Kings Chambers Planning

What if all new terraced houses were this good & this simple? Just following simple patterns that evolve gently with the centuries, making people happy not creating false ruptures.

Well done @HistoricEngland making Coventry better ….

Apparently Coventry is building a tram line at less than a fifth of the per mile cost of the Edinburgh tram, and with a construction time of *eight weeks* rather than six years. The trick is the use of battery-powered trams and shallow prefabricated tracks. A potential breakthrough? capx.co/coventrys-tram…

I’m so jealous that 🇺🇸 even has a chance to build something this good. This is what Milton Keynes should have looked like!

Recently finished in Le Plessis-Robinson near Paris. This is a social housing renewal scheme, replacing decayed postwar blocks with mixed-tenure and mixed-use development at much higher densities.

Like most European cities, Valencia was built on a river, vital for freight transport until the invention of railways. In the 1950s, fed up with flooding, the Valencians redirected the river around the city and turned the original river bed into an enormous linear park.

A Chicago two-flat.

Wow! Social housing in the Balearic Islands, Spain. Built using local stone, bricks and timber.

Wildlife charities have hit out at the government’s proposed removal of the pre-application consultation stage from the nationally significant infrastructure project (NSIP) regime. planningresource.co.uk/article/191654…

Iran is currently producing some stunning brick architecture

The government is making reasonable progress on reforming the "superstructure" of the planning system but there are plenty of smaller wins available too - changes that will remove grit from the system, and speed it up. Some thoughts for @housing_today housingtoday.co.uk/comment/abolis…

The government will amend the Planning and Infrastructure Bill to allow the housing secretary to impose a surcharge on planning application fees to reflect costs incurred by statutory consultees for providing advice in the application process. planningresource.co.uk/article/191569…

Dublin's garden squares illustrate an important principle in the economics of placemaking. Although parks are, in themselves, a pure cost to developers, they raised the value of the surrounding houses so much that developers laid them out anyway. The key condition for this was unified land ownership: landowners will sacrifice land for public goods if they own enough surrounding land that this benefits them. Fragmented land ownership is more likely to generate 'race to the bottom' effects. In understanding the economics of placemaking, the unity of land ownership is one of your core tools.

@DeltapollUK @TfL @putney_bid @relondon Manchester's City Council plans to transform some of the bin filled alleys in city centre to green & pleasant streets, using consolidation points to reduce number of bins & make space for greenery & people. 📸Arup

The planning minister and housing secretary have both claimed that the government remains on track to meet its target to deliver 1.5 million new homes in England this parliament, despite the Office for Budget Responsibility estimating it would fall short planningresource.co.uk/article/191414…

One of my favorite apartment buildings I've come across in some time. Warm, earthy, strong natural materials, and eminently welcoming. The most surprising part? It's public housing!

Lambton Park by @MillerHomesUK has some of the best house types I’ve seen in a new UK development. Even the block of flats is really impressive. Excellent bricks, windows and ornament. And this is outside Sunderland, where presumably the viability is more difficult.

The design and build quality of this hospital in Barcelona is remarkable Even more so that it achieves this despite needing 2m thick concrete walls (to limit radiation) and 1m2 of mechanical floor area for every 2m2 of clinic

Today we celebrated the opening of Deansgate Cycleway by riding the entire length to Chorlton and grabbing a beer. The dream!