ABSTRACT
On the first point – the separation of the professions – our experience is that a critical divide exists between the various professional consultants charged with creating and evaluating urban schemes. In its simplest manifestation, the divide is technical – the deficiency of designers in understanding transport planners, property consultants understanding design, and transport planners understanding property. This springs from ignorance either of each participant’s methodology (How do designers design? How do transport planners plan? How do property consultants measure value?) or of their nomenclature. (What is ‘materiality’, or ‘free movement’ or ‘junction capacity’ or ‘yield’ or ‘juxtaposition’?) At a more complex level, and of greater concern, the divide is philosophical. One example relates to movement and the design of public space. The urban transport paradigm has been to keep traffic moving – including pedestrians – whereas the intention of the public realm designer is often to stop people moving by giving them somewhere to sit. Similarly, the property consultant is often looking to avoid ‘leakage’ in shopping centre designs whereas the urban designer is advocating ‘permeability’.
