Soapbox
My interest is 'spaces and places' was professional as well as personal. Many people pursue this by taking an interest in design but I was more interested in how to go about making things happen.
Here my recent thoughts on Labour Party proposals to rationalise local government and speed up the planning system.
Towards the end of my career, I did quite a bit of coaching and teaching mainly focused on the financial hydraulics and art of getting things built and and aimed at environment professionals ranging from student architects and local authority planners to developers and the Planning Inspectorate.
Here are links to a small selection of material on development economics and delivery strategies that I used. Most of this is quite old now and a lot of the hard data and references to regulations are out of date, but the general analysis is still mostly relevant and website analytics tell me that people still look for them. I hope you find it expressed here in rather more accessible terms than in the dreary text books.
Delivery Strategies for Masterplans and Area Action Plans.
Written for the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors in 2008.
Personal practice note on how / if good design affects the value of a scheme. Undated.
Development Freakenomics Part 1.
Article for Town & Country Planning magazine on common misconceptions about development economics among town planners and architects. 2012
Development Freakenomics Part 2.
Ditto. 2013
Personal Practice Note on the provision of workshops, studios and small offices. 2010
Planning and job creation – alternatives to the standard menu
Article for Town & Country Planning Magazine on alternative approaches to stimulating employment through the town planning system. 2012.
An 80+ page guide to development viability appraisals, what they tell you and what they don't, prepared as background material for lectures I gave at various universities, to civil servants and to local authorities through their training networks. It also supported a module I created for the RTPI CPD programme. This last edit dates to 2016. The numbers have changed since but the logic hasn't.