JUST - IN - TIME BRADFORD
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Architecture and Capital Modern architecture has been, and continues to be, a product of capital forces, where “[...] urban form is taken [...] to be a reflection of economic [...] forces already in play throughout larger society” (Pope, 1996, p219). Capitalist [re]development in the urban and extra-urban context is driven by economic reward and capital gains with a view to “seek[ing] a more promising bottom line” (Pope, 1996, p153) from any given scheme.
myriad of “[...]economic and social contradictions, which explode in an always more accelerated way within urban agglomerations” have halted “capitalist reorganisation” (Tafuri, 1976, p170). The city has been unable to readjust to the fluctuating variables of the knowledge economy, globally-led retail development or city centre commercial/ residential regeneration. Instead of regrouping and redefining the city as the modern hub it once was, non-committal capital development, a compromised planning process and consumerist behaviour have left the city with few meaningful buildings with which to create place. Whilst some public, municipal and civic infrastructures remain from Bradford’s past “they do so in a highly qualified state, remaining only as traces or displacements of a former hierarchy, operating on the edge of complete irrelevance” (Pope, 1996, p173). Fig. 2 Assumed Comsumer Desires
Developers’ Whim
Bradford Reality
Capital
Produces
Urban Form
Fig. 1
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Capital Reality: Westfield 2008+ / Cities in context. The current situation of failing commerce and a lack of investment in the development of post-industrial cities has produced a fragile urban realm. The fissures, pock-marks and vacuums have been produced by myriad forces - many as a result of the financial crash - but to begin to design with pragmatism, or even comprehend what is wrong in the current urban-economic context, we have to frame where we are in social, economic and spatial terms. Bratton states that “we don’t know what we are post, and what we are pre, but simply that we are, an historical interstitial, a gap. Is the gap, the empty space into which something falls, a void, a newly cleared space?” (2009) Development gone awry / The inertia of development. The way in which capital-led development currently operates is symptomatic of present economic ideologies, which have, in the near-short term proved to be unsustainable. Procurement strategies employed by developers reflect that of the home-equity loans of the early-2000s. In the same way that mortgages were leveraged to allow the home to become “a three dimensional credit card” able to secure “speculative withdrawals to fund goods,” (Richmond, 2009, p216) developments are regarded as temporal, speculative chunks of equity, which can be notionally or physically generated in order to secure other developments against. As this speculative process invariably pops, or fails to reach its prophesised potential, the urban fabric is torn apart at the seams by the fissures of abandonment, dereliction and brownfield. The inevitable residuum created by the low points in the ‘boom and bust’ cycle “appear within the matrices of a traditional urban community indicat[ing] a process of development gone awry, producing an astonishing, uncontrollable remainder” (Pope, 1996, p195). This ultimately creates “an inertia of incredible scale, reinforcing division, exclusion and stagnation within the built environment” (Pope, 1995, p217). Metropolitan identity became capital based - consumerist desires. As an historical organism, the city existed to exchange goods from the hinterlands - in Bradford’s case the processing and redistribution of wool. In the post-industrial context of Bradford’s city centre a
£80,000,000 Hole in the Ground
Profitable Agenda
A rift in the urban fabric of Bradford. Perhaps the most evident of these irrelevant remainders is Bradford’s retail zone. With growing vacancy levels (22,537/ft2) and a relatively low rental yield (£14.39/ft2 avg.), the idealised precedent of localisedglobal franchises - spurring success by homogeneity - has not taken hold or substantially benefited Bradford’s retail prospects. It seems that someone forgot to point this out to the Westfield group, whose purchase of 400,000 ft2 of BD1 in 2003 has been nothing short of an egregious failure. Their proposed retail scheme utilised well-established high street chains as anchor stores, yet failed to encourage tenants from other retail areas - especially Bradford’s own retail stock, as it would have seen them paying 345% increased rates on their floor areas. The decade-long persistence of planners and developers created “[...] ineffectual myths, which [...] serve as illusions that permit the survival of anachronistic hopes in design” (Tafuri, 1976, p182) The myth of the all-saving, ubiquitous shopping centre in Bradford is one that cannot be realised because of relative value of space in the city; the economic model is simply not correct for this context. However speculatively outrageous the plans were, there remains a stark reality to the project: the £80,000,000 hole in the ground. Fig. 3
