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But travelling around the States recently, I found Hope Six's future to be a topic of real discussion, and not just among housing professionals but among a wider professional class as well, generating newspaper comment on both the east and west coasts.

Hope Six was set up by the Clinton administration in the early 1990s through the Department of Housing and Urban Development. It channels federal funds into major renewal projects for deprived areas facing housing market failure.

Bush has put the scheme on hold: no new funds will be allocated this year. The programme has fallen victim to the US political right's rejection of federal action to boost social cohesion.

The programme has faced problems, which the Bush administration has exploited, particularly the slow release of funds into complex projects. Even so, it has produced some spectacular successes in places such as Chicago and Philadelphia through the reintroduction of mixed-tenure family homes set out in traditional and popular low- to mid-rise street patterns. So there are lessons the UK can learn from the schemes that have been completed.

One characteristic of Hope Six is that it embeds within its guidelines the design philosophy of the USA's new urbanist movement. Beloved of the Prince of Wales and deputy prime minister John Prescott, the new urbanists are in fact "old" urbanists, favouring traditional street patterns and vernacular architecture, using local building forms and materials.

Putting aside my prejudices about nostalgia, the new urbanists are very good at making their ideas stick. They do so by insisting on design codes that constrain new developments' pattern, type and even style.

This can produce strange results. I visited one scheme, for instance, in a rough part of south-east Washington that looked like a set from Little House on the Prairie.

Some of our most cherished developments, from the Georgian period to garden villages and new towns, were based on design codes, but codes are no panacea

But it's easy to see why Prescott is interested. Billions of pounds are about to flow into the growth and renewal areas. He is probably asking whether he can afford to rely solely on a development control system that tends to roll over every time housebuilders want to erect another soulless estate.

The government is therefore on the hunt for new methods to speed up production while ensuring higher quality. Urban design coding could be part of the package. English Partnerships can use it on its own land holdings. Housing associations leading mixed-tenure schemes could also benefit.

Perhaps we could go further. Coding could be used to mark a gradual but ongoing shift in the planning system, from a reactive to a proactive model of control.

Of course, codes are not new. They have been used in one form or another since the Renaissance at least. Some of our most cherished developments, from the Georgian period through to garden villages and new towns, were based on adopted codes.

The 1990s redevelopment of Hulme in Manchester followed code-like guidelines. More recently, the Prince of Wales' Poundbury scheme laid down a prescriptive code based on traditional urbanism. EP has also been working with the Prince's Foundation to apply codes to schemes on former new town land.

Codes are no panacea. They are only as good as their content and application. We also have to ensure we don't become too prescriptive. With these caveats, coding could be a way of providing better quality, faster development.