This week the short lived Office for Place closed its doors less than a year after it was formally launched as an independent advisor on design in England. In a statement the Minister for Housing and Planning announced: “In taking the decision to wind up the Office for Place, the government is not downgrading the importance of good design and placemaking, or the role of design coding in improving the quality of development. Rather, by drawing expertise and responsibility back into MHCLG, I want the pursuit of good design and placemaking to be a fully integrated consideration”. Staff and key programmes of work are to be re-absorbed into the Ministry.
There is a pattern here. The Royal Fine Art Commission was abolished shortly after the New Labour Government of Tony Blair came to power in the late 1990s, the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment was abolished twelve years later by the newly elected Conservative-led coalition, and now, thirteen years on, as the political pendulum swings once again, the Labour administration closes the Office for Place.
In a tight public spending environment, there is a logic to concentrating design expertise and resources in one location (back in the Ministry), rather than across two. Some argue, however, that this comes at the expense of having an independent (or at least more independent) national voice on such matters with a greater degree of latitude to manoeuvre and innovate than is possible within government. We certainly saw that in the heady days of CABE, and in other parts of the UK such organisations have proven their worth over decades, notably in Scotland and Wales. But, having tried and rejected this model in England three times, the challenge must now be to avoid further shifting of the sands and for the bolstered Ministry team to more comprehensively and forcefully take on the design quality mantle.
Under the leadership of the Chief Planner and her Head of Architecture and Urban Design, we can be confident of success. That is as long as they have access to the sustained resources and leeway required to take their work on this front to the next level.
Learning from Public Architects in Europe
This reflects the conclusion of my last blog which examined types of leadership in urban design and argued that leadership varies according to how governance and development processes give agency to those with responsibility for shaping better places. The second part of the paper that underpinned that blog was by coincidence published this week, and explores the role and leadership practices of Public Architects across Europe.
What are collectively referred to as Public Architects in the paper are in fact senior public servants and their teams charged with providing leadership relating to urban, landscape and architectural design for governments, most of whom are embedded within government departments. This is the model that in England we are now strengthening. Actual titles vary, and even though much of the work of these entities focuses on urbanistic rather than architectural issues, the most common descriptors are ‘state’, ‘principal’, ‘government’, ‘chief’ or ‘city’ architect (the nomenclature reflecting the view in Europe that urban design is a sub-set of architecture).
Our research focussed on the experiences of Ireland, Flanders, The Netherlands, Scotland, and Sweden, plus the cities of Copenhagen and Vienna. Across these cases, the specific skills and areas of responsibility of Public Architects varied dramatically from, at one end of a spectrum, a focus on the design and construction of governmental buildings, to, at the other, a focus exclusively on promotional and advisory work relating to design quality. In the former role, Public Architects are directly supported by, and head up, large technical teams, while in the latter, the role tends to be supported by smaller teams focussed on engaging with other public and private actors in order to influence their practices.
There is no space here to discuss the cases we looked at (those interested can find that in the paper), but looking across the experiences it was possible to identify nine distinct roles that Public Architects performed. These range from delivery-oriented functions utilising the harder powers of the state, to supporting a culture change by embracing tools at softer end of the power spectrum.
Applying lessons to England
Across Europe, investment in Public Architect roles demonstrates that governments are increasingly perceiving the value and potential of more hands-on and persuasive forms of urban design related public leadership. Today, this is widely understood to be necessary to create the right conditions under which well-designed places can more consistently emerge with all the place value that delivers.
Returning to England, national Government has tended to avoid engaging with the delivery-oriented side of design leadership processes (1-5 in the diagram above), the exception being Homes England who have an important delivery role. The Ministry has instead focused on the culture change aspects, including:
- Taking responsibility for managing and monitoring its arm’s-length agencies (including, until this week, the Office for Place) (6);
- Developing policy, regulations and guidance associated with design quality (7); and
- Coordinating responses across government scales and sectors (9).
The Office for Place added new capacity in this final area of responsibility and was also charged with a more outward facing persuasion role (8) focussed on convincing others about the need to deliver design quality, utilising research, advocacy and advisory means. This is something that UK government departments have historically struggled with, but which the experience of Public Architects overseas suggests is both important and deliverable and which the Ministry will now need to embrace.
So just as I wished the Office for Place great success when it was announced, so to do I now wish the new arrangements, led by the equivalent of our Public Architect – the Chief Planner, the Head of Architecture and Urban Design and their team at MHCLG, all the very best in delivering on their strengthened role of securing design quality across England. This is no small task and is one that for decades we have consistently struggled to achieve.
As well as strong political backing, Public Architects need enough resources to mobilise appropriate soft design governance tools and the long-term support across Government to deliver the culture change. This won’t be easy, it won’t be quick, and the current tight fiscal environment alongside the drive to deliver housing fast, won’t make it any easier. But it was ever thus, and we need to keep on trying, so good luck!
Matthew Carmona
Professor of Planning & Urban Design
The Bartlett School of Planning, UCL
Matthew Carmona 