Graduates are leaving our planning schools with no passion for the built environment or its design and no understanding of the processes and the politics which produce it and which guide movement, activity and use within it. For a profession which then attempts to guide or control development within this environment, this is little short of arrogance. Unless British planners and urban designers can find the opportunity and the ability to produce inspired visions for our cities, regeneration in particular and urban development in general, will continue to be seriously undermined. Our cities will be too important to the future UK economy after the year 2000 for us to get it wrong. More than ever before there is a need for planning to be directly involved with architecture and design, but only if practice and education can accept the need to be more creative and imaginative.
Planning has a future and it is an exciting, bold and creative one.
The illustration is not a proposal of the City Council, but an example of work in progress which is being discussed with developers, landowners and the local community.