A special place

What makes this place special? How could it be made more distinctive?

• The natural landscape (including the rise and fall of the ground, distant views, streams, rivers and lakes)
• Historic buildings and archaeology, and potential archaeological sites
• Landmarks, meeting places and other important features
• Traditions and local history, inherited character, important events, and associations with locally known or famous people
• Townscape: the overall appearance of the place
• Views and vistas
• Street types: from boulevards to courtyards, from civic squares to crossroads
• Street patterns: blocks and plots
• Public spaces
• Field or plot sizes or shapes
• Types and uses of buildings
• Building scales, heights, massing and densities
• Special buildings (including architectural styles that are well-liked, historic, iconic or disliked)
• Building materials: texture, colour, pattern (including local stone or brick used in roads and walls)
• Craft traditions
• Building fronts and facades, including shop fronts and window displays, or steel roller shutters and security grills
• Building decoration
• Roof shapes
• Front gardens and trees
• Boundary treatments: walls, hedges, fences and railings
• Street furniture and paving (including lamp-posts, benches and litter bins)
• Public art and monuments
• Lighting and the appearance of the place after dark
• The life and vibrancy of how people use the place
• Good housekeeping: the overall quality of maintenance of roads and pavements, and of greenspace, hedges, gardens, buildings, and structures; and the absence of neglect

In short: What potential is there to enhance each special attribute of the place?

A well-connected, accessible and welcoming place

How well-connected and accessible is the place? What limits how easy it is to get around?

• Is the place pedestrian-friendly, or vehicle-dominated, polluted and noisy?
• Are there adults and children who use the place to walk or cycle to work, to school or to the shops; for exercise and leisure; for play or pleasure, to meet, and to enjoy?
• Places where the speed of traffic needs to be reduced
• The network of streets: safe pathways connected to surrounding areas
• Places where new routes and connections are needed
• Ease of crossing roads and streets: traffic speed under 20mph
• Pedestrian and cycle crossings: well positioned or lacking,
• Is the place welcoming to new visitors, as well as under-represented groups?
• Facilities for cycling: useful, safe or unsafe for cyclists
• Pedestrian routes: clear to recognise or confusing, well or poorly lit, cluttered or uncluttered
• Comfortable movement: even pavements, dropped kerbs at crossings, resting places, handrails where needed
• Walls, fences, guardrails, steep gradients and other barriers to movement
• Bus or train stops and shelters: conveniently sited, nearby, safe, well lit, in good or bad repair
• Drop-off points and taxi ranks
• Car clubs, car club parking spaces and electric car charging points
• 20mph area-wide limits, play streets, and home zones
• Facilities for loading and unloading, and the servicing of buildings or spaces How understandable is the place? Does anything make it confusing?
• What boundaries (natural and man-made) define the place? Are they successful and desirable?
• Do people generally have a clear understanding of the place: where it is, what happens there?
• Points signifying entry to particular areas
• How easy is it to find your way around: are there landmarks, buildings, works of art, or other features creating views and helping people find their way around?
• Signs: too many or too few, appealing or garish, uniform or clashing
• Street and building names: clearly visible or not • Plaques and information boards
• Lighting to help people find their way around, highlight landmarks and attractive buildings, or disguise eyesores How well does the parking work?
• What types of parking are there (on-street parking, surface car park, multi-storey car park, undercroft or mechanised parking, parking on front gardens, parking courts, garages and car ports, etc)? Which are more successful, and why?
• Is informal or illegal parking causing problems or damaging the appearance of the place?
• What are the rules governing parking? Are they effective for the range of users of the place?
• Is the parking enforced effectively?
• What conflicts are there caused by parking?
• Accessible parking for disabled people
• Parking and storage for cycles, prams, pushchairs and wheelchairs • Electric charging points
• Deliveries, loading and unloading, and servicing
• Can residents and visitors be encouraged to car pool, use public transport, walk or cycle to minimise the impact of parking?

In short: How can the place be made better-connected, more accessible and more welcoming?

A safe and pleasant place

What makes this place – and its street(s) and public spaces – safe and pleasant? What detracts from that?

