Changing perceptions

For a major developer, or its funding partner, to take risks, there has to be sound planning advice based on the increasing realisation that quality pays and that “good” architects produce good buildings that not only look great but work well.

Quality pays off for everyone: the developer gets a better product and the public gets the benefit of buildings that enhance the public domain. Planning advisors used to be regarded as quasi-legal figures who were preoccupied by policies and precedents, a matter of finding a way through the system. Today the priority is also to understand the political and public consensus and to work with it, though there are occasions when confrontation cannot be avoided.