OUTER SPACES

Richard Upton, chief executive of U+I, argues that while London’s centre will survive, it is the city’s outer reaches that will provide much opportunity too

Walking the streets of central London during the last weeks and months has been a strange experience. Places so familiar, devoid of their bustle; the crowds gone; shops and restaurants closed.

In Victoria, where U+I is based, we have seen and felt the impact of the pandemic on central London and at times it’s been hard to comprehend. It is all too easy to get sucked into a vortex of doom and gloom, but we must remember that there is light at the end of the tunnel in the form of vaccines and the second half of 2021 looks brighter as a result. So let’s focus on that future and ask what the opportunities are for London as a result of the pandemic. How will the shape of our city change? Certainly, enormous damage has been wrought on urban centres across the country – and in London these are some of the UK’s most famous and wellloved retail and leisure destinations. It isn’t only the impact of the lockdowns that has caused damage, but also the ongoing absence in between of the critical mass of office workers that is the lifeblood of many central London businesses.

Even so, I have no doubt central London will recover, the ‘death of the office’ narrative that drives a lot of the doommongering around the future of our great city has been overdone. The ‘future of work’ is not this urgent and necessary experiment in remote working that we have been living through. It is something smarter, hybrid and more agile that will keep an office at its heart. At U+I, for example, we’re looking for a new home. Something smaller that is designed to cultivate collaborative working rather than the usual rows of desks, a space that goes above and beyond usual office expectations. Remote working – at home or in shared workspace locations – will be for focused work and the office for the buzz of collaboration, creativity and innovation. Importantly, we will still have an office in central London – we are just rethinking how we will use it. We think this will be the case for most businesses: demand for offices in central locations will remain, but occupiers will look at using the space differently, with a premium placed on well-designed workspace with great public realm, parks and amenities, as well as high levels of sustainability, wellbeing and connectivity. Where we expect to see more wide-ranging change is in the outer London locations that have been a little less feted in the past. In 2020, it was already clear that for all the talk of retail dying and high streets on their last legs, suburban and fringe locations in London were faring far better than places in the centre.

In many of these locations, places like Bromley and Hayes where we have largescale regeneration schemes, footfall rebounded quickly after the first lockdown, as all those commuters now working from home rediscovered their local area.

We expect this again to be the case again in 2021 as restrictions lift and more flexible and hybrid working arrangements endure. The ‘shop local’ mantra that has helped many smaller businesses through the

pandemic is a great positive, which we think will help places to recover.

Ultimately, we still believe in the local high street as the lifeblood of a community: we just need to rethink what it is for. That means thinking less about the creation of retail destinations, more the curation of places for people to gather. Shops, yes, but smaller, more local, more interesting, more experiential, sitting alongside hospitality, leisure, workspace and homes, as well as much-improved public realm. The future of London as a city post-pandemic must be seen through this prism of creating more genuinely mixed-use places. But to do that you do need to be bold and creative. In Hayes, we’re creating a whole new neighbourhood based on these principles, called The Old Vinyl Factory – a seven hectare regeneration site that is now close to completion. Here we have poured our energies into curating a retail and leisure offer that has a balanced mix – some national operators but also smaller, independent businesses. These sit alongside homes, workspace and a hugely successful innovation hub, as well as community facilities, education providers and carefully considered public realm. What we find is that successful places need to have a sense of identity or character – that kind of magic alchemy that just makes a place ‘right’; a place where people want to live, work, visit, and spend their time (and money). And part of that alchemy is having a unique and interesting leisure, hospitality and retail offer. We have seen the same thing happen in Bromley: a virtuous circle is sparked that can kickstart the revival of a High Street, a neighbourhood or a whole town centre.

Getting it right is not easy. But we believe it is the only way you can deliver genuine regeneration that has a tangible and sustainable impact on local economies, while also being commercially successful. And that is what London will need to recover: imagination, hard work and close working between the private sector and local authorities, to help our city emerge from the grip of this pandemic. A city revived, with a strong vibrant centre, but equally vigorous satellites; a more balanced, hybrid, and sustainable city, fit for its global future.

