Preface
| In former years, the environment has not been a dominant subject in people's minds. Today it is. We have higher standards. We want more worldly goods and more attractive surroundings. We also want repose. We want to escape from everyday worries and have fun, but not to sit in a traffic jam for hours on the way to the coast. We want better education for our children and job opportunities when they leave school or university. We want to provide for the future, live in the present and keep some reminders of the past. We want roots, we want security, we want to belong. We want to live in a habitat which is convenient, which is human, yet containing elements of beauty which can inspire us and lift our spirit towards ambition and adventure. It is the enterprise and ingenuity of her people which has made Britain great. Now is the moment for us to give our time, our talents, and our individual expertise to help achieve an environment which we can all share, can all enjoy, and of which we can all be justly proud. |
That quotation, from a United Kingdom government-sponsored publication entitled How Do You Want to Live, was written in 1972. It could have been written yesterday. The aspirations set out therein and the requirements for action are, in the last decade of the twentieth century, if anything, now much more acute. Are we content to let them become even more acute in 20 years time? Or are we going, at last, to try to do something to bring about a substantial improvement to the quality of our urban life?
This book is about the design, maintenance and management of our towns and cities - particularly their central areas. It has been written in the context, not only of a current resurgence of interest in and dismay about buildings and development but also a serious decline in the quality of the public realm.
It has always been easy to identify past mistakes. It is altogether more difficult to prescribe better ways of approaching the problem of making urban areas more user friendly. This book aims both to stimulate a new philosophical approach and to propose practical suggestions.
The principal hypotheses are that firstly, overall places matter more than individual components of the urban environment, such as buildings, roads and parks; and secondly, that an understanding of what has succeeded in the past can usefully inform the way we design and manage new, innovative environments.
At a practical level, there is no substitute for looking, seeing and learning. It is important to go and look at as many good examples of town making as possible. We can all learn a good deal from principles of urban design and planning which have stood the test of time and can be applied to present day needs in an economically viable manner.
The book draws on some thirty years of practice, observation, case studies and sketching and incorporates some of the themes developed during an enjoyable year as President of the Royal Town Planning Institute in 1988.
I do not want it to be an opaque or esoteric book. It is addressed to a wide range of professionals, students and interested lay people both in the United Kingdom and internationally and I hope that its messages are useful, clear and simple.
I should like to dedicate this book to a number of people who have all genuinely influenced my thinking on the matters covered herein. They are Walter Bor, the late Dr Jacob Bronowski, Sir Cohn Buchanan, Jonathon Porritt, Jaquelin Robertson and His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales. Coupled with these names I would like to record warmest thanks to my wife, Janet, and two sons, Adam and Benedict, who supported this endeavour and quietly suffered me sitting at a word processor and sketch pad for hours on end. Warm thanks must also go to Maritz Vandenberg for encouraging me to write the book in the first place and maintaining a fatherly interest in its progress. Finally, I must also humbly acknowledge the many hundreds of people simply going about their business in different parts of the world, whom I have observed and listened to as they enjoy - or loathe - their local physical environment.
