Sustainability Guide

For our towns, cities and other settlements to be sustainable, they have to be 'locations of choice', not 'locations of rejection'. We can all tell successful places, it does not take special expertise.

We can however use the analytical tools of urban design to work out some of the elements of a successful sustainable place, and try to learn from that to guide our future developments.

The Urban Task Force, chaired by Lord Rogers, recently set out the principles that we have used as this section's Rules of Thumb.

Much of this section and the Rules of Thumb are directly relevant to the larger or strategic development, such as a housing estate, town extension, or business park.

But many of the principles above are equally relevant to smaller-scale local level developments such as an office building or group of houses. As an example: 'Making walking easy' can mean planning a new village with a 'grid' of streets - or at individual site level, it can mean looking for opportunities to put a cut-through next to the site, to save 5 minutes' walk for everyone in the neighbourhood.

Respect Site and Setting

A town that we like will have a sense of place. It draws on where and what it is, and on the way in which the forms of the buildings, and the spaces between them, play off their setting. The North East's best example is probably Durham. Not everywhere can be a Durham, but everywhere has the potential to be itself, and for designers to respect its site and its setting.

Respect Context and Character

The successful places also have a distinct character. This is not just about the architecture - there will always be arguments about style and appearance. Yet an essential part of the British urban tradition, at its most fluent in Georgian times, has been the use of a simple, modular and flexible system, which created harmony, and also gave adaptability.

We don't have to copy this, but we can learn from it, and from good modern practice in, for example, Holland. Design will feel more natural, and socially sustainable, if it respects regional identity - identifying the characteristics of the North East or sub-regional areas that contribute to its identity. These may include climate, topography, social make up, economic characteristics and building forms.

Respect the Environment: fit development into its landscape setting

The design of a new development needs to fit it into its environment. Landscape structure is the interweaving of many things - from the parks, streets, squares and water features down to the detail of buildings and boundaries that define the edge of the public realm, and the street furniture and surfaces contained within it.

Designers and developers need to consider these public spaces in an integrated way. This will provide a setting for interaction within a community, an attractive backcloth for buildings, a source of recreation and wildlife support. All open spaces should have a well-defined purpose, so that they are cared for and maintained, rather than just left over.

The starting point for ensuring conveniently sited and adequate amounts of sports and play facilities is an assessment of local need. Sometimes, rather than provide a new facility within a development, it will be more appropriate to contribute towards raising the standard and accessibility of an existing park or children's playground. It is the quality that really matters.

40 Units per Hectare Low permeability Large variety of uses accommodated High wildlife support	70 units per hectare Good Permeability Medium variety of uses accommodated Medium wildlife support	55 units per hectare High permeability low variety of uses accommodated low wildlife support

A network of different open-space types is often more useful for visual amenity, recreational use and wildlife corridors than isolated and unrelated landscape elements. A balance will need to be struck between promoting public access and protecting biodiversity.

Development that minimises environmental impact will work with the existing natural landscape:

• Orientate buildings to follow slope contours, use natural flow drainage
• Conserve mature vegetation, choose new planting that enhances biodiversity
• Use light canopy deciduous trees to provide shade in summer and shelter in winter

Create a Real Public Realm

At their best, English towns have excellent public spaces of all kinds. But the public realm is much more than the green space. Where we are perhaps less comfortable is in creating and maintaining the smaller pieces of the public domain. We have no real equivalent of the series of tiny public spaces (small squares or 'placettes') which make it a series of successive delights to walk through Aix-en-Provence or Prague. We handle clumsily the bits of pavement space that are not quite a street, not quite a square. Our new housing estates waste land, and do not take opportunities for shared public space between their buildings.

Designs, at small site scale just as much as in big schemes, should ensure that buildings make a positive contribution to the public realm, and vice versa. Design streets and other public spaces not just as routes but as the focus of community life by following these principles:

Building line: a common, though not necessarily straight, building line defines the width of the street. It therefore influences its character - the scale, proportion and feeling of continuity between individual buildings. Break this too often or too severely and the street rhythm is lost. Attending to the spaces between the pavement and front door - often described as the threshold - is important. Care needs to be taken to ensure these spaces are usable and attractive, and that they allow individuals to personalise their environment.

Enclosure: it is the three-dimensional mass of each building that defines the nature of streets and spaces. Good urban space (which includes the centre of villages) needs to be contained.

This means thinking as much about the quality of the public realm when creating buildings as the buildings themselves and the way they relate to their neighbours. Some simple ratios exist for judging the best fit between height and street, often described as enclosure (see Rules of Thumb). Fineness of grain is often the key to a town feeling liveable, friendly and fun.

