Martlesham Heath Householders

The obvious but difficult challenge faced by the expanding residential sector in Ireland, particularly in Dublin and Cork, is place making. How we relate to our home and indeed our sense of belonging, has not just to do with the estate agents' descriptions of its interior und access to shops, crèche, schools and transport but the quality and management of streets and space between buildings and whether it is ours, yours or at least somebody's! Overlooking can have connotations of encroachment on privacy, yet 'eyes on the street' are crucial for mutual sense of safety. It is said that we have a capacity to recognise and relate to about 500 people so that becomes another bullet point on the ever expanding checklist of virtuous measures for community makers. We must remember that, because of the way ownership is now structured, housing is a 'hard' land use, which remains in place for 100 years or more whereas the development cycle for retail, workplace and leisure can be surprisingly short.

Such concerns are so obvious and have been around since Aristotle observed that a city must be planned to make its inhabitants secure and happy, yet achieving that goal is still a huge challenge despite our society's technical prowess. Camillo Sitte in the 1890s understood the city at a series of linked perspectives through public spaces provided for its citizens. Thomas Sharp author of several books on town planning writing in 1939 described towns as "the physical expression of a nation's civilisation" and saw them as "essays in large scale architectural composition". A theme extolled and brilliantly illustrated by Gordon Cullen from the 1950s to 60s. This was, of coarse, the very era of town planning, which bowed to technical concerns about traffic and land use segregation and ultimately destroyed the street. By the late 1990s, David Mackay and other urbanists described streets as the "backbone of our society".

So where does urban design fit into these concerns? Nowadays, town planning (as opposed to development control) stops with zoning at 1:1250 and architecture starts at 1:200, often on small land parcels with high land value and so development economics conspire against place making. There is a yawning gap between these two professional roles and with planners less versed in the power of design, the spatial skills of the urban designer in land parcelling and road lay out are most needed at the 1:1000 and 1:500 scales. In a decade where every practice calls itself masterplanners, does that term have any particular meaning or definition or mere grandiose appeal by word association?

Generalising town planning is about two dimensions (plan), urban design is about the third dimension (space) and both require comprehension on of the fourth dimension (time). Masterplanning implies a rigid and authoritative predetermination of outcome, whereas Development Framework is a more useful description of the skeleton of infrastructure and design principles, which can embrace diverse and evolving contributions and influences.

The identity and legibility of our towns and cities has less to do with the current obsession with icon buildings and much more with the particularity of the fabric of homes and work places and shops that make our streets.

Recent research by the New Economic Foundation (NEF) of over 100 UK towns reveals how over 40% are deemed 'clone towns' - places where the high street is an identikit strip of global and national chains. In contrast, a 'home town' has retained its character and is instantly recognizable to a visitor The decline in local shop owners is on a huge scale and NEF makes the emotive analogy to ecological diversity and the loss of species. NEF does make innovative suggestions for policy changes and has found international precedents. Such a campaign did revive 'real ale' in the 80s so roll on 'real streets'! There seems to be an over simplistic, even dangerous, myth that delivering an iconic building ( Bilbao's Guggenheim is oft quoted) will be the catalyst that suddenly changes the destiny of a district or city. Indeed, what commissioning body nowadays does not ask for an "iconic building" as an "emblem of themselves and their power" as opined by Deyan Sudjik. Sadly not all sites are appropriate for an extrovert building and no city is composed only of self important and assertive edifices. This is a reminder that more attention has to be given to good ordinary buildings that make up our streets.

The diversity of our cities has come about over time and is more a consequence of land ownership, patterns than intentional planning. The complexity of the Temple Bar area and London's Covent Garden has in part resulted from the multiplicity of land ownership which has made the areas more difficult for developers to acquire and redevelop in whole blocks. The consequence of whole block redevelopment is there for all to see in too many towns and cities. Build high, corporate 'cake on a plate' buildings, neglect the street's enclosure, then add some set backs for future road widening and lo and behold all sense of street has gone. Hence now the mantra for fine grain, mixed-use and the desire for codes.

The party wall is the common thread in making streets - a physical constraint which can induce a rich repertoire of responses and produce the complexity we all appreciate.

So how do urban designers best explore and explain these ideas and concerns to developers, stakeholders and the public? Conventional plans and elevations provide notoriously poor modes of explanation. Indeed, when only those are used, it is a symptom of lack of awareness, low fees and a greedy developer in a hurry. It takes time to consider context and to communicate proposals. Devices such as physical models and walk-through computer graphics provide an excellent medium to help understand the kinetic experience of our built environment. Sadly the devices are mostly used at the wrong end of the process - by agents selling rather than designers designing. Such techniques are far more valuable than the endless aspirational image boards of world class designers' work which pad out too many submissions and often fraudulently convey senses of quality and space that are out of reach of the budget, the climate and, dare one say it, the designer's skill. Precedents are important but appropriate ones are always difficult to identify.

Tall buildings come with a civic duty of quality as the minimum obligation for their conspicuous self promotion. They are more expensive to build, so only achievable when the market wants them and where land values and development economics permit, which is rare in Ireland. The Ballymun Main Street Development Framework (1 999) promotes tall buildings in only two places, both now building - at Santry Cross by Shay Cleary and at the Southern Gateway by ARP Lorimer.

Rationing the provision and careful siting of tall structures so that they provide emphasis to the architectural composition is crucial for towns and cities. Since planning law is based on precedent, subsequent applications for other tall buildings are hard to stop without clear and steadfast guidance from planners.

The design professions bear society's recriminations for the failure of 60s dreams but management - that force which is invisible except when it is weak - was substantially to blame. The Ballymun project exemplifies the investment of personal effort and time necessary not just on the environmental regeneration but the sophisticated and painstaking confidence-building for the community's social and economic structures, which are the glue that keeps a community together and more resilient in the future.

There is concern about the number of unimplemented masterplans, which could be attributed to overambitious ideas, or more likely, to poor briefings on topics such as community's needs, development economics, stakeholder aspirations as well as unlucky timing in the economy's cycle. The common need of all major projects is to have powerful leadership - a champion - to drive the team and keep it going even when complexities are daunting.

Casting aside their unpleasant baggage, the great estates of past centuries demonstrate continuity of intent and continued investment. The Howard de Walden Estate in Marylebone have intervened positively with their retail properties to make a conscious choice as to the retailers they and their residents want and are thus countering the 'clone town' syndrome.

To endure, residential areas need comparable management to maintain the lifestyle initially provided. Span Development, the child of Lyons (architect), Townsend (developer and ex-architect) and Bilsby (builder) provided a rare environment in London's suburbs in the 50s and 60s and one which is worth visiting today. Fifty years on, they are not gated worlds, they are enclaves, (middle class ghettos maybe), of owners bonded together by a compulsory management company. The Bradford Property Trust behind Martlesham Heath in Suffolk demonstrates the same management priority on the scale of a small town. This thinking ahead is what so few developers appreciate and only makes sense when building on a large scale, as at Adamstown, where the developer will be around to reap the rewards of having invested now in the landscape, the social infrastructure and a balance of facilities, which can make a new town a place to grow roots.

The development industry has a civic obligation to take a huge leap of social imagination to avoid the UK's new town blues syndrome. Patience and belief in the longer term reward is required rather than the 'quick wins' ethic too frequently associated with housebuilders.

It is salutary that in the 50s Townsend worked on a 10% margin, rather than the 20% used today. Perhaps that is the crucial ingredient behind Span's quality. Until incentives are given to the development industry to move away from short term gain, the enduring success of what we are all building remains in doubt.