THE LONDON SOCIETY: When This is All Over - What do we do then? by London Society

WHEN THIS IS ALL OVER

2020

THE LONDON SOCIETY 2020

The Aim of the Society is to stimulate a wider concern for the beauty of the capital city, for the preservation of its charms and the careful consideration of its developments.

WHY DO WE EXIST? We believe that London's future must be shaped by contemporary culture as well as its rich and layered history WHAT WE DO Celebrate and enjoy the capitalâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s culture and architectural history. Debate how we plan a future that is beautiful, sustainable and fair HOW WE DO IT Engage Londoners with how the capital is designed and planned through tours, walks, talks and debates W W W . L O N D O N S O C I E T Y. O R G . U K

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e w o d ...what ? n e h t o d We asked: what will happen when this is all over? What is to become of our high streets? How do we pay for the costs of the lockdown? Will London continue to grow, or will cities and urban life become less popular again? How will remote working play out - will we need as many big, shiny corporate towers? And how will we choose to live - tiny apartments in vertical developments are fundamentally less attractive than a year ago.

Shortly after the first Covid lockdown hit in March 2020, the London Society invited members, friends, built environment professionals and others to reflect on the changes that London would see as a result of the pandemic and, more importantly, to think about the changes we should be making. Lockdown revealed many things about the capital - our need for public space, our reliance on our transport networks, how many of our key workers have to travel great distances to work, how small and uncomfortable much of our housing is, the tenuousness of ‘gig’ employment and the great poverty that exists.

More importantly, how should the city change? What sort of homes do we want to build? How do we ensure that key workers are adequately paid and housed? How do we keep pollution and traffic down? How do we make sure that all Londoners have access to green space?

It has also saw an upswing in community spirit, a great deal of selflessness, a greater appreciation of those poorly-paid workers - bus drivers, shelfstackers, binmen, cleaners - whose previously ignored, invisible roles are vital to the functioning of the city.

And how do we harness the community spirit, the people who have helped and volunteered, the ones looking out for neighbours and others, so that this becomes a point when society changed rather than a memory. You will find the contributions that we received on the next pages. But what do you think? If you’d like to keep the debate going, email your thoughts to info@ londonsociety.org.uk and we will try to publish them on the Society blog.

The economic impact of the pandemic might need a reconstruction every bit as profound as anything since the end of WW2. So what do we keep? What do we change?

THE LONDON SOCIETY 2020

WHEN THIS IS ALL OVER

TO OUR CONTRIBUTORS ALISTAIR BARR AMY WARNER ANDREW BEHARRELL BUCKLEY GRAY YEOMAN CHRIS WILLIAMSON CLARE RICHARDS CLLR. PROF. SAMER BAGAEEN DANIEL MOYLAN DAVID MORLEY DR NICHOLAS FALK FAHEEM MOHYUDDIN JAMES RAYNOR JONATHAN MANNS LORD TOBY HARRIS MATTER MATT BROWN MICHAEL COUPE MIKE STIFF NEIL BENNETT FREDDY MARDLIN SOPHIA BOYD SUSAN MOORE MEREDITH WHITTEN SEEMA MACHANDRA

THE LONDON SOCIETY 2020

POST-COVID CHANGES By Michael Coupe

At the outset, I consider that the Covid 19 crisis will have national and international effects that will be unprecedented in most people’s lifetimes. I do not pretend that the following thoughts are structured in any meaningful way, but hope that they may add some substance to the subject headings set out as possible themes for the London Society to follow in its future programmes. The greater use of, and a wider familiarity with, such online platforms such as Zoom, has highlighted the feasibility of remote working. This may: • reduce the appetite, or indeed the need, for commuting daily to city centre offices;

A fundamental re-ordering of the retail sector will have been boosted by the pandemic, with fewer shopping centres and retail parks, and more failing retail chains. Paradoxically, however, local food shops and corner shops have served their communities well during the lockdown, and could perhaps continue to be patronised in future. Moreover, local communities, who have drawn closer together in the pandemic, will still want quality entertainment, places to socialise, commercial offices and shops, and this must therefore be an opportune moment to re-imagine the High Street.

• l essen demand for living in reasonable proximity to urban workplaces, in favour of locations with better access to open space/countryside, not necessarily within easy commuting distance, but now more affordable without a daily commute;

As a means of helping to revive the retail sector and local enterprise generally, business rates should be reduced, in the short term at least, and the responsibility for setting rates, applying the proceeds, and operating the system, should be transferred to local authorities. Councils would then be more accountable to their electorate, including the business sector.

• e ncourage employers to require only a periodic office presence, which may reduce floorspace requirements; and

Covid 19 has led to a marked increase in community activism and closer links between neighbours. This momentum needs to be maintained and capitalised on.

• b ring about a better balance in childcare and domestic duties, assuming that working from home is here to stay; and

During the pandemic, there has been a premium on houses with gardens, and a realisation that many other types of residential accommodation were less than ideal, including tower blocks. The increased demand for houses with • presage an appetite for a continued experience gardens and/or improved access to open space, could spark of closeness to nature, a less polluted atmosphere, a more determined move to suburban areas, and wider rural and reduced noise nuisance. locations. This decentralising trend could see people and employment moving out of London, and lower property Post Covid, of necessity, there has been a movement to shop online, which may well be maintained to some extent prices in the capital. Reduced profitability for the major in future. Recent research has shown that the trend to online housebuilders would in turn affect their ability to provide retail, and away from old-fashioned bricks and mortar, has affordable housing (not really affordable anyway in a London been accelerated by five years, and that the proportion of context?), and spur the Boroughs to increase the number retail activity online has increased to 30%. More delivery of units of social housing that they have been gearing up to provide through their own development programmes. vans on the road, to add to the ‘white van man’ traffic?

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The young and single enjoy an active social life in London and are most likely to want to stay there in flatshares and cheap accommodation, whilst looking eventually to get a foot on the housing ladder. Together with the frontline workers, whose efforts will now have to be re-evaluated, given their important role in keeping the wheels turning during the pandemic, they go to make up a sizable proportion of the housing need now facing London. Due to the economic downturn, however, many of the former will have found that their work has dried up, temporarily at least, (eg the self-employed in the arts and leisure sectors etc.), or have found themselves unemployed. As a consequence, real demand may have lessened (possibly leading to a drop in accommodation costs), but the balance of need (ie theoretical demand) will still have to be met - probably in the main from an enhanced output of social housing undertaken by the Boroughs. The role of air conditioning, and heating systems based on circulating hot air, will now, post Covid, be particularly associated with the spread of infection. New design challenges? Fewer tall buildings? Fresh air access? Opening windows?

Current restrictions have sparked a move away from public transport in favour of cycling and walking, and have prompted some rearrangements of cycle ways and pavements, which may, or may not, be temporary. Somewhat paradoxically, the car continues to be discriminated against (increased congestion charge, to be extended to cover weekends etc.), despite being the safest mode of transport at present. The looming Covid inspired economic crisis looks likely to attain unprecedented severity, and economic uncertainty is likely to be exacerbated by a probable collapse of trade negotiations with the EU, and the prospect of rebuilding the economy while moving to trade under WTO rules. The ongoing difficulties with China, and some problems with international supply chains during the early days of the pandemic, have sparked a new emphasis on self sufficiency and an appreciation of the merits of lessening the reliance on a service-based economy. A much touted revival of manufacturing may, or may not be promoted, but in the meantime, reserves of industrial land in London should not be dispensed with too easily. Some appreciation of the embodied energy contained within the existing urban fabric should commend the adaptive reuse of buildings and structures, and developers would also do well to learn from historic patterns of sustainable urban living (ie terraces, squares, mansion blocks etc.)

The example of people like Col.Sir Tom Moore, and pictures of children communing with a grandparent through the closed windows of a care home, have helped to lessen the generation gap. A youth-obsessed society has rediscovered old people. Covid 19 has ratcheted up a longstanding resentment of incomers buying up second homes in attractive rural and seaside locations, reducing the stock of housing for local people. Tourism is generally welcomed as a source of income, but not where there is a perception that money is not being spent locally, and more recently, not where it brings the risk of infection and the spread of the pandemic. The Covid experience could also give an edge to the resentment felt in the face of an economy perceived to be centred unfairly on London and the South East.

It is to be hoped that the economic emergency will not be the cue for a wholesale relaxation of planning controls and set off a prolonged bout of licensed vandalism in the name of economic growth. Judging from past experience, and some of the proposals already being discussed, the omens do not look too promising. Michael Coupe is and Independent architecture and planning professional, the former Head of Planning and Regeneration for English Heritage, and a London Society trustee.

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QUARANTINED SHEDS By Faheem Mohyuddin

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Lockdown will accelerate the move to online retail and is driving change and opportunities for the logistics sector says Faheem Mohyuddin of the K2 Consultancy.

If you are reading this, it is highly likely you are one of the millions of consumers that use the internet to obtain goods; that expensive waffle maker you’ve only used once was most probably bought via a platform like Amazon. You, much like millions of other Britons, see the convenience in online purchasing - including myself. However, since the lockdown online purchasing has gone from convenience to necessity. The question is can retailers deliver consumer needs with current property assets and is the construction industry ready for the shift to predominantly online shopping? The steady increase in online purchases over the last 20 plus years has meant the “death of the high street” and a boom age for online retailers. The obvious impact this has had in construction is the building of more warehouses. And now it appears Covid19 is the final straw for the high street - we have been in lockdown for over two months and during this period there has been an increase in online sales of 40%. More significantly, the HIM & MCA UK Recovery Report 2020 suggests half of these shoppers plan to continue to use online services even when lockdown has ended. This is forcing many of the remaining high street retailers online and companies such as Primark are now preparing for the move, following significant recent losses. So, what does this mean for construction? Savills research team believe the logistics and warehouse sector will either, in the most conservative scenario maintain its growth, or more realistically rapidly increase. However simply building more warehouse space is not the answer. Wounds from the 2008 global financial crisis are still raw as we head towards what might become ‘the worst recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s’. Solutions to drive lower costs need to be explored and with land being an ever-reducing commodity innovation is our only ticket.

One clear shift to development models is the integration of warehousing into residential mixed-use projects i.e. ‘Beds and Sheds’. The housing shortage, a key headache for the government still unresolved, is sometimes seen as the remedy to struggling town centres, but what benefit are flats if there are insufficient jobs in the area? Beds and sheds would deliver evolving consumer needs whilst providing employmentled mixed-use schemes creating a possible vaccine to the country’s economic illness. Market events will also see an impact on the type of logistic and warehouses produced. Recent years have seen an increase in the use of robotic warehouse systems and a move away from labour-intensive models. As lockdown eases and employers look to adapt their places of work for safe distancing, the increased dependency on robotics will ensure social distancing is maintained with no loss to operation. The new planning laws to be published in the government’s white paper this summer are set to ease planning restrictions on development and provide additional powers to councils to seize land that developers have failed to build on. Coupled with a requirement for infrastructure and motorway junction upgrades these will be a welcome boost to the industry.

One thing is for certain; this is a sector we should all be focusing on. Faheem Mohyuddin is a Project Manager working in London. He has over 6 years’ experience in the industry as a Project Manager and further years as a Structural Engineer. Faheem has worked with a number of warehouse developers and global retailers. Other sector experience also include residential, commercial and health care.

THE LONDON SOCIETY 2020

Chris Williamson of Weston Williamson + Partners shares how he thinks cities will be affected and the changes that we should and will need to make.

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By Chris Williamson 11

THE LONDON SOCIETY 2020

By Chris Williamson It has been 5 years since that Bill Gates gave his TED talk predicting the pandemic we are now in the middle of. If you haven’t seen it you might find it interesting. But even in 2015 it was nothing we didn’t know. Hollywood was ahead with a very similar storyline to the one we are now living in the 2011 film “Contagion”. I re-watched it recently and its chillingly accurate - apart from the fact that the COVID-19 pandemic is thankfully much less easy to catch and much less deadly. That could be the next one. There can be little doubt there will be another so what must we learn in order to prevent the world from closing down again and there being more suffering and loved ones lost. And how will our cities change, our lifestyle, our politics?

At the end of the pandemic however the figures may well be comparable but there is no doubt it is spreading more rapidly in denser cities.

