The Assembly, Planning and Design: Key issues

Introduction    Key issues    The Assembly and the Planning System   Urban Design    Transport    Strategic Planning

The following key issues emerged from the seminar papers and the discussion that ensued.

General

1. The debate on planning and design policy should, in keeping with the Assembly's commitment to inclusion, be as wide as possible, and transcend particular interests and groupings. The identification of Welsh distinctiveness is central to the future shape and content of policy. Historical and cultural factors need to be emphasised as part of this distinctiveness and as integral to a vision of the future.


2. The Assembly should stimulate a debate about environmental quality and take positive steps to empower people and communities and promote social inclusion through the process of education in the built environment.


3. If the public can be encouraged to understand and care about environmental quality, to develop the civic awareness, that is a feature of other countries but is poorly represented in Wales, then this should influence not only community action, but the choices of politicians and developers.


4. The Assembly itself should look outward and encourage an international dimension to its work in planning and design.
   

Strategic planning

1. Planning can help preserve the culture of Wales but at the same time it needs to help raise our economic performance and reconcile issues of environmental quality and development pressure.


2. All-Wales strategic planning needs to address all issues of environment and sustainability, including transportation, the rural economy, and imbalances amongst the regions in growth rates. At the same time, strategic planning needs to be flexible and regularly updated to meet changing and evolving environmental, economic and social circumstances.


3. There is a need for effective strategic planning guidance and for regional guidance as a framework for unitary development plans; both all-Wales guidance and regional guidance should be statutory. The effectiveness of the present system of action through local authority consortia will be limited, and the more controversial issues will not be addressed properly, without clear guidelines from the Assembly.


4. Strategic and regional guidance needs to be connected to strategic planning guidance in the English regions to which the Welsh regional economies relate, particularly in north-east and south-east Wales.

Integrated transport

1. The lack of power in the Assembly over rail and air makes the development of integrated transport policy problematic, yet the Assembly must have a key role in reconciling economic, environmental and social objectives in the shaping of inter-urban transport systems. The Assembly could be especially influential were it to think creatively about rail and bus franchising.
2. Modest investment in the road network is required but substantial investment is required in rail and bus if there is to be any chance of addressing road traffic reduction targets and producing a modal shift in favour of public transport.
3. Investment in rail is especially important in developing N-S links and opening up west Wales to investment.
4. The creation of the Assembly in Cardiff requires the creation of new fast bus and rail links between different places in Wales and Cardiff, and to design a fast shuttle service between Cardiff's Central Station and the Bay.

Urban design

1. Environmental and urban design is integral to sustainability. The relationships between urban form, urban design and sustainable behaviour are important as is the need to that rural and urban issues should be considered together rather than separately.
2. Influencing the type and quality of the spaces between buildings is more important than being prescriptive about the design of individual buildings. If this is to be achieved there is a key role for the Assembly in ensuring that urban design sets a context for new development and this should be emphasised in relevant planning policy guidance. The apparent lack of urban design and architectural expertise within the Assembly and local authorities is a matter of concern.
3. Supplementary guidance in the form of urban design statements and development briefs must be encouraged, and can help articulate a local community's aspirations, but to be robust and meaningful need to be given added weight by the Assembly.
4. Wales needs an equivalent to the former Royal Fine Arts Commission but this should have a more democratic structure.
5. The influence of transport engineers and highways design standards in defining the environmental quality of urban areas is a matter of concern. The need to integrate land use, transport and environmental planning at the local, regional and national level is crucial if an effective agenda for sustainability is to be achieved.