Bart van der Vossen reflects on Utrecht’s mobility story ahead of hosting Congress in June.
The Productive Place
Barny Evans dreams of a new town where human contact is prioritised over car use.
How do we Design and Deliver Mobility Hub Networks?
Small Grants Scheme recipient Joe Bonomo shares ideas for how the UK could implement mobility hubs.
Bus Stop the Heat!
Mark Bessoudo’s photo essay examines the humble bus stop and how it can provide shelter in a warming world.
Member Spotlight
Leyla Moy reflects on urbanism and its specific meaning to her.
MyPlace
Julie Plichon writes a love letter to Gillett Square, Dalston.
The City Observatory: Delhi
In this instalment of BDPlab’s Good City papers, Kanak Tiwari, Nilesh Prakash Rajadhyaksha, Manisha Bhartia and Radhika Mathur explore an alternative approach to guide Indian cities towards a more sustainable and inclusive future.
Urban Philosophy
Guest philosopher Mark Bessoudo asks, is there a there there?
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I think all of you will agree that last year was a particularly busy year for the Academy but we are not going to rest on our laurels. We have lots happening in 2025 too.
In the first few months of this year it has been good to catch up with so many members at our online, social, and learning events, and to see activity building across the regions particularly in Scotland where the Scottish Advisory Group are leading the development of different events and social gatherings.
The highlight of the year will naturally be our Congress which will take place in Utrecht 11-13 June on the subject of ‘Healthy Urban Living’. Inspirational speakers including Carolyn Steel, Jan Vapaavuori, and Karin Huber-Heim will join us there and we hope you will too.
Our Academicians are keen to assist with great placemaking and two separate panels of Academicians continue to provide support to Cork City Council and Kildare County Council; both of these come under the umbrella of our Diagnostic Initiative.
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Our Young Urbanists continue to flourish with learning and networking events. This year, the YU Small Grant Scheme has been awarded to Hal Mellen to support his research project on back-to-back housing typologies, and you can read about one of last year’s Small Grant projects in this edition of Here & Now. 17 YU members have been grouped with 13 Academicians to participate in the mentoring scheme and, as for events, a group of YUs will cycle between Brussels and Ghent as part of this year’s annual European cycle trip.
In the meantime, I look forward to seeing you at our in-person events and hearing about your ideas and experiences in our world of urbanism. NPPF24 is giving all of us the opportunity to shape the country’s communities of the future and the Academy is in prime position to lead that debate and influence its outcome. If you wish to know further details on any of these activities, please contact me on chair@theaou.org
Andreas Markides AoU Chair
Editorial team
Harrison Brewer
Connie Dales (AoU Exec)
Harry Knibb
Leyla Moy
David Rudlin
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Editorial
As the weather improves, we gravitate outside, like cats, to soak up the spring rays. Short commutes, trips to the post office or supermarket, and visits to neighbours or friends are more often the outcome of a walk or short cycle. FitBit data confirms this, we walk more in the summer than winter. But very often we find obstacles holding us back, sometimes physical, sometimes policy and sometimes psychological. In this issue we explore mobility and its impact on urbanism.
Often hailed as the pinnacle of cycling culture, the Netherlands leads the charge. Ahead of Congress in Utrecht this June, Director of Urban Development Bart van der Vossen reflects on the importance of mobility in healthy urban living. Barny Evans sets out his vision of a new town where human contact is prioritised over car use, calling for a future towns standard. Joe Bonomo shares ideas for how the UK could implement mobility hubs and where we can learn from.
Taking policy change head on, Andreas Markides asks whether the revised NPPF will affect the way Transport Planners work and the way the rest of us travel. Mark Bessoudo, in a Here & Now first, provides a photo essay of the humble bus stop looking, and how this humble structure can provide shelter in a warming world.
Leyla Moy steps into our Spotlight series with her reflections on urbanism and its specific meaning to her. Julie Plichon writes a love letter to Gillett Square in Dalston.
Exclusive to Here & Now, BDP’s Good City feature continues providing an international flavour in its analysis of alternative approaches available to Indian cities in their quest for a more sustainable future.
Finally, Mark Bessoudo steps in as our guest philosopher, contemplating identity, suburbia and transport through a sense of place in non-places.
As always, we hope you enjoy. Keep walking.
The editorial team
The Academy in Action
The first few months of 2025 at the AoU have been full of opportunities to connect with the community, from in-person social events like the Members’ Winter Party and the Young Urbanist pub night, to online Coffee Breaks and Urbanism Hours.
In February we held the second Founder’s Lecture at Cambridge University, with Jonathan Smales who delivered a compelling talk titled Action Breeds Hope, which is available to catch up on in the online Members’ Corner.
And, following two recent joint conferences in Galway, the AoU and RIAI collaborated once again on the Ireland 2050: Balanced by Design conference held at Dublin Castle in March. We had contributions from some brilliant speakers and look forward to sharing some of the slides when we can.
Looking to the summer, our our big focus is Congress in Utrecht in June, where we’ll explore the theme of Healthy Urban Living and launch the Academy’s 20th anniversary. You don’t want to miss it!
Coming up at the AoU:
• New Ground Co-housing Community Visit
Saturday 17 May, Barnet
Tickets at theaou.org/new-ground
• Call for submissions: AoU Summer of Walking
Deadline Friday 30 May
Full details at theaou.org/summer-of-walking
• Book Club: Rebel Cities by David Harvey
Thursday 19 June, Glasgow
Sign up at theaou.org/book-club
All AoU events and collaborations can be found in the online events directory at theaou.org/events
Utrecht: Healthy Urban Mobility
Ahead of hosting Congress 2025 in the city, Utrecht’s Bart van der Vossen reflects on the importance of mobility in healthy urban living.
Good urbanism focuses on places. Great urbanism focuses on people. Because cities are about people coming together. They give us the ability to coalesce quickly, collaborate easily, and cohabit closely. It makes this activity easier, improving our individual and collective lives. Our Utrecht vision for 2040, uniquely putting health at the heart of all policies, and its recent placemaking story define Healthy Urban Living. It holds the view that healthy lives make healthy citizens and healthy citizens make healthy cities. Above all, in Utrecht we recognise that urbanism is truly about shaping places that make peoples’ everyday lives easier, happier, and healthier.
Capitalising on our heritage and location, the city is the fastest growing in the Netherlands. Located in the crucial Randstad region, and home to one of Europe’s oldest universities, thousands of Dutch students graduate and choose to stay put with their skills. Biotech, finance, and health multinationals are big employers. Continent-wide transport links mean London, Paris, and Frankfurt are no more than a half-day train journey.
Underpinning Utrecht’s future is ‘Utrecht Nearby: the ten-minute city’, our vision for 2040. Adopted in 2021, this gives voice to our belief that our growth must be shaped around its people and their needs. It identifies that growth depends on how well the city connects mobility, housing, public facilities, energy, greenery, the economy, and jobs. We believe that our future placemaking must address these challenges in ways that reduce gender, race, income, and age disparities if ‘Healthy Urban Living’ is to be about more than mobility or environmentally conscious land use. We are using the principles of a broad and positive approach to health, in which the person is central, equity, and working in partnerships, to guide its ‘Health in all policies’ approach. Perhaps most enlightening is our goal of ‘Grow is not a goal in itself; we grow in balance.’ With all our challenges kept in mind, it gives us a clearer focus on the kind of choices that need to be made.
Utrecht’s Transport Story
Forty years ago, ‘liveability’ was not on Utrecht’s radar. Between 1970 and 1990, the city’s population shrank by 50,000. There was vacancy and dilapidation, with plans to demolish parts of the beautiful Lombok district. It was the era in which we created the highway through our city center. The very one we recently restored in a waterway. There was little attention to the importance of green space. Today, Utrechters want to stay in the city en masse.
The city has one of the world’s busiest cycleways and where a motorway once covered a historic canal, goods are now transported once more by water into the city core and people gather by the water’s edge. The city has the highest percentage of shared cars in the Netherlands due to an active support system. That saves a lot of space, which is really needed in order to create new neighbourhoods within the city boundaries. Data shows that car use and ownership did not increase over the last 5 years, while the number of inhabitants grew by approximately 20,000.
