What do you think about the quality of Devon's built environment?
Is modern architecture always bad? Are housing estates killing our countryside? Is it wrong to recreate building styles from the past to disguise modern buildings? Should there be a Poundbury in Devon?
Philip Knowling
Devon Life contributor
The concept of developing a new community which has a cohesive feeling is highly desirable, however for me Poundbury does not achieve that objective. Whilst many homes and buildings are individually attractive, somehow the planning process that decides to accept or reject their setting detracts from the final result and perhaps this more than any other is the reason that there does not appear to a community feel.
Regrettably today's council planning seems to be restricted to just the individual building, though there are also signs that even this is not the case, rather than the cohesion of the whole.
This can often be seen in the contrast between fastidious following of restrictions made by details enshrined in listed building demands yet in other buildings in the same street, allowing buildings totally out of sympathy and context with their neighbours.
Talking of film sets - hopefully the gated community now often seen in some areas of the UK wil,be resisted as this is hardly the way to promote and develop real communities.