Actual Development
Secured Speculative Development
Urban Failure
1
Reprogramming the urban form. Ruffolo states that “[p]rograming [...] becomes a procedure providing a means of comparing the costs of all the various proposed [...] undertakings, as well as comparing the total of such costs to the total foreseeable resources” (1969). A developmental mindset in a context as economically scarred by failed capital ideals as Bradford needs to take the above into account. The heavy handed ubiquitous development of retail space may no longer be appropriate, as much as a speculative developments in general should not be appropriate in recession. ”Systems of values can no longer be considered established for long periods” (Rittel, 1963, p29). The proposition of any typology in the city should see the underlying relative economic value of space and should be governed by sustainability in terms of affordability over time. It is true that “[...] the fate of capitalist society is not at all extraneous to architectural design” (Tafuri, 1976, p179). Radical typological transitions that provide for more than the capital elite will have to govern future urban development in order to reprogramme the self destructive tendencies of speculative cities. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Entropy Conflict. The tension in the modern city between what is desirable (i.e. profitable) for developers, the economic reality of a place, and the historical urban form is palpable in all cities which have embraced regeneration in its present guise. However, in the same way that stubborn planner and developer views have endorsed asynchronous representations of city development, ”[...] the inherent conflict between its traditional and innovative qualities has thrown the contemporary city into a kind of interregnum - or inability to evolve - where traditional urban strategies cannot die and new urban strategies cannot emerge” (Pope, 1996, p151). Fig. 4
vs.
Historic Urban Forms
New Urban Strategies
Stalemate
Equilibriums. “The city of development does not accept ‘equilibriums’ within it” (Tafuri, 1976, p120). A stalemate between the historical city and new typologies cannot persist if redevelopment is to rationally address the issue of actual affordability in the city. Developers appear to take the opposite stance. They “prefer an ‘inside without an outside,’ or an outside so disorganised as to form no viable alternative to corporate enfranchisement” (Pope, 1996, p205). The inability to evolve, however - the ‘unequilibrium’ - in the city, created by the aspirations, achievements and failures of capital ventures, may be the catalyst which allows fundamental changes to occur. Entropy as residue: Awakening. “Entropy is the measure of disorganisation inherent in any closed system” (Pope, 1996, p202). The disequilibriums of urban space are the places of entropic aggregation. They are the vacuum, the residuum and the voids - the derelict, the defunct and the unused. These byproducts of capital led urban development can serve more functions than just representing the divisions between economic aspiration and reality - they can become “persuasive economical, political and social site[s]. As these sites become recognisable, the closed enclave will be increasingly confronted not with absence, but entropic counterforce” (Pope, 1996, p205). The emergent organisational potential of entropy in Bradford will form the vital economic and political sites which are 2
needed to counter the failed claims to redevelopment and ownership of the authority in the enclave of capital. Fig. 5
Entropy: Emerges
: Multiplies
: Agglomerates
