A collection of residential blocks even more tightly packed than usual, and generally to be found in improbable locations hitherto deemed unfit for human habitation (cf Millennium Village, Olympic Village)
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Kick start (vb)
January 13, 2011a generally vain attempt to get something immovable to move, with a large amount of hubris and publicity, and few obvious or measurable results. The kick, applied without due care, can have the opposite effect to that intended and bring it to a final and permanent halt.
Read moreTo 'win' planning consent
February 12, 2012Exactly when planning consents ceased to be granted, and begun to be 'won', is difficult to establish, but it there does seem to be a telling alignment with the arrival and ascendance of 'X Factor' and similar TV shows . Reports that DCLG are considering adopting a phone -in celebrity-led system of planning decision making as part of a new neighbourhood approach 'to make planning more exciting', have not been denied by Ministers, although stories that Simon Cowell might be enobled in the next Honours List to take charge of this are as yet unconfirmed
Read moreGreen Belt (n)
January 13, 2011An invention which served to bring the urban evolution of the UK to a juddering halt as first the automobile, then the decline of industry, and now the growth of technology placed increasingly impossible demands on its obsolete urban shape and structure.
Read moreBrownfield Land
February 12, 2012Land which remains undeveloped for very good, rational reasons,usually to do with contamination, lousy environment, unliveability, remoteness or inaccessibility, but whose development priority, at all costs, remains the core article of faith among planning theologists. The inevitable consequence of this has been that very little development now takes place and where it does it is usually bad. Good development of brownfield land is certainly possible, but is contingent on a combination of time, imagination, expertise, an unbankruptable developer, and generous public subsidy - all of which are in very short supply (..outside the Olympic Park...) . In the absence of any wiser approach to the issue, we can therefore expect very little development, let alone good development, to take pla...
Read moreOlympic Legacy (n)
January 13, 2011A vibrant (qv) and growing branch of urban theology whose core belief is that spending a very, very, very large amount of money on sporting venues in a very, very, very, small part of the country, will bring potentially limitless benefits to a potentially limitless number and range of people, or possibly Tottenham Hotspur
Read more'Outline' planning consent
February 12, 2012A term, now used ironically, to apply to the process whereby a quick decision on the simple principle of development has been turned into a mammoth existentialist drama which is only resolved, if ever, long after the conditions which spawned the original development proposal have long since departed. Often closely associated with s106
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