Utrecht has made Healthy Transport a way of life. This theme is a vital component of the Utrecht story and one for which we receive global attention. But this current reality stems from
past choices and decades of dedicated work on a multi-modal approach to sustainable mobility. Utrecht’s global reputation today as a cycling and pedestrian-focused place is the result of visions developed in the 1990s. Integration was vital. Utrecht Centraal is the busiest train station in the Netherlands, with 200,000 passengers daily. Nearby, the Vredenburg cycleway, the busiest cycle path in the Netherlands, has an average of 33,000 cyclists per day. It’s no surprise, then, that the world’s largest bicycle parking facility opened underneath the station in 2019. With a vast citywide cycle network, it is the default transport option for most people.
Designing the city’s public space has changed to help deliver this reality. New neighbourhoods incorporate cycle and pedestrian infrastructure, like the Dafne Schippersbridge, as standard. The city’s residents have changed their expectations for healthy transport options, too. The result is less vehicle pollution and more space for people on city streets.
It comes as no surprise that apart from the sustainable mobility and energy strategy, green is much more a strategic part of our future
narrative than it used to be. From front door, park, to green in the region. And it ties in with the ten-minute city idea: more services nearby, fewer travel movements, more space in the street for greenery and encounters. Green in the street contributes to climate adaptation, heat stress, water storage, biodiversity; space for meeting contributes to strengthening social structures in the neighbourhood; and more space for cycling and walking contributes to residents’ health.
Urgent housing problem
But housing is a clear and urgent need. The 375,000 current residents will number up to 400,000 within five years and 470,000 by 2040. Like many cities, Utrecht is actively asking how it can keep city living affordable, especially for families with children, but also for the many young people who study in the city, and the older generations for whom mixed living is a boon for life expectancy. Affordable housing is a huge problem in the Netherlands and even more so in the Randstad Region. Housing is becoming more expensive, pushing out the middle-income families. And with an average 11-year waiting list for social housing in Utrecht, we could ask ourselves the question where we stand in creating a city for all. What does it mean if there are more and more small houses? And how do we ensure well-designed small homes?
And with the urgent need for housing, other challenges will be under pressure as well; how do we organise our green and recreational space? Our sustainable logistics, our economic expansion? But we also realise that those issues are not unique to Utrecht. So, our vision does help in making choices and clarify our dilemmas.
Imagery: Lead photo - Taken in Utrecht during a recent Congress recce; previous page - Utrecht Centraal station by Jeroen van de Water via Unsplash; this page - canal photo by Martin Woortman via Unsplash, Leidsche Rijn photo by Nanda Sluijsmans; next page - Utrecht barcode courtesy of City of Utrecht
The Utrecht Barcode
Part of our vision for 2040 is that Utrecht sees a home as only the start. It knows that people need local schools and jobs, places to exercise and enjoy nature, to experience cultural activity and use their skills, and to generate clean energy. People - cities - need neighbourhoods. Creative tools like the ‘Utrecht Barcode’ illustrate how we intend to organise urban space. This barcode was designed a few years ago to specify the extra infrastructure and amenities for neighbourhoods beyond mere housing need. New urban centres are planned where transport connections already intersect or on former industrial land to maximise connection, liveability, and environmental sustainability. Innovation is crucial to properly tackle challenges such as grid congestion and climate adaptation. Moreover, history shows that a one-sided focus on construction speed, as in post-war neighbourhoods, can lead to higher social costs, such as healthcare costs. That is why we opt for speed with quality and quality of life for current and future generations, for which municipalities need room to manoeuvre and flexibility to accelerate with customised solutions.
compared with Noordoost, two neighbourhoods separated only by a railway line. The ability to make ends meet translates into large differences: among more affluent Utrechters, 88% generally feel happy and 80% feel healthy, whereas, among those who are battling, this is 52% and 54% respectively. Isolation is a concern: one in five Utrecht residents feel discriminated against, and 15% of people - rising to 1-in-5 young Utrechters - feel extremely lonely. Loneliness and growing inequality are essentially the two biggest health challenges for the future.
Liveability is the radar for this focus. 81% of Utrecht residents report being happy. 86% are satisfied with their lives. Crucially, 74% feel healthy. Social cohesion in the city is stable, and most Utrecht residents feel at home in their neighbourhood and have trust in their fellow citizens. But challenges remain, as in many other cities. Still, there is recognition of increasing challenges around life inequities, loneliness, and integration. These challenges are familiar to cities around the world and to us urbanists who work in them.
One example regularly cited is the 13-year life expectancy gap for people living in Overvecht
Are we able to implement every ambition that we formulated? That’s another discussion. But making health central to every single policy decision was crucial. It demonstrates that the city’s placemaking of the last 35 years has not only made it a more physically attractive place but was also designed to make human connections easier. Our 2040 vision outlines that sufficient quality of life through having access to good education, a place to live, job opportunities, meaningful daytime activities, and decent care are only the beginnings of a healthy society. It is explicit that life is not just about material things; people also want to be seen, and a basic sense of interconnectedness is essential for wellbeing in a city. Good urbanism focuses on places. Great urbanism focuses on people. Because cities are about people coming together. Utrecht has many stories to share about how to put people in the core focus to create a healthy city. And lots of challenges that remain to be solved.
Bart van der Vossen is Director of Urban Development at the municipality of Utrecht. Before that, he worked as an architect and urban planner for over 25 years.
The Academy’s Congress will take place in Utrecht 11 - 13 June 2025 on the theme of Healthy Urban Living. The programme, tickets, and more info are available at theaou.org/utrecht
The Productive Place: Shared Mobility Unlocks Great Places
Barny Evans dreams of a new town where human contact is prioritised over car use. To realise this dream we may need a ‘future towns standard’.
I have a dream of a new town that incorporates the opportunities that modern technology and the future brings. A place that is happy, healthy and productive. It is a place of higher density, no cars in the centre and a mix of business, social, retail and housing that gives a vibrancy and encourages interaction; the human collider.
Whenever I have given presentations about housing over the past few years, I have always started by saying that new housing will change more in the 2020s than it has in the past forty years, with us finally getting the Future Homes Standard. The gas boiler, simple programmer and petrol car in the drive give way to the heat pump, solar on the roof, an EV in the drive and smart management system. Those changes are all wonderful, making energy and car bills tiny, eliminating air pollution and setting you on the way to zero carbon homes.
What is not changing is how we build the developments the homes sit in; outside cities it is almost all 25-30 dwellings per hectare, some green space, a village centre and two cars on every drive. It is a model of proven commercial success but is also holding us back from creating some wonderful places, higher productivity, more homes and being ready for the future. Some of this should be obvious; no parking onplot or on-street. Car parking for private cars and for car club vehicles would be distributed at edges. You can still own a car and still have easy access to it, but driving within would be at specific times or on a request basis when needed. There could be electric pods that could enable disabled, frail or heavily laden people access when needed and deliveries / rubbish could come and go in the same.
What is
need for car parking and road/street size could enable around double the density of normal suburban development without a loss of outdoor space; imagine how that helps with housing numbers. Urban planners have talked about ‘gentle density’ for years, and there are examples, such as Marmalade Lane in Cambridge. The reason a lot of efforts have failed, I think, is the failure to bite the bullet on cars. Once you have on-plot or street parking, you can forget active streets and good density.
What is holding back the kind of innovation in new communities? The obvious answer is the economic model; if you tried to borrow/ invest money against a large scale development where the residents don’t all have a driveway or dedicated car parking space, you would be told no. This is certainly a major driver of the status quo, but it is as much government that is holding back improvement. I have worked with developers and on developments where the local Planning policy and/or officers are resistant to change. Sometimes it is simply fears that a lack of off-street parking will lead to chaos or complaints, sometimes adoptable road standards, but mainly because no-one ever got sacked for doing the same as last time. We need innovation.