The mesh of space hollowing the core of the city needs to be activated with purposeful intervention of a type which realigns the failed promises of capital and satiates the consumerist desires inherent in modern society. Can this typology be redefined retail and distribution? The city of no centre. If dereliction were to exponentially increase as a product of recession and further failed capital development, then the city would cease to exist functionally - becoming a monument to the historical success and ultimate failure of capitalist forces. This scenario, as Pope describes “ may be unimaginable, if not socially and politically intolerable” (1996, p174). An evacuation strategy for Bradford need not be considered quite yet, as new typological models of urban consumption may be developed which empower sustainable versions of retail and distribution to alter the rules in the stagnated situation created by late-capitalist reality. As Smithson declared “unlike Buckminster Fuller, I am interested in collaborating with entropy” (1996, p256). ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Retail [e-commerce] The urban form of retail. Patterns of purchase and shopping behaviour have sculpted the way current retail models govern urban design, infrastructure and decentralisation of towns and cities worldwide. There are several models of retail expression: the high street (central), the out-of-town centre (peripheral), and an integrated amalgam of the two - the city centre retail development. Although flourishing in prosperous economic times, it is evident that the models of procurement and consumption which are endorsed by these capital-led developments will not be sustainable for long lengths of time. These forms have dictated the spacial layout of the centre and periphery, as the vectors of speed, time and proximity replace the architectural repertoire of space, light, form and materiality. The current interrelationship between retail and the city constitutes a “breed of formal expression [...] largely at odds with the traditional architectural language” of cities, defined by capital potential and “perhaps most evident in the rise and rise of the shopping mall and associated delineation, demarcation and definition of the periphery” (Brook & Dunn, 2009, p9). As described by Tafuri, it may be “useless to propose purely architectural alternatives” (1976, p181) to the pervasive control that retail/capital control has over the design of urban and sub-urban realms. System based alternatives to the power of dominant retail must be provided - ones which take hold of the entropic zones created by this dominance - in order to allow for new models of retail and distribution, and new forms of consumer-led, appropriately scaled programmes to flourish. e-commerce. The high street/shopping mall (spatial manifestation) of retail is not the right typology for 21st century consumer needs. E-commerce is where the proverbial money is at, and where the consumer is placing their demand. It is “to the Information Revolution what the railroad was to the Industrial Revolution. [...] In the new mental geography created by the railroad, humanity mastered distance. In the mental geography of e-commerce, distance has been eliminated. There is only one economy and only one market. The competition is not local anymore - in fact it knows no boundaries” (Drucker, 1999).
The prevalent trend so far in e-retail distribution modelling has been to augment the flows of capital and products within the digital realm and allow goods to manifest themselves almost as if by magic to the consumer’s desired location. This process utilises the model of capitalist global distribution of goods, creating and overhauling infrastructural networks in an attempt to reduce overheads, cut out the physical middle-man and satisfy stringent consumer demand. Fig. 5
Interface
Goods Desire Physical System
Consumer
The Digital and the Physical Physical survival. Even though an increasing amount of retail is now processed in digital form, the traditional retail forms have not completely died (the estimated average weekly spend online in the UK is £507.8 million (Sept. 2012)). Retail developments remain as testament to the fact that “the more immaterial our lives become, the greater our corresponding desire for a material world” (Leach, 2009, p7). If anything, ironically, the digitisation of consumer habits allows people to begin to appreciate the material, spacial and social aspect of retail in its traditional sense. This said, the typical retail which still persists today is of global scale - the brand names and outlets you would expect to be able to compete with such fundamental changes. This creates a skewed, genericised representation of availability in the public domain, and will ultimately lead to “the virtual militarization of the [retail,] domestic, commercial, industrial and administrative enclave[s]” (Pope, 1996, p183).
Death of the Varied High St.
