How a little bit of chaos can be a grand design for communities

It involves jam and knitting and the designer is so sure he is right that he has embarked on a mission to convince the entire house-building profession to his embrace his philosophy.

The designer and face of TV's Grand Designs has long been a vocal critic of the identikit developments which have sprung up in British towns and cities over the last 20 or so years. He despairs at architects who simply copy historic designs and has no time for those who bury the past under towers of glass. Last night as he delivered the 2010 RIBA Trust Annual Lecture he hoped to show there is a third and, as he puts it, "gentler way".

"The layering and complexity of our built environment provides depth, interest and relief like a moist and flavoursome layer cake of reference," says McCloud. "The mistake many planners, builders and architects make is to assume that by reproducing history, you can reproduce its meaning.

"You might be lucky enough to evoke an echo or memory of the past; you might make a pleasant enough brand new Georgian street, but it will be about as layered, moist and flavoursome as a Jacob's cracker."

This is where the jam and knitting comes in. McCloud believes new developments should fit around the existing environment and with a little architectural jam in the form of open spaces, walkways and bridges, the whole site can be knitted together into a community.

It was that same idea he used in the Castleford Project. The West Yorkshire town was chosen in 2003 for a Channel 4 restoration series which it was hoped would provide a blueprint for regeneration. Seven schemes, including improvements to parkland and an adventure

playground, were given the go-ahead and when the final project, a 4.8m bridge spanning the River Aire, was completed two years ago, McCloud's idealism was shown to have foundation.

With the involvement of Castleford residents, cutting-edge modern design sat against the existing backdrop of the mining town and the result was seen as proof that successful regeneration is about a blend of old and new.

For McCloud the theory was confirmed during a recent trip to Mumbai. Just a few minutes from the centre of Bollywood glamour lie the slums of Dhavari. Home to a million people, there is little sanitation, rats roam the endless piles of rubbish and disease is rife. Yet for all the problems, razing it to the ground and replacing the rabbit warrens of overcrowded homes with soulless high rises is not, he says, the answer.

"It takes a trained designer to come along and put it all in order again," he says. "However, it is possible to sweep away the superfluous and polish up the stuff that's valuable, but which has been neglected. Dhavari is higgledy-piggledy, ramshackle and improvised.

"However, despite the high population density, this isn't a high rise neighbourhood, but one built on a family pattern of alleys, lanes, streets and squares and everywhere is walkable. You can get everything you want from washing powder to a goat within five minutes from home and the use of shared space creates a sense of community."

McCloud learned a lot from his time in Mumbai and now back in Britain he wants to pass on those lessons to developers in this country and show that sometimes a little bit of chaos is no bad thing.

"Developers don't do messy very easily," he says. "They prefer tidy. Development has to fit a red line on the plan and be highly marketable, not scrappy round the edges. The trouble is that human beings are naturally quite messy and they also happen to be scrappy round the

edges by nature.

"It's what gives rise to interesting places, idiosyncratic homes and streets with that higgledy-piggledy charm.

"The first mistake of virtually all slum redevelopment schemes, no matter how well-intentioned, is to start from scratch instead of using existing structures and patterns as a starting point."

While the country is braced for a massive cut in spending, the inevitable years of future austerity ahead may yet help turn McCloud's dream into a reality.

"If we are to meet the low carbon and resource-meagre targets that our governments are rightly demanding, we're going to have to figure out some ways of being flexible," he says.

"What we in the West need to do is curb our enthusiasm for status, acquiring stuff and materialism while developing a keener, richer, more elaborate set of connections with the people that live around us and the places we inhabit."