Planning costs

LAST week (Perspective, 9 November) you published a two-page article by Ross Martin headlined “Essential to protect the spirit of place” which refers to the annual Scotland’s Towns Conference to be held later this week at Dunfermline.

It is over a century since, in 1904, the Study in City Development by Professor Patrick Geddes was published by the Carnegie Dunfermline Trust. Exactly 100 years ago, in 1911, the Civics Exhibition in Edinburgh was held at the Outlook Tower and town and country planning was launched to become a growth industry throughout the 20th century costing millions every year.

The late Professor Sir Robert Grieve, as president of the Town Planning Institute, had the courage to raise the question of cost-effectiveness. Over the years the planning system has imposed procedures and constraints of ever growing expense with doubtful effectiveness in most towns and villages.

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Ross Martin writes that “for far too long we Scots have allowed our towns to become homogenous clones” and we are just starting to understand the role and function of place and how it interacts with us in the villages, towns and cities in which we live and work and play.

So what have planners been doing for the past 100 years?

Antony Wolfe

The Tollhouse

Gatehouse of Fleet

Kirkcudbrightshire

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