the urban design agenda?
Public and community consultation is creeping higher up the urban design agenda and, increasingly, self-educated campaigners are making sure that their views get heard. For many of us, it’s not a moment too soon. With thorny problems ranging from how best to create sustainable communities to linking climate change controls more firmly to the built environment’s agenda seemingly no nearer to being addressed despite years of government promises and hubris, it’s a wonder that ‘people power’ has taken so long to evolve. Even lesser issues are threatening to be troublesome: the control of regeneration for East London’s proposed Olympic site, for example, not to mention the ongoing debate regarding demolition versus new-build in housing programmes. Even the placement of London’s famous Eye is promising to be vexatious.