It looks likely that Europe and USA will be decimated but I really fear it will be a catastrophe in Africa and India where social distancing is a luxury and access to running water and hygiene is more difficult. We are fortunate in the UK to have parks and open spaces in our cities planned for well being and health reasons by enlightened visionaries. I’m sure Frederik Olmstead did not envisage his exemplary 1857 design for New York’s Central Park would a huge field hospital but he did provide it for rest and recreation, health and well-being for a rapidly growing population. Many people believe that the world will be a changed place There has also been an issue in London and many other after the pandemic with greater respect for health workers, cities trying to keep 2m away from other pedestrians when the police and other essential workers who helped us the pavement widths are often much narrower. We should through this pandemic. I hope it is but I’m not so sure. History start by prioritising pedestrians not the car. A few years ago teaches us that this might be the case for a while but then we my studio WW+P proposed pedestrianising Broadway in revert to our previous values and opinions all too soon. After Manhattan and redistributing priorities. Measures such as the Second World War the solidarity of the country ensured these would offer people greater distance and help create a Labour Government in the UK who introduced the amazing a happier, healthier more civilised city. National Health Service with free medical care for everyone I love London and would never leave despite the regardless of income. But in the next election 5 years later pandemic. It helps that I have hardly had a day of illness the Conservatives were re-elected (for the next 23 years) as the old order was re-established. Yes, society continued to in my life. At school every year I used to win the award for the best attendance (it was the only award I won). I change with education and opportunities for the working think I’m invincible so the first thing I did was sign up as a class much improved, but you probably get my point. volunteer at my local hospital. I’m not at all worried about And what of our cities. It’s no surprise that the densest catching COVID-19 but I’m worried about passing it on to cities are the worst affected. I live in London which is someone else. But others are quite understandably more going through a difficult time. Everyone reacts differently. risk averse. Having been a vegetarian for 35 years I feel My neighbours have fled to their second home in Dorset angry that these pandemics seem to start from the way a few hundred miles away. My biggest chance of catching meat has to be farmed to feed a carnivorous world. That the virus is taking in their Amazon deliveries which are is perhaps one of the first things we should try to change still arriving. I was in New York at the beginning of March for our health and also the health of the planet. We live when there were 2/3 cases there and 2/3 in LA. But in on a fragile earth and this pandemic has shown that when the past month NY has surged ahead and the reasons are big issues emerge there is money that can be found. We understandable. The virus isn’t in the air. It is on elevator will need to repay our young people for the sacrifices they buttons, door handles, metro straps, bus rails. People in are making to protect the old and infirm by treating their New York live closer together than in LA, they live and concerns about climate change with a bit more urgency. travel differently. Faster spread seems inevitable.

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We should surely see that these issues are not unrelated. Taxes will undoubtedly increase to pay for the economic upheaval caused by COVID-19 and much of this money needs to go towards a zero carbon programme. Greening our cities is a good start. I hope the world will be a changed place. More modesty, less excess, a more caring community belief system. We are seeing just who are the valued members of our society. Many years ago I remember Tony Benn a ‘radical’ English Labour MP advocating that the BBC should not report on movements in the value of stocks and shares every hour but instead report on the number of available hospital beds and the waiting times for essential operations as a better indicator of the state of the nation. This is now the new normal, for the moment. We need to remember this change in priorities. We need to build civilised cities with good air quality for our physical and mental health with space for nature so we can appreciate what actually does enable balance in the planets eco system. We need as a society to connect better with nature in our villages, towns and cities. Hopefully we will elect more empathetic and better prepared politicians. It is embarrassing to watch the journey of various Presidents and Prime Ministers from denial to ‘panic in the headlights’. Hopefully the Michael Gove’s Brexit statement “The public have had enough of experts” will now be seen to be as daft as it was at the time. On my daily exercise I have been cycling round the council estates of Haringey, Islington, Hackney examining the public space in which residents are being asked to self isolate. No wonder the parks are crowded. We should reorganise the way we involve communities in all our projects. It is too confrontational. At the start of any project there should be a paid part time panel representative of all members of society established to input into the concept through to the detail working alongside the experts. We all go out on to the street on a Thursday to clap our key workers- we should involve them in the design of our communities.

As I said at the start it’s not as though we had not been warned. But we need to be better prepared for the next pandemic which could be much, much worse. And I think we will be. We need to learn from South Korea and other countries who used the new technologies to test and trace and monitor to help eradicate. We need to test everyone once a week and then we can get back to some sort of normalcy. The design of our cities can help this and start by giving more space to people and places, trees and nature, less to cars. My practice Weston Williamson specialises in transport infrastructure projects and can see a greater role for the private sector in unlocking essential public transport projects. The Covid-19 crisis has seen great public private cooperation and we hope this will spread to the development sector. Schemes at Camden and Holborn and many more could be unlocked in this way. I was 12 when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon and have always been intensely optimistic that we can solve any problem tackle any crisis as long as there is the political will to ensure it happens. There are huge lessons to be learned from the way the Covid-19 crisis has been handled but if they are they will guide not only future pandemics but the way we tackle the environmental issues. Young people have made huge sacrifices to protect the old and vulnerable we now need to do the same to repay them and tackle climate change. I believe we will. Chris Williamson is a founding partner of the international architecture practice Weston Williamson + Partners

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PEOPLE CHANGE By Clare Richards

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I’ve had a sense over the past weeks of physical space shrinking around me. It’s a curious feeling - as experienced by Alice in Wonderland perhaps - of undergoing a change in scales. My immediate community in North London has taken on huge proportions, in which minute visual and audible stimuli have been amplified (just listen to the birds!) and daily walks have become an elaborate spatial dance. As an architect I find it intriguing. Yet there’s also a new sense of social space – as people have suddenly become more conscious of each other, of a common vulnerability and interdependency. In Islington, as elsewhere, actions speak for themselves: strangers chatting through open windows; students delivering donated meals; retired nurses returning to work; people on rotas phoning vulnerable neighbours. The optimist in me hopes that this spontaneous show of empathy represents a genuine change of heart, the world having been forced to focus on what’s important. Are we witnessing a new appetite for social action that we can harness once we return to some kind of normality? I’ve learnt not to judge by appearances. Before becoming an architect I was a documentary filmmaker, often observing and recording people’s experience of poverty. I am therefore acutely aware of a parallel reality in my own community. Islington is not only one of London’s most deprived boroughs, it’s also one of the most divided in terms of income. At 38%, it has the second highest rate of child poverty; and it is 8th in London on the IMD’s Living Environment Deprivation list, which reflects poor quality housing. So on local walks – unavoidably eavesdropping on raised voices, babies crying, teenagers huddled together on doorsteps – I’m well aware of the precarious existence of families living in crowded accommodation. The problems and inequalities within this community have simply been brought into sharper focus by the pandemic.

From what I’ve observed, the following principles could help formulate an enduring response to the pandemic: • commit to fundamental and lasting change • b uild on people’s newfound resolve (not to revert to where we were) • f ocus on social justice (we’ve learnt to connect with and shield the most vulnerable) • b e inclusive (we’ve seen the potential for mutual support across social divides, especially in volunteering) • b e collaborative (public, private, charity and community sectors have spontaneously started working together) • t ackle social and economic aftershocks together (they’re interdependent and there’s some evidence of a new contract between business and society – such as rent relief, flexible working, or hotel rooms for rough sleepers) Above all we must seize the opportunity, but how does this translate into action? There are clear pointers from what’s already happening: • b e practical and inventive (we’ve found new ways of working, of being at home, of relating to each other) • m obilise the wider community (collaborate across disciplines to kick-start ideas) • b e adaptive (organisations small and large have rapidly switched focus to address the impact of the pandemic) • c hampion and fund innovation (social and creative enterprises have been firing on all cylinders, keeping community spirit alive) • c ollect evidence (understand what’s happening, what’s worked and provide clear evidence to demonstrate its value)

So, if what I’m seeing beyond my front door is both the problem and the potential solution, the key challenge is this: how must we act to harness this capacity for mutual support, People’s responses to this extraordinary world crisis have compassion and social action in order to tackle the divisions shown that it doesn’t take a generation to change human that have been so cruelly exposed? behaviours. We’ve each experienced its direct effects, so does that make us more prepared to act? If we want to ft’work’s purpose is to help create thriving communities: we continue to enjoy clean air and car-free streets, we must support local projects with advice, evaluation and funding choose to stop driving, stop flying, work from home... – so that the best ideas can be rolled out elsewhere; and Similarly, if we value the demonstrations of human kindness we call for clear social principles to underpin development and social action, we must acknowledge our individual – to ensure it brings real value to communities. Right now responsibility to build and maintain inclusive communities. we’re getting behind various rapid-response initiatives, whilst collecting and helping to evaluate examples of Clare Richards, architect and award-winning social innovation. These include the delivery of donated documentary filmmaker, founded ft’work in 2016 to smart phones to enable isolated residents to join in online promote thriving communities and ensure that clear activities; a local theatre becoming an interactive platform social principles underpin development. A not for profit, for artists and performers; a community centre and ft’work collaborates at local level to support projects restaurant collaborating to provide free meals. and initiate ideas whilst, at national level, working to encourage best practice and debate policy change.

THE LONDON SOCIETY 2020

James Raynor, CEO of Grosvenor Britain & Ireland who says that 2020 will be the year we revalued whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s valuable

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The property industry is a core part of the world economy. Valued at $228tn globally, [i] It provides spaces for business to thrive, production to occur and people to shelter and socialise. However, it’s also an industry that has played a part in rising global inequality. Much of the time we pretend we’re not all aware of this. But we are. It’s just easier not to rock the boat. Yet over the last few weeks, an industry which is often accused of worsening the inequality gap has been tackling these issues, in the UK not least, head on: repurposing buildings, waiving rents, donating cash and making huge volunteering efforts. During the pandemic, it’s also been interesting to see that the investments proving most resilient are often ESG investments. This isn’t new. Research from 2015 suggested that businesses who invest this way can have up to a 17% increase in profit over the longer term [ii] and the green buildings sector has been forecast to be worth a staggering $25tn. [iii] So the economics are stacking up fast.

Last year, Grosvenor committed that every building we directly control will have net zero carbon operating emissions by 2030. All our new buildings will operate at net zero too and we will completely replace gas as a fuel source with renewable energy, while simultaneously finding ways to eradicate waste and enhance biodiversity. This wasn’t about incremental change. We ripped up our rule book in an attempt to fundamentally transform the way that we operate both our buildings and our business. Since then, we have launched new green leases, a staff sustainability academy, a supply chain charter and a development brief, and we will be shortly publishing our roadmap to net zero. Many of our peers are doing the same and we can help each other with an open source approach to sharing solutions to shared challenges. This is collective self-preservation on a grand scale.

What Covid-19 might therefore be teaching us is that companies who excel at sustainability are best placed to adapt to this new world. And make no mistake, significant disruptive scenarios like the ones triggered by Covid-19 will become much more frequent if global warming does not stay below two degrees. The science is clear on that. [iv]

Many despaired at the postponement of COP26 in Glasgow. But in fact it presents an opportunity for business to lead this agenda. In the midst of Covid-19, the public sector doesn’t have the capacity right now. We need to step up and develop practical solutions that enable transformational environmental change.

Fundamentally, the coronavirus has shown yet again that economic, environmental and social issues are all interlinked, and often in positive ways. We are seeing air quality improve as people find new ways to connect with each other that involve less travel. We’re valuing nature and celebrating people who often work the hardest and are yet lowest paid. Is it too much to think we might be starting to revalue what we believe to be valuable?

Above all, we need to be investing in a way which drives the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals and addresses the inequality gap that our sector has partly enabled. That way 2020 would be not just the year of Covid-19 but the year that a $228tn sector started to lead the way in wholescale system change. And in doing so we became known as an industry that works alongside communities, that cares about our planet and a sustainable economy, sharing ideas and being open about the challenges. Now that really would be worth celebrating.

[i] Savills 2017, How much is the world worth? [ii] Mckinsey and Co, 2017 www.kinandco.com/the-business-case-for-purpose [iii] Green Buildings, A Financial and Policy blueprint for emergency markets, 2019 [iv] Coronavirus Response Shows the World Is Not Ready for Climate-Induced Pandemics, 2020

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COVID-19 & LONDON’S OUTSIDE SPACE by Freddy Mardlin London, unlike many of Europe’s cities, is blessed by a preponderance of green space and what the lockdown has brought to light is the dependence of many of London’s inhabitants on these public parks and spaces. The Mayor’s Housing Strategy finds that more than half of London’s dwellings are flats (which are less likely to have gardens,) and the average size of gardens for those that do have them is 40% below the national average. This crisis really highlights how, despite London not being as densely populated as many of its European counterparts, a very large number of its residents, especially in the inner boroughs, do not have private outside space and are reliant upon public spaces. And this open space is not evenly split around the city; London’s wealthiest 10% of wards have almost 60% of their land taken up by private gardens and parkland (with roughly equal proportions of each) while the poorest have only around 25% as parkland and another 20% as private gardens. Social distancing in these wealthier wards should therefore be significantly more achievable, with far less strain being placed on the available parkland. Such strains have led to some parks, such as Victoria Park (Tower Hamlets) and Brockwell Park (Lambeth) suffering temporary closure due to what has been seen as ‘inappropriate use’ of the park space during the crisis. Closing parks in this way is not, however, the most appropriate response as such actions have a disproportionate effect on those who are the most dependent on these spaces - the poorest of London’s residents. This group is already two to three times more likely to develop mental health issues that the wealthiest Londoners and stripping away access to public spaces and exercise is likely to dramatically worsen this situation.

