Best practice

   What is best practice?

This depends on what we are trying to create when we intervene in the built environment.  A large number of physical programmes are dominated by impractical aims - such as trying to solve social or financial problems by changing the urban structure.  

The driving purpose of any serious regeneration intervention has to be to create better places, places where people want to live, work and enjoy recreation.  Such places are self-sustaining, convenient to use, and long lasting,  For these reasons they give strong economic returns. 

To achieve this means giving first priority to the quaity of the physical product - and letting this determine the pace, scale, and nature of what is being built. 

To build well means giving time and importance to the design of the physical outcome.  It means using good designers.  It means producing a clear, ambitious, but realistic, brief.  Above all it means making sure the primary result will be a better place, with the new well integrated with what exists.