Matthew Carmona
Biographic Data
| ID | 6010185 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Matthew Carmona |
| GIVEN NAMES | Matthew |
| FAMILY NAME | Carmona |
| SIGNATURE | CARMONA M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University College London |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-7322-1224 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 34 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 6 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 34 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1994 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Urban design leadership
This paper forms a third part in what becomes a trilogy of papers examining leadership in urban design as a dimension of urban design governance. Part 1 proposed a theoretical framework through which to explore leadership in urban design. Part 2 applied it to the varied practices of public architects across different countries in Europe. This third part takes a single national lens, the case of Indonesia, and examines how fundamentally different …
Barriers and solutions to place quality, looking through a tools-based urban design governance lens at Israel
Israel has a rapidly growing population, a need for new homes, and a planning system that provides them but with little focus on their design quality. This paper uses an innovative barrier-mapping approach to understand why this is, before looking for solutions in a tools-based approach to urban design governance. The paper concludes that existing approaches are dominated by control tools and overly technical approaches to the management of devel…
Equity in quality
Disadvantaged communities routinely live with poorly designed development, but it is not a given. This research traced twenty stories of projects that successfully delivered high-quality housing and housing environments in disadvantaged areas across England. Through on-site audits and detailed interviews with development stakeholders, ten transferable routes to success were identified. The routes are presented in the paper and illustrated with th…
Designing Britain’s new ‘new towns’
Urban design leadership
This paper, in two parts, explores the styles and application of urban design leadership as a dimension of urban design governance. Part 1 explores the literature on leadership and its relation to urban design. It discusses the relation of urban design leadership to places and situations, first connecting through the fundamentally integrative nature of the activity – vertically, horizontally, and temporally – and second influencing across profess…
Design in planning, planning to design
Urban design leadership
This paper, in two parts, explores the styles and application of urban design leadership as a dimension of urban design governance. This second part takes the theoretical framework for understanding urban design leadership developed in Part 1 and applies the theory to the varied practices of public architects across Europe. Based on interviews with protagonists involved in the delivery of these roles, the paper teases out how these functions can …
Bridging the design / finance divide
Professional, policy and conceptual divides continue to throw up barriers to a shared understanding between the domains of urban design and development finance. Drawing on cross-Europe analysis, this paper explores the relationship between mechanisms of finance and tools of urban design governance, asking how they can work together to enhance urban quality. Practices were conceptualized and compared and those that combined tools were identified a…
Coding urban design
This paper explores the nature and use of coding in urban design, both conceptually and as a tool for delivering a greater attention to place-focused urbanism. It discusses how these practices have been used on both sides of the Atlantic before conceptualising this role in the light of different ‘model’ coding prescriptions and processes. The paper draws from two major pilot programmes, 17 years apart, that examined the use and potential of codes…
The existential crisis of traditional shopping streets
This paper explores the crisis in our traditional shopping streets driven by the rapid move to shopping online. The paper examines the nature of traditional shopping streets; why physical and local shopping is important; conceptualizes the distinguishing characteristics of traditional forms of retail and online shopping alongside the factors that determine shopping choices; and explores different approaches to shaping the future of traditional sh…
Public Places Urban Spaces
The Social Dimension
Place value
This paper explores the link between the quality of the built environment and its value, in health, social, economic and environmental terms. This is theorized as ‘place value’ which, alongside ‘place quality’, is conceptualized as existing within a virtuous loop in which quality dictates value and value defines quality. To test this, a systematic review brought together wide-ranging international research evidence. The work confirmed a range of …
Principles for public space design, planning to do better
This paper sets out a series of normative principles for planners and others to use when planning for and regulating public space design and management. Based on an exhaustive examination of public space in London, the substance of which is reported elsewhere, a first section sets out three overarching principles relating to the critical but often missing strategic planning framework for the development and regeneration of public spaces. A second…
Marketizing the governance of design
This paper explores the marketization of design review in England, a tool of design governance that prior to 2011 had almost exclusively been within the purview of the state. This is no longer the case, but neither is it the case that the involvement of the market in the delivery of such services has inevitably undermined their public interest raison d’etre. The processes revealed in this paper, and its structure, draws evidence from three discre…