There is, moreover, no evidence to suggest that these actions are effective. The closing of areas like Brockwell Park and Mount Pleasant Cemetery has been directly attributed to crowding in other areas, suggesting that councils had managed merely to shift the issue to other areas rather than providing a solution. This issue then begs the question of what can be done to rectify the situation. Parks can hardly be subdivided into private gardens, nor with the ongoing housing crisis would much governmental support be found for building homes with large gardens, since the focus is on affordability and quantity. If urban planners and government agencies fail to see the need for private outside space then the next time an event such as the Covid-19 pandemic occurs, the city will be faced with the same public and mental health disaster that is currently afflicting it. Open balconies, such as those in the housing projects of Camden, rooftop gardens or communal gardens, shared between a small number of flats rather than the masses of the general public, all could provide safe and relatively cheap solutions. The implementation of such spaces into more of the city’s urban development projects would simultaneously reduce the stress on public parks and increase the wellbeing of London’s residents, especially the poorest, who currently are the least likely to have private outside space. Gardens have not only been shown to improve mental health but also reduce crime rates and improve air quality by filtering out toxins. The arguments for urban rejuvenation projects centred around building affordable, yet high quality housing with outside space are many and with the attentions of the world drawn to the topic by the Covid-19 virus, the time feels ripe for this kind of project.

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THE LONDON SOCIETY 2020

Andrew Beharrell of architects Pollard Thomas Edwards looks at how these past few weeks have brought about a re-evaluation of the direction of our built environment – from home and workspaces, to public areas.

As a technophobe, I have been amazed by how readily our business and others have adapted to working from home. We thought we were already at the forefront of flexible working, but now realise how transformational a permanent shift could be – both by choice and to anticipate future periods of enforced isolation. We are already rethinking how we will use our physical studio at Diespeker Wharf: more a place for workshops, meetings, networking, socialising and other events rather than fixed workstations. I can imagine remote working becoming the norm, with regular visits to the studio for vital ‘contact time’ (even if we still preserve our distance for a while). And for those who need or prefer to remain officebound, it can be safer workplace with a reversal of the trend towards smaller shoulder-to-shoulder workstations. This trend would logically transform both the nature of the workplace and the amount of space we need. Will it generate surplus commercial space and lower rents?

TRANSFORMING THE WORKPLACE By Andrew Beharrell 20

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PUBLIC REALM DIVIDEND It would be great to think that less commuting will mean less traffic and an opportunity to reassign road space to pedestrians and cyclists. It has been a joy to walk down the middle of traffic-free roads for my daily exercise in the cleaner air of London in lockdown. The countertrend would be an increase in private car use, the perfect mobile isolation tank.

SPACE IN THE HOME The flipside is that we need more spacious homes to work from and social support to enable us to carve out the necessary head space for concentration. Some of our people have been having to work from a shared kitchen table with infants round their knees. This reinforces the justification for decent space standards in new homes, including private outdoor space, and spare rooms in existing ones – in direct contradiction to cramped officeto-residential conversions and the ‘bedroom tax’ on social tenants. PTE has already been developing apartment plans with a separable screened space off the living room - study, hobby-room, short-stay guest room – typically adding 10% to London Plan space standards.

As for public parks and shared gardens if we ever we needed proof of their value - and the essential importance of providing generous open space to serve new high-density developments – we have it. Who would have imagined the perverse closure of parks and open spaces for being too popular!

More space comes at a cost, and we may see an increase in the age-old movement of people (and especially young families) leaving the capital to seek a better life, with cheaper and more spacious homes, in regional town and cities and rural settlements with decent broadband. Perceived reduction of risk from future infection could also be an incentive. Some net outward migration could be seen as positive rebalancing of economic activity between London and the regions. HIGH RISE ISOLATION And could this finally get developers, architects and planners to wake up to the limitations of tall buildings as mainstream housing? After the financial crisis and then Grenfell Tower and then Extinction Rebellion, I thought the stampede to build tall in London must end – but will it? The latest NLA Tall Buildings Survey shows little change in the (525) towers in the pipeline and a 140% increase in 2019 completions. However, starts on site are down and new applications static – could this be the beginning of a longterm reappraisal? Sharing lifts is a great way to share viruses – and do we really want to reinforce the social isolation of living high with the mandatory isolation of pandemics? More positively, let’s revive the apartment block staircase as an attractive daylit social space and opportunity for exercise – and build at heights which make climbing stairs the practical choice, with lifts for those who really need them. The Edwardians built walk-up mansion blocks as high as six storeys, and fourstorey walk-ups were common until the 1990’s.

Perhaps the pandemic will accelerate the death of the high street for general retail and its rebirth for leisure? And all those home-workers could benefit from a flourishing of local business hubs, offering basic support services, meeting space and workspace-by-the-hour – potentially shifting the focus of existing retail businesses, as well as the obvious opportunity for cafes to diversify. DIGITAL AND PHYSICAL COMMUNITIES We do a lot of community engagement in the context of planning and regeneration. The pandemic has accelerated our move into digital engagement tools and our awareness of how readily social media can create ‘instant digital communities’. I am sure we have all seen new WhatsApp groups forming on our own streets to share information, encourage volunteering and target support towards neighbours who need it. As regards digital democracy, we recently enjoyed one of London’s first ever virtual planning committee approvals – the largest scheme ever in that borough, which was processed in 20 minutes! At the same time, we have seen a resurgence of the street and front garden as a social spaces - for the ritual Thursday evening applause for the NHS and for doorstep conversations with family and friends, which would otherwise have taken place inside.

Andrew Beharrell is Senior Advisor at Pollard Thomas Edwards

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By Amy Warner What will change... home working (I hope) will become the norm, even if it is for a few days a week. The trains and tubes would be quieter, making daily commuting so much nicer, improving peoples moods. – An appreciation of the NHS and the work they do; the system is by no means perfect, but they have done an excellent job! – As for what should change... Everyone is so much nicer at the moment. They greet you in the street and stand aside to let you pass. There is a level of consideration for others I have never seen in the city. I hope that continues. There also seems to be a realisation that we don’t really need as much stuff, we can make do with what we have. – Spending more quality time with our families. We live busy lives and families seem disconnected. I have not spent this amount of time chatting to my family in years. – A greater appreciation for the people who keep things running, who are often poorly paid and overlooked: the farmers, shop workers, bin men, park wardens, care workers etc. – An appreciation for the quiet environments, clean air and wildlife that we have been blessed with whilst stuck at home. Rampant pollution and habit at destruction needs to stop. We need to make space for nature as it has provided a solace for many during this time.

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LOOK TO THE PAST AND THE FUTURE By Mike Stiff

Mike Stiff of Stiff + Trevillion looks to the lessons that previous epidemics and disasters had for the cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s built environment and what will need to be done as a result of the present pandemic. 23

THE LONDON SOCIETY 2020

Our environment is shaped by many factors; climate, security and connectivity have been our priorities in recent years. The current predicament challenges us once again to look at the way we live, and how we will need to adapt our cities and buildings to cope with a world of viral pandemics which will almost certainly become the new normal.

Scanning my shelves for something to read, I came across a book I had forgotten I owned, I think it must have been a student buy, ”A Journal of the Plague Year” by Daniel Defoe. This is a contemporary account of London in the 1660s as the plague arrived in The City of London. The parallels are striking, the use of statistics, a sense of denial, escape, lockdown and financial collapse all accompany the uncontrolled death rate. “ The face of London was now strangely altered; sorrow and sadness sat upon every face; and though some parts were not yet overwhelmed, yet all looked deeply concerned, and as we saw it apparently coming on, so every one looked on himself and his family as in the utmost danger” The parallels with 2020 are uncanny, as the plague gathered momentum, laws were quickly enacted to enforce social distancing: “ Again, the public showed that they would bear their share in these things; the very Court, which was then gay and luxurious, put on a face of just concern for the public danger. All the plays and interludes were forbid to act; the gaming-tables, public dancing rooms and music houses were shut up and suppressed” The great fire in 1666 enabled the wholesale rebuilding of the City refreshing the entire building stock and introducing building regulations and party wall acts. However the cause of the pandemic was still misunderstood, it was still believed that the virus was an airborne miasma. It was not until the mid-nineteenth Century that the link between the spread of disease and the built environment was properly established.

In the 1850s a cholera epidemic was devastating London. Sanitation had improved very little in two hundred years, raw sewage was still pumped into the Thames or into cesspits which inevitably infected the city’s drinking water. It was a physician, John Snow, who used mapping to understand that the source of the outbreak in Soho was contaminated water from the Broad Street pump. (Now Broadwick Street) An act of Parliament soon followed and Joseph Bazalgette’s sewage system was installed along the Thames embankment. Furthermore, streets were widened and paved with larger slabs, thresholds introduced, and properties were connected to a municipal sewage system. Twentieth century architects exchanged high Edwardianism for a modernist aesthetic in response to the Spanish Flu and TB outbreaks after the First World War. At the turn of the century bathrooms were still as they were in Victorian times, little different to bed chambers. Now they were tiled and sealed plumbing was integrated, hard cleanable surfaces were used in kitchens, larders and hallways. Perhaps today we see International Modernism as a “style”, but the clean white spacious architecture was born out of an interest in creating airy, sunlit and hygienic spaces to counter the dismal air quality and cramped living conditions that resulted from the rapid urban expansion of the industrial revolution. London is once again in the forefront of a global pandemic that arrived with a whisper. Even with 21st century technology we are struggling to deal with the consequences of contagion. Whilst it is not as devasting in human terms as the plague or Spanish Flu, the political response is being shaped by expert medical advice and will have far reaching economic consequences.

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We will, by necessity, lead our lives very differently, and the places we work, play and live in will need to adapt. Things that we take for granted will be viewed with suspicion, who will want to squeeze into a packed tube train for example? As architects we have a particular responsibility for the physical and mental well-being of the people we work with, and of course the people we design for. As a practice we hope to reopen our studio soon, and we are making plans for that now, home working will continue for those who are vulnerable or unwilling to use public transport. We will encourage people to cycle or walk to work, and we will need to ensure that social distancing does not preclude many of the shared activities that make our jobs so satisfying. Buildings will need to adapt too, space standards and specifications will be challenged, a response driven by the people who use the buildings rather than a change in statutory regulations. Tenants will seek spaces that, among other things, will have taller ceiling heights, the ability to open windows and naturally ventilate, and more generous washrooms.

Clients, planners and designers will need to adapt quickly to these necessary demands which will impact the shape and form of our cities and buildings. Public realm must be even more of a priority, wider pavements, priority for cycling over cars, spacious amenity areas. When we get into our places of work these will need to adapt, the surfaces we use and touch will be reappraised, doors will be automated, lifts called by iphone, and cleaners will no longer just have “cupboards”. Over the years, architects have allowed their professional status to be diminished, enabling cost consultants, project managers and main contractors to write the agenda. In the post Covid world architects and engineers can take the lead, as we have seen in this national emergency, it is the experts not the politicians that people listen too. Image Credits: Wellcome Library, London. Images from: ‘The great plague in London in 1665’ by Walter George Bell. Published 1924 This page: Extracted from Woodcut ‘Nine images of the Great Plague of London’ Previous page: Chart illustrating the great excess of mortality in the liberties and out-parishes over that within the city walls. Based on the Bills of Mortality, 1665.

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Lord Toby Harris says that for the capital to succeed and to do so sustainably, it has to adopt the E3 model of sustainable development: Economy, Equity and Environment.

