Michael Gove backs Policy Exchange’s plan for a new school of urban design to improve "indifferent and insipid" town planning

A new national school of urban design and architecture, breaking down divides between the two disciplines, is needed to tackle the mediocrity of much British town planning, according to a new report by Policy Exchange today. 

In a foreword, the Housing Secretary, Michael Gove, writes: "While the tradition of great architecture continues to flourish, all too frequently in Britain the places around it do not. How often have we seen what would otherwise be good housing developments let down by poor landscaping or indifferent or insipid urban character? How many public spaces are poorly designed, managed and maintained?

"If we accept that places are integral to levelling up and design is integral to places, then what can we identify as being central to design? The answer is unmistakably clear: education.

"We must do all we can to ensure a new generation of built environment professionals are armed with the best skills and techniques possible to enable them to go out and build beautiful, sustainable places in which people and communities can thrive." 

As Mr Gove writes: “Much of the opposition to new housing developments is often grounded in a fear that the quality of the new buildings and places created will be deficient and therefore detrimental to existing neighbourhoods and properties. If a general improvement in the standard of design reassures the general public that this will in fact not be the case, then they may be less likely to oppose it."

The report, ‘A School of Place: How a New School of Architecture can Revitalise Britain’s Built Environment,’ makes the case for the establishment of a new national architecture and urban planning school with the express aim of improving placemaking standards across the built environment industry. An embargoed copy is attached to this email.

The school will complement existing qualification routes for architects, planners, engineers, designers and other built environment professionals and will offer nationally recognised vocational validation certificates.

The report says the new institution's intake should be "rigorously multidisciplinary,"including architects, planners, designers, engineers and consultants from across the built environment spectrum. This would break down divisions between these fields and ensure an unprecedented level of collaboration and integration, the absence of which is often hugely detrimental to placemaking projects.

It also recommends that placemaking designs should more conspicuously incorporate and reflect public views where practicable. The school’s curriculum will remain fully conscious that vocations like architecture and planning remain fundamentally professional pursuits. The aim is not to reduce the built environment to a popularity contest, but to stem the tide of disfranchisement that many of the public feel when engaging with the development process or planning system.

By providing the educational methodologies required to ensure that all places, especially those termed deprived and ’left-behind’, can realise their full potential, the school seeks to play an active role in the levelling up agenda.

The new school would practise stylistic neutrality. So-called ’style wars’ between traditionalists and modernist have played a disproportionately large role in architectural debate since the late 20^th century and, to a large extent, have left architectural education academically biased against traditional styles that have often proved popular with the general public. The new school will seek to redress this bias but will also ensure that theoretical doctrines from all styles and architectural periods are equally reflected. 

Additional information:

• Mindful of the need to beautify and dramatically improve the quality of our built environment, in 2020 the Government’s Building Better Building Beautiful Commission was convened after a prior Policy Exchange report recommendation and a policy evolution of Policy Exchange’s Building Beautiful programme. You can read the report here. The Commission identified a placemaking “skills gap” as one of the key obstacles to the realisation of this enhanced built environment. In order to address this educational deficit, it recommended the promotion of a “wider understanding of placemaking”.

• The proposed new school explicitly seeks to meet this challenge. By creating a new generation of architects, planners, engineers and consultants all equipped with the capacity to dispense the very highest standards of placemaking quality and design it is hoped that Britain’s homes and communities will eventually attain a level of beauty and resilience that will have a transformative effect not only on the country’s housing supply but on its urban landscape and identity.

• This is not a quick fix. But, by citing and learning from historic examples of previous transformative architecture schools and by ensuring that the school forensically focuses on the skills gaps that have been identified across the built environment industry, the paper is of the firm belief that the proposed new school has the potential to lay the foundations for the better homes and places that are critical to the UK’s future wellbeing and success.