‘Ghost buildings’ to help public envisage impact of developments
We had our Alternative Service Delivery seminar in Oxford last week. I was impressed by the Park and Ride and I thought the City very much in tune with its rural hinterland. This interesting proposed borrowing of best practice form Europe on visualising the impact of planning strikes me as something else being considered in the city which we rural dwellers might find helpful. The article setting out what is proposed tells us:
Clusters of spindly antennae poke up from rooftops and strange boxy frames project from walls. In the distance, a line of balloons hangs improbably in the air, describing a perfect square. This surreal panorama of rods and wires, which form the ghostly apparition of an alternative skyline, is a common sight in any Swiss city, where planning policy requires the erection of the profile of a building before it is granted permission to be built. And such ghost buildings may soon be coming to a street near you, if Oxford city councillor James Fry has his way.
“Our current planning system makes it very difficult for the public to actually see what is going to be built,” says Fry, who represents the city’s North ward. “You’ve got to navigate the website, track down the application and find the architects’ drawings, which can often be hard to understand in context.”
The difficulty of understanding architects’ drawings, even for council planning officers, was all too evident in Oxford last year, when the disastrous Castle Mill student housing scheme was erected next to Port Meadow, plonking five-storey blocks right on the edge of the ancient protected landscape, blocking long-cherished views of the city’s dreaming spires. An independent review criticised the council for inadequate consultation and said that the assessment of the visual impact of developments should be improved.