One issue we need to address is the perception that you are either pro-private car or pro-other. What we need is realism; most people need access to a car regularly; tip runs, weekends away, beach trips, collecting bulky stuff, occasionally for work. (Of course, for many driving a vehicle is part of the job.) Therefore, people need to be able to own a car or have a large and reliable car club that means you don’t need one. There has often been an unrealistic perspective that active travel and buses will reduce the need for car ownership; it doesn’t. It
may reduce the need to use one, but people still need access.
This false dichotomy leads to an experience where token provision of car clubs or bike lanes and a limited bus service lead to low uptake and the fading to business as usual.
If we exclude cars from the town, but each household still has two cars then we just end up with huge car parks at the edge and a flop of a development as people won’t move there. We need to offer better, not less. There must be a full shared mobility solution; all residents able to access a variety of cars and vans at a moment’s notice. I am a member of a car club and the ease with which you can get a car is amazing now, you just need to be confident one is close and will be available when you need it. Up to now, car clubs on new developments have normally meant a solitary car put in at the end of the development, funded for three years and then disappearing. That is because you need a full fleet to give confidence and it needs to be there from day one so that people see it as part of the development. If you assume there will be only half as many private vehicles as is typical and the rest covered by shared vehicles, you can expect to reduce car parking by around 40% and use that for homes or green space.
The financial benefits to residents shouldn’t be underestimated. We often talk about how much cheaper new homes are to run than old ones, but the savings are comparable if you can use
a car club rather than owning a car or at least a second car, but this is not considered. In my own city of Cardiff, the council is building social housing to enable poorer people to afford their own home, which is great. Unfortunately, many of these homes are in locations that make it very difficult to live a good life without a car, but there is no provision of car clubs. These people saving money on housing will have to pay for and run a car.
The point that this town must be much better than other towns is fundamental. So often now, restrictions on car parking are seen as squashing people in and restricting lifestyles. It is crucial these new towns are better in every way - people can have as much private/outdoor space as usual, the car club means you can now choose from a range of vehicles, rather than being stuck with one; the density will mean there is good pub, restaurant and gym, etc. Not less, but more.
In almost everything in life the new version is better than the old; cars, phones, games, clothes… New developments and new homes have often been seen as worse than the old. It is partly about character, but also about being better laid out, more mixed, more going on. Soon, all new homes will be demonstrably better than the old; all-electric, very cheap to run, very warm. New towns need to go through their ‘Future Towns Standard’.
Barny Evans is Director, Sustainability and ESG at Turley
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How do we Design and Deliver Mobility Hub Networks?
Joe Bonomo shares ideas for how the UK could implement mobility hubs, and where we can learn from.
Urban areas are grappling with mounting challenges: rising emissions, increasing congestion, declining public health and persistent car dependency. These issues demand innovative solutions that redefine how we move through and interact with the places around us. One promising answer is mobility hubs, defined as a ‘recognisable place with an offer of different and connected transport modes supplemented with enhanced facilities and information features to both attract and benefit the traveller’.
A recent study, as a part of my MA Urban Design Dissertation, was supported by the AoU’s Small Grants Scheme, opening a dialogue for how the UK could begin to plan, design and deliver mobility hub networks. This research draws on European successes with a focus on the unique challenges facing the UK.
What are Mobility Hubs?
At their core, mobility hubs are more than transit points, but spaces with mobility components, such as bicycles, buses, and car clubs, seamlessly integrated with non-mobility components, such as toilets, community gardens and Wi-Fi. These hubs aim to make sustainable transport convenient and desirable. However, they also have an additional, and often overlooked, purpose: to create community spaces where people can gather, interact and access amenities. Despite their potential, the UK lags behind its European counterparts, where mobility hubs have been embraced as integrated networks.
The UK’s Mobility Hub Challenges
The research identifies significant hurdles in delivering mobility hubs across the UK. Funding
constraints, fragmented policies and land ownership issues have hindered progress. Additionally, many hubs focus solely on transport operations, overlooking their role in fostering community connections and improving the urban experience. Moreover, many hubs are being planned on a piecemeal basis, often as a part of individual developments rather than as elements of a larger, connected system.
Learning from Europe
The AoU Small Grants Scheme proved vital to enabling this research to take place, facilitating study trips to explore the Hoppin Point Network in Leuven, Belgium, as well as exploring recently delivered mobility hubs in the West Midlands and Stratford, London. These studies demonstrate the benefits of integrated design, strong branding, and a focus on user experience. For instance, the Hoppin Points in Leuven combine multi-modal transport options with amenities like seating, green spaces and parcel lockers, to
create spaces that serve both transport needs and local life.
These case studies emphasise the importance of branding and accessibility. Mobility hubs in Amsterdam have shown that clear, cohesive signage and seamless digital integration (e.g., Mobility-as-a-Service platforms) can increase usage of the hub services and improve user satisfaction.
A Framework for the UK
This research drew on case studies and interviews with professionals to inform a comprehensive framework for planning, designing and delivering mobility hub networks in the UK. The AoU networks engaged in the research through digital consultations, promoted through the Small Grants Scheme and Academy newsletters, the results of which proved invaluable to informing the findings of this research.
The research highlights the importance of creating mobility hubs as a part of a broader, connected network, and interviews with stakeholders identified that many hubs are being developed reactively, driven by piecemeal
funding or individual developments. To overcome this, this research proposes a framework which adopts a proactive, network-based approach, set out across two phases.
Phase 1 illustrates the implementation of a network from vision through to evaluating success across six stages. Phase 2 shows the management and expansion of the network informed by lessons from Phase 1.
The framework adopts a holistic approach to planning and designing mobility hub networks. It’s more than about building transport infrastructure, but shaping the places that connect people, improve quality of life, and contribute to a sustainable future. By weaving together planning, high-quality design, and community engagement, this framework begins to demonstrate how mobility hubs can be delivered.
The Road Bus Lane Ahead
This research is an initial step to thinking about how we can practically design and deliver mobility hubs across settlements that look beyond transport. The AoU Small Grants Scheme has continued this conversation, through the ‘Findings’ event, in October 2024, which brought together professionals to discuss the findings of research supported by the scheme, foster engaging discussions around the topics, and
New mobility hubs in the West Midlands adopt the TfWM branding, improving recognisability.
A two-phase Framework for Planning, Designing and Delivering Mobility Hub Networks, proposed as a part of this research.
where sustainable travel is a desirable choice. An opportunity to reimagine how our towns and cities function, connect and thrive.
provide a platform to raise awareness of this topic.
The challenge now lies in turning this concept into reality. With sustained funding, political will and collaboration across sectors and between stakeholders, mobility hubs can be a tool in a transformational opportunity to transition away from our car-dependent culture to one
Now is the time for urban designers, planners and policymakers to lead the charge for a cleaner, connected and cohesive future.
Joe Bonomo is a Young Urbanist and Assistant Urban Designer at David Lock Associates Ltd.
Joe’s full report can be found at joebonomo.wixsite.com/portfolio/dissertation
The ‘Findings’ event, set up by the AoU is a great opportunity for winners of the Small Grants Scheme to present their findings and create a conversation with professionals.
Mobility hubs should balance transport and community needs.
Vision Led, Values Driven
Andreas Markides asks whether the revised National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF), published in December 2024, will affect the way Transport Planners work and the way the rest of us travel.
NPPF24 has been hailed by many as an important document in many respects and it has been welcomed as a way of kickstarting a housing boom which will help deliver on the new government’s growth agenda whilst, on the other hand, tackling the housing crisis with its multitude of challenges (younger generations locked out of the housing market, lack of decent and affordable homes, overcrowding and so on).
However, the NPPF is not only about housing and the new grey belt planning category. Critically, paragraphs 109-118 emphasise the importance of providing for sustainable transport but for the first time, it proposes the replacement of ‘Predict and Provide’ with a vision-led approach. This is specifically stated in para 109: ‘Transport issues should be considered from the earliest stages of plan-making and development proposals using a vision-led approach to identify well-designed, sustainable and popular places’. Such a change will mean greater focus on sustainability and more work upfront for Traffic Engineers who will have to investigate
different options and undertake visioning exercises. This needs to be thought through further as it could be an unintended consequence if the objective of the NPPF was to speed up the planning system.
