2:Intelligence

摘要

It's a new office set up by the Ministry of Housing, which helps communities to encourage development that they find beautiful, and refuse what they find ugly. Initially it sits within the ministry but might later become an independent body. It aims to catalyse change across government, planning and the development sector to create popular, healthy, beautiful and sustainable places.We have five main areas of work, but in the first year will focus on two: gathering evidence on popular placemaking, and sharing it with planners and neighbourhoods to support the creation of design codes - simple visual tools representing local character and preferences. The National Planning Policy Framework advises local authorities to develop design codes, and the new National Model Design Code gives guidance on the process. The government set the brief and worked with Urbed to produce it. Among other things, the Office for Place will support pilot codes in around 20 communities and share the learnings from that - the first pilots are up and running.