THE CONTROL SYSTEM IN DEVELOPMENT AND PLANNING PROCESS
Ari Widyati Purwantiasning
Jurusan Teknik Arsitektur Fakultas Teknik Universitas Muhammadiyah Jakarta
arwityas@yahoo.com
“The only real way to design sustainable cities is by being able to effect
both the macro and the micro levels of the town simultaneously”
(Guy Battle)
ABSTRAK Tulisan ini mengangkat topik tentang sistem kontrol dalam proses pengembangan dan perencanaan suatu
- INTRODUCTION
‘certain objectives …………have been absorbed by planning merely because they cannot be pursued by any public authority under its current powers. In such circumstances planning, in cricket terms, acts as a long-stop for balls which cannot be fielded by other public authorities’ (Lichfield: 1956, p.31, McLoughin: 1973, p.31)
The design activity was intense. Local plans, village plans, city-wide infrastructure and landscaping policies were developed. A system for industrial buildings and the structure of the city centre, conservation areas, housing programmes, community buildings, sport and recreation, health programmes, building classification and recruitment of local building industry all ran parallel with national, local and county liaison.
The time-honoured principles of the traditional city constitute the only body of knowledge to which we can look for guidance today. Indeed, it is the neglected wisdom of the traditional city-whether European, English, American or otherwise – that is now showing fresh sign of life, at a time when both modernism and post modernism alike seem incapable of delivering a socially and ecologically responsible programme of urbanization.
The issue today, however, is not one of stylistic but of design, with a view to ecological balance which is known as sustainability development. How to control the design and development is the issue which will be touched on in this essay. This issue not only just dealing with architecture design but also with landscaping and urban design in the future.
This is a wholesale programme of re-awakening from controlling the sprawl of our cities, to reconsidering the scale and measure the urban block, all the way to encouraging a typological understanding of design that establishes hierarchies between public and private building, as well as a concern for the civic open spaces of our cities.
- CURRENT CONDITION OF PLANNING AND DESIGN CONTROL
From the recent condition of development and design which is not enough being controlled by existing tools, the DETR try to establish new tools to control design and create better control system. These new tools are new guidance on design in planning system. Planning should provide a policy framework for urban design based on a set of objectives which are derived from experience of what makes successful places and related to how people used bad experience urban space.
Kevin Campbell and Robert Cowan, said that the manual has a function to describe the kit of tools which local authorities can use to create the conditions for good design and national and regional planning guidance should provides the context for this purpose. (Planning, 1999)
According to Kevin Campbell and Robert Cowan, the toolkit has two parts (see figure 1) which known as ’hardware’ (tools of policy and guidance) and ’software’ (the mean of raising standards in the management and operation of the planning system). (Planning, 1999)
As far as hardware is concerned, the local authority’s development plan is the most important planning tool which is further detail is provided in supplementary planning guidance, including urban design frameworks, development briefs and design guides. The development control process must be used to deliver quality, with the help of design statements and independent assessments.
And on the other hand, as for the software aspect of the toolkit, high standards of design depend on proactive management of the planning system and developing skills. Effective collaboration between stakeholders is essentional. Too much of current local authority design policy and guidance is vague and ill-conceived.
Design control has always been an integral part of the development control system in England or anywhere else. And it is also important to note that design issues have always been the focus of a lively debate between the architectural and planning professions which have been quite separately and also between development and amenity interests.
- IS THERE ANY GAP BETWEEN PLANNING AND DESIGN?
As a planner, city can be defined as a ’diorama’ in the historical museum which has ability to reflect impressions in appropriate time. The relation between ’city as a diorama’ and the historic of the city extracted by Kevin Lynch in his book ’Good City Form’ which has influences for almost all planners recently.
In this term, planning more concern about how to plan the physical element in the city such as ’landmark, edges, district and node’, or by providing main development such as ’plaza or boulevard, park, garden and open spaces’, without concern about economic as well as social aspects. In this context, architect has a role in city planning, to realize the ideas, dreams and obsession to develop a city.
On the other hand the main problem of chaosity in big cities is because there is a gap between ’planning’ and ’architecture’. In term ’architecture’ there are too many things to be concerned about art and aesthetic. On the other hand in ’planning’ more concern about ’pseudo science’ which has vision to the future. This gap has to be solved by integrating ’planning’ and ’architecture’ as one step to create excellent city. This condition still become main debate between planners, architects and other parties about the quality of built environment.
Proactive planning is not a substitute for good designers. It is a way of making space for them to design creatively, and helping them avoid later finding themselves tripped up by matters of public policy, economics or local context which they failed to take into account. Unsuccessful urban development almost has its roots in imbalance between policy, context, approach and feasibility or between the various urban design objectives.
One alternative way to intervere this condition, by establishing development control document such local guidance, development briefs, design strategies, etc, which might be helpful to control the chaosity in urban development. Although there are such legislation and policy about local context, which has intervention in the design process of urban development, planners themselves as one part of planning process have actively being steered away from any involvement in such a process.
- EXISTING TOOLS IN PROMOTING AND CONTROLLING PLANNING AND DESIGN
1. Development Plans
’The planning system should be efficient, effective and simple in conception and operation. It fails in its function whenever it prevents, inhibits or delays development which should reasonably have been permitted. It should operated on the basis that applications for development plan all material considerations, unless the proposed development would cause demonstrable harm to interest of acknowledged improtance’ (DoE 1992a, para 5).
