Sustainable Futures in the Built Environment to 2050

7Sustainable Design of the Built Environment

Lorraine Farrelly

7.1 Introduction

There are a range of initiatives that consider the idea of improving the quality of design and the experience of place making, and which implicitly highlight the importance of sustainable design. The Farrell Review, led by Farrell Architects (Farrell, 2013), was a national review of architecture and the built environment. One of its themes was design policy and it suggested that strong leadership is needed at local authority level to encourage a collective community‐led approach to improving the quality of the built environment. It also suggested that all government decision‐making panels for major infrastructure reviews should have design professionals represented. The idea of the design review panel, a group of professionals from disciplines across the built environment from architects to landscape specialists, environmental engineers, transport engineers, was supported as a way to ensure that the design of the built environment is considered by a range of professional perspectives. This approach meant there was an objective debate around design quality that informed the planning process.

In response to the Farrell Review, there was a proposal that all towns and cities should have an ‘urban room’, a place to encourage discussion around place‐making and the quality of townscape and urban environments and cities. A group of academics and professionals have established Place Alliance. This is an ...