Infrastructural Impact
New retail distribution modelling. E-commerce is currently a truly global power. It has the force to employ whole city populations (eg. 20,000 people in Louisville just for UPS distribution) and completely regenerate urban form and economic performance in the places where it touches down. It has the ability to change dying post-industrial cities “into the most important hubs of our era” (Lindsay & Kasarda, 2011, p64). The beneficial influence of the new model where it is physically manifested is undoubtable, but it remains a system based on global capital gains and unsustainable amounts of consumption and energy use. It ultimately leads to regressive urban form, “shifts in traffic patterns, the establishment of new warehousing facilities, and changing shopping habits” (Leach, 2009, p7). Consumer desires. Instead of producing a more rational, pragmatic consumer, the advent of e-commerce combined with a credit card culture has created “[...] a particularly voracious and narcissistic consumer whose ideal home is the city [...] itself, but whose influence radiates outward along truck routes and rail lines to the rest of the country” (Richmond, 2009, p210). The exponential increase in the availability and accessibility of products which has been permitted by just-in-time delivery and e-commerce may have changed the face of retail and its interaction with the urban and sub-urban realms, but its negative impact architecturally, spatially and environmentally suggests that it cannot continue on this trajectory for too long - “[...] the era of ‘just-in-time’ shipping may be coming to an end in favour of a return to the age-old strategy of storing stuff nearby until it’s needed” (Richmond, 2009, p214). If the ethos and efficiencies of new distribution methods are scaled down, localised and contextually appropriate, they may be the system-based typological solution to the ravaging influences of capital, retail and consumerism that is needed. Condensation is needed in the procurement, delivery and distribution of goods to “enable small and medium-sized entrepreneurs to participate more directly in the requisition of labour and goods overseas at a smaller, more manageable scale,” redefining and realigning the mentally of “consumers gone wild” and augmenting of the reality of the digital purchase and its spatial implication (Richmond, 2011, p216). -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Generic Retail Condenses
Online Retail Multiplies and Extends Aspacially
Fig. 6
Intermodal: typology. Physical retail may still exist (albeit in an extreme form), but the ancillary, back-of-house areas of the cycle - the storage, distribution and transit infrastructure - have grossly mutated. Their spacial qualities have been uprooted in favour of increased priorities in the dimensions of proximity, time and accessibility. Their acontextual, ubiquitous big-boxes may be “fixed in place yet exist as links in a fluid supply chain of ships, trains, trucks and containers to which they must respond and adapt” (Richmond, 2009, p214). They contribute to an urban form which has been outmoded by “the temporal vectors of transportation [...]. The speed of a vehicle on a freeway [...] has usurped the traditional domains established by form” (Pope, 1995, p9). The exponential increase in this type of built form is in the early stages of comprehension with regard to urban and extra-urban implications. We may not know for some time what impact the supply chain economics of e-commerce is having on our cities, and we will certainly not be vested with the power to influence it, as “[p]lanners have yet to develop the awareness, let alone the expertise or appropriate policy intervention mechanisms, that would enable them to influence the spatial development of a digital society” (Gillespie [?]). Augmentation. What would happen if we could see the lines of convergence that allow us to purchase freely in the digital realm; the peripheral buildings that temporarily feed our desires? Would this make us understand the latent scales of transit and energy consumption? Would perceptions and behaviour alter? These questions will not come to bear, as the capital control of the mechanisms hides them in an attempt to “reduced contact with the greater urban world down to the frenetic but agreeable traffic of an electronic feed” (Pope, 1995, p183). Instead of highlighting the effects of the process, it should be condensed and interspersed into the physical realms in which we participate. Augmenting the experience of digital retail, distribution and consumption with the comprehensible space of the city by scaling, adjusting and realigning it to contextually appropriate sites and economic models will begin to amend the disjunction in modern 3
retail from “bricks versus clicks” to “bricks and clicks” - and begin to “counter the homogenising shift towards the Generic City” (Leach, 2009, p7-8).
Fig. 7
Bricks
&
Clicks
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Proximity Intermodal zones of accumulation. One reason why the spaces of intermodal infrastructure and goods distribution appear so hidden is their relationship with the peripheral. They are most commonly zoned in the areas of most available space in the places that provide best all round proximity - see Memphis’ Fed Ex expansion within the triangulated airport zone and LA’s I-5 and Alameda shipping freight corridor. These precedents are the epitome of the global scale at which retail and distribution operate today. More locally, the motorway corridors of the UK are lined with business parks, storage facilities and distribution hubs which highlight the ubiquity, integration and stealth of global forces within the infrastructure of all areas of the supply chain. Outreach and locality. The fundamental premise of all the above examples is their relationship with proximity. All distribution sites are centrally zoned so that they have the greatest possible outreach areas for their systems. Ironically, this notion of ‘sitting in the middle’ is at odds with the notion of proximity itself. These places are close to everywhere, but near to nowhere. Nearness. The current system puts space between every node which the process of efficient distribution aims to serve. What if the process of retail and distribution were to emulate the cutting-out of the middle man (the major hub), and return to the age old ideology of accumulating goods very near to where they are ultimately needed?
