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

244 Teoría y Práctica del Diseño Urbano to be required, not simply to secure planning approval but also to resolve potential conflicts within mixed use schemes” (Adams, 2004: 615). The house builders with the greatest resources of money (from being able to raise appropriate level of capital) and land are the ones that have been able to acquire the ‘best’ sites (Baron cited in Carmona et al., 2003) and invest in complex and expensive marketing strategies that promote certain visions of lifestyle. We might call this an accountancy-model where economies of scale determine the design and sale of the hou- sing product. Those specialist house builders, which are nor- mally more modest in scale, operate somewhat differently. In essence these types of developer are much more interested in the quality of the final product and are far more willing to en- gage withmore complicated sites. Indeed Carmona et al., (2003) indicate that accountancy-model developers are less likely to engage with sites which are smaller and more complicated. So we see that what we can term the quality-model developers have managed to find a niche within which the housing prod- uct has the potential to be of greater or better quality. Site conditions The particular conditions of a site are an important element in the production of housing. There are two aspects of the specu- lative residential development process in that are argued to militate against better design. First, speculative residential developers in the UK, unusually compared to other countries, control all of the stages of development from identifying land, obtaining the necessary permissions, organizing construction and marketing the finished product; construction is typically sub-contracted to other firms to maximize flexibility. Land is an essential resource, and consequently enormous effort and resources are deployed to ensure continuity of land sup- ply. Developers also expend significant resources to influence planning policy so that sites inwhich they have an interest are allocated in plans and receive planning permission (Bramley, 1995). Sites are typically held in a land bank for a minimum of two years for operational reasons, and some sites may be held for much longer, normally under option or conditional con- tract, while allocation or planning permission is sought. Sites are also traded between developers.