ABSTRACT
This chapter concerns the public sector’s role in securing and maintaining high quality environments. It examines how public agencies use a range of statutory powers not only to provide a quality threshold over which development proposals must pass, but also to guide, encourage and enable appropriate development, and to work towards the enhancement of the public realm. In reviewing the range of mechanisms available to public authorities, particular reference is made to a major source of urban design action, that of public sector design control/review. The public sector’s role is much more than that of ‘controlling’ or ‘guiding’ design and development. In its various forms, it has the potential to influence urban quality through a wide range of statutory and non-statutory functions (see Box 11.1). These enable the public sector to be an important contributor to the quality of the built environment both in its own right and by influencing,
and requiring high quality development from the private sector. A study of London’s urban environment expressed these public sector activities as ‘policies and processes’, ‘maintaining influences’ and ‘enabling factors’ (Figure 11.1).