As far as tool is concerned, the most important planning tool is the local authority’s development plan. This tool sets out the policies against which development proposal will be assessed. The legislation stated that when deciding applications for development the local authority – ’had to have regard to development plan and any other material considerations’ (Punter, 1994).
2. Design Strategies
’An attempt was made to identity the role of design in the plan’s strategy, both in terms of the plan’s agenda and the spatial strategy for development. The main design policies was identified which is based on area appraisal or consultation.’ (Punter, 1994)
Design strategy is a clear implementation from local authority’s act towards design and planning which could perform the basic of all design control to produce good plan and design within devopment plan. Nevertheless, some plans exhibit dual strategies and thus count in more than one category in local plans.
There are few plans as well which attempt to develop in large scale of area and try to make coherent with design strategy of their district of borough or maybe with regional planning guidance or structure plan policies.
3. Design Guides
A key area of analysis was the relationship between policy and Supplementary Design Guidance (SDG). There were wide variation of practices with regard to the inclusion of guidance in the plan itself and a marked and very serious failure to cross-reference guidance in relevant policies where it was not included in the plan. A meaningful assessment of the quality, coverage and policy relationship of guidance cannot be made from analysing the plans, but must depend upon a close comparison of the plan with all published guidance issued by local planning authority.
Design guide itself can be defined as – ’a general set of design principles and standards required by the local authority and applying to a wide range of area and not just a particular site.’ (Liewelyn-Davies Weeks, Forester-Walker and Bord, 1978, p.9, Biddulph, 1996, p.145)
Guides seed to provide positive systems of intervention in the development process, and guidance should encourage negotiation between designers and planners before a scheme is submitted for planning permission. (Biddulph, 1996, p.148)
4. Development Briefs
Development briefs must also be distinguished from what in some areas are called Local Plan Briefs or Project Briefs which are basically agreements between District and County Planning Authorities over the preparation and adoption of statutory local plans.
In this context, the term of Development Brief is intended to cover documents variously called Developers’ Briefs, Planning Briefs and Design Briefs. (See figure 2)
A brief will usually be issued by local authority or other public body with responsibility for control of development in the area.
In its definition and its purpose, a development brief can be defined as followed:
‘A Development Brief, as its name implies, is a summary statement of the ‘author’s policy position on development matters relating to the site and/ or premises. It should also provide other relevant material intended either for common information between parties having a potential interest in development of a site or as a starting point for negotiation with, or competition between developers’. (RTPI, 1990, para.3)
5. Design PoliciesDesign policies as one of tools to promote and control planning and design, need to be carefully considered as integral elements of the plan’s strategy and not marginalized as dispensable considerations when development is considered.
The positioning of design policies itself in the plan is an importance statement of the overall role assigned to design. The shift towards integrating natural and built environment design concerns in an environment matters is to be applauded, but it often tends to mean that urban design is not given a very heavy emphasis. Some plans address spatial issues in a number of ways and thus count in more than one category.
- GAPS BETWEEN EXISTING TOOLS
There are a number of gaps in the control over the physical environment avalaible through development control procedures which involve a number of parties such as architects, planners and landscapers. Of course, it is possible to argue that some kind of general control over the physical environment is not the purpose of development control, that development control exists to regulate land uses, to conserve ’amenity’ and to implement development plan policies.
If development control is to remain a major tool for the implementation of plans it must be adequate to its task of implementing this broader type of plan. Urfortunately its present legal structure does not comprise a number of areas of current concern to local authority planning and to the public at large.
In the term of implementing the existing tools, it needs to balance those tools which can influence the development process. These existing toolkit in guiding quality of built environment often conflict with one another. The successful development depends on planners and urban designers bringing stakeholders together and applying the art of ’urban choreography’. Achieving a balance in this way will be in the interest of everyone who takes a part in the development process and wants to avoid inappropriate development, commercial failure, and poor design.
- CONCLUSION
The development plans should set out clearly the role and the relative weight to be attached to design policies in the development plan, and relate these clearly to the plan’s strategy and objectives. It is clear that the opportunity to develop spatial strategies to direct the location and form of development, as well as its integration with infratstructure provision and nature conservation, needs to be grasped more fully.
To formulate local policy, which is lack of design appraisal, should touch on all aspects of the environment and be easy to comprehend.
In this case, consultation should support appraisal and be reflected in policy justification.
According to the wide range of urban development, which sometime deal with large scale or maybe small area, local authority should be sensitive in providing different local policies for those different scale of development process and should be related to design concerns and criteria.
The development process which always change in period of times, will need new policies and guidances to promote and control it. The existing toolkit need to be renewed which depends on the local policy and local context within development areas.
Any policies, guidances or designs that cannot be seen clearly as a response to one or more of the urban design objectives will contribute nothing to good urban design. Equally, any policies, guidances or designs that are not expressed clearly in terms of one or more aspects of development form will be to vague to have any effect.
How the objectives and the aspects of form relate to each other will depend on both local context and the type of planning tools such as explain before in section D.
Finally, to be underlined, that the local authority has an important role to lead development process in promoting high quality design in built environment by providing its own development projects which accord to its own policies and guidance.
All the existing tools should relate and support each other to promote and control urban development process and to produce high quality development in urban built environment.
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