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The Value of Urban Design

Authors

Acknowledgements

Executive summary

1 Introduction

2 Overview

3 Findings

4 Discussion

5 Bibliography

1 Introduction

1.1 Purpose

The Value of Urban Design examines the case for urban design and asks: is it persuasive?

In considering this question, we examine documentary evidence of the economic, social and environmental effects of urban design, thereby building a picture of the possible benefits, and costs, of designing towns and cities better.

This report is not a cost-benefit analysis; much of the evidence in this area is qualitative and cannot be summarised in a simple quantitative manner.

Urban design is a relatively new field, and has only recently achieved widespread attention in New Zealand. The recent interest in urban design within the public and private sectors, and among community organisations, stems partly from a 'hunch' that high-quality urban environments may be able to significantly help New Zealanders live more sustainably. Although some remain doubtful, many harbour the hope that better urban design can tangibly enhance New Zealand's enviable lifestyle, and even help to sustain economic development.

This report sieves the international urban design literature, and draws on what little New Zealand evidence exists, to see whether these hopes have any real basis. In doing so, the report seeks to promote a wider understanding of the nature of urban design, and to clarify just what it can, realistically, deliver.

Urban design developed during the 1960s, largely as a reaction to the perceived failures of both modernist architecture, with its focus on the 'ideal building', and modernist planning, with its focus on segregation of land uses. Because of these critical and reactive origins, much of the early urban design literature is based on ideology rather than empirical evidence. Seminal publications contained manifestos or sets of design principles that were more articles of belief than established fact, and anecdotal accounts of the disappointing performance of modernist planning and architecture. However, in recent decades, as urban design has become a recognised profession, theorists and researchers have placed the discipline on a more secure footing.

Today, there exists a wide body of international literature that systematically examines the implications of key elements of urban design. The Value of Urban Design surveys this material and reviews the merits of claims commonly made for urban design.

Findings are extremely diverse. Much of the evidence still consists of expert views and judgement, but there are an increasing number of robust scientific studies. An underlying difficulty is that urban design entails both 'hard' economic realities and a number of 'soft' human-oriented elements coming together to create a whole that is more than the sum of the parts. Moreover, some of the judgement is necessarily place-specific. In this sense, urban design remains as much an art as a science. This report does not discount evidence and judgements on 'soft' matters, but it places the most weight on empirical evidence (whether quantitative or qualitative) from robust scientific studies, where available.

The overwhelming majority of the information comes from overseas sources. An important purpose of The Value of Urban Design project is to evaluate, interpret and organise these findings so that they can be applied in New Zealand by those working in urban design.

1.2 Using this document

The Value of Urban Design has been commissioned by the Ministry for the Environment (the Ministry) together with the Wellington City Council (WCC) and the Auckland Regional Council (ARC). The report is not intended to be used in isolation, but as one component of a larger suite of documents and resources on urban design developed to support implementation of the New Zealand Urban Design Protocol:

• New Zealand Urban Design Case Studies
• Urban Design Toolkit
• Urban Design Research in New Zealand.

This work in turn forms part of the Government's Sustainable Development Programme of Action, launched in January 2003, which identified the importance of making New Zealand cities more sustainable.

The Value of Urban Design is intended for a number of audiences - those engaged in urban design at central or local government agencies, property investors and developers, urban design professionals, and members of the public with an interest in enhancing the quality of our urban places.

Public agencies can use The Value of Urban Design to inform policy, shape development objectives or evaluate projects that are intended to improve the urban environment. Key claims examined in this study might, where they are shown to have merit, also provide a basis for monitoring the performance and management of streets, squares, parks and other public open space assets.

Although the project is sponsored by central and local government, The Value of Urban Design aims to be useful to both public and private sectors. The evidence suggests that many of the dividends of good design at the site level accrue to property investors and developers, especially where the investor takes a longer-term view, and where enhancing the public domain can also add value to a private development. The Value of Urban Design provides a basis for bringing new factors into cost-benefit assessment informing investment decisions, in two ways. First, it identifies the full range of economic advantages of better urban design. Second, it identifies how, under certain conditions, private investments can also generate wider spin-off benefits, contributing to the wellbeing of the community as a whole.

1.3 Definitions of key terms

Urban design

The Urban Design Protocol describes urban design as: "the design of the buildings, places, spaces and networks that make up our towns and cities, and the ways people use them". This is an inclusive definition that addresses both the public and private domains of cities, and embraces the social as well as physical dimensions of the urban environment. According to this interpretation, urban design must be considered at a number of different scales, from the details of street furniture to the infrastructure that shapes entire cities and regions.