Richard Upton is chief executive with U+I, a property developer and investor focused on regeneration. Richard is driven by a desire to build a company that inspires people to deliver great places that are authentic, inclusive and exceptional. uandiplc.com

DEBUNKING DENSITY AND DISEASE

Urban density is not to blame for the pandemic’s spread and we should weaponise it to fight future contagion argues Earle Arney, Founder & Chief Executive of Arney Fender Katsalides

London’s population density is often cited as a critical point of vulnerability during the pandemic, and a catalyst in the rising ‘R’ (Covid reproduction) number. But I think density is widely misunderstood and often a ‘catch-all’ for a much broader range of urban problems. A high density does not make the capital predestined to become the epicentre of an epidemic. Instead, the data suggests that well-planned density can improve cities’ ability to cope with epidemics through economies of scale, and access to the higher-grade amenities and green spaces that a critical mass of citizens demands.

You only need look to Dickensian London to understand why density is unfairly linked to poor health. The Industrial Revolution caused London’s population to explode from 1 million in 1800, to 4.5 million by 1880 making the capital the largest and richest city in the world. However, the social consequences were terrible, with overcrowding, squalor, poor sanitation and constant outbreaks of cholera and other diseases. Through reform and much-needed improvements in infrastructure, sanitation, healthcare and education, the worst aspects of Victorian life were banished, but London’s population density remained high. Urban density does not have to equate to epidemic vulnerability. In fact, the opposite is possible. At the World Bank a team led by Dr Sameh Wahba investigated 284 Chinese cities to examine whether there was a link between Covid-19 and urban density. It found that the commonly associated connection was unfounded and he argued that higher densities can even be a blessing rather than a curse in fighting epidemics. Due to economies of scale, cities often need to meet a certain threshold of population density to offer higher-grade facilities and services to their residents in order to help protect against the transmission of disease. Similarly, data for New York City illustrated that in some urban areas, Covid-19 cases were disproportionate to urban density. Specifically Manhattan, the most populous borough of New York City, had fewer cases of Covid-19 compared to the less densely populated outer suburban boroughs of Queens and Staten Island. So if density isn’t to blame, what makes one city more vulnerable than the next? It’s simple – poverty. London, to its great shame, still has shocking rates of urban poverty throughout its boroughs – higher than any other region in the UK according to London’s Poverty Profile. The pandemic’s disproportionate effect on the urban poor is also linked to housing quality, where higher death rates from Covid-19 were found in areas where the housing need is the most acute and overcrowding rife. Housing and health must go hand in hand for our cities to prosper. Poor quality housing and vulnerability to infectious diseases is not solely a question of density done poorly, but how we make our cities an equitable place for all. We should channel what we have learnt during the pandemic to

Mill Hill, a high density development and WELL community of 844 homes, at 244 dwellings per hectare, on a 3.14 hectare site designed by Arney Fender Katsalidis

drive reform and make London as healthy and green as it can be. Firstly, we must tackle the housing issue. Affordable housing targets should not be lowered as some argue. Rather, we should just get on and deliver much-needed homes - at a good level of density and at an increased rate. We need to ‘press reset’ as the current approach is broken. To drive that reset, Special Development Authorities should be established, much like the Olympic Delivery Authority employed to deliver mass housing within a compressed time period – something we have otherwise been incapable of since the post-war period. These new Special Development Authorities should be empowered as consent bodies to deliver homes across GLA-defined Brownfield Sites, Opportunity Areas and Housing Zones. Density will help balance the development economics and offset the provision of well-designed, affordable homes.

These homes must be made more adaptable and able to support homeworking, with associated qualitative measures such as good acoustics and privacy for shared occupants. This would be particularly achievable in build-to-rent as a fresh and evolving typology. Most adaptations of this type can be achieved with minimal uplift in floor area and with no increase in the extent of external walling. Finally, new green spaces must be created for London and the quality and accessibility of existing green areas, including the greenbelt, elevated. What better legacy of the pandemic than a healthy green revival of London? I envisage a new, improved density that allows our city a more concentrated mix of culture and creativity, all with intrinsic epidemic resilience facilitated by good design.

Earle Arney is Founder & Chief Executive of Arney Fender Katsalides. He holds a Master of Architecture from Harvard University and is an architect, urbanist, and an office and tall building specialist. His practice works internationally from their London and Toronto studios. afkstudios.com