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Rowan Moore, Architecture critic for the Observer
For more than a decade, Cabe has been promoting good architecture, yet it has hardly been a golden age. For evidence, look at successive Carbuncle Cup shortlists, the Bad British Architecture blog, or the writings of Owen Hatherley and Anna Minton.
This is not all, or mostly, Cabe's fault. In its attempts to turn awful PFI schools into bearable ones, for example, Cabe deserves credit. But its design review has waved through some shockingly poor high-profile schemes with slight or no opposition. It fails to insist on its own policy that tall buildings should be part of an area plan. Its commitment to public space doesn't prevent some shoddy aprons at the...