As someone who has lived in London all my life and spent twenty-six years as an elected politician in this city, I am biased. I have always believed that London is the greatest city in the world – certainly in terms of its diversity, dynamism, tolerance of difference, the vitality of its cultural life – the list in my view is endless. But that London is currently in suspension and it is naïve to believe that in a few short weeks everything will be back to how it was before. The human tragedies of those who have died may get lost against the geopolitical changes and the economic devastation that potentially will now follow. It is some time before we will know whether the public health measures currently in force are proportionate and effective or whether they are a grotesque miscalculation. However, already it is apparent that the global consequences of the pandemic are going to be enormous: many businesses – some of them very substantial indeed – will not survive; international relationships will change; and patterns of work and life will have been permanently transformed. In terms of London, a slow relaxation of distancing rules (which currently seems the most likely way forward) will have a number of consequences. The habit of not using public transport may become engrained for many people. More remote working is likely to become the norm. This will challenge the viability of the current bus and underground network and in the longer-term we may see a use of cars greater than it was before the lockdown, so that the current benefits of better-quality air will recede again. Businesses that rely on commuters and others using them will not recover in the short-term – cafes, coffee shops and sandwich bars restaurants will be lucky to emerge from hibernation if the current situation persists for more than a few more weeks. Likewise places of entertainment and social interaction will not revive immediately. Many bars and restaurants will have gone out of business by the time clientele return and, whilst they will no doubt in time be replaced by others, the variety and mix may not be restored. Similarly, theatres and cinemas may struggle to reopen – particularly smaller and independent venues. Other leisure facilities will also be challenged by the enforced closure. These effects, although potentially significant for the culture and ambience of many neighbourhoods in London, are minor in comparison to the impact of a global depression. Some estimates suggest that GDP in this and many other countries may fall this year by 20 or even 30%. And the speed of recovery will depend everywhere on which enterprises have been able to survive the pause in their operations. These effects will be exacerbated by the number of people who lose their jobs or whose incomes are seriously reduced.

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It maybe that I am a natural pessimist, although I certainly hope that I am wrong about this. However, what is certainly the case is that we should be beginning to reimagine how the city might operate in an environment that is economically depressed, in circumstances where working patterns for those with employment have changed dramatically, and in which social cohesion is under threat.

Partnerships need to form around a common vision and strategy. They must offer greater inclusiveness to enable all of the city’s social partners to participate fully. They must offer real added value. But above all – and this is the task of city leadership and in London’s case the task of the Mayor – there has to be a consensus that social equity is a necessary component of economic development.

The vision for a future London has to be not just about delivering the growth to restore employment to those who Of all the arguments for reducing inequality, the most have lost out during the current crisis and its economic consequences, but also it must be about ensuring that social potent is that a more unequal society is one with fewer opportunities to rise. The evidence from the USA is that the inclusion and sustainability are central to that growth. rising fortunes of the top percent of earners is connected to a hardening of class lines. More unequal societies are bad for The future success of the city will only everyone. Social and environmental problems, ill-health, low be measured in human terms and in levels of trust, violence, mental illness and drugs, are more likely to occur in a less equal society. improved life chances for all. The statistical evidence also shows that quality of social relations is better in more equal societies. People are more likely to feel they can trust others, community life is stronger and levels of violence are lower. But this is not just about economic prospects. It is also about life and the quality of life.

And this goal cannot be treated as separate from the economic objectives, or the urgent need to protect the environment.

Over twenty years ago, I put forward what I regard as a beautifully simple proposition - to succeed as a city and to do so sustainably, London must adopt the E3 model of sustainable development: Economy, Equity and Environment. As London recovers from the present crisis, we must restore the city’s economy, we must promote greater equity and You cannot build a successful urban society by constraining fairness, while sustaining the environment – in short, we commercial growth; nor can you preserve a delicate ecomust address all three of the Es in the E3 model. They are system without fresh rules and attitudes for businesses the three legs of the stool – without one, it topples over. and households alike; nor can prosperity be secure if some neighbourhoods become synonymous with social exclusion. The last few months have been a shock to London and to Londoners. The fragility of the city and its social fabric has To be successful in the longer-term, no part of London been laid bare. And in the next few years the changes in the (or indeed any city) can prosper on its own. No single global environment will be intense. Recovery will not be easy. interest can, in the long term, do well at the cost of another’s well-being. Simply trying to go back to where we

were before will not be an option. London In this E3 model, all three components of sustainable development are represented equally - economic cannot stand still or it will decline. competitiveness, social cohesion and environmental sustainability. Environmental and social issues are not treated The city will need fresh purpose and direction: a vision as hindrances to competitiveness or economic growth. – rooted in partnership and shared commitment – for a London whose economy can once again thrive, be The three Es overlap. They create tension. Any economic, environmentally sustainable, and where every citizen can social or environmental change in a city will produce a play a part and has a stake in the city’s future. Above all, those tension with the other objectives – and those tensions who care about London and its future must be bold and see will call for policy compromises. this crisis as an opportunity. These compromises need to be negotiated by the different stakeholders in the urban economy. And for sustainable development to be realised, the heart of this negotiated consensus is partnership - between the public, private, community and voluntary sectors.

Lord Toby Harris is Co-President of London Councils, a former member of the London Assembly and a former Borough Council Leader.

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By Matt Brown

At the time of writing, at least 20,000 British citizens have lost their lives to Covid-19. London hospitals account for around a quarter of those deaths. The virus has caused the greatest disruption to society since the Second World War. Although it’s hardly the most pressing question right now, I can’t help but wonder how the victims of the pandemic will be remembered by wider society. And I have an idea, which draws inspiration from our city’s past. London is replete with memorials to the great and good. We have more than our fair share of moustachioed military men on horseback, but these are vastly outnumbered by plaques and statues to those who contributed to society without the need for imperial equestrianism. These were otherwise ordinary people, who did something extraordinary. Heroes who dedicated, and sometimes sacrificed, their lives to help others. Postman’s Park in the City of London contains one of the capital’s most famous, and certainly most thought-provoking, examples. In this quiet, unassuming space stands the Memorial to Heroic Sacrifice -- sometimes called the Watts Memorial after the painter George F Watts who proposed the idea. Opened in 1900, its 54 glazed tiles record the names and deeds of individuals who died while saving others.

Here we read of Alice Ayres, the 25-year-old nursemaid who saved three children from a fire but lost her own life to the flames. Of 61-year-old Daniel Pemberton, who pushed a rail worker out of the way of an oncoming train, but was hit himself. And of 19-year-old William Donald who drowned in the River Lea while trying to save a boy from “a dangerous entanglement of weed”. Most recently, a tablet was added for Leigh Pitt, who drowned while rescuing a boy from a Thamesmead canal in 2007 -- the first addition to the memorial wall since 1931. Over the years, the memorial has attracted far more attention than any bronze general or sandstone statesman. Its stories, told in simple, powerful language, still move the reader, decades after the awful events they describe. The wall of memorials has appeared in Hollywood films and countless press features, and is a popular stop-off point for tour-guides. Above all, this is a living memorial that has only gained in potency through the generations. It is the best kind of monument.

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Postman’s Park, EC1A

London needs a new Watts Memorial, one that records the sacrifices of our own generation. Hundreds of thousands of Londoners continue to put themselves at greater risk of infection, either on the medical front line or by turning up for work in another key service. At the time of writing, 21 London transport workers have lost their lives, while over 100 medics and carers have succumbed to the virus across the UK. Delivery drivers, shop assistants, teachers, prison staff, emergency service workers and other key workers have also died. We can expect more. The Watts memorial can serve as a powerful template for how we might commemorate some of these lives. Among its heroes, we find similar professions to those mentioned above. Several are medics. Dr Samuel Rabbeth, for example, saved a four-year-old diphtheria patient by sucking an obstruction from the child’s blocked airway, in doing so exposing himself to the fatal disease. Two of the tablets memorialise ‘carmen’, what we might today call delivery drivers. Another remembers two transport workers who were badly injured in a boiler blast, but managed to bring their train to a safe halt.

Like the selfless people remembered on the Watts memorial, the key workers taken by coronavirus died while helping others. They may not have leaped in front of speeding cars or pulled anyone from quicksand (as did one of the carmen mentioned above), but their actions -- in serving the public at greater personal risk -- were nevertheless heroic. All kinds of memorials will be suggested over the coming months and years, but I hope that those 54 cherished tiles in Postman’s Park may serve as an inspiration. Matt Brown is editor-at-large of Londonist.com and author of ‘Everything You Know About London is Wrong’, among other books.

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We have the direction of travel before as laid out by experts across the economy. What we need to do is be mindful of the following:

THE IMPORTANCE OF SYSTEMS THINKING When I started working in the field of resilience 6 years ago, resilience was a hard sell. Everyone saw the value but were reluctant to invest because it is about in vesting in the future rather the now Leaders now need to think of their country as a system that is comprised of smaller systems and is a part of larger systems that affect their country’s resilience. Global risks can have profound effects on politicians’ ability to govern, business-government relations, the efficiency of government spending and reform implementation, public trust, anti-corruption measures, and provision of services to improve business performance. Systems thinking can NET-ZERO TRANSITION & HYDROGEN provide a foundation to assess resilience by considering We must shift capital and shift investments towards transition a system’s – and a country’s – robustness, redundancy, activities and we should really look at the way that industry resourcefulness of people and government (local & could shift towards zero emissions as quickly as possible. national), response to the crises, and recovery trajectory. There is a hydrogen availability at the moment but this is expensive. Like solar and wind though, volume will drive FACEMASKS: SUPPLY CHAIN RESILIENCE down the price. Shifting industries to zero carbon will need Assuming that supply chains can deliver facemasks, that’s large amount of hydrogen, and in the UK this could mean going to be the accessory to have. Asia is slightly ahead of the rest of the world on this, and that’s not because 90% of producing it overnight in the North Sea when we are not the world’s face masks are produced in China! Pretty much using it. everyone in Asia is wearing facemasks in spite of conflicting ATTITUDES ARE IMPORTANT advice about this from the World Health Organisation. According Ipsos MORI, most of us in the UK are uncomfortable about going out. Restarting the economy ELECTRIC VEHICLES First subsidies and now procurement rules including a push will therefore be a slow process. Have messages from governments around the world been too successful in the of state-owned motor companies mean more EVs coming fight against the coronavirus? This spears to be the case in the onto the market, generated by state policies. We expect to UK. The transition to a post lockdown economy will be crucial see the cost of electric vehicle on a capex basis come down and will depend on the shape and form of that economy for consumers from 2023/4. What will cheaper oil mean for which, the Economist has recently called the 90% economy! this growing market for EVs in the short term? Oil producing nations will protect their interests and behave in a way that AN ECONOMIC CRISIS SITTING BEHIND THE could shift the trajectory of both combustion engine and PUBLIC HEALTH CRISIS electric vehicles. The economy will get worse before it gets better. Economists want us to be more comfortable if we are to get the economy Cllr. Prof. Samer Bagaeen FRICS MRTPI FRSA is going again. The Institute of Directors advises (April 2020) Professor of Planning & Resilience at Kent School of that we are not going to experience a V-shaped recession Architecture and Planning, the University of Kent at & recovery as some had been contemplating. The scarring Canterbury to the economy is too great given the lockdown so best we can hope for is a staggered climb out of the trough. This will depend on the number of new virus cases, the number deaths declining, NHS capacity to deal with new cases, and which sectors open and how across the economy. Overcrowding and use of the transport issue will be problematic as will opening up and understanding supply chains. THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SUSTAINABILITY AND VALUE We need more data for this one. Monetary added value resulting from energy efficiency improvements is not sufficiently considered in property valuation due to the tendency of valuations to lag behind other market trends. There is a dearth of quantitative information that would enable us to integrate & interrogate those aspects of sustainability relating to value into valuations in spite of UK government proposals, for example, to support decarbonising heat after 2021.

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THE LONDON SOCIETY 2020

By Neil Bennett

LONG AGO, IN THAT DIFFERENT WORLD WHERE... ...we worked together in offices, we bumped into people on the street, we hadn’t heard of Zoom, when everything wasn’t delivered to us, and...

...when we were already worried about our town centres and their high streets, I was calling for them to – evolve or die.

So why would you stray out of your literal health and comfort zone, and visit your local high street? And then why go again, and again?

Today, in the midst of coronavirus and with a level of uncertainty that dwarfs Brexit - if you remember that it’s more important than ever that our high streets need action and hands-on management to continuously re-invent themselves, to survive and to again become multicultural, interesting places, not just shopping centres, but places where something different happens everyday.

For me, that revolves around uncovering a shared understanding of what a place’s USP is, and building a personal, a social experience around that.

So, what good points can we glean from the lockdown?

• To get human contact

For myself, I would hope that we can hold on to the realisation that with half of the population deeming themselves to be depressed and anxious, society, sociality, matters, and caring about the places where people meet matters.

• T o be stimulated and entertained – the theatre of a high street – something Westfield for instance understands very well

And then, as my world has become where I can walk to, I would also hope that we can retain an understanding of how important our local services are – not just retail, but the places that host the social and civic elements of our lives.

