Quality of urban design is not just about 'public art' but about providing places which can lift the spirit emotionally as well as functionally, while providing a safe, secure, accessible and clean environment. These places should give people the opportunity to use their energy in activities at ground level, encourage them to realise their vitality and artistry in temporary performances, such as ice sculptures or summer fetes and to get involved in self policing. Processes which make places work have to include vision. The European Commission has produced a 'vision of sustainable cities'. 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.