In addition to the risk of prolonging the early stages of planning process, the suggested change also raises a number of important questions. Whose vision should be preferred? How is that decided? What criteria should be employed to determine that vision? Who contributes to the identification of the appropriate vision? Is it the Highway Officer, the Planning Officer, the public, or a combination of all three? Hence the exploration of a
‘vision’ is likely to affect both the cost and timescale of planning applications. Will it also affect the running of planning appeals? It will certainly affect the post-planning cost of a new development as, according to para 118, in addition to the assessment of the likely impacts of a proposal, there should also be subsequent monitoring of those impacts.
Be that as it may, the proposal is a major and very positive shift in policy (and hopefully delivery too).
In this paper I ask two questions:
• First, will this move to Vision and Validate change the approach that Transport Planners / Traffic Engineers have towards their work?
• Second, will this bring about a fundamental change to the way we all move around?
Let us start from the beginning - it has long been recognised that ‘the more roads we build, the more traffic is created’. It is a little like the mythological monster the Hydra: you chopped off one of its heads and two more sprang forth in its place! The same with roads; the
more you build, the more traffic is created and therefore you need to build even more roads.
Despite this, we have continued to provide for and, in many respects, be ‘slaves’ to the car. Note that this inclination may remain as there is hardly no change in emphasis towards sustainable transport between the newly revised NPPF and the previous version.
Despite the last NPPF’s emphasis on sustainable transport we have tried to maintain traffic capacities by improving junctions, building ring roads/loop roads/bypasses (call them what you like!) and in the case of new settlements we have ensured that they are built to accommodate the turning of a lorry, the parking requirements of both residents and visitors, the visibility of cars at junctions and so on. Why?
Why have we continued to do so, even whilst knowing that, in this way, we are simply maintaining and prolonging the phenomenon of roads proliferation; in other words, we have been feeding the Hydra.
Whenever this question has been posed, the answer has inevitably been that it is done for ‘highway safety reasons’. Is this a good enough defence and could highway safety be achieved by different alternative means e.g. lower speeds, change in modal prioritisation and better balancing environmental consideration against the needs of the car?
That question aside, let us turn our attention to answering the first question posed by this paper - will the new NPPF change the way that Traffic Engineers go about their work? There is no doubt that the change in
emphasis is welcomed. It will hopefully reduce the amount of time spent on (very often unnecessary) traffic modelling in the search of an extra inch of traffic capacity and turn the focus towards the creation of better and healthier places. Nevertheless, cynics might say that we have known about this objective for at least 30 years (the greater part of my own working life) and yet in most cases we have not been practising it. Why?
Could the answer lie in our education system? Are traffic engineers simply practising what they have been taught at college/university? Are traffic engineers simply following their textbooks and their Highway Standards? If so, change will be achieved only at grassroots level by changing both the education that Traffic Engineers follow and the tools that they use. This is not to absolve Traffic
Engineers of their responsibility. It is offered only as a possible explanation and, if this is the case, then I do not expect the new NPPF to have an immediate effect. A revolution is required to achieve that and, if so, it will take time - but the change in emphasis introduced by the NPPF may prompt the beginning of that journey.
Let us now consider the second question - will the new NPPF bring about a fundamental change to the way that we all move?
We can start to answer this question by looking at different examples. There are many places in both the UK and the rest of the world where real and systematic efforts have been made to change the way that we move. Starting with London, the introduction of congestion charging as well as much better facilities for pedestrians, cyclists and buses has meant that the car modal share has been decreasing, despite the city’s population growing. For example, in central London we have experienced an approximate decrease in traffic of 15% in the last 5 years whilst public transport trips have increased from 6m to 10m daily. Additionally cycling has more than doubled in the last 20 years, reaching 1.26million daily cycle journeys in 2023. In Copenhagen, which has long been recognised as one of the cycling capitals of the world, incremental investment in appropriate infrastructure has led to more than 50% of all employment and school trips now being undertaken by bicycle. Finally, as reported by Professor Peter Hall in his book Good Cities, Better Lives, “Freiburg’s coordinated
transport and land-use policies have tripled the number of trips by bicycle, doubled transit ridership and reduced the share of trips by car from 38% to 32%” at a time when everywhere else this was increasing. We know of similar results in many other urban centres around the world; change is possible.
However, the big challenge is whether this shift can be achieved in a new settlement, either on the edge of an urban centre or on a greenfield site? Reviewing many such settlements, it is evident that a car is pretty much a necessity. A plumber, an electrician and a builder will need their van to drive to their jobs. A parent will, in most cases, want a car to drive their child to/from school and to buy milk and bread from the shops. Provision of a bus and a cycleway will reduce people’s dependence on the car, but the effect will be minimal. Consequently, parking spaces will still need to be provided, the roads will still need to be at least 6m wide, the junction radii will still need to be oversized, and so on. Unless there is considerable investment in
public transport systems and we plan for future travel options such as e-bikes which extend planned journey distances and until we change the way we build our settlements, the car will continue to be the predominant form of movement - no matter what the NPPF’s aspirations may be.
Does this mean that the problem is not in fact with the way Traffic Engineers go about their work? Does it mean that the answer lies more with:
• Educators and what they should be teaching future Traffic Engineers?
• Planners and policy makers who fail to focus on the big issues and instead preoccupy themselves with the minutiae (ie they exercise regulatory rather than strategic planning)?
• Architects and the way they design new (or modify existing) buildings?
• The construction industry which, in most cases, wishes to maximise profit instead of building a more sustainable future (in terms of both construction materials and methods)?
• Politicians who often fail to show the required longterm vision and leadership, instead preoccupy themselves with securing the next electoral term?
The above is not an attempt by a Traffic Engineer to either defend his profession or shift responsibility onto others. It is my own evaluation of how we can achieve real change in the way that we move. It is clear to me that we all have a role to play in this.
Over and above the holistic responsibility identified above, there is yet one more element that significantly affects the way we move and the way we build our settlements - and that is our values. The values that we all hold as a society.
• Do we value uncontrolled freedom or are we prepared to accept some restraint and controls on our lives for the greater good?
• Do we value nature and do we care about our impact on the environment?
• Do we value the quality of places that we build or are we just happy to accept lowcost, standardised replicas?
• Do we care about where our energy comes from?
• Do we value inner peace and are we prepared to invest in people’s health and wellbeing?
• Do we, at the end of the day, have values?
In conclusion, key changes that need to be introduced to a Transport Planner’s approach to their work, are:
• Instead of asking ourselves the question ‘will this be safe?’, we should be asking ‘in addition to safety, will our
design advance health and wellbeing?’
• Instead of asking ‘will this maximise traffic capacity?’, we should be asking ‘have we done as much as possible to promote walking, cycling and public transporteven if this is at the expense of traffic capacity?’
• Instead of paying scant attention and lip service to the natural environment, we should seek to work with nature, capitalising on natural assets and delivering environmental net gain. How about this for a crazy idea: instead of traffic engineers calculating junction capacities and developers funding S278 highway works, why not fund and manage community tree planting, allotments for new residents, more local parks?
• Instead of avoiding the political hot potato of congestion charging, we should start charging for car movement whilst at the same time investing in new infrastructure such as trams in major cities.
• Instead of doing things ‘just like we have always done’,
we should seek to embrace and if possible, anticipate technological advances. Currently the vision for the future is regrettably framed in the systems and roles of the past with the result that we end up with short-term outputs.
In conclusion, the answer to my two questions is that the proposed transport-related changes to the NPPF are welcome but real change to the way traffic engineers go about their work and to the way that all of us move will be achieved only once we holistically, as individuals and as a profession, accept that a revolution is necessary - a revolution to the values we hold as a society.
