I was sent this story from a month or two ago :
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/03/10/wfra310.xml
It's about a new piece of software that is being installed for the French civil service to try and discourage English phrases such as 'email' from creeping into the French language.
The word 'email' is understood by the whole world and is quite useful. Because of this, the new French software will probably make it more difficult for people to understand each other.
But it got us thinking about the problem of language in our own field of work.
All of the different groups involved in city design, planning and development speak their own dialects. For example, a 'house' might be called :
- a 'unit' by surveyors
- a 'dwellinghouse' by planners
- a 'dwelling' by architects
- a 'home' by sales brochures
A large residential development might be called :
- a 'masterplan' or 'place' by planners
- a 'new community' by a developer
- a 'new urban quarter' by sales brochures
- a 'dormitory estate' by opponents of the development.
A wide part of a street might be called :
- 'that bit of the road next to the new building' by locals
- a 'space' by architects
- the 'public realm' by planners
- an 'area of hard landscaping' by designers
- an 'off site infrastructure item' by a developer.
New shops in a town centre might be called :
- a 'shopping centre' by local residents
- a 'new piece of the city' by architects
- 'town centre retail-led regeneration' by developers
- an 'extension to the prime retail pitch' by surveyors
- a 'brownfield opportunity site' by planners
The fact that there are many different ways of describing exactly the same things illustrates how fragmented the city design, planning and development community is.
One professional group on its own is capable of creating a huge amount of impenetrable jargon.
When several professions get together, as they do in city design, the quantity of jargon can grow at a terrifying rate. Rob Cowan's Dictionary of Urbanism is a heroic attempt to control and explain this jargon.
Our urban design software, called CityCAD, was originally conceived as a way of trying to bring together all of the different groups involved in city design and planning.
It does this by creating a shared integrated model of the masterplan where all data can be stored. It doesn't solve the problem of language (it has to use some words, obviously) but the main technique for communicating information is through a 3D perspective view.
A 'Correcteur Termonologique' probably wouldn't help though, as everyone seems to enjoy jargon far too much to do away with it.
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