Active and attractive edges: Having frequent doors, windows and balconies, with few blank walls, adds interest, life and vitality to the public realm - a quality often described as 'active frontage'. In more central areas, this also means enabling lively internal uses, such as shops or cafes, to be visible from the outside, or spilling onto the street. Building size and scale: the size of a building not only has a bearing on the feel of adjacent public space, but also has an impact on energy consumption and the ability to change use over time.

Maximising windows and doors encourages active frontage

In many urban situations, 3-4 storey buildings provide a flexible form and have low energy demands, whilst also enclosing the street.

Transparent windows enable communication between outside and inside

Balconies, canopies and bay windows enliven frontage

Regenerating Settlements

Many of the region's centres and older industrial areas are suffering from neglect and decline. In order to bring new vitality and investment, public realm improvements are needed.

The design of public spaces needs to take account of pedestrian comfort, safety and ease of access, as well as delighting the eye and stimulating the imagination. Different professions involved in this work (engineers, planners, architects, landscape and urban designers) need to work closely together.

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Artists can bring new ideas to create interest, often successfully interpreting the character and history of the area in an innovative way.

Plan at a People Scale

'Fineness of grain' - often, a key to a town's feeling liveable, friendly and fun - is its 'grain' or block size. Small building plots and short blocks allow frequent linkages. They give a flexible grid: so pedestrians can choose varied and interesting routes; they provide multiple frontages for sales, views and access. American writer Jane Jacobs made small and varied blocks one of the key elements of what was successful about New York - and especially Manhattan - when she was analysing 'The Death & Life of Great American Cities'. But this applies even more so to our older British towns - they again contain much we can learn from.

We need to be designing so as to create a walkable street network. In a sustainable settlement, walking and cycling should be the most convenient modes of transport for all local trips. This quality is often referred to as permeability - the ease with which people can move through an area by a choice of routes.

A large development should be based on a network or grid of streets that focuses on centres of activity, whether the local shops, community facilities or bus stop. Within this permeable network, convenient bus stops or railway stations should be available to carry people beyond comfortable walking distance. Smaller schemes can still provide convenient extra routes for people to take short cuts and make walking easier: if designers and developers look for them.

Use Land Efficiently - Use Land Intensively

Intensity of use ('density') is an important element in the successful and sustainable place. The towns that we like, the ones we think 'work', are quite intensive in the way they use land - the close succession of activities one after another - the compactness and convenience that they offer.

Many of our cities are now too strung out, too loose in form, to be of much interest to anyone - they are simply too much hard work to use. Parts of Newcastle's West End show this all too well. To ensure that Government targets are met for using recycled land and preserving the countryside, whilst also developing in such a way as to support rather than undermine urban life, the issue of density needs to be addressed. The challenge is to maximise intensity and density without creating the perception of over-crowding.

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For example, Jesmond shows that generous living spaces can be achieved at higher densities than their contemporary equivalents.

High quality landscaping is combined with buildings of a human scale within a network of streets. This requires a flexible approach to post-war standards for parking spaces and overlooking distances.

The government now encourages all new residential developments to achieve an average density of 30 units per hectare (u/ha), although there are considerable benefits in raising this further to make local facilities viable.

At 35-40 houses per hectare local commercial, community and transport facilities become much more viable. About 100 persons per hectare (pph) are necessary to support a good bus service and 240 pph to sustain a tram or Metro. Increasing the density gradient towards the centre of the neighbourhood, with its bus stop, Metro or railway station, allows more people to be within close walking distance of public transport and local facilities. This is in fact a description of many traditional villages, towns and cities in the North East Region. It contains lessons not just for new building, and for the brownfield sites, but also for possible suburban redesign, housing estate rejuvenation, and councils thinking about facilities and community-owned assets.

Mix Activities

Liveable towns and cities are not a series of single-use zones. Leeds has recognised the power of an attractive new mixed quarter, growing The Calls & Riverside district organically as a lively mixed-use extension of the city centre, crammed with entertainment, media and creative businesses, hotels, housing, shops and visitor attractions.

This is not just a big-city issue. Local facilities bring residents together, reinforcing the community and reducing the need to use the car.

The starting point for promoting such mixed-use development is to ensure that local shops, schools and the bus stop are convenient to get to on foot. The neighbourhood unit can provide a useful device for structuring large development - but only when it is overlaid on a permeable street network that is fully integrated with its surroundings. A widely used benchmark is to apply a 400m radius from the local centre, which equates to a 5-minute walk and covers an area of about 50 hectares.