Andreas Markides is Chair of the Academy of Urbanism, and Chairman of Markides Associates
Imagery: Second page - photo by Iwona Castiello d’Antonio via Unsplash; belowphoto by Scott Szarapka via Unsplash
Bus Stop the Heat!
In a pictorial twist Mark Bessoudo provides a photo essay to examine the humble bus stop and how this humble structure can provide shelter in a warming world.
As extreme heat risks are predicted to rise worldwide, access to shade is becoming an increasingly scarce resource—one that is crucial not just for comfort, but for public health and urban resilience. In a world that is becoming more urbanised, ensuring that people have access to shade, particularly in public spaces, has never been more important. This is especially true at bus stops, where waiting passengers can often be exposed to direct sun for extended periods.
Bus stops may be humble elements of public infrastructure but they play a pivotal role in shaping everyday urban experience. Yet, many bus stops—especially in remote or low-income communities—have not been designed to address the basic human need for protection from the elements.
The solution doesn’t have to be complicated or expensive. As the photos here show, design interventions can be straightforward, low-tech and inexpensive.
Using Google Street View, the 360-degree visualisation tool in Google Maps, I navigated city streets and country back roads across the world capturing images of a diverse range of bus stop styles and designs. The images reveal that with just a little creativity, simple additions to bus stops, like canopies, awnings, vegetation or street furniture like benches can enhance the overall experience for public transportation users. These small interventions also have broader social and environmental impacts, potentially encouraging more people to use low-carbon modes of public transport.
This photo essay is an invitation to urban planners, designers and policymakers to rethink how they approach the mobility needs of their communities. It challenges us to look at everyday spaces through a different lens and consider how, with a few thoughtful interventions, we can improve not just transportation, but the lives of the people who rely on it.
Bus stops are more than just functional spaces— they are opportunities to improve public health, provide better accessibility, and enhance the dignity of those who use them.
Mark Bessoudo is a writer, researcher and Chartered Building Engineer whose work explores philosophy, culture and the built environment. He is completing an MA in Architectural History at The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL.
Member spotlight On being somewhere Leyla Moy
Young Urbanist Leyla Moy provides her reflections on urbanism and its specific meaning to her.
The lobby of the BFI Southbank is its own little ecosystem on Friday nights: under a scattering of spotlights, retirees with grey hair glinting sit alongside students hunched forward, tangled in headphone wires and
stationery detritus. There’s softly thrumming music like the ghost of happy hours past, just metres away from an openaccess film history library and a humble row of cinema screens. It’s London at its most quietly brilliant, I’ve often thought: a salve for loneliness.
I have a handful of canned answers for how I ended up in urbanism. There’s a poised one for people in the field, but I give the truest one to friends and uninitiated strangers with the boundaries of day and night blurring, breaking eye contact as I say I think I just love places. I don’t know if that makes sense.
At eight, my favourite place in the world was the public library. Specifically, a window alcove that could be clambered into, with heavy beige curtains to shut out the
world inside, cradling little me aloft above the street with my books and the muffled noise of the city. I recall playing hideand-seek in the Wisconsin state capitol building, clambering up cold marble steps, keeled over laughing at the golden badger statues, lying on the floor in the centre of the rotunda in that state of pleasant exhaustion only accessible in childhood memories, squinting up to see the painted dome aglow in midday light.
There’s a mnemonic basis, I learn, for this link between place, emotion and memory. The method of loci, the basis for the oft-televised mind palace memory trick, relies on our tendency to hold tight to our memories of places. An imagined place, particularly a familiar one, serves to anchor otherwise slippery memories. This anchor is strong for me, particularly with an emotion to go with it. Reaching back
in my memory, the first-year university feeling of freedom and limitless possibility lives in a now-shuttered Montreal bar on Saint Laurent Boulevard, with handles on the ceiling to hold as you dance. Heartbreak lives on a bench outside the Notre-Dame Basilica, crumpled like a leaf.
An ocean away from my first favourite places, I seek comfort in their facsimiles: the library reading room; the BFI lobby; the carpeted expanse of the Barbican Centre and the concrete maze surrounding it; every park bench, rotting wood or modern, CAD-modelled steel. The conversation about third spaces like these is fraught and crowded with questions of what makes one truly democratic, the implications of private control over ostensibly public spaces and the spectre of commercialism. I know to question all these things, but the unmoored part of me still falls in love with every place that lets me linger, unquestioningly.
At the root, maybe I know that my fascination with place isn’t scholarly or professional at all, it’s personal. I walk the busiest streets to be enveloped and cradled by the crush of people, swept up in the churn so I can move with the
certainty of red buses flowing through the city’s arteries. I go to concerts to soak in the sweat and feel that I’ve arrived somewhere, down to the reverberations in my bones.
Two weeks ago, the BFI — riverfront side this time — is abuzz with chatter at April’s Young Urbanist pub night. I haven’t yet run my career explanation script tonight, which is a relief. Tonight, I’m around people who understand. Under waning lights, I’m caught looking contemplative and hear myself say, oversimplifying, I just love places like this.
Leyla Moy is an AoU Young Urbanist, sits on the Here & Now Editorial Team, and is an Urban Designer and Planner at fabrik.
Pictured: Previous page - Capitol of Wisconsin in Madison, from the General Government and State Capitol Buildings series (N14) for Allen & Ginter Cigarettes Brands; this page, top left - Barbican by Mieke Campbell via Unsplash; top right - Young Urbanist pub night, April 2025.
MyPlace A Love Letter to Squares Gillett
Square, Dalston
I love squares. They are the centre of urban life, where people meet, rest, observe, street watch, gossip and exchange. They can be grand, institutional or local and friendly. Unlike immense squares that illustrate state and institutional power, a good neighbourhood square has a horizontal to vertical space ratio that makes it feel enclosed, cosy, like a living room. In my hometown, Bordeaux, those are ubiquitous. There is something perhaps rather romantically South European about the idea I have of a square, sitting in the sunshine, perhaps hearing the gentle lapping water of a fountain, resting in the shade of a tree. In the language across Southern Europe the place value is recognised in the words: la place, la plaza, plateia, piazza, praça.
Such an ideal space is therefore spatially open, open ended, traffic free and public. In London, numerous squares have a private or semi private aspect to them, be it the lush and gated Bloomsbury or Notting Hill squares, or the ‘POPS’
(privately owned public space) such as Pearson Square in Fitzrovia.
Amongst this myriad of squares, Gillett Square in Dalston is tucked away from the hustle on Kingsland Road. A former car park until the late 2000s, MUF architecture envisioned this space that gathers the qualities of a genuinely open-toall neighbourhood place - with seating, pine trees, a wooden platform for busking, and a healthy dose of chaos to support activities for all ages. It is musical, animated, lively. A mirrored container has been in place for 15 years - it contains street furniture and materials for spontaneous activities, like a tool box for a square sized sandbox. A visit there is always a renewed experience to reconnect with the city’s energy.
Julie Plichon is an AoU Young Urbanist and Head of Transport Strategy and Programmes at Lambeth Council
Delhi: Rewriting the code
The Indian building code is turning Indian cities in to unsustainable, places dominated by cars and lacking in legibility or identity, an urban form that is bland, nondescript and plagued by uniformity. Kanak Tiwari and Nilesh Prakash Rajadhyaksha of India’s National Institute of Urban Affairs and Manisha Bhartia and Radhika Mathur of BDP’s Delhi office explore an alternative approach that can guide Indian cities towards a more sustainable and inclusive future.
Official estimates suggest that 40% of India’s population are now urban although many researchers believe this to be an underestimate and that we have already crossed the half way mark. The trend however is clear, by 2050 India will be even more of a global urban powerhouse than it already is with 416 million additional urban dwellers.
By 2030, urban areas will contribute to 75% of the national GDP, driving government’s focus on
city planning and investment. The result has been an urban boom particularly in the large metropolises like Delhi. The boom may have been stimulated by public investment, but it is increasingly driven by market forces. The drive to develop quickly and at scale has led to concerns that market interests are pushing aside notions of ‘equitable good growth’ and leading to outcomes that ignore environmental sustainability, inclusivity, place-making and long-term urban resilience.
