Teoría y práctica del diseño urbano para la reflexión de la ciudad contemporánea

237 Experiencias contemporáneas del diseño urbano New urban housing design in the UK We postulate that new urban housing is an arena of media- tion between developers, designers and planners in a range of agencies at different spatial scales. It is useful in the first in- stance to examine the role of each of these in producing hous- ing through the planning system. Firstly developers, the pri- vate companies that build housing, are key to the production of housing in the UK. Adams et al. (2009) indicate that not only do speculative developers dominate the market but that their mass-produced housing is standardised with little opportuni- ty space for designers to intervene in the form of the finished product. Furthermore the speculative house-building indus- try is dominated by a small number of companies competing over a relatively scarce supply of land compared to other in- dustrialised countries. The outcome of this is housing which attracts both concern from planners and other built environ- ment professionals about its quality, and general satisfaction from the consumers. Indeed this is one of the fundamentally intriguing aspects of residential design quality. So we can see an environment where speculative house-builders lead the production of housing through land acquisition, active inter- vention in plan production (to influence the number and lo- cation of new homes) and negotiations over individual appli- cations for development. Indeed ‘the typical design approach to the private housebuilder is determined by: i) Buildability; ii) Maximization of unit amenity; iii) Market research, and, iv) Public policy and regulations’ (Carmona et al ., 2003: 121). Planning authorities have a number of roles in planning for housing. Firstly, they must produce local development frame- works that reflect the amount of housing which is required to be built within a particular timescale in their area. In other words they must give spatial definition to housing numbers and notional concepts of type and tenure of housing (so- called housing need). They also seek to reflect national plan- ning policy in their plans in relationship to design quality. Furthermore local planning authorities have to pass judge- ment on the design merits of proposed development as these enter the formal planning application process. Interestingly,