Real Estate Development, Urban Design and the Tools Approach to Public Policy

Urban design and place-making involves two key challenges – the first involves recognising what makes ‘good’ urban design and what constitutes ‘better’ places. The second involves delivering good urban design and creating better places on the ground. The first challenge involves, inter alia, developing and reflecting on normative theory about what constitutes a ‘good’ place. The second challenge typically requires close engagement with the real estate development process. This book deliberately focuses on the role and significance of design in the real estate development process, on the decision-making of key development actors and on the relationship between developers and designers. Its overarching object is to explore how higher quality development and better places can be achieved in practice through public policy (i.e. by state actions). It does not, however, interrogate the meaning of higher quality development, or of better places, which have both been addressed at length elsewhere. Instead, for the purpose of analysis, we intend to set aside these issues and focus clearly on delivery. We therefore make the assumption that, in any particular circumstance, ‘higher quality’ and ‘better’ can be defined and agreed and, in turn, made the object of public policy and design processes.1 If we know – or think we know – what better places are, it then becomes essential to understand how best to achieve them.