Kanak Tiwari and Nilesh Prakash Rajadhyaksha are from the National Institute of Urban Affairs an Indian think tank undertaking multi-disciplinary research, knowledge exchange and capacity development, policy planning and advocacy.
Manisha Bhartia and Radhika Mathur are directors and associate directors in BDP’s Delhi office both with a speciality in urban design.
These issues are of increasing concern to Indian policy makers who are promoting the importance of sustainable urban development. After several decades of experimentation it could be said that Indian urban thinking is ‘coming of age’ at both the national and local level embracing principles like the compact city, transit-oriented development, placemaking, green development, and sustainable mobility.
However the implementation of these ideas remains a challenge. There are islands of excellence and innovation, but the main-streaming of good urban design practice is being thwarted not by the market, but by the Indian planning system itself.
Planning in India
Planning in India is a combination of ‘land use’ planning at the city level and ‘volumetric’ development codes at the plot level. These regulations govern:
The proportion of land allocated to different uses based on demographic considerations;
The spatial segregation of these uses based on assumptions of incompatibility;
The plot-level regulation of how much one can build, setbacks fire service access, etc.
However, these regulations fail to consider local conditions such as climate, soil, cultural heritage, and economic potential. Rather than fostering sustainable development, these codes hinder the creation of walkable, mixed-use neighbourhoods. They impose a rigid template of towers and slab blocks within walled compounds and parking lots, disregarding the character and heritage of Indian cities. Reforming this system is critical to ensuring that India’s great wave of urbanisation supports livability and sustainability
Coding in India
Indian city planning dates back thousands of years to the civilisation of the Indus Valley. The ancient Hindu text Shilpa-shastra includes some of the earliest known codes for architecture and city planning.
Cities like Ahmedabad, Jaipur, and old Delhi exhibit compact, walkable urban forms with well-integrated private, communal, and public spaces. Elements such as otlas (threshold spaces), nukkads
The main barrier to implementing the best intentions of India’s planners is not the market, but by the Indian planning system itself.
(street corners), and chowks (market squares) demonstrate a deep understanding of human-scale urbanism.
Traditional Indian cities have a hierarchy of streets and open spaces, a mix of uses and buildings, and respond well to local climatic conditions allowing for light, shade and ventilation. The principles of good urban design are as present in the historic cities of India as they are in the hill towns of Tuscany.
The same is true of the cities of the Colonial era. The British quarters of Mumbai, Delhi and Kolkata or the Portuguese-built parts of Panjim may be different in character and density, but they maintain a structured, street-based layout with active commercial frontages, colonnades, and urban squares.
It was however during the colonial era that things started to go wrong. The culprit was the humble
bungalow that first appeared in the imperial capital New Delhi before spreading across the country. The bungalow established a model of individual buildings standing in the centre of a walled compound contrasting with traditional forms where buildings joined to each other. Soon building codes includ-
The principles of good urban design are as present in the historic cities of India as they are in the hill towns of Tuscany.
ed rules about set backs requiring a gap between the building and the site boundary.
Post independence planners took their cue from this ‘bungalow’ typology creating codes that dictated that buildings be set back from the street in walled compounds within gated enclaves regardless of the context.
Modern Indian codes still contain the DNA of the bungalow, even when applied to the multi-storey apartment complexes that are being build all over India. They are the product of a standardised set of rules relating to floor area ratio, ground coverage, site setbacks and height limits linked to specific land uses. Plot and floor area ratios mean that the more accommodation that is provided, the more open space is required so as the density rises, the bungalow becomes the slab, tower or point block. The greater the density, the larger the compound, and the poorer the connection to the street.
Starting in Delhi, these standardised building by-laws have been adopted across India. This outdated zoning model continues to shape new developments, worsening issues like urban sprawl, heat islands, and car dependency.
Flooding in the city of Gurgaon: India’s volumetric codes will not create places that are sustainable or resilient.
Delhi: Both the imperial city (top) and the old city (bottom) are based on principles of urban design that would be recognised the world over.
A Glimpse of the future in Gurgaon
Gurgaon, developed as a satellite city of Delhi, exemplifies the failures of volumetric coding. Built by private developers prioritizing floor space efficiency over urban quality, it consists of gated communities disconnected by high-speed roads. The result is a landscape of isolated compounds, lacking walkability, public spaces, or community cohesion.
Gurgaon may be a city of swanky shiny buildings but it is without a beating heart.
Gurgaon may be a city of swanky shiny buildings but it is without a beating heart.
As urban development in India accelerates – with large numbers of new towns and huge development activity within cities, these volumetric building codes threatening to turn all of India into a replica of Gurgaon. This would be an India that failed to reflect
its heritage, did not respect the environment, would be unfriendly to pedestrians and cyclists, unsafe, dominated by cars and lacking in legibility or identity. Blanket use of these by-laws will result in an urban form that is nondescript and plagued by uniformity - something described aptly by Gertrude Stein as “there being no there there”.
This is not just about placemaking, it also affects sustainable development, climate resilience, and energy efficiency none of which can be achieved through these codes. A business-as-usual approach will not yield the sustainability levels required to meet long-term climate or sustainability goals of cities.
Up to 30 Floors
Figure X: The Indian Code: The rules on setback and floor area ratio dictate a particular form of development that is profoundly anti urban
How we need to change?
We need a fundamental shift in planning practice to achieve sustainable urban development away from land-use zoning and volumetric codes to a character-based approach. We will still need codes, but they will be urban design codes that are locally specific,
Around the same time, cities in Europe and Australia were also rethinking the way that they planned for good places. Examples include the German Bebauungsplans developed as tools for shaping the urban structure of development, or the typo-morphological guidance in France to take into account the character of historic
The switch from volumetric codes to form based codes is about changing the rules rather that the system.
respond to the character and heritage of each place and promote walkability, public space, greenblue infrastructure and climatic responsiveness.
In Europe and the US these locally responsive codes are known as Form-based Codes (FBCs). They are at once very old (being similar to the ancient Indian codes), and relatively recent. In the modern era they were ‘rediscovered’ in the 1980 and 90s by American urban designers like Peter Calthorpe, Andreas Duaney and Elizabeth Plater Zyberg. They created graphic codes to regulate the nature and form of new private suburban development. The movement was called ‘new urbanism’ but, despite its name, its aim was to return to a more traditional form of development.
areas. In the UK there was the Urban Village movement and in the State of Victoria, Australia the Rescode provided a design guide for residential development.
These Form Based Codes used physical form as an organising principle, rather plot based rules for different land uses. For example volumetric codes will specify a minimum set back of buildings from the edge of the plot. The form based code by contrast will code for the building line (the primary front face of the building) and how it encloses and relates to different types of street. It is coding the same thing but from a completely different perspective.
The influence of these FBCs has spread from the early new urbanist suburbs of the US and are now widely used worldwide. England has just introduced a National Model Design Code encouraging all planning authorities to prepare their own FBCs.
The Benefits of Form Based Coding In India
Adoption of FBCs can provide a number of benefits that will be crucial for shaping the way Indian cities will evolve:
1
Safe, accessible and active public realm: Indian cities have a vibrant public realm, even if it is not always safety and inclusive, particularly vulnerable people and those with disabilities. FBCs can code for accessibility both within plots and in streets, squares, vending zones and public utilities as well as active frontages to ensure ‘eyes on the street’.
2
Active mobility and last mile connectivity: Walking and cycling have a substantial modal share in Indian as the modes of necessity for the urban poor. FBCs can ensure public right-of-ways through gated enclaves, dedicated cycle paths and pedestrian infrastructure. They can also improve last mile connectivity to public transport.
3
Socio-cultural sensitivity: Indian cities are a complex weave of class, caste and culture that are often expressed through built form. Our cities are also full of vulnerable heritage assets and precincts. Customised codes can address these special conditions.
4
Compact mixed-use development:
The current Indian development model favours mono-functional land use planning. FBCs can provide the tools to manage mixing of multiple compatible uses and high densities without overcrowding.