The formal and informal tools of design governance
This paper takes a typological exploration of the ‘tools’ of ‘design governance’. It begins by exploring the generic literature that focuses on the range of instruments, approaches and actions ‒ the tools ‒ that policy makers deploy in order to steer public and private actors towards particular policy outcomes. Subsequently, how the notion of tools relates to practices of design governance is examined: first, encompassing three ‘formal’ categorie…
Design Governance
Design Governance focuses on how we design the built environment where most of us live, work, and play and the role of government in that process. To do so, it draws on the experience of the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE), a decade-long, globally unique experiment in the governance of design. This book theorises design governance as an arm and aspiration of the state; tells the story of CABE, warts and all, and what …
Design governance
This paper introduces and theorizes the practices of design governance: the process of state-sanctioned intervention in the means and processes of designing the built environment in order to shape both processes and outcomes in a defined public interest. The paper is in three parts. The first briefly addresses ‘why’ the public sector should seek to intervene in design, in other words the motivations behind design governance. The second and third …
Urban Planning in North Africa
Urban Planning in Lusophone African Countries
Mega-event Cities
Contents: Introduction: cities and sports mega-events, Gavin Poynter and Valerie Viehoff. Part I Urbanism and Legacy in the 21st Century: Urbanalisation and city mega-events: from 'copy&paste' urbanism to urban creativity, Francesc Munoz Olympic legacy, Iain MacRury How do we measure legacy?, Allan J. Brimicombe The economic power of the Olympic brand and the legacy of London 2012, Alvaro de Miranda. Part II Urbanism: Space, Planning and Place-Ma…
The Place-shaping Continuum
Drawing on empirical research in London, this paper examines how public spaces in the contemporary city are shaped. Together, the ‘contexts’, ‘processes’ and ‘power relationships’ that are revealed represent an integrated framework in the form of a journey through time during which contemporary public space—exemplified in this paper through the case of public space in London—is moulded. Extrapolating to the larger field of urban design, the discu…
The Design Dimension of Planning
This book examines the design policies in current development plans. With design quality of growing importance to the public, consumers, developers and their clients, and high on the Secretary of State's agenda, this book makes an important practical contribution to improving design control. With the increasing importance attached to district-wide development plan policies since 1991, local planning authorities and community groups have an import…
Design Dimension of Planning
Contemporary Public Space, Part Two
There are a series of discrete but related critiques of the contemporary public space situation, and it was these that the first part of this paper identified and organized. These drew on different scholarly traditions to highlight the key tensions at the heart of the contemporary public space debate. It revealed that critiques of public space could broadly be placed into two camps: those who argue that public space is over-managed, and those who…
Design Coding and the Creative, Market and Regulatory Tyrannies of Practice
This paper reflects on a pilot programme to evaluate the use and effectiveness of design coding. It focuses on the roles and relationships between the different stakeholders in the coding process and compares the preconceptions about coding with actual experiences in use. The paper reveals the gulf in professional cultures that impact on the development process. This is underpinned by the continuing struggle between creative, market-driven and re…
The design content of development plans
(1994). The design content of development plans. Planning Practice & Research: Vol. 9, Design Research and Planning Practice, pp. 199-220
Design control—bridging the professional divide, part 2
In Part 1 of this paper the new framework for design control in England in the form of (revised) Planning Policy Guidance Note 1: General Policy and Principles (1997) was examined alongside a reformulation of the established critiques of design control in the UK. From the analysis the implications of the new framework for the key actors in the design control process was considered and the extent to which the guidance addresses the key themes of t…
Residential Design Policy and Guidance
Residential Design Policy and Guidance
(1999). Residential Design Policy and Guidance: Content, Analytical Basis, Prescription and Regional Emphasis. Planning Practice & Research: Vol. 14, No. 1, pp. 17-38
From Design Policy to Design Quality
A framework for design policies The design dimension of planning The process of design policy writing The fundamentals of design policy Key aspects of design policy coverage Writing, implementing and monitoring design policies Other influences on improving design quality Selected sources of further advice
Public space -- Asian Pacific style
Planning for housing
(2004). Planning for housing: Unravelling the frictions in local practice. Planning Practice & Research: Vol. 19, No. 2, pp. 123-146
Design Coding and the Creative, Market and Regulatory Tyrannies of Practice
This paper reflects on a pilot programme to evaluate the use and effectiveness of design coding. It focuses on the roles and relationships between the different stakeholders in the coding process and compares the preconceptions about coding with actual experiences in use. The paper reveals the gulf in professional cultures that impact on the development process. This is underpinned by the continuing struggle between creative, market-driven and re…
Contemporary Public Space, Part Two