• For convenience

I can’t avoid the bad news – nobody really knows, and the casualties are not yet visible – but, if we forgo this year a seventh of our economic activity, then we will lose many, disproportionately smaller, businesses. Sadly, many of these are likely to be the low cost base, low funding base, independents. I think we have also seen the end of the department stores like Debenhams, that used to ‘anchor’ many of our high streets. Overall, it’s a sudden acceleration of the trends we have seen over the past years, with all the underlying issues coming to a head:– it’s time to act or die.

Many physical parts of retail are now irrelevant, and people will only travel to • To touch things - to go to a “show”-room

• To buy something unique

From this, it follows that a High Street should not just be a shopping centre – a specialised mono-functional place for shopping only – but rather return to being a multi-functional place – a place where you live, work, shop, eat and drink, and be social, civic and healthy, throughout the day and week. In the long term, we have the cavalry slowly arriving, in the form of more people living in our town centres, an ever better understanding of how to balance traffic and people, and people beginning to understand the need for flexible places to meet and work – shown by the remarkable rise of coffee shops. But we can’t wait that long.

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In my view, a high street, a local centre needs active curation and management, with a frequent shot of adrenaline, to make it an interesting, relevant, entertaining, changing environment, where there is always something new. Learning from experience, first steps are to:• E xperiment and be prepared to fail with new ideas, using temporary structures and empty spaces – for work, for food, whatever • D eliver small - scale upgrades and quick wins as a continuous process – something has to be seen to be happening • E stablish an ‘Urban Room’ as a hub for continuous communication about the change and regeneration process, a place for change leaders to meet The aim is to provide a continuous spectrum of space and uses from one day pop up events through to 5 years, and from food and drink, through to flexible workspaces, with no more dividing lines of fixed tenancies and fixed use classes. I’m inspired by the example of Roeselare, a small postindustrial town in Flanders in Belgium. They have energetic, passionate civic leaders and officers and crucially have built an effective coalition of opinion across businesses, their communities and the council, which has turned their high street around.

I’ll end by quoting Vanessa Dehullu, their council head of regen’:

“ Don’t expect miracles to occur within 12 months - you have to keep maintaining and refreshing your approach for years and years. If you have passion for your city, and you want to see it thriving, you can’t just sit on your hands and watch people leaving the town. You have to try things, whatever it is that works. Sometimes these things don’t work – know from me that doing nothing is not an option, because you will end up with a dead city centre.” So what to do first? As one of those who thinks social distancing won’t last forever, have a party! Kick start your high street 2020 with fun, a festival of managed, ‘curated’ transformation and find out why people like your place, what they want to see, and why they would want to come back. Neil Bennett is lead partner at Farrells architect/ planning practice for strategic infrastructure and urban design projects.

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Leading designers of awardwinning workplaces, Buckley Gray Yeoman are at the heart of the reconsideration of the changes can be made in workplaces now. In response to the Government’s restrictions and advice amid the Covid-19 pandemic, all non-essential workplaces stand empty. Where we once gathered in a form of professional communion, there is now only dark emptiness and silence. The workplace has been deemed strictly offlimits, high-risk and inadequate during a crisis. Trends develop gradually, often picking up momentum until reaching zeitgeist status. This crisis has precipitated a rapid reappraisal of workplace design, and long-term we will see new design trends emerge that will seek to avoid such a punishing shut-down of workplaces should another pandemic emerge. The decades-old debate about the rise of working from home will continue to persist, growing louder until succumbing again to the only home truth: we all like to work in an office. But at present, anxieties are heightened and the notion of spending whole days in close proximity to hundreds of others has increased concerns, so what immediate changes might be made? SAY HELLO, WAVE GOODBYE Every reception area is the heart of a contemporary workplace where visitors and tenants coalesce on neutral ground. Their design is always high-quality and demonstrative of the building as a whole, setting the tone for the workplaces above and reflecting the ambitions of the building’s owner.

Elevators could respond to approaching footsteps and be voice-activated, responding to either floor numbers or company names. Waiting room coffee machines could also be voice-detecting, or employ the same mobile contactless technology to deliver your favourite coffee: “Welcome back, Mr Anderson. Your cappuccino is on its way”. Even modest interventions can acknowledge the changing concerns of visitors: Integrated hand sanitisers within reception desks and beside elevators or escalators remove unsightly plastic bottles and demonstrate the owner’s sincere approach to health and hygiene. Complimentary face masks, gloves and hand sanitiser could be provided for building visitors – branded by the building’s owner or each company. WORKING ON IT The rapid switch to full-time home working for everyone has answered many unresolved theories: How effectively can we work from home? How distracting are our families? How tempting is it to work in our pyjamas? What should we do with the time saved from commuting? Are we working more? Each of us have had to find an equilibrium and a method that works for us. We have learnt to use new software and develop patterns of behaviour and etiquette for the next generation of video-calls. Despite all of the new novelties, one thing remains clear: We still crave a workplace environment: we are naturally conversational and collaborative beings and benefit from the stimulation and interaction within contemporary workplace environments, even if it is balanced with a certain amount of home working. We have all read and talked about how workplace trends are likely to emerge that reappraise the existing workplace. But what changes can be made now to ease the transition back into the workplace? Meeting rooms will see the greatest change – many of which can be made quickly. The large expanse of wall space behind the speaker is a plain canvas which now effectively serves as a billboard for companies: Expect to see this space quickly colonised to convey personality and brand.

How might they adapt quickly to alleviate new concerns about proximity and hygiene?

Meeting rooms will need to be less claustrophobic and allow for greater space between participants. The quality of video and audio-conference calls will need to be updated fast as Sensor technology on automatic doors, sign-in screens and the culture of quick ad- hoc team calls already has a feeling elevators could allow for both uninterrupted and contactof normality and efficiency to it. The design and furnishing free entry into the building. This would also reassess the of meeting rooms will need to be radically reconsidered, need for full- time front-of-house staff. taking into account the appropriate balance of natural and Returning visitors would have quick and established access artificial light, whilst acoustic panelling can be installed to through a mobile-phone app which makes use of the same provide the best experience for virtual calls. Body positions contactless technology used for touch-free card payments. for online calls tend to be more upright, so finding the ‘right’ Developed by the building’s owner, this ‘speedy boarding’ chair for long calls will keep staff comfortable when sitting app route allows for security-related communication and for such a long period of time. loyalty-driven marketing to be sent straightto visitors phones.

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BEYOND BOG STANDARD A frank admittance from designers is that one of the most important features of workplace design is one that is often overlooked: the toilets. Free from distraction, its users are a captive audience who may judge the entire design ambition of the building based on the quality and comfort of this space. Manufacturers for this space have already been leaders of sensor technology, but its use is still the exception rather than the trend. Sensor technology for flushing, hand-wash, taps and (often forgotten) doors is an achievable adjustment. BREAK AWAY Previously only featuring in the most ambitious and luxurious of office buildings, open terraces and roof gardens now have a new meaning beyond merely places to take ‘time out’. As the purest form of a ‘breakout space’, these areas allow users to spend time beside planting and water and contribute to mental wellbeing. Moreover, they serve as an important place for time away from the close proximity of others within typical office spaces. Even modest terrace spaces with boxed planting allow for moment away to relax and enjoy fresh air. Here, peaceful and solitary moments can be found using outdoor furniture which subtly divides space without appearing regimented, thus developing a division of space akin to business class flight cabins – where a large group share a single area yet feel as if they have their own private space. When concerns over outdoor group gatherings loosen and a terrace is large enough, it can provide space for group exercise classes and corporate events, where guests may wish to be less closeto one than at the interior gatherings of yesterday. LEAVING The rise of the secure, internal bike shed is fairly commonplace and in many refurbished buildings they have replaced spaces previously assigned to car parking. Was this a mistake? With electric cars and charging points satisfying environmental concerns, will the privacy and solitary nature of car travel make a comeback in lieu of the perceived exposure within public transport?

It’s clear that whether we walk, cycle, or drive, we need to get back into the workplace soon.

THE LONDON SOCIETY 2020

Alistair Barr of Barr Gazetas says that we need to return the West End to being a place of real production and work.

Central London could be creating, making and selling locally-made products and food when lockdown ends. This would be a sustainable solution to the many units which will never re-open again as conventional retail. We must find new uses for the thousands of spaces which will otherwise be empty, diluting the vitality of central London. Oxford Street and Regent Street would remain in some form but I have been thinking of the streets between and want to prevent many years of retail wasteland. Our practice, Barr Gazetas, has been working in the West End since we began in 1993 and we believe that the area’s history shows the way to a better, more sustainable future. As recently as the 1970s Central London was a thriving mix of manufacturing, production and warehouses in the streets behind the glamorous shops. Soho, Marylebone and Covent Garden had been production centres for hundreds of years until these vibrant and diverse uses were squeezed out. When workers, residents and visitors return to town we can build on this heritage to offer varied and sustainable uses again. This movement has been happening in inner suburbs for many years now as empty buildings are taken over by incubator units and creative start-ups, which the UK is famous for. It is only 50 years since this making and selling together left central London so no complex building or infrastructure changes will be needed. We can take the many empty spaces and make them relevant again. Some examples below illustrate these local legacies.

The famous Fitzrovia agent Irving Brecker says “the garment industry and showrooms were important in Marylebone from the 1870s to the 1970s. The area was buzzing with showrooms, tailors and associated industries. Buyers from Oxford Street came to Fitzrovia to source garments and as they were so close that fashion was fast and forward looking.” Carnaby Street was radical, innovative and responsive in the 1960s because the production and assembly was next door. David Bowie posed in Heddon street in 1972 when it was full of clothing makers and wholesalers. All these areas will have spaces ready to revert when we are back and they can mix naturally where conventional retail still works to regain active frontages. Covent Garden Market only stopped food distribution in 1974 and now is full of chain stores selling unsustainable items. The Crown Estate already encourages office tenants to grow food on their roofs, so this is easy to replicate. We are growing tomatoes, chillies and herbs on our roof with the scheme and we have combined with many more wellbeing initiatives across the office. The office space at One Heddon Street is currently the healthiest measured co-working space in the UK and the post-virus office spaces should be hitting these aspirations as well. In a recent conversation, Jon Eaglesham, our MD, noted that, “…two of our projects show how important adaption is. In Covent Garden we are restoring a former seed sorting factory into an innovative, people focussed head quarter office building with wellness at its centre. On York Road, Cottam House is being refurbished to be host to world leading technology that recycles post-consumer garments into clean and wearable clothes…”

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When BHS on Oxford Street closed everyone agreed that the era of department stores was over and conventional retail would never work in such a large space. Instead it was quickly stripped out and is now a vibrant food hall providing fresh, exciting food from independent and growing businesses. Letâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s also grow food on the roof of this food court for full sustainability.

To realise this vision, Westminster and landlords would have to accept that the post virus retail world will never be the same again and be prepared to make radical changes.

The planning use classes are already blurring the edges of pure office versus manufacturing prompted by new ways of producing and assembling. Westminster should let the crisis nudge them into formalising this and welcoming back creative uses where the items designed above the shop In recent years more people have moved back to living and manufactured in the basement are sold in the ground in Central London and the newly empty units allow proper live work uses to prosper. Co-working, incubators, design and floor shop. manufacturing can spring up in many side streets, mews and small spaces in post-virus London. We want all architects And landlords would have to recognise that many empty and designers to look for the balance of necessary change shops off the primary routes will never be occupied again by old model retail. A reduced rent with all floors occupied and useful change in their designs here. is better than no rent at all. Most of the landmark shops will survive, even prosper; Hamleys, Apple, Selfridges and Production was squeezed out of Central London for four reasons in the 70s and we have already solved two of those John Lewis can adapt well if they are agile enough. But they can also interlock into a Central London of 50 years as shown below. ago when creative designers and makers are nearby. Firstly, old manufacturing was dirty, noisy and created issues for delivery and refuse collection. Milan has just announced The day before lockdown I was in Libertyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s. A high that 22 miles of central Milan will be closed to unnecessary percentage of the exceptional goods I saw there could have private traffic to allow a rapid experimental expansion of been designed, made, assembled, and created in the West cycling and walking. This Strade Aperte plan could easily End, next door. Many of the clothes, jewellery, household work here, even if it begins as an experimental response to items, souvenirs, furniture, stationery and food could be extraordinary times. 3D printing, CAD/CAM, and recycling locally designed and sourced from repurposed retail shells initiatives means that production is no longer dirty and noisy. nearby. We owe it to the post-virus West End to make sure the vibrancy and activity returns to all those streets as soon Secondly, Westminster has implemented innovative refuse collection regimes which now efficiently clear and efficiently as possible. recycle rubbish.

THE LONDON SOCIETY 2020

David Morley of David Morley Architects says that there’s a simple and immediate change that can aid social distancing.

