That must be some of the most uninspiring and grim attempt at making a visualisation I've seen, even for the usual grim and uninspiring standards of Aberdeen/shire!

The comments by Jim are most certainly apt in that the visualisations are predictable, sad and offensive. The true scandal is that the Planning Authorities involved are clearly Not Fit For Purpose. It is the unique combination of greedy visually illiterate housebuilders with Planning Authorities who regularly fail to assert for meaningful standards. With such low standards pertaining we should not hold our breath for improvements to emerge.

Brian

Planning Officers do what they can with the resources they have. If developments of this size and quality are being approved it is the Scottish Government and their policies/standards that should be tackled. Blame the generals, not the footsoldiers!

What is more to the point is this is planning in principle - why are visualisations required at all?

Ian,

civil servants always have excuses eh?

Ian Nairn Jr - Really? you don't think that some planning officers are terrible at implementing local area planning policies?
In my experience, every planning officer has their own personal slant on the policy - which makes it very much the responsibility of those with the power to issue the approvals, what we need is a more consistent implementation of the policies that exist first, rather than letting money and (uneducated) councillors influence the decision making.
Developments like these are too often approved to "help local housing needs" and no consideration is given to the actual design of them - planning departments should make developers work harder, much harder when designing green field settlements - you can see the aspiration here is to put standard (horrible) house types in the middle of a plot on some slightly curved streets.
Hopefully in the detailed application they will have to significantly up their game in terms of the product on offer and urban design, but I have no doubt the likelihood is the "town centre" aspect of this will disappear in place of additional residential units - or will be the last phase of development and never quite happen...

Boaby - what you say can be correct, but I doubt one renegade planning officer would be solely responsible for approval of 550 homes and a primary school. I'll happily blame a planning officer for an ugly house or bad extension, but this is on a different scale.

the problem is that the "renegade planning officer" would be the one telling them to go back to the drawing board and come back with something decent!!