Rethinking urban design

In the UK today we have realised that we have to think again about towns and urban renaissance and this is high on the political agenda, but we are only just beginning to realise that we need to start at the local level and are still searching for the tools to do so. This presents a real challenge for urban design professionals—to make urban space work, for quality-of-life reasons as well as for productivity. This paper discusses these issues, with particular emphasis on new initiatives such as Returning Roads to Residents, Placechecks and Home Zones.