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Many have pointed out that the coalition's 'localism' and 'growth' agendas are on a collision course. The doublethink that is involved was identified a while back by the late political philosopher Jerry Cohen who lamented so-called conservatives who 'blather on about warm beer and old maids cycling to church and then they hand Wal-Mart the keys to the kingdom'. The rise of nimbyism has coincided with that of planning policies about 'town centre first', building on brownfield land before green field etc. If high density mixed use walkable neighbourhoods are the goal, then things need to be built close to, if not actually in, people's back yards. Thirty years ago, we were building supermarkets and business parks well away from anywhere that anyone lived, and well away from anywhere nice. The downside of prioritising the preferences of the nimbies could be more hypermarkets on the ring road. An alternative upside model would be to build some...

The Government has signalled a return to the Enterprise Zones of the 1980s. The aim is to encourage development by freeing up planning rules and offering tax incentives. This is just one more approach to 'regeneration', i.e. public sector measures to secure development where no one wants to develop (private sector development that claims to be 'regeneration' is now ubiquitous, but is in fact just 'development' - no shame in that). Last time around, we had Enterprise Zones, which were cheap, passive measures, but also Urban Development Corporations (UDC's), which were costlier, but active in facilitating development, for instance by assembling sites and providing infrastructure; and they, rather than local authorities, had development control powers in their areas. Both (the measures were not mutually exclusive) had mixed results, with more failures than successes. In some places, a great deal of public money was spent, and nothing of consequence was bu...

Neighbourhood planning is likely to make the planning system more complicated, but luckily, it probably won't apply everywhere, and it is likely to be most prevalent in places where there isn't much development anyway. All a bit Alice in Wonderland. My latest quarterly column for the RIBA Journal, here , has more considered views on this.

In a few weeks, old CABE disappears and its successor begins work as part of the Design Council. What are the prospects for the new arrangement, and how will the politics work? When CABE was started in 1999, its support came from the Government's Culture department, DCMS, which had sponsored CABE's predecessor the Royal Fine Art Commission. DCMS has remained CABE's primary sponsor, but as the years have gone by, it has received progressively more funding from what is now the Communities department, DCLG, responsible for planning, housing etc. - the two funding sources reflecting architecture's uneasy siting, as far as tidy minded administrators are concerned, somewhere between fine art and the provision of useful shelter. The Design Council's links are with yet another department, the Business department, headed by Vince Cable. This could make a significant difference in the way new CABE will relate to its political (pay)masters. The DCMS is way down the Whitehal...

People would be more interested in getting involved in a 'Big Community' than in the 'Big Society', according to research published this week. There's not much sign of enthusiasm for 'Localism' either, so perhaps that term also needs another look. The default unit of localism in the Localism Bill is the parish - we still have parish councils in some places, generally in the countryside, but not in others. The adjective associated with a parish is parochial. So perhaps Parochialism would be a better word for what is intended? Certainly as far as 'neighbourhood planning' is concerned, it would convey the likely flavour more accurately. But there is also something called 'community planning' - which starts to sound a bit more like something useful. The planning system suffers from too many words and not enough pictures, but the choice of words is still important.

The Rogers Stirk Harbour-designed One Hyde Park, with its super luxury flats, had a high profile launch party yesterday which got plenty of attention in the press. The jaw-dropping prices and billionaire interiors received more attention than RSH's architecture, and no one seems to have noticed the building's inspiration across town at the 1970's St Giles Hotel in the former YMCA building off the south end of Tottenham Court Road - revealed in the pictures above. The buildings share a remarkably similar 'parti' - architect speak for basic arrangement of plan and form - even to the extent of both relying on views out on the diagonal to avoid overlooking from one wing to the next, as in both cases they are quite tightly planned. But while you will be asked for quite a few tens of millions if you want one of the remaining flats in the new building, at the former YMCA there is, as the Village People observed, a 'place you can go...when you're short on your d...

Private Eye's Nooks and Corners column, which deals with planning and architecture, can usually be relied upon for tweedy, miserabilist huffing and puffing, sweeping up (with that same lack of discrimination for which its targets are so often criticised) the worthwhile along with the worthless in its scattergun loathing of anything that has happened in architecture after, roughly, Le Corbusier abandoned twiddly mouldings. Very surprising, therefore, to find that the column in the latest issue begins with two paragraphs of (grudging, caveated) praise for the new masterplan for Chelsea Barracks. What's going on? No good can come of this. Happily, the natural order of things is restored within a sentence or two, and the point of the item revealed - a characteristic moan about the project developer Qatari Diar's application for a certificate of immunity from listing for the Victorian chapel on the site. Piloti's judgement in matters of listing can be gauged from a subseq...