Because the field of urban design is so broad, no single profession has a monopoly on expertise. Instead, architects, engineers, landscape architects, planners, economists, surveyors and many others must combine their knowledge with that of property developers, public agencies and community groups. Good urban design is thus collaborative in nature, integrating various perspectives and concerns. This is one reason why the subject is best approached with a long-term, 'big-picture' perspective.

The inclusiveness of urban design is both a strength and a potential weakness. By its very nature, design is integrative. It creates relationships among things that might otherwise be considered separate. The holistic nature of urban design reflects the multi-faceted nature of urban areas themselves, where so many problems and potentials are interconnected. However, there is a risk that urban design may become so all-encompassing that it lacks focus, substance or bite. Inclusiveness poses particular difficulties for The Value of Urban Design, because the purpose of the project is to identify specific causes and effects. Studies that are able to disentangle distinct effects, while holding other factors constant, are thus particularly valuable.

The Value of Urban Design adds two points of emphasis to the definition of urban design in the Urban Design Protocol. First, while urban design's principal concern is the 'public realm' (ie, the streets, squares, parks, buildings and other spaces to which the average person has full or partial access), this study emphasises that urban design does not exclude private property. Private buildings and spaces have a significant impact on the quality of adjacent public areas. Also, privately owned spaces such as shops and entry lobbies are often freely accessible to passers-by. As a result, public and private spaces are better thought of as a continuum than entirely distinct.

A second feature of urban design that this report underlines is a concern for physical elements and spatial relationships. This focus keeps urban design firmly grounded in a tangible, three-dimensional world: a place that is experienced through sight and sound, and sometimes through the tactile qualities of materials and details. This emphasis does not discount people, their behaviour, the significance of collaboration and participation in the urban design process, or even the meanings people attach to places. But it does stress that most of the impacts of urban design flow essentially from tangible, physical characteristics.

Value

In competitive markets, value in a narrow economic sense is determined by supply and demand. Property markets in most cities are relatively competitive. But in assessing the value of urban design, a complicating factor is that the value from a design investment often accrues in part to parties other than those making the investment. As a United Kingdom (UK) study noted, "Of course there is agreement that good urban design is desirable but that agreement does not extend to taking responsibility for creating it." [Gibson et al, 1996, p 4.]

In economic terms, a key issue is that urban design may create positive 'external benefits' - benefits of an economic, social or environmental nature that accrue to the wider community and are not fully captured by the developer. [Carmona et al, 2001a, p 15. Equally, the costs of poor urban design (often deficiencies with mainly local impacts) may be externalised - often from a property to its close neighbours.] It is rare that a development will be large enough that external benefits can be essentially 'internalised'. A related issue is that developers may have shorter time horizons (higher 'discount rates') than the community as a whole. [Leinberger, 2001.] Developers may thus tend to emphasise short-run returns and curtail costs, whereas the community may favour a durable yet flexible outcome that provides lasting utility. Carmona et al in the United Kingdom describe this as commercial pressures militating against long-term investment in design quality.

There are two consequences. One is that the market will tend to provide poorer urban design than is socially optimal. This raises the policy issue of how the urban authority can best correct the deficiency, but that question goes beyond the scope of this paper. Second, many of the benefits of good urban design (or costs of poor design) are intangiblesocial, environmental or even economic impacts affecting a range of parties. They include neighbours, other city residents, and even those beyond the city in question who may, for example, benefit from a thriving urban environment. Although these impacts may be identifiable and significant, they cannot be readily quantified or valued without a significant investment in econometric studies: "[W]hile the direct benefits to stakeholders (in the form of enhanced real estate asset value) can be evaluated through their monetary 'exchange value' in the marketplace using standard valuation techniques, the same cannot be said of the wider 'value in use' benefits that accrue to society as a whole ... [for example] social value, aesthetic value and other non-market concepts of worth." [Carmona et al, 2001a, p 14.] This problem greatly hinders attempts to examine the value of urban design.