Just after the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, David Morley Architects held a seminar about the role of temporary structures in urban design. We were joined by Peter Bishop, Morwenna Wilson from Argent, Richard Hannay from LUC and Neil Smith from Max Fordham. There was an emerging consensus that temporary interventions provide valuable opportunities in city master-planning to try things out, without too much investment, before committing to the costs of long term infrastructure. Our experiences over the last few months, with huge sacrifices for some, have forced on us some temporary interventions from which we can also learn valuable lessons about how our cities will work better when ‘this’ is all over. If ‘this’ means the threat of a deadly pandemic it won’t be over until we find suitable vaccines. It seems this may be some way off. In the meantime, we have shown how we can do more with less - burning less fossil fuels, working effectively with much less workspace, spending less time commuting. We have seen how government can act with a sense of real urgency and bring in radical change to our environment. Let’s hope these lessons can also be applied to our other emergency – climate change. However, if ‘this’ means the lock-down, then there are some immediate challenges to address when ‘this’ is all over. Whilst we might be well prepared for new ways of using the workplace and we are excited about adapting homes to become great places to live and work, we have not solved how public transport can be compatible with the emerging requirements for social distancing. The easy answer is to say walk more or get on your bike. But if we create more space for bikes, by reducing space for cars, are London’s pavements capable of both accommodating more people and enabling adequate social distancing? Keeping the two metre rule will be almost impossible, but a real difference could be made if we were to introduce oneway pavements. Supermarkets have already introduced oneway circulation systems and there is talk of one-way routes becoming part of office planning for those who choose to return to the traditional workplace. It’s already part of sports stadia design - even the Pavilion at Lord’s Ground has a one way system where the exit to the WCs is marked ‘out’ and the entrance ‘not out’!

If there are ten people on a path, five walking in each direction, there will be 25 instances of people passing close. However, if all ten walked in the same direction at similar speed, the figure drops to zero. So why not adopt a similar system on our pavements? One-way systems were a curse for cyclists. By making journeys longer there was a valid argument that one-way streets discouraged cycling. If you are moving under your own man-power, the extra metres make all the difference. But the same objection need not apply to pedestrians - most London streets already have two pavements and allocating a one way flow to each should have minimal impact on overall travel distance. It is not unprecedented to ask people to walk on one side of the road or the other – it’s part of the countryside code to ensure walkers face oncoming traffic. We naturally adapt to up and down escalators. One way corridors were introduced in some schools, before this pandemic, to improve behaviour. One of the world’s greatest treks, the Milford Track in New Zealand can be walked in one direction only, precisely to enable better social distancing. Regardless of the need for social distancing, I can imagine places like Oxford Street and Waterloo Station becoming much more enjoyable promenades if one didn’t have to jostle with people from opposing directions. I would advocate walking on the right, to face oncoming cycles and buses. It needn’t apply to all pavements, but even on uncontrolled routes we could begin to adopt a natural habit of always passing to the right – rather like boats steaming in an estuary. To implement this concept on London’s busiest pavements could be relatively inexpensive. Indeed it could be trialled as a temporary measure to see how well it works. As far as I can see, it’s not part of the London Mayor’s emerging plans for making our streets work better – maybe it should be? Having founded David Morley Architects in 1987, after 13 years working with Norman Foster, David has brought together a team that have designed 500 projects winning over 100 awards. These include pioneering healthcare projects, 15 projects at Lord’s Ground, three projects at the University of Oxford, the London 2012 Water Polo Venue, five projects for the Royal Parks and three projects at London’s King’s Cross. David is an honorary scholar of King’s College Cambridge and published his first book ‘Five by 5’ in 2012. He judges RIBA Competitions and the Wood Awards.

WHEN THIS IS ALL OVER

THE LONDON SOCIETY 2020

Earlier this month Chris Williamson gave us his thoughts on the sort of London that will emerge post-pandemic. Here he addresses some of the practical changes that WW+P are making to allow people back into the office, and looking at what the capital (and particularly the transport infrastructure) might need to do for the city to open up again. The WW+P studio space is relatively easy to adapt to safe working. We have two side doors which open into the lobby for the washrooms so everyone can wash and change as soon as they enter. The drawings (above - you can download the full images here and here) show other modifications such as holding meetings in open areas rather than closed meeting Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve been attempting to put together a plan for gradual rooms, and employing a barista and cook rather than having transitioning to a safe studio environment ahead of a a shared kitchen. The changes will make a more relaxed, vaccine being available for Covid-19. calmer sociable studio. The changes will be beneficial. As restaurants, bars, cinemas, theatres and sporting events might So these suggestions might be relevant for many months. be curtailed for some time the working day could be more At Weston Williamson we have found that we can function flexible and relaxed. with home working but that we work better together. We need to blend the two ways of working, and in the future The studio will be divided into three teams. The blue this may become the new normal. team will be asked to work Tuesday and Wednesday. Tony Travers of LSE said recently â&#x20AC;&#x153;Getting people out of their homes and back to work may prove especially challenging in Britain, precisely because citizens have learned they need to remain at home to stay safe, protect NHS workers and save lives.â&#x20AC;?

Architects and designers need to be alive to emotional aspects of any return to work. Not just the practicalities. My planning involves the studio working space and equally important, getting to work. I have modelled the plans on Weston Williamson and Partners but have considered how this works for the whole of London. At Weston Williamson we have information of how everyone travels each day so that makes it easier to plan. We are also researching individual appetite to return to the studio base, and who can travel safely.

The red team will be asked to work Thursday and Friday. The following week the teams will change days. Saturday and Monday will be for Partners and project reviews. Given all that, there are changes in layout and additional hygiene measures included in the drawings. The key is to do these modifications with style and grace and use these unfortunate circumstances to actually improve how we work with climate change in mind. Investment in video conferencing and distance working facilities has paid off during the lockdown and we see future investment being essential to allow greater flexible working.

It is important that any return is consensual with no feeling of persuasion one way or another as there will be many variables within this. Family circumstances, personal health, home working conditions etc. Armed with all this data we are replanning our studio to accommodate 50% of our 100 staff at any one time to allow safe social distancing.

WHEN THIS IS ALL OVER

My plans for getting to work assumes that every other business will be doing broadly the same as us - so only half or a third of regular pre covid-19 travel will take place. There will be no tourists. Last year WW+P conducted a major survey on commuter attitudes in 10 global cities so I have incorporated those results into these proposals:•

No cars will be allowed into the congestion charge zone from 7-10.30 After 10.30 only cars with 3 or more people signing u via a car sharing app. Buses will be supplemented with coaches.

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More space will be given to cycling and walking and greening the city.

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Cycle hire will be free. Electric scooters will be permitted. At Weston Williamson we will fund the purchase of electric cycles.

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Again the intention is to implement these changes beautifully (unlike the knee jerk additions to terrorist attacks) to consider how we travel to improve our city in the short term and the planet for the long term . It’s interesting that the very things that attract us to cities workplace, social gatherings, exchange of ideas, talks, debates, theatre, cinema, galleries, museums - are no longer available to us. Without them what is the city? Thinking further ahead we should consider that this is not a one off hiatus. We should plan for this happening again, next time maybe worse. We should plan our transport and our cities and our economy to build in this resilience and to give choice of where to live, work and relax. If we plan properly it will work, it could even be fun and will make the world a better place. Lets look back on 2020 as the year a virus made us stay home to reappraise how we live and to make the city better.

Commuters will have to prebook their travelling time whether by train bus or tube. Slots will be in 15 minute periods from 7 till 10.30

Chris Williamson is a founding partner of the international architecture practice Weston Williamson + Partners

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There will be additional staff, paid and unpaid volunteers with a cheery disposition ensuring that times are adhered to.

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Passengers will be managed in groups into the station onto the platforms and onto the trains.

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Additional buskers and entertainers will be engaged handing out masks to anyone who might have forgotten and encouraging passengers to use the debatable track and trace app.

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Only half of all seats will be in use. There will be escalator handrail cleaners top and bottom. Barriers will be left open.

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There will be some stations with some services which discharge passengers only. On the Jubilee Line say only dropping off at Waterloo so passengers alighting would have to go to Southwark or Westminster.

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Other stations such as London Bridge lend themselves well to a one way system enabling social distancing for reduced numbers.

THE LONDON SOCIETY 2020

We are facing another war, but this time

As cities like London seek to recover from an epidemic that has left the streets in a state of suspended animation, it will be impossible to return to business as usual. Our former enemy Germany has suffered a fifth the death rate, and its towns and economy are in a much stronger position. It is at the heart of Europe, not the edge of nowhere! When industries closed, as they did in Eastern Germany after reunification or in the old coal and iron belt of the Ruhrgebiet, the sites were returned to woods and lakes. Trams and cycle paths kept car use down. In contrast the UK already has over-invested in shopping malls, and its urban roads are congested and unsafe. After the First World War, a policy of ‘Homes for Heroes’ led to endless suburbs of semi-detached houses, which led to the imposition of tight green belts. But Garden City principles and extensions to the London Underground drew people out to expanding towns like Ruislip, which are still very pleasant places for families. After the Second World War, London’s bombed East End was rebuilt through Comprehensive Development Areas. Councils such as Southwark and Lambeth compulsorily acquired land for rebuilding. Outside London New Towns were built by development corporations to provide jobs and homes in healthier surrounding. However continued centralisation has robbed communities of the resources and capacity to keep neighbourhoods healthy. Now that many ‘inner city’ areas have been gentrified, and people from overseas have taken over the old shops, the ‘front line’ has shifted to the outer suburbs. Before ‘lockdown’ return visits to centres that URBED had once advised such as Peckham and Lewisham suggested they were finding niche markets, and attracting young people to fill any gaps. Uxbridge too looked much healthier, thanks to an influx of major employers round the town centre. The surrounding environment seemed green, pleasant, and quite special. But most High Streets in London have no room for bypasses, and orbital traffic normally thunders through. It is the pollution from car tyres as well as exhausts that research suggests could be the main killer, as well as contributing to global warming. Their residents look depressed. So how could we use recovery to tackle the ‘giant’ challenges’ of inequality, poor health, unaffordable housing, and a general lack of hope that afflicts many people in the centres of the poorer suburbs of places such as Brent, Hackney, and Newham that have fared worst from the epidemic? We should take inspiration from the Beveridge Report of 1942, as well as the Abercrombie Plan again produced before the end of the last war.

Following research for Ken Livingstone entitled ‘ A City of Villages, URBED was commissioned to produce a ‘toolkit’ for making them more sustainable. The proposal, based on applying proven best practice, are still applicable, but were never put into effect due to lack of capacity. With a new Mayor ReShaping London, Jonathan Manns and I on behalf of the London Society used a case study of outer West London to show what could be done if only under-used land was mobilised. Proposals included new housing along the canal on storage yards close to stations, and a new Garden City on Northolt Airport, which is just off the A40 and has three stations on the London Underground lines, along with extensive greening. Again this was all seen as ‘too difficult’, and reliance was placed on private developers. Our research study for the Deputy London Mayor on mobilising land with Dentons and Gerald Eve proposed Land Assembly Zones and other changes, modelled on what had worked in the past and in Continental Cities. Subsequently I showed how the uplift in land values from development could be shared, and used to help fund local infrastructure, as is common in German and Dutch cities. With property values falling, could now be the time to mount a battle plan, and set up task forces to bring our High Streets back to life? Having spent over 40 years working as a consultant and researcher on urban regeneration, and having led study tours to many places that could serve as models, I believe that unless we apply similar approaches to planning, development and public finance as in the rest of Northern Europe we will fail to restart our economy. We will also lose precious assets as buildings rot or go up in flames. So the London Society, and others concerned with urban quality, should not just be recording history but helping to rewrite it. Instead of radar, we have the power of GIS (Geographic Information Systems) and modelling to identify and screen opportunities. We have much better communications, now that internet based meetings are common place, and information can be quickly shared. We could start with the network of green and blueways that characterise many of London’s suburbs, and use them, and under-used railway lines, to bring dead places back to life. Dr Nicholas Falk BA MBA is the founder of URBED, and executive director of The URBED Trust, www.urbedtrust.com

WHEN THIS IS ALL OVER

THE LONDON SOCIETY 2020

Institutional Architecture in a time of Crisis. By Roland Karthaus of Matter Architecture. This piece is about prisons and care homes and before proceeding, I want to be clear that in writing about these two building types I don’t believe they’re in any way equivalent – they’re not – but as institutional buildings they do have some things in common. They are also both types of building that I know a little about and they’re both being considered differently in light of COVID 19. They both accommodate the provision of public, private or a mixture of both types of service and are designed primarily with the delivery of those services in mind. At the time of writing, prisons have not been affected as severely by the virus as many feared, whilst care homes have been affected as badly or worse – with a very large proportion of all COVID-related deaths so far occurring in them. Furthermore, Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service is the biggest provider of care to older men in the country and it seems likely that prisons will also be severely affected at some point. Both prisons and care homes have been in the news in recent years as austerity has seen drastic cuts to funding, leading to worsening conditions. Although potentially scandalous, their enclosed nature has meant that these conditions pass unnoticed by many. Of course there are both prisons and care homes that provide the highest quality services and they serve a crucial role, but at a fundamental level many of these institutions are based on the assumption that the best way to deliver their social goals is to gather people with similar needs together in a large building, or cluster of buildings, separate from their communities. This is because they are labour-intensive services that are expensive to run and so the most economic model is to design the building around service efficiency.