Most activities can live side-by-side, with potential conflict designed out at the detailed level. This is most successfully done when a range of services is provided near residential areas without creating single-use zones of shopping, business and entertainment.

Sustainable settlements grow up around centres of activity, often at a natural crossroads between destinations. This helps create a sense of place, provides passing trade and ensures that public transport facilities can be fully integrated.

Design Out Crime

The combination of good design, good management and community involvement is effective in creating secure environments and the risk and fear of violence. One of the most effective measures of community safety and crime prevention is the creation of lively, lived-in built areas and public spaces, which are easy to overlook and oversee.

The local authority are now legally bound to prevent crime and disorder, therefore new development should build in safety by following these three key principles:

Ensuring surveillance and human activity
This can be achieved by making buildings front the street.

• Avoiding blank frontages - include windows and doors putting 'eyes on the street'
• Mixing uses to encourage activity at all times of the day and night
• Designing an integrated network of streets that go from and to destinations, encouraging human activity
• Locating parking on the street where they can be overlooked or in secure rear courts
• Choosing planting carefully, for example prickly boundary hedges where you want to prevent access, and lower less dense species where people need to see and be seen
• Entrances and exits should be visible from adjacent buildings, with good lighting and security

Minimising conflict
Safe and convenient routes suited for walking and cycling. Where there has to be a grill or security fence, disguise it as a piece of sculpture, e.g. wrought iron decorative gates or shutters.

Designing-in a sense of place and community When people view public spaces as their own they take care of them. Design to foster ownership and belonging Contact the local crime prevention officers and police architectural liaison officers for further practical advice on security and safety

Mix Housing Tenure

The creation of a socially sustainable well-balanced community also requires that a diversity of housing types and tenures are sprinkled throughout an area, rather than clustered in separate enclaves.

There are a range of ways of accommodating a mix of uses and tenures in close proximity. This includes 'horizontal mixing' of adjacent buildings within a block, 'vertical mixing' between storeys in a building and a hybrid of the two. Flexible building design will enable uses to change and adapt over time.

Choosing a Sustainable Location: the planning policy background

To promote more sustainable patterns of development and constrain encroachment of the countryside, the Government has set a national target that 60% of all new housing should be on previously developed (or 'brownfield') land.

Within this overall framework, there are three broad locations that can support sustainability, in this sequence:

• intensification of existing urban areas by developing derelict and under-used land and reusing existing buildings, particularly in areas most accessible by public transport (see The Countryside).
• urban extensions that are integrated with the edge of urban areas, capitalising on existing services and public transport provision.
• new settlements with a minimum population of 30,000 people and far enough away from an existing town or city to promote self-sufficiency.

The least sustainable solution is sprinkling small numbers of housing in and around existing villages or producing new settlements of a modest size. It is also important that development avoids areas of valued landscape - both those recognised as nationally important and those recognised as having local landscape or ecological value - and that public access is safeguarded, such as footpaths to the countryside.

The Regional Planning Guidance for the North East and county and local development plans designate suitable areas for development and define the parameters of how the sustainability of a site will be assessed. The selection of sites should be influenced by environmental considerations.

Environmental Assessment has a role to play in the consideration of alternatives and should assist in identifying sites where adverse impacts on other resources, and on the quality of life of local communities, can be avoided or minimised. (See Conserve and Enhance Biodiversity and Minerals)

Many of the themes in this section are now at the heart of Government thinking on how to regenerate and celebrate our urban areas. The major policy statement 'our towns and cities - the future' (the first urban paper for 25 years) pulls the thinking together, and relates it to other strands of social and economic regeneration.

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Rules of Thumb

• Think About the Whole Place

Sources of Info

• Towards an Urban Renaissance - The Urban Task Force
• Building the 21st Century Home
• Village Design, The Countryside Commission
• Sustainable Settlements, University of West England Barton
• Responsive Environments
• By Design: Urban Design in the Planning System, The Department of Environment
• Places, Streets and Movement: A companion guide to Design
• The Urban Design Compendium
• Energy Demand - links to land use and forward planning
• A Guide to Green Networks
• The new Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) Regulations - DLTR
• Millennium Villages and Sustainable Communities
• The Death & Life of Great American Cities
• Our Towns & Cities - The Future (the Urban White Paper) - DLTR
• Building Security by Management and Design - North East Risk Management Group and Thorn Security

Case Studies

• A Waterfront Renaissance, Newcastle Quayside
• Central Post Office Building, Newcastle