Infrastructurally Associated Distribution
Urban Associated Distribution
of vacancy and economic under-performance of its vast majority is apparent (See: Capital Realism: Bradford, where 38.61% vacancy leads to area losses of £7,8m (2012, p106)). This failure of capital development - visually evident in empty ‘active street-frontage’ country wide - is symptomatic of the development process gone awry. Surely, new typologies which can economically perform in the urban core have to be discussed and accepted if the city is not to become one without a distinguishable centre, with “increasing degrees of exclusion, division, and polarization [...] that we fail to recognise [...] as a city at all” (Pope, 1995, p151 & p173). Rejecting old hierarchies. As Pope suggests, any city which remains “sub-urban or subsidiary to an archaic or metropolitan core prevents the new exurban nuclei from claiming the greater social, economic, and political status they might otherwise acquire. It can be argued that the old hierarchies continue to cast a large part of [...] the urban [...] world into a secondary position” (1995, p174). Bradford is guilty of this assertion in recent times, failing to acknowledge contextually appropriate urban forms in favour of asynchronous, overvalued development, which when combined with over-zealous protection of its historic urban core has rendered the current state of inertia and failure in the city tangible. To begin to redesignate the purpose of a city in such a state of disrepair, acceptance of pragmatism with regard to radical typological transformation may be the only course available. If the planners, developers, commerce, retail, education, housing and heritage cannot fill space in the city, something else must.
Extra-urban Typologies
Urban Context
Unacceptable
Fig. 9
Collaborating with entropy: “Seek[ing] a more promising bottom line.” The spaces for the integration of a contextually appropriate, typologically and economically sound, systematic intervention already exist. They are the entropic zones described in the sections above - the vast swathe of BD1 rendered unusable by Westfield and the frontages necessitated by the planners, but vacated by the retailers. These spaces are abundant, politically charged and economically down-trodden enough for them to naturally regroup into the new form of closed network retail-distribution which is suggested by trends in consumer behaviour, proximity problems in the distribution chains, and which is needed to regroup Bradford’s void-ridden city centre. The “delineation, demarcation and definition of the periphery” (Brook & Dunn, 2009, p9) from the centre can no longer exist - due to economic reasons. Fig. 10
Fig. 8
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------[Dis]connecting Sprawl and the City: Typology The urban clash. It is apparent that the integration of peripheral typologies into urban cores (where their distribution proximity would be more rational) is a scenario which has not been well-received or accommodated in many areas. However, in order to reduce the mass inefficiencies of scale inherent in the current system of distribution and perform the necessary augmentation of digital retail models, this proposal begins to gain weight. “The absence of a strong metropolitan centre.” When the city is analysed as a performative entity, the prevalence 4
Cost of Speculative Development
Unrealisable Proposals / Dead Urban Space
Cost of Pragmatic Development
Economically Sound Typological Compound
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------Polemical Conclusions: In the Form of a Brief Downwards spiral. Bradford is on the brink of something. Post-capitalist urbanism creates a situation where “we don’t know what we are post, and what we are pre, but simply that we are, an historical interstitial, a gap. Is the gap, the empty space into which something falls, a void, a newly cleared space?” (Bratton, 2009) The price of space in Bradford has dominated its architectural landscape. Lack of investment/allegiance/affordability in the city centre has prohibited the development of the Westfield shopping centre. Prospective occupants simply cannot afford to commit to joining a development which would see them pay +345% of the going rate of retail space in the city. The failed development has resulted in a massive urban void. The way in which capital and economics dictate the architectural agenda has built Bradford in the past, yet has hindered it most in recent times. A model of retail speculation aligned with undesirable, wasted retail and commercial space is a situation which cannot be sustained in this context, particularly in a recession. A new typologically hybridised architecture which performs city centre urban functions whilst meeting the harsh economic parameters of post-metropolitan, post-capital development is required. Just-in-time: e-retail [condensed]. The way in which things are consumed has changed. We no longer expect to have to enter a designated physical space for our retail needs (although a large amount still do); we are able to enter notional space, view objects in virtual realms and watch their delivery progress as they travel through physical networks and appear in our lives. Although the models of Amazon, eBay and the like are dominating - with projections to infamy, the likes of which have never been seen before - they precisely articulate a disjunction between the physical and digital world and place huge strain on under-developed infrastructural networks. We can see representations of things, but there is a discontinuity between their image and their physical presence. A new method of retail has emerged. Consumers visit shops, then augment their experiences by cross-referencing the price with what is available online. How many people see a book in Waterstones, check the Amazon price and get it discounted, delivered to their homes the next day? As Bradford has a vast amount of entropic, unoccupied retail and commercial space (995,253/ft2), it stands to reason that the city - with political/economic backing - should become a hub of mixed augmented retail with manufacture, research, development and distribution. “Instead of simply reflecting a “moment” of development, the plan [of the city] now takes on the form of a new political[ly backed, economically sound] institution” (Tafuri, 1976, p120).
