Urban design policies in English local plans: content and prescriptions

This paper explores the content of urban design policies in the new generation of English local development plans, and makes some prescriptions for policy development. Drawing on and developing the theoretical discussion in a previous paper it takes five dimensions of urban design - district-wide strategies, public perception issues, townscape considerations, urban form concerns, and public realm matters - and explores current policy content, identifies useful ideas and practice, discusses a range of relevant policy sources, and develops a series of recommendations that should guide future policy. It dissects each of the above-mentioned areas into individual design considerations that might be developed in policy. It also explores alternatives to this systematic approach that prioritize the context, scale or type of development in the writing of policy. The paper concludes with a set of general recommendations for policy writing.