5
Green-blue infrastructure:
FBCs can manage green and blue elements, such as green roofs and landscape elements within sites and green streets and porous surfaces off site. At the neighbourhood level, codes can ensure green blue spaces along eater courses, enhancing biodiversity, improving access to green space.
6
Appropriate response to climatic conditions: Indian cities are not energy efficient and have overloaded power infrastructure. The heat island effect leads to widespread use of air conditioning. Codes can require climate-appropriate design reducing the need for mechanical cooling and lighting.
The switch from volumetric codes to form based codes is about changing the rules rather that the system. But the impacts would be profound. The development currently taking place in India is, in many respects, an unintended consequence of rules that are focused on housing standards and fire safety. The rules in FBCs by contrast are designed to create high quality, street-based, urban environments. The focus is on external rather than internal space and the relationship of buildings to one another and to streets and public spaces. The aim is the creation of good places shaped by the local community and stakeholders. As was the case in the US, this may be ‘New Urbanism’ but it is also a way of rediscovering traditional Indian urban forms that can create high quality environments that fit the context of traditional cities.
Not one size fits all
Delhi’s urban core is made up of multiple typologies that differ vastly in terms of urban form and density. A course-grained approach to coding could erase this diversity that is the essence of Indian cities. We need to take care that we don’t replace one-size-fitsall volumetric codes with equally inflexible Form Based codes.
Many FBCs use an urban transect approach to vary codes from the
We need to take care that we don’t replace one-size-fits-all volumetric codes with equally inflexible Form Based codes
settlement periphery to the urban core. Others are linked to building or street typologies. These help, but there remains a question about whether it is possible to adapt codes to the highly diverse and complex contexts of Indian cities. We therefore advocate a hybrid framework that sets out broad principles of good development,
while allowing area-level customised coding both for architecture and urban design. The six benefits listed opposite could form the backbone of a broad framework that can be applied across the board with different benchmarks set according to the needs of different areas. Similarly, built typologies could be varied from heavily regulated form in heritage areas to highly flexible codes in new areas with regulation only for buildings interacting with the street to ensure high quality public realm.
Below, Above and Opposite: The different typologies of Delhi: The city is made up of multiple urban typologies reflecting India’s complex mix of class caste and culture.
An Alternative approach:
Sarojini Nagar
To demonstrate the impact of this alternative approach we have explored how it might be applied to Sarojini Nagar. This is one of ten General Pool Residential Accommodation (GPRA) colonies that were built after Independence for government employees. These new settlements were built by the Central Public Work Department with a central retail area and market (the Sarojini Nagar market has become a major regional attraction for budget shoppers). The colony is divided into blocks (running
also require the creation of large parking structures despite the fact that the area is served by 3 mass transit stations.
The scheme will consist of gated complexes that will make it more difficult for people (including those in the surrounding area) to walk to the transit hubs. The absence of pedestrian movement networks will also lead to conflicts between pedestrians and cars.
The increased densities together with the floor area to open space ratio and fire safety rules create a repetitive block typology. This
the roads become bigger and more car dominated while the area becomes less connected
alphabetically from A to M) with a layout based on the neighbourhood design principle: each super block containing a school, local shops and a park.
In 2020 Sarojini Nagar was announced as one of seven GPRA colonies to be redeveloped because of dilapidation and the need for more government employee housing. The current redevelopment plans cover just over 100 hectares and follow the standard volumetric development codes with all the problems that we highlight earlier in this paper.
We have explored the impact of this approach. One the striking finding was that the surface area of roads increases significantly with implications for the heat island effect. However the permeability of the road network is much reduced making it more difficult to move around – in other words the roads become bigger and more car dominated while the area becomes less connected. The excessive parking requirements
makes it difficult to create good attractive public spaces or create green-blue networks. The redevelopment will also involve the loss of a substantial number of mature native trees.
We therefore wanted to explore how the scheme would have changed with the use of customised Form-based Codes. The plans illustrated to the right illustrates the results of this process and demonstrates how we could completely transform the quality of a development like this with much better results in terms of accessible public realms, inclusivity, sustainability, accessibility and long-term resilience. The scheme illustrates the potential of these GPRA Colonies to create new neighbourhoods built on TOD principles.
1
The Code requires to follow a building live around the edge of plots. Towers are still permitted but they have to be within a perimeter block structure.
2
There must be a vertical mix of uses with active ground floor uses. If parking is accommodated within the block it should not be on the ground floor.
3
Views, vistas and landmarks aid legibility and give the new neighbourhood a strong sense of place so that everywhere does not look the same.
4
Green/Blue infrastructure and natural drainage systems are integrated with the development reducing the potential for flooding and creating recreational spaces.
5
A landscape led strategy integrates publicly accessible green space into the urban structure allowing for recreation, biodiversity and cooling.
6
Bringing all together buildings are integrated and enclose an attractive and walkable public realm while private space is at rood level and in courtyards.
Urban Codes – the story of Delhi
Delhi’s urban fabric is a complex interplay of history, planning, and market-driven growth. While its historic quarters – like Shahjahanabad, Mehrauli, and Hauz Khas – demonstrate principles of walkability and mixed-use vibrancy, the broader cityscape has been shaped by fragmented policies and conflicting interests. Post-independence planning, driven by rigid land-use zoning and volumetric regulations, has undermined the city’s livability. Despite sporadic reforms, the planning system remains a barrier to sustainable, inclusive urban development
Historic Delhi
Most of Delhi’s vibrant urban quarters are historic places like Shahjahanabad and Mehrauli or the ‘urban villages’ of Hauz Khas and Nizamuddin. They are mixeduse and walkable and grew organically. They now form islands surrounded by ‘modern’ Delhi with its regulated land uses. In the past planners regarded these historic quarters as outdated and yet they have become havens of recreation, culture and commerce absorbing growth and responding to change in a way that formally planned parts of the city can never do. We need to decode this success and understand that the success of these places is the result of simple principles of urban design.
Imperial Delhi
When Delhi became the imperial capital its population boomed with rapid growth around the Walled City. The New Delhi Municipal Council was set up to address overcrowding and public health and housing government workers. Built between 1911-1930, New Delhi had a grandeur befitting a capital with avenues, gardens, public spaces and iconic buildings. It was based upon detailed codes and by-laws that serve it well to this day allowing for cars, public health and even specifying tree species on different streets. The first city planning agency was established in1937. The Delhi Improvement Trust (DIT) was charged with creating a ‘modern planning code’ to ensure the repair and extension of the city over ten years although this was interrupted by the Second World War. Delhi became headquarters of the Allied efforts and the empty plots and open spaces of New Delhi were filled with tents, temporary huts, hospitals and offices to serve the war effort.
Independent Delhi
After India gained independence in August 1947 shortages and economic problems meant progress was slow. Then Partition in 1948 resulted in a huge influx of refugees from Pakistan doubling Delhi’s population making housing the main priority.
In 1950 the DIT functions were transferred to the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) who produced the first city plan, published in 1962 and covered the period up until 1981 – A subsequent plan was produced in 2001. Both plans were based on land use zoning at the city scale and regulation at the plot scale with no consideration for the ‘missing middle’ to account for the character of different parts of the city.
The new draft plan published in 2021 covers the period up until 2041. As described in the main article it stops short of adopting a Form Based Code approach but it includes many elements that move in this direction.
Where Delhi Leads...
Delhi is the lighthouse city of India, where it leads others follow. If Delhi were to adopt progressive urban design and building codes, they would likely be adopted across the country.
The time is right for this to happen now because of changes to the The Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act. In the past this law stipulated that city planning authorities would acquire land, develop it and sell plots to developers. Recent changes to the law mean that councils can only acquire land with the consent of landowners. They must also undertake a Social Impact Assessment and rehouse any people displaced, paying compensation that is five times higher than it was previously. The role of public authorities will change from a developer to a facilitator and enforcer and Form Based Codes will have an important role to play in guiding development by private developers.