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------Contextual Approach Data Derive / Capital Realism: Bradford. The group research undertaken in Semester 1 laid the groundwork for this thesis proposal. As an abstract site analysis of the conditions of Bradford city centre, it formulated an understanding of the latent conditions of value/price, vacancy/occupation and typological distributions. The rigorous data collection throughout the 91 buildings surveyed produced a comprehensive understanding of these latent conditions, and provided a stringent set of brief-determining parameters within which this proposition is set. Parameters: O/A cost. The value data collected for rental figures surrounding the Westfield site gives rise to economically suitable intervention. The total cost of the project build must be contextually sound for Bradford - to avoid an intervention which is grossly overvalued and disproportionate for the resources of the city from being proposed again. Scale model. When considered, the big-box models are the only typologies which can be systematically integrated, feasibly constructed within a stringent budget and occupy a footprint which is appropriate to address the void of the Westfield site. Typological combination. Within the surveyed typologies of the data-derive, retail and commercial space were found be most abundant in the city centre, whilst also being the most economically unjustifiable. This thesis proposition aims to integrate the vast swathes of unused typological shells and assimilate them into a more rationalised, economically sound system for Bradford city centre. Policy. The frameworks which govern the distribution of typologies within the city centre were addressed in the data-derive and used as a framework to highlight the vacancy, mis-use and inefficiency of space in Bradford. The propositions contained within the LDF and UDP with regard to extra-urban typologies, retail, commercial space, heritage and value will all be considered throughout the thesis in order to rigorously frame the proposition and challenge the current underdeveloped strategic policy implementation in Bradford. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------The following project outline aims to build on the strong quantitative data collected within the data-derive in order to present a scheme which addresses: entropy, value, price and scale in the context of systemsbased city masterplanning, digital and physical interrelationships, and the economic future-proofing of a post-capitalist city. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Polycentric Filler: Entropy. The vacant Westfield site and the city’s developmental residuum is ripe for political and economic activation with pragmatic development. It is perfectly aligned with the train station and the post-office sorting depot to emerge as a localised and wider-reaching distribution hub for a new model of retail. The vacant retail sites of the city can be impregnated with snapshots of a seller’s content (a physical manifestation of an online shop), readily available and minimally stocked, so that consumers can see their wares, order, then have their products efficiently and succinctly wherever, however and whenever they require. Bradford city centre has the potential to be a spatial retail destination with the infrastructural prowess needed for a rationalised digital realm.
