Urban Design Guidance

Quality in Design

National Planning guidance and advice stresses the importance of quality in design, and the importance of design considerations in reaching planning decisions. This advice is found in the Scottish Executive's Designing Places, and A Policy on Architecture for Scotland.

Design policies are included within the development plan and the Council's non-statutory planning guidance in the Development management Handbook.

The introduction of a tram system into Edinburgh will bring significant change to the city. The system must make a positive contribution to our environment and to this end a DESIGN MANUAL (LINK) has been prepared.

Planning briefs and Statements of Urban Design/Design briefs may be prepared for particular sites, and these are available from the planning reception at Waverley Court.

The Council has recently (August 2003) prepared a report to Planning Committee on Urban Design Guidelines for Edinburgh.

The following files are in Adobe Acrobat PDF format.

NEW!  Standards for Urban Design (PDF, 2.7MB) - Download full document.

Standards for Urban Design

Introduction (PDF,290K)

1 City Wide Dimension (PDF,668K)
2 Local Area Dimension (PDF,988K)
3 Street and Site Dimension (PDF,482K)
4 Public Realm Dimension (PDF,300K)

Summary (PDF,115K)