Cells or rooms are therefore frequently undifferentiated spaces, organised relentlessly on both sides of spine corridors, sometimes with little or no natural light into the circulation spaces. In some parts of the care home sector, the drive for efficiency has been pushed to its logical financial limits through privatisation and debt so that even the most efficient model in many cases has become extremely fragile without contingency or tolerance to change. In prisons, efficiency continues to be ‘baked in’ through the construction of larger, out of town prisons such as HMP Berwyn (which my practice used as a case study in our award-winning research, Wellbeing in Prison Design) whilst overcrowding and ‘doubling up’ continues in the wider prison estate. Efficiency may sound like a good thing, but it conceals two significant downsides. Firstly, if things change such as is happening now, then there is no room to adapt. Neither care homes nor prisons can realistically apply rigorous social distancing. Secondly, efficiency usually refers to quantities rather than qualities. There is an increasing understanding in public health that the quality of people’s lives directly affects their healthy life expectancy and prisons and care homes are both effectively healthcare environments. We’ve known all this for some time, but COVID 19 is finally forcing us to confront these issues. By their very nature, institutional buildings tend to isolate people from their communities, whilst physically integrating people within them.

WHEN THIS IS ALL OVER

Furthermore, they integrate these enclosed groups with their service providers – carers, staff, prison officers - who live in nearby communities, creating a nightmare scenario in infection terms. It may seem intuitive in the context of viral infection that more vulnerable and older people should be physically isolated from society, but if isolated together in the case of prisons and care homes, precisely the opposite is true.

My practice, Matter Architecture has been exploring this through our grant-funded research work and we are currently working with Local Authorities to commission specialist housing that prioritises people’s health and wellbeing, whilst incorporating the design of service provision in more adaptable and flexible ways. We’ve also been looking at how people can be supported when leaving prison to settle into society so they don’t end up back inside - as a ridiculously high percentage currently do. This requires In his book Flesh and Stone, Richard Sennett describes the thinking differently about the prison architecture so that it Jewish Ghetto in Medieval Venice – a walled neighbourhood can connect better into its local communities. in the city in which Jews could be accommodated for their financial services, whilst remaining distinct and separated The philosophy behind much institutional architecture due to the Venetian’s fear of these ‘other’ people. Whilst hasn’t fundamentally changed for more than a century similar motivations may have influenced institutions in the – it is long overdue a rethink and the current crisis may past, society has thankfully moved on, but the unintended provide the impetus. consequences still linger – people who are separated from their communities are too easily forgotten – out of sight, Matter was formed in 2016 by Roland Karthaus and out of mind. The institutional architecture that narrowly Jonathan McDowell combining the experience of prioritises service delivery, inevitably deprioritises the need their previous practices McDowell+Benedetti and for social integration which in turn leads to worse health and Karthaus Design. a greater burden on the under-funded service. It doesn’t have to be like this. Whilst there will always be a need for institutional provision – and I would emphasise the crucial role that care homes and prisons play and the enormous social value provided by the people who work in them - the way we design our cities can act as a preventative measure to greatly reduce this need, improving people’s lives and wider society. I am not arguing against institutions, I’m arguing for better institutions through better design.

See their research at www.matterarchitecture.uk/research

THE LONDON SOCIETY 2020

World economies have pulled the brakes and global capitalism has ground to a relative halt, foreshadowing what may become the “Noble Recession”. By Jonathan Manns

Yet whilst national media debates the extent of state intervention and queries, for the second time in a decade, our reliance on economic growth, the effects have been localised and personalised. We are compelled to spend time in relative isolation and our lives have, by necessity, become more immediate in their experiences. The focus has shifted from shared spaces to private ones and ‘the small things’ matter more than ever before. Our homes have, unsurprisingly, proven to be particularly important. “Won’t it be nice,” a neighbour mentions to their housemate in conversation, “when we don’t have to work and sleep in the same room”. Across the fence a neighbour quietly confesses “I’m so pleased we bought the garden flat and not the one on top, they’ve been stuck in there for months”. Uses have coalesced and many of us now shop, educate, labour and relax in the same place. There will be many people who crave private amenity and to separate the component parts of their lives back out, whilst others will have found greater freedom and flexibility than they expected. There will be important lessons here about how we take such matters into account when designing future developments.

The space between buildings requires more negotiation and has, often awkwardly at times, been defined by varying interpretations of social distancing. Yet access to green space has proven paramount. With all but very limited travel possible, the Green Belt has – in so far as it ever has done – offered little in terms of accessible amenity. Meanwhile, parks and commons, woods and allotments, have given respite to many. These often-overlooked pockets of space, knitted into our communities, have proven themselves of real value. It would be both environmentally and socially beneficial for us to plan for more such spaces in our cities. What then of planning? The focus so far during this pandemic has rightly been on those serving our country as frontline NHS staff. Establishment of the health service, on 5 July 1948, was a bold and fundamentally redistributive effort to enhance our collective well-being. It would be remiss to forget that four days earlier, on 1 July 1948, the Town and Country Planning Act 1947 came into effect underpinned by similar principles: development rights were nationalised and placed within the gift of local authorities, with the state to share in value creation where permission was given. As we begin a slow and tentative emergence from lockdown, the big questions will of course be there to discuss and debate. It may be, though, that there is also a different emphasis on how we go about our lives and, consequently, the ways in which we perceive and use the built environment. In these circumstances, it will be planning that is deserving of our attention. The question of what and how we build has rarely been so apposite. Jonathan Manns is Board Director, Head of Planning and Development, at Rockwell. He is a writer, speaker, lecturer, campaigner and convenor of the APPG for London’s Planning and Built Environment.

WHEN THIS IS ALL OVER

London Society member Susan Moore says that urban dwellers need to be more connected to the earth.

I have seen at first-hand how many children have benefited “helping” with the sowing and inspecting the little ponds for new frog life – or even just running up and down the pathways. I have seen people in their 80s working their plots, staying fit and well. Younger people working from home dip in over the lunch period and then later after 6pm to get that fresh air and maintain their plots.

During the lockdown, allotments were regarded as acceptable “exercise” for those lucky enough to have one. I waited for over 6 years on a waiting list and eventually got one in 2015. This has been a complete godsend during this pandemic, I have visited almost every day and worked really hard and with relative serenity. In the early weeks I did so with the thought that there may be local food shortages and all of us plot holders could be asked to contribute what we could – especially to the London homeless.

We know there is a housing shortage but there is not a land shortage. We know there is huge demand across London as thousands fester on a council waiting list. The environment needs a boost, insect life and bird life need a sanctuary. I hope the London Society will see what an integral part of our great City these allotment sites are.

So, when I consider the question “When this is over”? I would recommend a great deal more land is set aside for allotments for people. Even a small square of land makes all the difference to well-being, being able to communicate with other people at a safe distance, sharing of seeds, seedlings and produce.

THE LONDON SOCIETY 2020

Daniel Moylan thinks that we need to stop telling people what to do

Lord Moylan is a Conservative peer. He has been involved in London and national politics since the early 1990s, being at various times a councillor in Kensington and Chelsea, an officer of London Councils, a cofounder and co-Chairman of Urban Design and Deputy Chairman of Transport for London under Boris Johnson. In September 2020 he was appointed a member of the Board of the Ebbsfleet Development Corporation

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I have had a quiet lockdown. For seven weeks outdoor exercise has been rationed. For me, at least, this has created a sense of anxiety that, by not taking up my ration, I may be missing out and as a result I have been daily pounding the lawns, hillocks and glades of Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park at, as it has turned out, one of the most glorious seasons of the year. On my way to the parks, I pass at the top of my road, the mooching motorcyclists who deliver takeaway food locally. These are people who might today scrape into the approved category of heroic key workers, but that was not true a few weeks ago. Back then, when things were “normal”, we regarded them as a rather annoying manifestation of what was contemptuously called the “gig economy”. We had only two ways of explaining these people: either they were being ruthlessly exploited, in which case they were to be pitied, or they were willing participants in the lowest form of economic organisation, in which case they were despicable. Our solution was simple: the law must force them to become subject to the infantilising web of employment legislation. We had no conception that they might prefer the freedom and autonomy of being in control of their own economic actions. They had to be told what to do. The urge to regulate the messiness of urban life was identified by Jane Jacobs as the main threat to cities, those vast engines that delicately balance wealth-creation, community life and personal self-realisation. Jacobs’ insight was that what looked like disorder was in fact a vastly complex and continuous web of human interactions beyond our ability to analyse. And what we could not analyse we mistook for messiness and set about eliminating. In city planning terms, that meant a rational re-making of the city: different places for different activities and uniformity within them, with models as various as Sir Ebenezer Howard’s garden cities and Le Corbusier’s Ville Contemporaine. For Jacobs these were not paths to renewed cities but ways of destroying cities, by eliminating the complexity of human interaction that was crucial to the city’s success. For a city to prosper, we needed to live with a degree of disorder. We made some brave experiments in that direction under Boris Johnson, with streetscape re-modelled to remove signs and guardrail and with some tentative experiments in shared space, inspired by the work of the late Hans Monderman in the Netherlands. But the instinct to control was quick to re-assert itself and now we design our cities in response to barks and yelps from well organised single-issue lobby groups who are keen to allocate the city’s spaces for the purposes they favour, usually with no better argument than that they are morally superior and deserving persons.

And so we face demands for bicycle lanes here, bus lanes there, kerbs for guide dogs everywhere, all to be allocated top-down by highways engineers practising what remains one of the few professions still working to a Soviet model. The lockdown has taken the bossy society to a new zenith. Even in the Second World War people weren’t told when and whether they could sit in a park. Of course there has been a very strong justification for this: plague management is not new and for centuries it has included urban lockdowns, isolation of the infected and social distancing. It would be remiss of the government not to resort to those measures learnt from hard experience. But there are too many decision-makers relishing these new powers. Loath to let a good pandemic go to waste, they are emerging with plans for a radical re-shaping of the city’s transport: more lanes for everyone! Some are indeed pondering a far less dense city – not a city at all, therefore. We see hints of a new, even fiercer obesity strategy. And of course we are to be shouted at by recorded warnings whenever we ride on a bus or a Tube. It’s easy to believe that for these people the queue is the paradigmatic form of social organisation. I am not sure anyone has asked the mooching motorcyclists whether these are their priorities. The London Society is blessed to have so many educated contributors with bright ideas for the capital’s future. I am no different – I have got the degree certificate to prove it – and I am greatly honoured to be invited to put down my thoughts as to how we might change London when the pandemic recedes. So let me hark back to Lenin and Trotsky, who, with the ruthless insight that accompanied their ruthless brutality, gave us the question, “Who, whom?” Who will control whom? It was always a slogan to summarise class struggle but it is not without applicability to London today, for truly the capital is divided into those who do and those to whom it is done. My suggestion for change in London after the virus is that we, the educated doers, should celebrate the messy takeaway bikers as a freewheeling symbol of a city that has been a success for 2,000 years and take a break from telling those to whom it is done what they should do.

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London’s Green Infrastructure by Dr Meredith Whitten With the rich inheritance of green space across Britain’s cities, it’s easy to take these spaces for granted. However, the Covid-19 pandemic and lockdown have delivered a jolting reminder of just how vital green spaces are to daily life, particularly in densely populated and developed urban areas, such as London. At the same time, the lockdown has exposed how unevenly provided London’s green spaces are. Neighbourhoods across the capital are deficient in access to nature and the benefits it provides, and this has been felt acutely by some more than others. Further, the throngs of Londoners crowding into public green spaces during the lockdown highlights the intense demand and pressure on these spaces that existed well before the pandemic. At one level, this simply reflects constraints to providing green space in London, which is 14 times as densely populated as the England and Wales average. Yet, this pressure also reveals the limitations of taking a narrow approach to greening the city. The concept of publicly accessible green space is a vaunted legacy of Victorian idealism and ingenuity. Motivated by their concern for public health – notably the spread of diseases such as cholera and smallpox – and for improving the behaviour and morality of the poor and working classes, the Victorians introduced the idea of the public park. Today’s health and wellbeing issues, including diabetes and obesity, stress and social isolation, differ from those of the 19th century. Together with other contemporary concerns, such as the climate crisis – a key justification cited by London and other cities around the world for adopting urban greening policies – this demonstrates that what we ask of our green spaces today has multiplied. Cities don’t stand still – they are continually and strategically evolving. Likewise, landscape is not static. London is a dynamic city, and its green spaces need to adapt and change along with the city around them. Instead of narrowly adhering to a 19th-century approach to green space, we can harness the innovative, progressive spirit the Victorians applied to the challenges of their era by allowing London’s urban landscapes to reflect and redress changing practices, attitudes, and values about nature and equity.

