Glasgow has adopted an ecological city strategy in its 1996 vision, which focuses on economy, education, safety and social infrastructure including culture and leisure, in the context of diversity and partnership. Statutory plans are inflexible and take too long. Competitions, non-statutory design briefs and action plans are better tools to encompass variety, ingenuity, skills and art within a well layered national framework of sustainability and viability. Rob Cowan has proposed alternative design criteria, such as process, public realm, senses, scale, alternatives, time, history, relativity, artistry, choices, variety, the involvement of the enforcers and the role of mixed use. Such a people-centred approach does not dispense with analysis or professional design, which includes choice of materials, lighting, art and water.
Examples show that mixed use is an important feature of successful public realm.
The successful Glasgow City Centre Millennium Public Realm Project illustrated the benefits of collaboration between p rofessionals, funding agencies, public and private sectors and local communities in delivering projects. The diagram above, by Gillespies, illustrates the way in which clear space can be provided up to the line of the former pavement with street furniture, features and lighting available in the central space where it is pedestrianised. Partnerships Successful delivery has to start with collaborative project design, as well as a unified approach to delivery, maintenance and management. Partnerships have to include the users, the community, the funders, the managers and the enforcers. Neither the planning system nor the implementation procedures have been very good at involving people and participation has been low despite legal provision.