Urban places are essentially manifestations of organised chaos. Some are great places but many are not. Ensuring urban places are great...

Urban places are more than just buildings- its the spaces between buildings and the way the buildings relate to those spaces that matters...

We must start by remembering that we experience any urban environment on foot. We see the buildings around us, but what we perceive is...

In the city or town most change is delivered by private landowners and developers. Most of the time this involves repairing or...

Successful cities require holistic vision and planning, they require thinking beyond the space individual buildings occupy. They require...

We need to start by thinking of the layers of the city up on top of which the buildings sit. There are multiple facets to these layers:...

All urban places have a grid of streets and when thinking about delivering change we need to think about how this functions as a network....

In any urban environment, the spaces between where streets interconnect are parcels of land where buildings or green spaces appear. These...

In the pre car city there is usually little open space, particularly if it is a pre-Georgian or unplanned city. However what space is...

If we take all the previous principles and apply them to making a place, we will probably make somewhere which functions reasonably for...

The finishing of streets and open space relates to matters such as the surfacing, planting, artwork and seating. With unsuccessful places...

The British have an aversion to density, yet most Brits who live in a city want to use vibrant places and even Brits who live in suburbia...

People designing urban centres, need to understand how life is created in that centre. Successful urban spaces are filled with life. How...

The different parts of any urban environment will have different purposes and functions. In the small town you will likely have a town...

In India something like 90 cities have been declared smart cities, of these around half are prone to flooding, and there are problems...

Next to the aforementioned design rules, context is king. It is all well and good to be able to design a great place, but for that to be...

To be blunt, if there is more space than demand for retail, food and beverage, then there will be lots of empty shops and empty retail...

It is necessary to understand the characteristics and needs of the population who are going to use or live in the place so that those...

Before delivering any change it is vital to first understand housing market economics in more detail than TV's Homes Under the Hammer...

So far, we have run through the principles and context we need to understand to make sure schemes are designed well and are appropriate...