paying for urban design staff

So how do you do it?  What barriers have you found? 

Any good arguments you have used to get enough resources to get enough staff with the right skills to ensure better urban design quality in your Borough?

 

Or is this too depressing for words!

 

please say what is on your mind.

‹ By Design- CABE Contractors who can produce good flythroughs ›

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paying for urban design staff
Submitted by David Orr on March 14, 2007 - 19:59.

My consultancy Mouchel Parkman has framework or partnering contracts with 20% of London Boroughs and with TfL (variously for highways, transportation, and property services, etc) - we can and do provide urban design support services under all of these for a number of these authorities.

We do find that some council planning departments do not know that their colleagues have these contracts nor that they can commission urban design work through them. Authorities are also able to commission work through such framework contracts run by other local authorities -strange but true.

As urban designers working in the public realm, planning buildings and streets, we are often called in by one branch of an authority to do something and find that funding for the scheme or process scores on the service of another department. If we can get them to talk to each other, we can get LTP funding for public realm schemes, bus money for walking schemes, safety money for lighting schemes etc. Its not always the case, but the money is sometimes held in a different pot to the ones we know about.

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