ACADEMY OF URBANISM CONGRESS VI, Glasgow 2011 Provocation Paper 2: Jobs Prepared by A+DS
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ACADEMY OF URBANISM CONGRESS VI, Glasgow 2011 Provocation Paper 2: Jobs
Proximity to the school gate is no longer enough to get a job “Frothy papers that announce the death of distance or the dominance of global networks and the need to move beyond thinking about place are as unhelpful as those that see neighbourhoods as closed systems of unending borrowing of cups of sugar and other forms of mutual support. Better place polices would start from knowing the nature of the places where investment and change is planned” Professor Duncan McLennan
The Cities Outlook 2011, published by the Centre for Cities, paints a troubling picture of the UK’s economic geography. Looking at the 64 biggest cities and towns of the UK, the image arises of an ever clearer divide in fortunes between the UK’s high-value knowledge economy (e.g., Brighton, Cambridge, Edinburgh) and those post-industrial or otherwise marginalised places where structural decline or flat growth may be the norm for a long time to come (e.g., Burnley, Stoke-on-Trent, Doncaster, Hull and Newport). The ongoing recession seems to have only exacerbated uneven geographical development. Whilst the country as a whole may bounce out of recession soon, this may not be true at all for places in the post industrial and marginalised category. For some, the evidence suggests that in these places, a ‘Great Depression’ seems underway. The Cities Outlook is particularly concerned about vulnerabilities stemming from reliance on the public sector as jobs engine. It is also concerned about the deeply engrained tendency to rely on high-profile physical regeneration to put cities on a different path. These factors will be prone to public funding cuts. In addition, emerging evidence suggests that deeply rooted path dependencies shape the economic prospects of places, and that turning these around is very difficult. Or near-impossible, as was suggested in the controversial 2007 report from the free market think tank Policy Exchange. It is clear that path dependencies matter more than location per se, but that pathways can be influenced. It’s not always a deterministic story. The problem is that physical regeneration has done little to address this, as it often fails to have a structural impact. This is necessarily related to local institutional capacity, local place culture and local enterprise. Factors such as these are likely to be the driving force of change – as internal growth capacity may be more important when large scale funding from external sources gets scarcer. This requires whole place thinking, new ways of thinking and doing. It requires a new approach to innovation, experimentation in the making and management of the spaces of our places.
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Growth from within inevitably means smarter use of the resources we already have to deliver better outcomes, better opportunities, greater choice. Innovation is key. Human capital is key. Creative use of existing buildings, space and assets is key. Growing the conditions for innovation to flourish as a cultural aspect of all decisionmaking is central to smarter economies. This is likely to be enabled by new forms of networking. Tim
ACADEMY OF URBANISM CONGRESS VI, Glasgow 2011 Provocation Paper 2: Jobs
Brown, CEO of IDEO suggests that ‘that participation is key to the next big wave of innovation in business and society’. Participation can be understood in terms of the process of creating ideas collectively using the knowledge, skills and creativity of people. Collaboration can be understood in terms of those with the power to effect change translating these ideas into valuable processes, products and services to achieve economies of benefit [ie there is more to gain by doing it together]. Perhaps these are two of the key capacities to develop at the level of local institutions to enable places to develop as modern spaces of enterprise and innovation.
Re-thinking the planning of places? Increasingly, it is agreed that you cannot define and design neighbourhoods through zoning alone. However, you can provide the catalysts to stimulate them; creating the conditions in which they can emerge as distinctive and characterful places. As part of the 10x10x10 series facilitated by the Academy of Urbanism, Professor John Worthington defined placemaking ‘….as a combination of organisational [behaviourial] and spatial [physical] actions over time, spanning masterplanning and economic development planning’. The emphasis on both behaviours and space is important. In seeking to build better places, we should seek to better understand the behaviours and motivations of the individuals and communities that colonise spaces. What are the emerging behaviours of innovators, entrepreneurs, organisations and communities of work? What needs and demands might these behaviours place on the built environment as a physical resource, and the institutions that govern and manage place as an enabling resource?
