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 development, proving ineffective at influencing the delivery of sustainable design quality. Consequently, a new focus on informal tools should be explored to help build a new culture of quality.