There are a series of discrete but related critiques of the contemporary public space situation, and it was these that the first part of this paper identified and organized. These drew on different scholarly traditions to highlight the key tensions at the heart of the contemporary public space debate. It revealed that critiques of public space could broadly be placed into two camps: those who argue that public space is over-managed, and those who…
Contemporary Public Space
This two-part paper draws upon different scholarly traditions to highlight the key tensions at the heart of the contemporary public space debate. Critiques of public space can broadly be placed into two camps, those who argue that public space is over-managed, and those who argue that it is under-managed. This over-simplifies a complex discourse on public space that this paper aims to unpack, but nevertheless provides a useful lens through which …
The Design Dimension of Planning
This book examines the design policies in current development plans. With design quality of growing importance to the public, consumers, developers and their clients, and high on the Secretary of State's agenda, this book makes an important practical contribution to improving design control. With the increasing importance attached to district-wide development plan policies since 1991, local planning authorities and community groups have an import…
Design Dimension of Planning
The Place-shaping Continuum
Drawing on empirical research in London, this paper examines how public spaces in the contemporary city are shaped. Together, the ‘contexts’, ‘processes’ and ‘power relationships’ that are revealed represent an integrated framework in the form of a journey through time during which contemporary public space—exemplified in this paper through the case of public space in London—is moulded. Extrapolating to the larger field of urban design, the discu…
Design Governance
Design Governance focuses on how we design the built environment where most of us live, work, and play and the role of government in that process. To do so, it draws on the experience of the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE), a decade-long, globally unique experiment in the governance of design. This book theorises design governance as an arm and aspiration of the state; tells the story of CABE, warts and all, and what …
Design governance
This paper introduces and theorizes the practices of design governance: the process of state-sanctioned intervention in the means and processes of designing the built environment in order to shape both processes and outcomes in a defined public interest. The paper is in three parts. The first briefly addresses ‘why’ the public sector should seek to intervene in design, in other words the motivations behind design governance. The second and third …
Urban Planning in North Africa
Urban Planning in Lusophone African Countries
Mega-event Cities
Contents: Introduction: cities and sports mega-events, Gavin Poynter and Valerie Viehoff. Part I Urbanism and Legacy in the 21st Century: Urbanalisation and city mega-events: from 'copy&paste' urbanism to urban creativity, Francesc Munoz Olympic legacy, Iain MacRury How do we measure legacy?, Allan J. Brimicombe The economic power of the Olympic brand and the legacy of London 2012, Alvaro de Miranda. Part II Urbanism: Space, Planning and Place-Ma…
The formal and informal tools of design governance
This paper takes a typological exploration of the ‘tools’ of ‘design governance’. It begins by exploring the generic literature that focuses on the range of instruments, approaches and actions ‒ the tools ‒ that policy makers deploy in order to steer public and private actors towards particular policy outcomes. Subsequently, how the notion of tools relates to practices of design governance is examined: first, encompassing three ‘formal’ categorie…
Place value
This paper explores the link between the quality of the built environment and its value, in health, social, economic and environmental terms. This is theorized as ‘place value’ which, alongside ‘place quality’, is conceptualized as existing within a virtuous loop in which quality dictates value and value defines quality. To test this, a systematic review brought together wide-ranging international research evidence. The work confirmed a range of …
Principles for public space design, planning to do better
This paper sets out a series of normative principles for planners and others to use when planning for and regulating public space design and management. Based on an exhaustive examination of public space in London, the substance of which is reported elsewhere, a first section sets out three overarching principles relating to the critical but often missing strategic planning framework for the development and regeneration of public spaces. A second…
Marketizing the governance of design
This paper explores the marketization of design review in England, a tool of design governance that prior to 2011 had almost exclusively been within the purview of the state. This is no longer the case, but neither is it the case that the involvement of the market in the delivery of such services has inevitably undermined their public interest raison d’etre. The processes revealed in this paper, and its structure, draws evidence from three discre…
Public Places Urban Spaces
The Social Dimension
The existential crisis of traditional shopping streets
This paper explores the crisis in our traditional shopping streets driven by the rapid move to shopping online. The paper examines the nature of traditional shopping streets; why physical and local shopping is important; conceptualizes the distinguishing characteristics of traditional forms of retail and online shopping alongside the factors that determine shopping choices; and explores different approaches to shaping the future of traditional sh…
Engineering (20 works) · Political science (18 works) · Business (16 works) · Computer Science (14 works) · Urban Planning and Governance (11 works) · Architectural engineering (10 works) · Geography (10 works) · Public relations (9 works) · Sociology (9 works) · Environmental planning (8 works)