5
OUTLINE
PROGRAMME ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Distribution Centre Cost, Value & Proximity. The distribution centre is the catalyst for a systematic change in city centre retail, production, service and building procurement sectors. The value of land and rental yields in Bradford only permit city developments of scale in big-box typologies. Connectivity. The development would see shrinkage of the supply and distribution chains, putting products near to their actual destinations. Road and rail infrastructure will be utilised and redeveloped in order to allow the efficient localised long-tail model to function. Retail Provision Entropy. In the vast swathes of empty floor space in the city centre, the new model of augmented physical/digital retail will emerge. The price of floor space will initially be centrally subsidised in order to catalyse the system. Store Design/Temporality. Retailers will occupy the hollow core of the city in shops comprised of smart components and built consistently with rationalised, adjustable and reusable elements sourced from the abundant materials currently wasted in the built fabric of Bradford. The internal unit sizes will vary to meet the temporal, fluctuating demand generated by the online markets. This temporal, constantly adapting flow will see the city articulated as vibrant and varied as the system develops. Goods. The produce and stock in the centre will be different from every other urban retail core. A long-tail model will see the products of high demand in stock through a just-in-time model as required, but will also have an abundance of niche choice externally sourced, combined with that produced locally, whilst at the same time remaining highly economically justifiable.
Ex-commercial Research & Design. Economically and spatially appropriate entropic commercial space will be used as a research facility for the progression of the local system. Policy, product, manufacture, infrastructure, distribution and retail research and development will be conducted in order to continually progress the suitability of the city centre and the performance of the system’s constituent parts. The success of this radical cottage industry will directly benefit the area, ultimately working towards a closedloop. Manufacture. The produce of design, research and development will be directly tangible in the stock of the retail stores and in the materiality and efficiency of the architecture which houses it. Consumers Access: Physical & Digital. The city and its performative resources will become a model of augmented shopping culture which has yet to be manifested in an urban context. Value. The consumer will see Bradford emerge as a prototypical model for future consumption requirements. The models of retail, distribution and research/development employed will create a highly competitive marketplace which will enable the city to perform as efficiently as the online marketplace. Destination. The resulting impact of the system will enable the residents of Bradford and wider areas to reactivate the city and region, changing the city with no discernible centre into a definitive retail destination. Ancillary Services. Emergence. As a direct result of the influx of activity in all modes in the area, the city will see a rise in its service sector performance, generating jobs, income and activity in the stagnated wider Bradford economy. This infrastructure of support will respond to the fluctuating demand, and once established will allow the city to expand in other ways which are not currently suitable due to economic underperformance in the area. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fig. 1. Integrative system map. FEED OUT
SERVICE SECTOR
FEED IN
ROAD
RAIL
CONSUMERS
6
ENTROPIC RETAIL SPACE: AFFORDABLE, AUGMENTED RETAIL USE
WESTFIELD: DISTRIBUTION HUB
ENTROPIC COMMERCIAL SPACE: (RDM) RESEARCH, DESIGN, MANUFACTURE
MECHANISM: FEEDBACK LOOP
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------A number of feedback loops are inherently built into the system Feedback loop 1: The initial facilitator in the system is the symbiotic relationship between the entropically engaged retail stores and the distribution centre. This is the fundamental link in the chain, through which all other ancillary functions of the system are formed. The constant interplay between supply/demand, occupancy/vacancy, and value/price will see fluctuating conditions in both these elements of the system. They are therefore mutually designed and adaptive so that they are able to grow and retrench efficiently in tandem. Feedback loop 2: The relationship between the emerging ex-commercial zone and the distribution centre will utilise a series of feedback loops. The performance, scheduling and efficiency of the system will be monitored in a hub in this area, feeding back analytical evolutionary developments. The manufacture and collation of stock/product will be carried out and managed in the RDM space - this will be mutually aligned with the distribution centre in order to constantly develop the interperformance of the two. Feedback loop 3: Consumer demand and city centre retail availability are inter-
Fig. 2. Essential feedback connections map.