Where quantitative studies of value gains have been carried out, for example by the Property Council of Australia, [Other examples often cited are Vandell et al, 1989; Doiran et al, 1992.] the focus has usually been fairly narrow. For instance, better design and special architectural features may be rewarded with higher rents and values. But information on relative market returns, and data on other possible confounding variables, are often patchy or absent. This means overall value is unclear, despite higher profit margins often being claimed. [Property Council of Australia, 1999, p 4, for example. Factors such as timing of development, mix of uses, and so on, may also have influenced value gains.] Even when sophisticated methods are used, complex findings are likely to be revealed, such as that value is added in some circumstances and contexts, but not in others: [Vandell et al, 1989, cited in Carmona et al, 2001a, p 86.] "[A]ny answers about the value of urban design are only relative, given the varying contextual and market conditions at a local scale and the peculiarities of the different sectors within which decisions on design are made." [Carmona et al, 2002c, p 145.]

In short, this report takes a broad view of 'value', and underlines that the focus of interest is not just on returns to the developer or the local council involved, but to the community as a whole, including those in the future who will benefit or suffer from today's urban design decisions. It does not accept that just because value in a wider sense is hard to quantify, it is therefore unimportant. Moreover, value is interpreted in the sense of a range of benefits to society - economic, environmental and social - although the time constraints on this project meant that not all aspects of these three dimensions of benefit could be fully explored. [For example, the literature on social equity impacts of urban form is only fleetingly discussed. See Syme et al, 2005, p 44, for further coverage.]

1.4 Scope

The scope of this project has been determined by the following considerations:

• The project was a relatively short one, carried out over a four-month period.
• The literature search focused on the last five years, but integrated seminal or important earlier work.
• The project could not review the full range of elements in the urban design literature, such as visual complexity and heritage. The focus has been selective, addressing the main issues of interest or contention. A number of issues omitted could merit further investigation, especially heritage.
• Key areas of interest or contention are those:
  • undergoing debate and also central to urban design activity
  • derived from the New Zealand urban design literature, such as the Urban Design Protocol, or People + Places + Spaces
  • raised in the international urban design literature, for example, the Urban Design Compendium (Llewelyn-Davies, 2000) and The Value of Urban Design (Carmona et al, 2001a).

1.5 How do the urban design elements relate to the Urban Design Protocol?

The urban design elements identified from the literature and analysed in The Value of Urban Design are subtly different from the urban design qualities identified in the New Zealand Urban Design Protocol. While the vocabulary used in this report is closely based on standard elements in the literature, there is a substantial degree of correspondence with the Urban Design Protocol. The following table shows the main relationships between the elements. For example, the discussion of 'Density' in The Value of Urban Design covers green space and the environmental effects of emissions, matters that are covered under 'Custodianship' and environmental responsibility in the Urban Design Protocol.

Table 1: Relationship to the Urban Design Protocol's attributes and qualities

1.6 Methodology

The key points of the method adopted in this project are as follows. An initial stage identified the claims for urban design value set out in three recent Ministry for the Environment publications:

• People + Places + Spaces
• Creating Great Places to Live + Work + Play
• New Zealand Urban Design Protocol.

These claims were taken as a provisional starting point, and an extensive body of overseas and (where possible) New Zealand literature was examined. The aim was to establish what sort of evidence the literature provided supporting or rejecting these claims. Literature reviewers looked specifically for links between urban design and economic, social/cultural and environmental outcomes.

A key part of the review was an assessment of the quality of the evidence available, using the categories Conclusive, Strong, Suggestive, or Anecdotal, and placing considerable weight on empirical findings:

• Conclusive: Consensus conclusions of top experts in the field; or objective evidence based on findings of more than one empirical study, reaching a clear and firm conclusion.
• Strong: Conclusions of a top expert in the field, supported by multiple citations; or some systematic objective evidence, especially a robust empirical study (quantitative or qualitative).
• Suggestive: Assertions from someone with standing in the field; or a collation of anecdotal evidence; or conclusions based on only a single empirical study of limited validity or restricted application.
• Anecdotal: Examples, assertions, observations - but not from a recognised expert or someone with standing in the field.

When the various findings were collated, a significant task was interpreting and judging the quality of the findings - for example, judging the combined impact of a group of mutually supportive findings. Important methodological caveats are:

• A scarcity of literature on an element of urban design does not necessarily mean that it is not valued; rather, it may reflect measurement difficulties or other factors.
• It is difficult to extract conclusions about certain design elements because they tend to be commonly found in combination with other features.
• The evidence is largely from overseas and, thus, although some aspects of urban design are universal, caution needs to be exercised in drawing conclusions for New Zealand.