• Activity at various times of the day, week or year
• Can a mix of uses (such as living, working and playing) add to the success of the place? Can any conflicts and irritations be eased by management?
• Is there a sense of ownership by the whole community?
• Meeting places (for all everyone, gender, race, age etc)
• Places to relax or sit
• Conditions for visually impaired people, deaf people and learning disabled people
• Inclusive space for a wide range of uses and activities, or space where certain groups feel unwelcome?
• Housekeeping: litter, detritus, and fly tipping; roads and surfaces well maintained; general evidence of care and maintenance
• Safety: how safe people feel during the day or at night
• Comfortable environment and shelter (micro-climate: pleasant, or strong winds, glare or over-shadowing) • Behaviour: social or antisocial, vandalism and graffiti
• Overall unifying composition (a certain style or pattern of development), or a more organic composition
• Gap sites or boarded-up buildings
• Buildings or areas that are well used or underused
• State of repair of buildings and structures
• Shops: well-used, or vacant
• Buildings with active uses on ground floors or living over shops • Beautiful or ugly buildings
• Building frontages: windows and doors overlooking streets or spaces, or blank frontages.
• Boundaries and barriers: fences, gates, guardrails, bollards etc
• Security of property, private gardens, yards and other spaces
• Lighting: to little or too much, sensitive, obtrusive or intrusive
• Advertisements, security cameras, seating, estate agents’ boards: welcome or obtrusive
• Noises and smells: pleasant or unpleasant
• Rubbish and fly-tipping: removal and prevention
• Litter, litter bins and dog bins
• Vermin: mice, rats, pigeons, foxes etc
• Air and water quality
• Ground contamination
• Telecommunications: cabling, masts, antennas and aerials
• Utilities: water, gas, electricity; under and above ground
• Suitable space for local economic, social and cultural life (markets, festivals, tourism, night life, eating, entertainment, sport, sitting out, promenading, religious practices and retailing, etc, allowing for changing needs during the day, week and year)
• Traffic: calm or excessive, slow or dangerous
• Pavements: broad or narrow or shared between vehicles and people on foot
• Street furniture or clutter: signs, bins, railings, phone boxes, control boxes: useful, broken, ugly or disused How successful are the streets and spaces underfoot? What could be improved?
• Pedestrian routes: even or uneven, slippery or non-slip
• Hard surfaces: tarmac, stone, paving etc
• Paving: attractive or unattractive; messy, uneven or broken
• Cleanliness and maintenance: broken materials, potholes, puddles, litter, potholes, drainage, chewing gum, dog mess
• Visually and functionally pleasing design underfoot
• Drainage: drains and gullies, and storm and rainwater run-off
• Ironware: manholes, tree grilles etc
• Verges and planted areas: considered and cared for, or neglected and unkempt How do people enjoy nature here? What is missing?
• Parks, or other green and open spaces
• Public or private space (and how public is the public space?)
• What uses are encouraged or discouraged in the open spaces?
• Open water: coast, rivers, streams, lakes, ponds and canals
• Watercourses underground in pipes or culverts
• Fountains and water features
• Biodiversity
• Green corridors (for people and/or wildlife) along natural features or roads, rivers or canals
• Shelter belts: trees or other planting helping to create a more comfortable microclimate
• Gardens: beautiful, neglected, or used for car parking
• Trees: beautiful, shady, sheltering, screening, damaged, sick or overgrown
• Planting (trees, shrubs, flowers, grass, planters, hanging baskets etc)
• Weeds and overgrown areas
• Productive landscape for food production
• Allotments
• Hedgerows
• Sports grounds
• Nature reserves

In short: How can the place be made safer and more pleasant?

A planet-friendly place

What makes this place planet-friendly? How are scarce resources wasted? How does movement use resources?

• Walking and cycling made easy and attractive
• Public transport within easy reach
• Car sharing schemes in place
• Shops, parks and community facilities within walking distance How is waste handled?
• Recycling and composting facilities: existing, or provided for
• Automated waste collection systems or other area-wide waste solutions
• Community-based waste collection systems How is energy used in buildings?
• Energy demand minimised
• Energy supply: from on-site renewable or low-carbon sources, or off-site, low-carbon technologies, including decentralised and district sources
• Features taking advantage of passive solar gain, and providing shade in summer How adaptable is the place?
• Features that make the place adaptable to a new use or uses when conditions change
• Buildings: maintained, restored and adapted, rather than demolished and replaced What other features makes the place planet-friendly?
• Contributions to tackling climate change, and to adapting to and mitigating its effects
• Features that minimise water use and water run-off, and maximise water recycling
• Stray light and light pollution
• Habitats encouraging biodiversity: water, hedges, trees, unmanaged land, wildlife corridors

In short: How could the place make better use of resources?