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Masterplans - 2007/05/02 17:10
While we wait for what Mr Style insists is his 'masterplan' to appear, these extracts from an article by academics at the Sustainable Cities Research Institute, University of Northumbria, on the subject are interesting. They are talking about regeneration in cities and I'm no expert, but some of what they say seems relevant to Lewes:
"By their nature, masterplans are produced by professionals – some would say experts. As such, they continue the theme of top down urban management. Apart from a little potential in the consultation phase, the community is effectively excluded from taking an active part. As masterplans have become more visionary, they have become more self contained and abstracted from the urban settings that they are supposed to enhance. There has been an accusation that, especially the architects, have become so obsessed with the images and details of the proposals that they have lost sight of the objectives for producing plans and that the plans have become an end in themselves... The more that masterplans become detailed representations of specific proposals, the more they become deterministic and inflexible…
"There is no doubt that masterplanning is aimed at the scheme as product rather than the city in process… It is a broad brush technique covering not just the location, and sometimes design of individual buildings, but the layout of the site, transport infrastructure, the spaces between buildings, the overall design style and land uses. This tends to produce coarse grained structures and large static buildings on their independent plots of land. It is unusual to find any existing structures or activities retained as part of the scheme. In fact masterplanning is a tool of property-led urban regeneration. Evidence is starting to accumulate to suggest this approach actually creates very little in terms of new activities, employment and support for the local economy…
"Furthermore, there is the suggestion that masterplans may actually hinder regeneration by being too prescriptive and inflexible. Even the terminology worries some people – Master has dictatorial connotations and Plan can imply rather simplistic solutions and/or a fixed blueprint for action."
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