Controls’ (ADCs) that go part of the way. The plan includes four types of development area each linked to a set of ADCs to guide the design of development. The aim is to ensure that the overarching policies in the plan to promote sustainable development are translated into rules for development. The four policy areas are:
Land Pooling: Covering the major areas of urban extension and allowing land owners to pool land and coordinate planned development.
Green Development: Covering restricted, low FAR non-residential development in the former green belt.
The role of public authorities will change from a developer to a facilitator and enforcer
The Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs has also published a raft of guidance and standards on inclusive and accessible cities such as the ‘Harmonised Guidelines and Space Standards for Universal Accessibility’ and the ‘Guidelines for creating Infant Toddler Caregiver Neighbourhoods’. The government has also recognised the role of Form Based Codes by advocating their use in the redevelopment of 101 railway stations in cities across India.
This is being reflected in the new plan for Delhi. While it stops short of adopting Form Based Codes, it includes ‘Additional Development
Regeneration Policy: Covering the existing built up area with multiple policies covering heritage, regeneration and land use.
Transit Oriented Development: Covering areas of intense redevelopment around 24 strategic transit nodes, facilitating high density high FAR mixed-use development.
The Additional Development Controls for these areas cover many of the issues that would be in Form Based Codes. The TOD policies, for example cover:
Encouraging non-gated development with an active interface between buildings and public areas
Creating a conducive and safe environment for walking, with access to public transport.
Providing well-designed and safe public spaces for all ages.
Ensuring high quality living and working environments as part of dense and compact developments.
Enabling mixed-use development with variety of housing units and facilities and destinations at reduced distances.
Delhi has the opportunity to lead India’s urban transformation. By replacing outdated volumetric codes with context-driven, formbased regulations, the city can set a precedent for sustainable, walkable, and heritage-sensitive development. This shift is not just about aesthetics—it is critical for climate resilience, economic vitality, and social equity. The time for reform is now. India must move beyond rigid zoning and towards an urban framework that fosters truly livable cities.
India stands at a crossroads. The existing planning codes, designed for another era, are failing its cities. Shifting from rigid volumetric regulations to context-sensitive form-based codes is not just a technical reform—it is an urgent necessity for sustainable, livable, and resilient urban growth. Delhi has the opportunity to lead this transformation. By rewriting its codes, it can set a national precedent, ensuring that future urban development reflects both India’s rich heritage and its aspirations for a greener, more inclusive future.
The Good City
BDP believes that cities are good for us, at least they can and should be. They have the potential to be good for economic growth, for our quality of life and wellbeing, for arts and culture and for the environment. However too often, around the world, cities fail to live up to this potential.
The Good City is an initiative launched together with BDP’s parent company Nippon Koei to help cities across the world become better. It brings together our designers, urbanists, engineers, environmental scientists, and technologists to provide a package of services targeted at cities and municipal authorities.
As Part of this the City Observatory is a research programme and think tank in association with the Academy of Urbanism that draws on expertise from across the world to better understand the issues facing cities.
Is there a there there? Placemaking in the non-places of Subtopia Urban philosophy
Our resident philosopher slot is filled this time by Mark Bessoudo, who contemplates identity, suburbia and transport. Questioning opportunities to find a sense of place in non-places.
“There is no there there,” wrote novelist Gertrude Stein in her 1937 book Everybody’s Autobiography. Stein was describing the sense of profound loss she felt after returning to her hometown of Oakland, California, only to discover that the childhood home and farm where she had grown up decades earlier had been demolished to make way for new development. The place that had once defined her sense of identity, marked by its distinctive qualities and unique characteristics—its particular there-ness—had been transformed into its opposite: a space stripped of its capacity to anchor meaning or memory.
Decades later and thousands of miles away, the British architectural critic Ian Nairn echoed Stein’s experience. In 1955, Nairn wrote ‘Outrage,’ a seminal essay for The Architectural Review that sent ripples through the UK’s architectural and planning world. His fiery critique warned
of a future swallowed by what he termed Subtopia—a soulless, monotonous landscape where the distinctions between town and country blur. Before long, he argued, Britain would become smothered in wire fences, traffic roundabouts, car parks and the vaguely (and ominously) named ‘Things in Fields’. “The end of Southampton will look like the beginning of Carlisle,” he prophetically declared, naming cities in the south and north of England, respectively, while “the parts in
between will look like the end of Carlisle or the beginning of Southampton.”
Nairn saw the relentless spread of Subtopia as a profound threat not only to Britain’s natural landscapes but as an erasure of the local character of its villages, towns and cities. He was raising the alarm not just about the physical expansion of cities, but of the sense of place that was being flattened and eroded in its wake. It was, as he put it, “the annihilation of the site, the steamrollering of all individuality of place to one uniform and mediocre pattern.” Nairn’s warning was characteristically blunt: if this thoughtless sprawl continued unchecked, we would become castaways of our former selves, floating on an island of industrial detritus “into the abyss”.
Fast forward to today, and Nairn’s outrage might seem overly dramatic. Yet, in some ways, it is difficult to
disagree with. Cities have sprawled outward, losing their distinctiveness in precisely the ways he feared. It’s just that many have grown accustomed to it—not just in Britain, but across the world. This issue is not confined to suburbia alone; it is a natural outcome of supermodernity, a concept Nairn vaguely foreshadowed in ‘Outrage,’ but which was formalised in the 1990s by French anthropologist Marc Augé in his book Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity
Augé identifies the architectural and infrastructural typologies that now shape contemporary everyday life in much of the modern world: motorways, cars, supermarkets, airport lounges, retail outlets, shopping malls, hotel chains, underground metro platforms, bus stops and service stations. These spaces emphasise efficiency, transience and functionality over meaning, identity and rootedness. If they possess any recognisable qualities at all, it is those of anonymity, uniformity and sterility. These spaces of transit and commerce are simultaneously everywhere and nowhere, their experience both solitary and collective. Augé labelled them non-places. Today, as the world grapples with the challenges of rapid urban expansion, questions remain: How do we build cities that don’t simply sprawl endlessly outward but instead cultivate meaningful connections with people and place? What happens when we rethink non-places not as inevitable voids but as an opportunity for embedding local character?
One way to address this is by
re-examining our approach to transportation. In the world of Subtopia, mobility is often treated as an end in itself—a way to get from A to B as quickly and efficiently as possible, with little regard for the quality of the space in between. But mobility is not just about reaching a destination; it is about how we experience the spaces as we move.
This means that we should simply accept Subtopia or the non-places of supermodernity as inevitable. While Augé’s prognosis ultimately leaned towards pessimism, Nairn’s message contained a kernel of optimism. His appeal for sanity was best articulated in his 1956 follow-up ‘Counterattack against Subtopia’. His directive was less combative than the title suggests: it was a casebook illustrating, in the simplest of terms, how to turn the tide by humanising the built environment through small, tactical interventions. It provided prescriptive recommendations across different landscape categories— from city and town to country
and wilderness—and at various scales. The suggestions included practical guidelines for improving street furniture (public benches, bicycle racks, telephone boxes and rubbish bins), hedges, footpaths, lettering, advertising, street lighting, wiring, road signs, bus shelters, car parks, and more. If ‘Outrage’ was a manifesto against Subtopia, then ‘CounterAttack’ was a blueprint for resisting it.
As Nairn wrote, “The more complicated our industrial system, and the greater our population, the bigger and greener should be our countryside, the more compact and neater should be our towns.” The future should not be about nostalgic longing for an irretrievable past, but about reclaiming a new vision for our places—one that doesn’t reduce us to merely passengers in Subtopia moving from one nonplace to another but instead restores our connection to the character of the places we inhabit and move through.
Mark Bessoudo is a writer, researcher and Chartered Building Engineer whose work explores philosophy, culture and the built environment. He is completing an MA in Architectural History at The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL.
Imagery: All photos in this article courtesy of Polly Tootal (pollytootal.com)
Urban Model of the United Kingdom & Ireland Large urban modelling allows analysis of spatial inequalities providing insights that influence national and regional policy on issues including mobility, land value, health and carbon.
