Plug-in Urban Design

Plug-in urban design refers to the design and implementation of an infrastructure project in order to obtain some catalytic reaction. There are two types of plug-in urban design projects. The first type involves the provision of the infrastructure of, usually, a precinct of a city or suburb, and the selling of sites into which individual developers can plug buildings. The second type involves plugging the infrastructure into an existing urban fabric to enhance its amenity value.

Sometimes the process of building the infrastructure and then the fabric of a city or suburb is heavily controlled. Building uses are specified and design guidelines are created for each developer to follow. In this case, the process is really a variant of all-of-a-piece urban design. In other cases those property developers plugging their projects into the provided infrastructure are free to respond to the marketplace, as they will. The assumption in this case is that the market knows best what is in demand and thus appropriate to build.

The second type of plug-in urban design refers to the situation where elements of infrastructure are plugged into an existing city in the hope of spurring new developments or providing some public amenity. The elements of infrastructure may be links, places or buildings providing for special uses that will, it is hoped, have a catalytic effect on surrounding property development (Attoe and Logan, 1989). The skyway system in Minneapolis began in this way but, as is described in Chapter 10, it has become an integral part of almost any development in that city’s centre.

Financing

All urban designs are affected by the financing available. Somebody has to pay the bill. There are two major aspects to financing projects: (1) their capital costs and (2) the cost of operating them once they have been built. The second is often forgotten in the haste to get buildings erected or public spaces created. The fundamental questions are: ‘Where does the money come from?’ and ‘Who pays for what?’ Then the question is: ‘What is the cost of the money?’ Interest rates affect many design decisions.

The viability of any proposal depends on the availability of capital funds. There are two sources of financing – public sector through tax revenues and the private sector through the money available to be loaned at interest. In socialist countries the funds have come primarily from the government. In capitalist the funding of projects has sometimes come from taxation income and sometimes from borrowed money but usually a mixture of the two. Each group involved in developing a project negotiates based on its perceptions of the equity necessary to be raised and the financial guarantees it obtains. In totalitarian societies the centralization of power makes funding easier.

It has generally been easier for governments to raise money because their credit is based on their ability to raise revenues from future taxes. Many cities, however, have precarious economies. Private developers have to raise funds on a project-byproject basis and seek loans with the lowest interest rates, the least amount of equity required and, ideally from their viewpoint, with government subsidies. Such subsidies take many forms: paying for the infrastructure development, mortgage guarantees, the leasing of parts of a project, or structuring a pooled commercial paper programme. Conversely, the private sector can subsidize government investments by building parts of the infrastructure.

The sums needed for major urban design schemes are considerable and much investment has to be made before any financial return is seen. These upfront expenses are for the purchasing of land, planning the development, developing the infrastructure, mapping out sites for development, writing building design guidelines, negotiating the sale of land, and reviewing individual development proposals. The phasing of developments is thus crucial because premature development of infrastructure can be costly. On the other hand, if it is delayed a developer incurs real costs and the community foregoes potential tax revenues. Large projects have come to a halt during periods of fiscal difficulty. Only changes in economic conditions and/or new injections of public funding or a change in the programme or the design controls have started construction moving again. The case studies here are replete with examples.

Public investment in infrastructure has served as a catalyst for many important developments. The failure of such expected investments to eventuate has led to financial crises in many projects (e.g. Canary Wharf; see Chapter 8). There are also many schemes where the infrastructure has been built and yet the private sector sees no gain in building the other components of a project (e.g. Penn’s Landing, Philadelphia has stood undeveloped with its infrastructure in place for over 20 years now). Today, public sources of financing have dried up in many capitalist countries and the private sector is being required to subsidize the development of the public realm in return for being allowed to build what it wants to build. The incentives for the private sector to take this role are substantially higher in growing economies than in those that are stagnant or declining.

Public and private property developers alike compete or cooperate within an ‘invisible web’ of existing laws, codes and design guidelines (Lai, 1988). They have to see the rewards that can accrue to them if an urban design proposal is to proceed. Somebody must want the product that is being sold. There has to be a market for it.

The Market

No project in capitalist societies proceeds without some image of it being marketable. It needs to be saleable. The market required to support a project and make it feasible in its developer’s eyes is made up of the population seeking real estate and other services and its ability to pay for them. For all the types of urban design schemes that one is considering the question is: ‘Is the market large enough to support it?’ – as all but two of the studies included in this book have been largely implemented, the answer in all the cases was that in somebody’s mind it was. There are some schemes that are based on market research and others based on intuitive feelings and yet others simply on hopes. There are a number of urban design projects around the world, however, that are largely uninhabited because the market was incorrectly identified. Muong Thong Thani in Bangkok is possibly the best known (see Marshall, 2003).

The public and private sectors have different but overlapping images of the marketplace. The former thinks in terms of future tax revenues and the latter in terms of the perceptions of current or future demands. The private sector is concerned about the purchasing power of potential investors and their disposal incomes in deciding on programme mixes. The public sector may intervene in terms of its perceptions of the public interest and, ideally, on behalf of the needs of those people in whom the private sector is uninterested.

The market and its values are not static. Fashions change. All-of-a-piece designs that evolve over long periods of time thus often undergo substantial changes not only in the facilities provided but also in aesthetic qualities in order to be up-to-date. The market is segmented into many parts in terms of the culture, stage of life cycle and socio-economic status of the people who form it. Each urban design project described in this book has been aimed at a particular segment of the market. Each property developer feels comfortable in targeting one sector rather than another. One of the urban design questions is: ‘How can developments be shaped so that private developers will provide public interest facilities when the market is incapable of supporting them?’

Дата добавления: 2015-11-16