Instead, a contemporary urban greening agenda that works in tandem with London’s long-established public spaces could enhance both human and ecological health. Such an approach includes infusing grey spaces with more green elements, such as vegetated streetscapes, roofs, walls and swales, street trees and green verges at scales yet unseen. Green spaces should reflect – not restrict – how Londoners move about the city, becoming a more active part of the urban environment. If, as some predict, more post-pandemic journeys will occur by walking and cycling and fewer by car, green spaces will play an increasing role in London’s infrastructure. We must recognise that many urban green spaces are places we travel through, not necessarily to. Thus, green spaces should be designed not just as destinations or escapes from the city, but as integral parts of the urban fabric, as necessary to and interwoven in the city as the buildings, roads and other infrastructure around them. We must think about green spaces as a network, not as isolated islands of amenity marooned in the city. Instead, we should connect these spaces via other types of green infrastructure and the communities that live there. When linked, these various green elements provide a green experience that is greater than the sum of its parts. Achieving this will require breaking out of silos, collaborating across jurisdictions and working at different scales. Instead of adhering to arbitrary boundaries, we should think strategically about green space planning, ensuring all Londoners have access to the benefits of these spaces. The public park movement revolutionised cities in 19th-century Britain. Today, an innovative, interconnected and forward-looking approach to urban greening can transform post-pandemic London, leaving a legacy for future generations. Dr. Meredith Whitten is with the Department of Geography & Environment at the London School of Economics & Political Science.

Planning laws already protect a lot of existing, and often historic, public parks and green spaces. But, we also must be realistic about the limited opportunities to create new, accessible and traditionally designed green spaces in urban London.

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Arts, Culture and Lockdown by Seema Manchanda As lockdown commenced I found myself in the interesting position of starting a new role as Managing Director at The Showroom in London’s Edgware Road area.

This has been strange, not just because I am diversifying my work life, but because managing a gallery I have not seen and working with colleagues I’ve only ever met online sometimes feels rather abstract. I am still delivering planning work through Smart Urban Limited during this period and so stay in touch with friends and colleagues in the development world too. Arts and culture has long been a key foundation of London’s economy. Currently the challenges that face the capital’s cultural bodies are huge. Large organisations face major running costs, rely on visitors and membership for their income and are struggling immensely while closed. Smaller institutions, like The Showroom, tend to rely on grants and donations to support programming but due to the pandemic this funding has shrunk. The Arts Council England has pooled all its funding, reserves too, to put together a programme of emergency support for the sector. This has been a fantastic move on their part as without it, no doubt, many organisations would not stand a chance. But the sector continues to face challenges. My own concerns are both very imminent and relate to long term strategy. In the short term can staff and visitors can travel safely to the gallery; can they be safe within the gallery; can artists travel to work with us on their shows and is there confidence amongst supporters to return and visit us. Financial confidence is also important so that donations will return. In the longer term: how deep will the recession be; how will the business model need to change; how can arts still deliver what Londoners want and need; how much will society really change its longer term behaviours particularly around proximity to others; how can arts organisations support town centre revival; what strategies and partnerships do we need to put in place? It is hard to guess the future for cultural institutions in London without answers to so many other questions.

For now a lot more culture has moved on-line and while this has been a bedrock for many of us during lockdown, a haven of interest and escape to help us cope, this model has not financially supported most of the organisations and artists that create it to survive. Musicians have been grappling with this issue for 20 years now but despite the onward march of IT this is still a relatively new issue in the visual arts. On the positive side the arts have reached new worldwide audiences but on the other hand viewing on screen does not give the same experience as a physical artwork nor necessarily provide income to the institutions. Virtual arts is a wonderful arm of culture but eventually people will crave the painting not the image; the sonic wave of a bass not an i-phone rendition of the song. I am not sure that we will live forever separated as some commentators suggest. In terms of our shared spaces already the 2 metre rule is being reduced and I think people naturally love to group together, for meals, for art, for dancing. People have suffered plagues before and they still return to each other eventually; the question is how long will that take this time? For the time being though social distancing remains a key part of our lives. The Showroom is lucky to have a mural project which we host on our building, thanks also to a supportive landlord who just happens to be Sir Terry Farrell. This remains an important artwork in the community especially since in lockdown we still have something to share with the local neighbourhood. Throughout lockdown passing locals have been our main audience. For 10 years The Showroom has delivered a programme of artworks, called Communal Knowledge, in which we coproduce artworks with our neighbours. Elvira Dyangani Ose, our Director and Chief Curator, has more recently embedded this coproduction approach into most of our programming.

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This has broadened our audience drawing people from all parts of the community; groups that don’t often participate in art including, for example, local youth groups, refugees; single parent households; social housing tenants. The Showroom works to both serve its local Church Street Market community and act as another anchor to bring vibrancy to the area, sharing cultural energy and forging placemaking. The pandemic and resulting economic crisis are not our only concerns. At the start of this pandemic Arundhati Roy encouraged us all the see ‘the pandemic as portal, a gateway between one world and the next’. Hers a call to action to recognize that some things were already broken, such as the environment and social inequality, and for us to use our collective isolation to imagine solutions and a new way forward. This drive has been heightened in the wake of the George Floyd killing and the black lives matter movement shining a light on race inequality; on the deaths in black communities, on the poorer housing and working conditions of too many in our society, and that many of those people are at the frontline. Those whom we clap but we need also to constructively assist. The Showroom has always maintained a focus on socially engaged art. Our last exhibition, ‘Affection as Subversive Architecture’, with Spanish architecture collective Recetas Urbanas, was focused on the role of community buildings and self-build projects in empowering communities. It was locked down midway through and now remains online. We had hoped to be able to use the exhibition to host discussions; with young people about their needs; with residents about their housing situation and self-build groups about their projects and plans.

Actually these are issues that concern many of us but for the community when discussions take place in an art environment they have the potential to draw out hopes, worries and concerns in a sensitive, creative, learning environment. I was looking forward to being part of it. Now though we are working with Baltic, Gateshead who were due to host the show later this year and hope together we can revive and reshape these discussions so they can happen, possibly virtually, this autumn. We want to forge new partnerships together so that there can be a fresh approach to exploring the societal issues affecting us all using art as a platform for exploration and ideas. We maintain a strong vision and programming that explores major issues of the day in a culturally vibrant, exciting way and welcome new partners and new patrons. We will all need a lot of creative space for thinking and evaluating as we move forward – lets work together. I invite those of you who are interested in new ways of exploring these issues in your work to get in touch as perhaps we can find mutual areas of practice. Seema Manchanda is Managing Director of The Showroom, a contemporary art space focused on collaborative approaches to cultural production within its locality and beyond. She is also the Director of planning consultancy Smart Urban Ltd.

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Sophia Boyd of AECOM says we are not only going to have to look at new ways of working, we will also need to consider new ways of living.

An estimated 25% of the world’s urban population live in informal settlements (1). This growing urban population relocates to the outskirts of cities for better opportunities and employment. What we see in developing countries are drives by international organisations to create shelters. The “T-Shelter” (transitional shelter (2)) is the icon of such responses – prefabricated, easy to deploy and quick to ‘shelter’ persons. The T-Shelter fulfils the paradigm of a shelter: a roof, walls, floors, door. A House – but not a home.

Post-COVID19 working practices are making us question what the future of the working environment looks like. This provides an opportunity to question our approach to Masterplanning and ask if we are currently empowering the right people at the stage to create flexible enough spaces which can adapt to changes in culture, economy and lifestyles. How do we currently plan for future uses of space which may result from such unprecedented changes in behaviour as we have seen with COVID-19?

Masterplanning aims to provide frameworks for development to take place (3). Designing structures and voids; giving purpose to spaces. They aid in addressing local and national requirements i.e. housing numbers. However, in some cases, addressing such requirements can make their uses ‘too rigid’’ (4).

Nick Searl, Partner at Argent, discusses the successful flexible Masterplanning approach taken with the Kings Cross development looking towards the Brent Cross South masterplan (6). One key point Nick makes is understanding the ‘local audience’ and culture is a driver for flexible Masterplanning.

As a human race we are quick to deal with an immediate need, placing the power for decision making and creation with ‘experts’. But those experts may have no local understanding or have any consideration for a what makes a space more than just a shelter – but a personal, interpretable experience in the long term and for future uses and occupants.

Nick notes that whilst these concepts of flexibility and adaptability are not new – changes in cultural attitude to modern ways of living and working can provide that opportunity rarely happen on such a fast and large scale as seen with the COVID-19 pandemic response.

Gordon Douglas’ “DIY Urban Design” (5) explores how people make ‘unauthorized alterations to urban space’ through their motivation to improve their urban areas. These are interpreted as a challenge to current models regarding who is empowered to make decisions about how spaces are used.

What would Masterplanning look like if we change the constraints and process of planning design by giving the opportunity and authority to interpret the use of space to future occupants? Very loosely speaking: the current tools for planning involve the application of physical and descriptive constraints. Depending on their application: they take the power of decision away from the user and ultimately apply use classes to spaces which are then developed and defined within the constraints of that allocation. Consider the Johari Window: a technique that was originally developed by psychologists Luft and Ingham to help individuals better understand their relationship with themselves and others.

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Considering the above, not to mention the huge rental market of flat sharing that is a reality for those living in dense urban areas: affordable and well-located spaces are a priority. What we are starting to see in urban areas is the overlap between activities once originally reserved for a private home that can now be carried out within a workplace or cafe.

A subject individual and a group of peers take a list of adjectives and apply these to describe the subject under one of four quadrants: • O pen - Adjectives that both the subject and peers select; • B lind - Adjectives not selected by subjects, but only by their peers;

It is almost as though we are seeing the boundaries between our private living spaces blur with other public or semi-public spaces. This is where the ‘middle’ section of a transitional Public/Private scale becomes more tangible: areas where there is limited access, but not specifically for individual or public access.

• H idden - Adjectives selected by the subject, but not by any of their peers; • U nknown - Adjectives that neither subject nor peers selected; We could apply a similar approach to understanding our relationship with space. No one individual will perceive the privacy of one space in equal measure to all others. Therefore, creating spaces which provide a variety of public, private and ‘mixed’ spaces along a transitional scale which can then be interpreted and adapted by a user/occupant gives users and occupants more decision-making power. What makes a space a home, an office, a shop or a café? And what specifically differentiates the uses of each? Think of an office: a lot of modern offices will have lights, computers, appropriate furniture (including sofas, individual tables and chairs) and kitchenettes. A lot have integrated shower facilities, gyms and cafes. Others have included onsite medical facilities with professionals on hand.

This proposed concept is not without flaws: the potential deregulation to allow informal responses to urban planning can lead to poorly co-located ‘spaces’: quiet areas with noisy or polluting activities within proximity. Ultimately, having some form of control can protect the wider population. So why consider an alternative approach? Catering to an unlimited set of variables is impossible but giving people the means and choice to adapt spaces to create more personal approaches to their own work/life balances is essential for future planning and design. “Informality exists despite planning, not thanks to it” and, it always will.

NOTES 1. www.gsdrc.org/topic-guides/urban-governance/keypolicy-challenges/informal-settlements 2. www.buildchange.org/tag/t-shelter 3. www.smartcitiesdive.com/ex/ It is highly likely you have ordered Christmas Gifts online sustainablecitiescollective/what-urban-design/1074316 and had them delivered to your office. Almost certainly 4. www.pps.org/article/benefits-and-drawbacks-ofsome of those gifts were for you. master-planning 5. www.asanet.org/sites/default/files/savvy/journals If we are going to look at new ways of working, clearly, we /CC/Mar14CCFeature.pdf need to consider new ways of living. ‘WeLive’ (in New York) 6. www.nla.london/videos/flexible-masterplanning and ‘Tipi’ (in Wembley) offer spaces you can live but share facilities such as kitchen areas - but always have your own private ‘space’.

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