Forget about chief architects-where are all the chief planners?

摘要

Older architects will remember that many years ago in a long-lost golden age, most local authorities had chief architects and chief planning officers who dealt with design and development in a logical and successful way for their local areas, writes Andrew Rogers. Over many years this sensible arrangement has gradually been eroded by the rise of corporate management teams ruled by procedure and funding regimes that have little regard for vision and long-term spatial planning. Not only are there now no chief architects, but at the recent annual Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI) convention, the institute launched preliminary research which has found that only 23 per cent of the local authorities surveyed had a head of planning reporting directly to the chief executive, while 9 per cent had no top-level individual responsible for planning at all.