dependant. The flows of goods, demand and people will be perpetually adjusting, therefore a managed and enhanced feedback loop will enable the city centre provision, density, layout and design to respond to the emerging conditions. Feedback loop 4: Management of the proposed elements of the system will be determined by a feedback loop between the retail, distribution and RDM areas. The interplay between theses parts will ultimately determine the success of the system and will have to be constantly malleable in order for a closed-loop city centre system to emerge. In this loop, the research, manufacture and development of products, building technologies, smart components, distribution strategies, just-in-time mechanisms and policy level analyses will have to be accounted for to imbue the complex interrelationship inherent in the system with relevance, efficiency and contextual adaptation. All of the outlined feedback mechanisms have to be incorporated into the holistic feedback approach of the system for the fluctuating conditions to be appropriately considered and managed. The resulting urban and latent conditions of the system will be one of constant flux, continually manifesting itself in myriad temporal combinations. A city centre always refreshed, diverse and contextually sound. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SERVICE SECTOR FEEDBACK LOOP 1
FEEDBACK LOOP 2 RDM SERVICES
FEEDBACK LOOP 3
FEEDBACK LOOP 4
ANCILLARY SERVICES
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Bradford as a retrenching functional organism currently has very little provision for expansion, particularly in the ancillary services sectors. The multi-tiered system of retail, distribution, RDM, and management proposed for the void-ridden city centre would tend towards the development and influx of typologies, densities, uses and footfall which are currently absent in the city. These emergent functions of the city will require the back-end support of ancillary provisions. For each sector in the system they would be diverse - emerging from the feedback processes of requirement and provision in each situation.
The consumer, retail, distribution and RDM service sectors will emerge as the system develops, and as an interrelated, intrinsically linked part of the system, these ancillary sectors will provide the city with additional economic input through job creation and longevity through skills development. The constantly changing occupation, supply, demand and economic performance of the area will enable the service sectors to readjust with the necessary conditions - creating a variable city centre skills base and contextually appropriate back-bone for the further development of the city centre. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------SERVICE SECTOR
Fig. 3. Ancilliary services feedback connections map. CONSUMER SERVICES
RETAIL SERVICES
DISTRIBUTION SERVICES
RDM SERVICES
7
CONTEXTUAL PROGRAMME
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
FEED OUT
FEED FROM EMERGEN
FEED IN
ROYAL MAIL: DISTRIBUTION CONNECTION
OCCUPATION GROWTH: CITY CENTRE RETAIL BACK FILL
CONSUMER
ENTROPIC RETAIL SPACE: REPROGRAMMED FOR AFFORDABLE, AUGMENTED RETAIL USE
Voids: Filling and Expansion. The fluctuation of parameters in the system will enable the proposal to be an evolutionary, developmental and ultimately emergent proposition for the utilisation of city centre space in Bradford. The initial voids which will be appropriated for re-engagement as augmented retail spaces and RDM zones will be allocated based on their entropic potential and relative accessibility by cost. A series of scenarios will then be played out by adapting the parameters of the
8
WESTFIELD: DISTRIBUTION HUB
RAIL: DISTRIBUTION C
system to begin to understand how the variability with which the city could be imbued as a result of the complex, adaptable system such as that proposed. It is the ultimate aim of the proposal, that instead of continuing the downward trajectory which has permitted the near evacuation of the city centre, the system will be able to enable entropic activation of the residuum, with a view to development, advancement and expansion of productivity and profitability in the city centre.
Fig. 4. Spatialising the system.
NT SERVICE SECTOR
WORKFORCE: PRODUCTION / FEEDBACK OPERATORS
ENTROPIC COMMERCIAL SPACE RESEARCH, DESIGN, MANUFACTURE: PRODUCTS PROGRAMME + DE_PROGRAMME MATERIALITY POLICY
CONNECTION
Existing Infrastructure. The distribution strategy is intended to not create any new fissures in the urban fabric through infrastructure creation. The Royal Mail sorting office to the North of the distribution hub is very well situated to allow road vehicular access to the surrounding infrastructural networks. The city centre road design currently permits the integration of distribution operations traffic that is required, as Royal Mail operate at a comparable scale. The rail network in Bradford is large relative to
its transient population. It is proposed that a line from the Bradford Interchange rail terminus is extended towards the distribution hub to allow for larger area distribution connectivity for the site. *The site levels, cost and feasibility of this proposal will be further investigated throughout the thesis development. ///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
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