The Prince's Foundation has a fair chance of winning the 31,000-home masterplan for the Kent growth area 鈥� they're pally with Prescott, and win points for planning-delay-busting design codes. So is Ashford set to be another Poundbury?
The news that the Prince's Foundation has been shortlisted to masterplan a new urban village in Kent may cause modernist housing architects to rethink their career plans. If the Prince's Foundation and its American project team win the competition to plan the 31,000 homes in Ashford, the designs are likely to mimic those of Prince Charles' neo-traditionalist Poundbury village in Dorset.

Ashford is not the only place that could soon be boasting thatched cottages and almshouses. There are other schemes backed by the Prince's Foundation that are finding favour with the government, such as Lightmoor Village in Shropshire, Llandarchy Urban Village in Wales and an urban extension in Northampton.

The Prince's Foundation will fancy its chances of winning. Three weeks ago John Prescott visited the Disneyesque town of Seaside, Florida, which was designed by Duany Plater-Zyberk, the Miami based architect working on the Ashford competition entry.

Seaside, which was the setting for the Truman Show, was built using strict design codes 鈥� something close to the heart of Prince Charles, who has a strict traditionalist design code in Poundbury governing everything from telegraph poles to roof tiles.

Prescott has already been considering using design codes to speed the planning process in Ashford and the three other growth areas in the ODPM's Sustainable Communities Plan. If architects adhere to the codes then their designs could be rubber-stamped and would avoid having to return to local planning committees. In the eyes of the government, design codes therefore serve two purposes: speeding up the planning system, and improving local design quality.

Such a design code will be in place at Lightmoor Village near Birmingham, which last month received outline planning permission for 800 new homes. The site is owned by English Partnerships but will be managed by the Bournville Trust, which is insisting that all housing be built in the Shropshire vernacular. The architect Piers Gough has already hit out at the scheme calling it "sickly" and "cloying".

The architect behind the masterplan for Lightmoor Village is Tibbalds TM2, which designed Crest Nicholson's Ingress Park in North Kent. This development wins government brownie points for having a high density of housing and for fitting in with the Kentish vernacular 鈥� it has been lauded as the best new development in the Thames Estuary.

For a glimpse of the past as possible future, visit the Prince's Foundation headquarters in Shoreditch from 15 November. An exhibition on "contemporary delivery of traditional urbanism" features 20 examples of urban developments around the world that have been inspired by design codes and pattern books.