ABSTRACT
This chapter follows through concerns with quality and place identity down to the level of townscape and the design of areas of a town. It uses ideas developed in the early part of the book, and in particular in Chapter 1, to analyse the new interest in urban design. It then draws on one of the most exciting elements in the NoordXXI project, the collaborative design work done by students from Heriot-Watt and the NLH in the towns of Ellon in Aberdeenshire and Askim in Norway. This was a very rich learning experience for the students and staff involved in the project. Not only did they come to appreciate differences in design cultures, but also to experience at first hand some of the differences in the ways that planning and the institutions of planning operate in practice. Practising planners and local politicians were also involved in the projects in Ellon and Askim, so not only was it an international exercise in student collaboration, but it also straddled the academic/practitioner boundary. We now push the project a stage further by applying a critical social science perspective to the narratives of design that dominated this part of the NoordXXI project.
