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S106
February 12, 2012A largely futile attempt by planners to get developers to cough up for all the glamorous things the developers promised at the time of the application but had no intention or capacity to deliver. Often part of an attempt by planners to pre-empt a revised planning application.
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 moreA New Quarter for... (np)
January 13, 2011A desperate area of usually remote vacant and contaminated land, hitherto occupied by noxious and noisome activities, excluded from the historic development of any urban area, and generally unknown and unloved by all bar Iain Sinclair. Often found accompanied by a fantasy masterplan detaching the area from any relationship to its history or surroundings, and prepared by an ennobled architect who is sometimes good at designing buildings but untested at large scale urban design, and a glossy brochure full of images of improbable comparisons to real places in other parts of the world produced by an increasingly desperate and deluded development company.
Read moreKick 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 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 moreUrban village (n)
January 13, 2011A 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)
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.
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