Earlier in our busy 2024 schedule of events, the Kent Design Conference took place at the University of Kent in Canterbury, attracting a multi-disciplinary gathering of built environment professionals to discuss the future of Kent and Medway’s places.

We began the conference with a session to set the scene and a reminder of the overarching themes of the conference – Placemaking, Sustainability, and Health and Wellbeing – in relation to Planning for a Sustainable Future in Kent and Medway.

Julia Thrift from the TCPA opened the panel session with a stark reminder of the health, economic and environmental challenges that we are collectively facing. Julia suggested three areas where good planning and placemaking can help to make a difference, particularly by focusing on the needs of the least advantaged in society:

  • Ensuring good quality affordable homes
  • Delivering good green infrastructure
  • Supporting active travel

In the face of uncertainty, Julia reminded us that by operating within our own ‘sphere of influence’ we can all play a part in helping to solve these challenges.

Joanne Preston from the DLUHC outlined the role of the newly formed Office for Place (OfP) in helping to create ‘beautiful, successful and enduring places’ through its range of research, training and events, advocacy, and advice to local authorities. Joanne described the ongoing work that the OfP is doing in relation to design coding, which, given the requirement for all local authorities to deliver an area-wide design code, was a topic that would be returned to at several points in the day.

Ross O’Ceallaigh from Design South East provided an overview of some of the challenges and opportunities in Kent and Medway and posed three questions to prompt discussions:

  • What kind of future do we want for the region?
  • What policies and investment will we need?
  • How do we bring people with us?

Design codes and design quality were the focus of the Q&A discussions around how to police bad design / enforce design codes, the role of design codes in de-risking investment and ensuring viability, and how to ensure inclusive engagement in planning processes.

Some of our other highlights include:

Creating Sustainable New Communities

Joanne Cave from David Lock Associates hosted a discussion on delivering sustainable, healthy places across strategic sites in Kent. The focus was on projects in Sevenoaks, Paddock Wood, Canterbury, Folkestone Harbour, and Otterpool. Focusing in on Canterbury, Joanna highlighted the challenges: a tight, radial city, centralised within a ring road. Paddock Wood, the second example saw the new development changing demand for travel and sharpening the focus on the need to improve active transport. Joanna emphasised integrating sustainability and health into urban development plans, ensuring that these strategic sites promoted well-being, environmental stewardship, and community engagement.

Julia Wallace – Otterpool Park focused on Otterpool Park – Kent’s new ‘Garden Town’, emphasizing placemaking and wellbeing through creativity. Julia outlined the vision for Otterpool Park, where the response was underpinned by 3 pillars: Countryside, Connected, and Creative initiavies. The community events programme worked with local organisations including Creative Folkestone and Strange Cargo, on 2 main workstreams: 1 around community engagement and arts; 1 around influencing built environment. The waste water treatment works and the learning programme delivered to local schools both aimed to integrate creative and relevant education into the development process​​.

Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG)

Eleanor Trenfield – EDLA reflected on Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) in practice, shedding light on recent experience and advocating for a deeper understanding beyond mere metrics to ensure long-term impact and better quality of design for residents and wildlife.

Eleanor highlighted some unintended consequences emerging through the BNG metric, including the pressure to maximise scores by favouring simpler habitats. This trend has led to the fencing off of large areas to create high condition habitat, effectively disconnecting people from nature and
encroaching on essential features like drainage basins, which become more
engineered and less accessible. Additionally, smaller developments are facing viability challenges, often resulting in disconnected pockets of homogenous habitat that fail to deliver meaningful value on-site.

Eleanor’s presentation sparked valuable discussions on finding better approaches to integrate nature into development sites, paving the way for more in-depth exploration and collaboration and we are exploring opportunities to discuss this in more depth.

It was an intense day of presentations, workshops, conversations and knowledge sharing. It’s clear that there is an enormous pool of talent and ambition in the county. Although the sector is facing challenges, we left feeling excited about the opportunities to create healthy, sustainable places over the coming decades.

Thanks to all the amazing speakers and sponsors who made this event so fantastic!

 

Images: Design South East