Suburban regeneration: Croydon

Recently the London Organising Committee for the Olympic Games announced that they had completed their "food vision". I won't dwell on what this was, but it was final proof that the word "vision" has suffered drastic devaluation. Once it applied to the experiences of exalted saints and prophets, which inspired dazzling paintings and books of the Bible. Now it means something slightly stronger than "memo".

The suburban borough of Croydon has also been subject to repeated "visions" over the past two decades, namely Croydon: The Future; Vision 20:20 and Will Alsop's Third City. Famous architects have zipped in and flourished brightly coloured images that turn Croydon's pervasive grey into flashes of neon, and striven to find an inner Manhattan in its array of towers.

There have been TV shows and articles, mostly with same shtick: Croydon is sexy, really. Yet, as Emma Peters, head of planning, regeneration and conservation, pithily remarks: "Every time we have another vision we've declined economically." From 1995 to 2005, when employment in London grew by 18%, in Croydon it grew not at all.

The borough hasn't given up, however, which is why I find myself sitting with a group of planners who are trying to make the place better. Opposite me is Finn Williams, pale and delicate as a consumptive poet, who looks a decade younger than his 27 years. To one side is Vincent Lacovara, 31, and to the other Tom Sweeney, aged 35. They are describing the deals they are making with heavyweight developers, and their efforts to steer many millions of pounds of investment to beneficial effect.

Planners aren't supposed to look like this. Normally you expect them to be worn and middle-aged, and to have turned the colour of manila through blending with their environment, as certain moths come to resemble tree bark. Williams, Lacovara and Sweeney are signs of the borough's intent to do things differently. It is a long-standing ambition, given new impetus by the arrival in 2007 of Jon Rouse as the borough's chief executive. Rouse, a former chief excutive of both the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment and the Housing Corporation, is one of the country's more effective civil servants.

The selection of this young band of planners could just be another doomed attempt to sex up Croydon, but what is striking is their determination not to do another "vision". "Every plan for Croydon," says Williams, "has always been desperate to undo the mistakes of the previous plan." Lacovara adds: "The first question people ask when we consult them is: 'Is anything going to happen this time?'"

They embody the attitude of many young architects, which is to take things as you find them rather than impose a grand plan, and to find the spirit of the place, even if that place is not particularly charming. In the 18th century, Capability Brown talked of genius loci in the design of landscapes. These contemporary architects apply the same attitude to office blocks, rather than hills and woods. They also think there's something good about suburbs, in contrast with older architects such as Lord Rogers, for whom dense, Barcelona-like cities are everything.

In the case of Croydon the place was once delightful enough for the Archbishop of Canterbury to build his holiday home there, and it keeps fragments of its ancient past. It was then a stolid Victorian town, before the spread of London's semi-detached suburbia absorbed it into the metropolis. In the 1960s, thanks to a quirk of official policy, it boomed. The government wanted to push new office development out of the centre of London, with the result that it migrated to Croydon.

Its distinctive skyline of stubby towers was created, but when policy was reversed, so was the boom. Croydon has struggled ever since, with BT the latest business to move out. It has resumed its status as a place that prompts faint sniggers among metropolitan types, despite being the location of the world's first international airport, and the town where Malcolm McLaren pioneered punk. It may have given the world Kate Moss, but she now lives elsewhere. Terry Major-Ball, the gnome-selling brother of John Major, was the Croydon resident who stayed.

Yet it is only 15 minutes by train from central London, and the borough's mixture of suburban semis, detached houses and terraced streets mean that there are homes for every stage of life ("nursery to nursing home" as Lacovara puts it). And given the desperate hunger for homes in southern England, it can't be impossible to make it into a place where people want to live. Much of it already is, but the centre remains problematic.

Williams and co don't want to make it into something it is not, but a better version of what it is now. Their proposals are mostly quite obvious, like building a bridge across dividing railway tracks, planting trees, removing the most destructive 1960s road systems, and making it possible to access public places now cut off by roads. But they also get developers to think about what's good and/ or distinctive about Croydon, such as its tendency to place little and large buildings, and ancient and modern ones, side by side.

Above all, although they stress that previous visions left behind ideas of value, like opening up the buried river Wandle, they want something to happen this time. In this they are not just a bunch of young turks, but part of a collective effort that includes more experienced officers such as Emma Peters. This effort includes the creation of delivery vehicles and joint ventures and other devices too technical to be digested over Sunday breakfast, but none the less important. If they succeed, they could finally make Croydon an example that other towns will follow.

Why the new-look US embassy is a lump

It claims to be exceptionally green, and its architects KieranTimberlake have a record that makes this believable. The design deals with the immense security measures by trying to disguise them as landscaping, which is at least tactful, while the intricate surfaces shown in the images give an air of quality.

Yet it is a lump. A green, well-dressed, diplomatic lump, but still an ungainly, dominating object that makes minimal attempt to relate to its surroundings. There is no sense that it will join with its existing and future neighbours in creating a cohesive piece of city. It will be a singular object that will loom awkwardly over what is already a disjointed area of London.

For this blame does not only attach to the state department or the architects, but also to the inability of London's planners, from the mayor down, to plan in three dimensions. Battersea was identified as a place of opportunity under Ken Livingstone, meaning that it would be a place where office towers could flourish, yet there has been minimal investment in designing what kind of places this new development might create.

What will make this area succeed or fail is not the artistry of individual facades, but the kind of places that will be made by several buildings working together. And, yes, as many have pointed out, the embassy does look like a Norman keep, complete with moat. We all know it has to be exceptionally bomb-proof, but was it really necessary to rub this point in?