Design governance the CABE way, its effectiveness and legitimacy

Figures & data

Figure 1. The CABE design governance model.

Table 1. National design governance models compared.

Table 2. CABE’s impacts.

CABE impacted on	CABE impacted through	But
… politicians	… convincing a generation of politicians in national government about the importance of design, in particular that design was not all subjective and inconsequential but could be objectively assessed and delivered with a real and positive impact on the economy and society	… CABE spent less time than it should convincing those waiting in the wings, the opposition politicians, who (when they came to power) weren’t sufficiently convinced of CABE’s value to support it in the face of completing claims on a diminishing public purse
… the professions	… building on pre-existing efforts to bring the built environment professions together, and indeed for some time they sang from the same hymn sheet about the importance of design, and particularly urban design	… CABE failed to tackle the culture of professional silos or the tendency of the built environment professional institutes to revert to type and to the narrow pre-occupations of their members once CABE ceased to exist
… the public	… successfully raising the built environment onto the national consciousness through its campaigns and publicity machine	… failed to change the national culture and debate, and design quickly slipped back into a specialist concern of the few and/or a passing preoccupation of those afflicted by poor quality development proposals
… policy	… its very significant influence on policy, particularly planning and regeneration policy (and latterly highways policy) where design became an overarching theme that infused the government’s guidance which directly influenced practice on the ground	… some argued that CABE too easily bent with the wind and was too keen to involve itself in every latest policy fad, and by losing focus never truly moved design to become a policy focus in its own right instead of an adjunct to something else
… public building	… positively shaping the range of public building programmes that stretched through the 2000s, and was successful in ensuring that design quality became a central consideration in many of them	… was less successful at institutionalising these changes, most of which were ad hoc, and so when the financial crisis came programmes like Building Schools for the Future where quickly dismissed as too expensive because of the bespoke design solutions they promoted
… private developers	… positively influencing private developers about the value of design, and whilst this influence on the volume housebuilders was late in coming and varied considerably, the organisation had significant successes in convincing some about the importance of design; an impact that persists today	… some larger developers were alienated by the CABE message and its methods, and never came around
… skills and capacity	… its work on professional skills and capacity care of its knowledge and assistance tools so that, by all accounts, this influence played a significant role in widely changing local cultures around the importance of and priority given to design, particularly in local authorities around the country	… these skills were quickly hollowed-out when austerity began to bite, and CABE never engaged with professional education and had no impact on its continued organisation in what have frequently been described as professional siloes
… the next generation	… the wide range of innovative resources that were prepared for use by teachers and school children which, because of their engaging and creative nature and the large numbers who used them, will have had a long-term impact on at least some	… given the sheer numbers of children that CABE needed to reach and the complexity of the educational field, the challenge facing an organisation of CABE’s size clearly militated against it having an impact that was anything other than transitory
… specific projects and places	… its design review panels that had a direct and tangible impact on projects and places, seeing in excess of 3,000 schemes over its life of which 81%, according to CABE (2010), were changed as a result. In doing so CABE moved design review from a marginal national activity to a significant national, regional and local one which, more than any other tool, has survived (albeit in a piecemeal fashion) the cuts in public expenditure.	… by making the process so public and adversarial CABE, like the RFAC before, ultimately contributed to their own demise through the enemies they created and the consequential absence of friends when they needed them most
… thought leadership	… the sheer quantity of its research and advocacy work, and became the natural focus for thought leadership in the field, a role that even extended internationally where CABE was increasingly regarded as a node of innovation and best practice	… ultimately CABE relied on the volume of its output more than the quality of individual pieces which only occasionally had the depth, rigour and originality needed to define the field or to convince sceptics, such as The Treasury, about the real value of design
… day to day practice	… its numerous practice guides, case studies, research studies, its audits, websites and toolkits, that practitioners of all types, even if they had no contact with CABE, could draw on and utilise in their day to day practice to assist with particular tasks or to help make the case for design	… the sheer quantity of this material was often the cause for complaint, that practitioners felt swamped with material that they rarely had time to digest
… mainstreaming design	… turning around the culture for design so that the pursuit of design quality was increasingly seen as a mainstream aspiration of planning and development and increasingly went without question by built environment professionals (of all types), and by politicians and developers alike	… at the same time, CABE’s influence was not the same everywhere, and CABE found it much harder to influence the hard to reach places, both those that geographically and culturally felt a long way from London, and those where economic and social challenges predominated
… the general standard of design	… improvement by degrees, with successful schemes that had been influenced by CABE setting the precedent for schemes that came after, whilst schemes that weren’t up to quality being abandoned either directly or indirectly as a result of CABE’s influence. Sometimes these changes were small scale and additive, for example the improvement in housing design gradually seen through the Building for Life tool or enabling giving confidence and capacity to address design challenges locally. Sometimes they were dramatic, such as CABE’s work on the 2012 Olympics with its galvanising impact on East London. The ultimate impact is as much about what is not seen today as what is	… CABE can’t take all the credit as the policy turn in favour of design had begun long before CABE came on the scene, in the mid 1990s, whilst government policy and non-governmental initiatives such as the Urban Design Alliance (UDAL) were also influential
… CABE’s demise and the austerity that followed drove many of CABE’s former employees to work outside the built environment or overseas	… its enduring influence on the people who passed through the organisation as its employees, many of whom are still working in and shaping the field in the UK. As one CABE officer commented: “It did bring together the most extraordinarily set of talented and committed people … for younger staff CABE was the most amazing springboard job before something else, and that is still raising standards”
… creating today’s market for design governance	… the impact it had on the regional partners that CABE supported and which continue to survive (albeit hand to mouth) alongside Design Council CABE which, as a final act, CABE established. The latter, having weathered some very difficult times, is now gaining momentum as a ‘premium’ supplier of design review services. All these players (and others (private and public) are now operating in the market that CABE, through its growth (creating the demand) and sudden demise (creating the opportunity), facilitated	… the dominance of CABE during the 2000s also led to unintentional casualties, through the sideling and eventual demise of formally influential non-governmental players such as the Urban Design Alliance and the Civic Trust

Figure 2. CABE’s influence was profoundly positive on a wide range of successful projects as diverse as the Birmingham library (i), Sheffield Peace Gardens (ii), Liverpool One retail quarter (iii), the Crossrail stations in London (iv) and the 2012 Olympic projects both in London (v) and elsewhere, numerous school projects across the country (vi), and many residential-led master plans, such as Kidbrooke Village (vii).

Figure 3. One of CABE’s mistakes as widely recognised by those who were involved, as one influential insider commented: “The Walkie Talkie is more elegant, believe it or not, as a consequence of CABE’s reviews of it, but obviously, there will always be projects like that where we could and should have done more.”

CABE. 2010. Making the Case, unpublished evidence submitted by CABE to the 2010 DCMS ‘value for money’ assessment of its NDPBs. London: CABE.

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