Sustainable urban planning and design concerns places as a whole.

Quite the opposite to static master planning, integrated approaches understand the dynamic character of the urban system.

It is thus essential that design policies are developed with a holistic view, examining for example how urban design can help support policies on environmental sustainability, crime and safety, health and education.

To effectively achieve an integrated approach:

• Establish interdisciplinary planning teams or partnerships to produce policy documents, to avoid a narrow single-problem approach

• Consult all service providers throughout the process, and ideally contribute to an extended planning team

• Involve the local community in the planning effort from the start

By doing so, policies can be more coherent, more transparent and more accessible to community engagement, and design issues will become part of the decision-making process. Clear leadership and coordination will be needed to ensure teams work cooperatively.