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What kind of urban future can we envisage in Essex, one of the most crowded parts of Europe? Not a spectacularly good one if the 120,000 extra homes required in the Regional Plan are built to current practice. Low densities, poor design and high carbon consumption are hardly a model for a sustainable future.

These concerns led Essex council to launch the Essex Design Initiative in January 2005. Three strands of activity began:

• a campaign for higher quality that challenged everyone in the development chain to try harder
• the production of new planning guidance to help better shape the form and nature of compact, urban planning
• a learning programme that raised expectations and skill levels within the region.

Essex council also entered into a design accord with architect Ken Yeang, who has since become a director of Llewelyn Davies Yeang, providing the council with a high-level technical steer.

So why is yet more planning guidance necessary? The Essex Design Guide was first published in 1973 and has been influential in improving the quality of new residential development in the county. But the guide has been less capable in shaping responses to the more complex demands of a broader, urban agenda. The quality of recent, higher-density development has been patchy, often compromising the quality of public and private space in the search for extra capacity. Not all of these developments have been well received by existing communities and not all of them liked by the new occupiers. These developments have been poorly integrated into their urban context.

It is also clear that we are consuming finite resources at a rate that is unsustainable while producing an unacceptably high level of carbon emissions. ºÃÉ«ÏÈÉúTVs are energy inefficient and urban planning can discourage the use of sustainable transport. Urban development is also often at the expense of nature, yet it needn't be so.

Last November Essex council launched draft guidance - The Urban Place Supplement (UPS) - to help deliver a higher standard of environmentally and contextually sensitive design. Sketched out following a series of collaborative workshops, the UPS concentrates its attention on three themes:

• building in context
• influences on quality
• influences on sustainability.

Urban context

There is little point promoting compact development in places that are remote from local jobs, services and public transport. It makes no environmental sense. New jobs and housing have to be concentrated close to the centre of urban areas and neighbourhoods so that it is possible to reduce our dependency on the car. There are, of course, many other reasons why this makes sense. The supplement therefore establishes rules for determining the minimum density and nature of new urban development.

We are consuming finite resources at an unsustainable rate while producing unacceptably high carbon emission levels

Further, it requires developers and designers to audit the needs, aspirations and opportunities that exist within any locality. These exercises must be undertaken in collaboration with the local community and agencies, and completed before the design process begins.

Influences on quality

In the best urban environments it is impossible to disassociate the quality of architecture with the quality of space and functionality. These places work not only because they stimulate and delight the senses but also because they are fit for purpose. They invariably accommodate change without major adaptation and that gives them a lasting quality.

The supplement promotes the belief that the quality of the public realm is paramount and that the architecture should be informed by the local context and all things should be built to last. The new guidance will introduce a change in the way schemes are assessed for design quality. The previous emphasis on the amenity of individual dwellings has been subjugated by a more overwhelming requirement for environmental geniality and sustainability. The guidance introduces priorities for place-making that create more substantial, high-quality spaces for communal enjoyment. Its purpose is to put the fabric in place to allow for a more sociable and safer urban environment within the context of compact, mixed communities.

Influences on sustainability

Carbon savings is a primary goal of the guidance. Essex is particularly vulnerable to climate change - from flooding and drought (Essex has a lower annual rainfall than Beirut). It requires a high standard of green design across Essex that exceeds the current, minimum standard required by government and funding agencies. For instance, every building has to achieve an "excellent" EcoHomes or BREEAM rating and achieve maximum scores for water conservation and waste-recycling.

The supplement challenges designers and developers to better integrate buildings within existing, natural systems and this requires new skills and building methods. Innovations include a "green points" system of incorporating biodiversity into every urban development (see "How the Green Points system works", page 51).

Alongside such innovations, the Essex Design Initiative is rolling out a three-year learning programme across the eastern region and is seeking out opportunities with Llewelyn Davies Yeang to launch pilot projects that demonstrate how to do it. It is partly through this marriage of leadership, innovative planning and neighbourly urban design that the quality and sustainability of urban life will be improved.