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Growing the conditions for innovation to flourish as a cultural aspect of all decisionmaking is central to smarter economies”
In seeking to develop growth from within places, policymakers as agents of change can have a tendency to divide out the economic drivers of productivity, skills, investment, competition, as separate silos. In this context, the interest in place based public investment is sometimes about specific benefits, specific targets met, specific outputs. The emphasis moves towards efficiency and management, not creativity, leadership, learning, thinking and doing. A consequence of this approach to public policy and investment is sometimes not the growth of local institutions and capacities that make places resilient, but rather service redistribution. This form of place policy sometimes tends to focuses on decline and disadvantage rather than development. What then does place policy mean? It does not have to be focused on redistribution. It may not be simply about bending mainstream programmes. Rather it may be about “mending” the capabilities of local institutions and individuals to benefit from the mainstream flow of opportunities and policies in society. This is about enabling conditions for growth as well as renewal. Place management in that sense embraces service delivery, regulation (especially land use planning and spatial development plans), tax policies and also the investment programmes of local and national governments and their private and non-profit partners. The process of creating these policies matters. If this process is about participation and collaboration, 2
ACADEMY OF URBANISM CONGRESS VI, Glasgow 2011 Provocation Paper 2: Jobs
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Smarter growth... will also be about the outlook and values of a place– tolerant, flexible, and irreverent – which make places good collaborators, adept problem solvers, open to ideas and willing to think afresh; in short design thinking.”
and a creative use of people and space, then strategic design thinking, understanding the architecture of problems and matching this to the art of the possible creates new potentials.
Innovation as a basis for building capacity, collectively Starting local, growth and development will not be just about fast growing creative and other industries. It will also be about the outlook and values of a place– tolerant, flexible, and irreverent – which make places good collaborators, adept problem solvers, open to ideas and willing to think afresh; in short design thinking. It is important to be clear about the nature of the innovation we mean. Innovation rarely proceeds down an orderly funnel from boffin to consumer. Innovation often involves changes to institutional, business organisation and consumer behaviour as much as science and technology. Frequently, innovation is highly networked and interactive, involving a wide range of players, not least the ultimate consumers of products and services. On this basis, what is required is to recognise that innovation will come from many sources. It will embrace social innovation, technical innovation, business innovation, all the elements needed to create what Will Hutton describes as an ‘innovation eco system’. Hutton argues that future success is about deliberately and self consciously constructing this eco system, to inform all that we do. To create the innovation eco system, we need new approaches to thinking and doing, individually, collectively and institutionally for the rip, mix, burn generation that throngs to MySpace. This is the generation that spontaneously sets up blogs, adds content and character to the computer games it plays and uses Garage Band and Sibelius to create its own music. The YouTube tribe does not just want to listen and watch culture wherever and whenever it wants; it also wants to create and distribute it. The Google generation increasingly seeks out knowledge and ideas from wherever they come. The generation that grew up with MSN Messenger and social networking, is instinctively at home working creatively and collaboratively together in teams. This all has implications for the way in which we make and manage spaces, and the way we enable behaviours and cultural development in our places.
Authenticity A review of the winners of the Academy of Urbanism awards for great places suggests two common themes. First, is an authentic story that transcends everything in the city. The second is authentic leadership, a stewarding of resources that is recogniseably motivated by enhancing people and place. These conditions stimulate the art of the possible. The same conditions seem necessary to effective innovation. The innovation story must be about the art of the possible. An innovation eco system should aim to become a society of adapters, contributors, participants 3
ACADEMY OF URBANISM CONGRESS VI, Glasgow 2011 Provocation Paper 2: Jobs
and designers, with people having their say, making a contribution (often in small ways) to add to the accumulation of ideas and innovation. Participation and contribution should be the watchwords of such a society, rather than mere consumerism. A society of mass innovation offers access to a deeper story about possibility and self-expression that will distinguish us from many societies around the world. Ultimately, people achieve happiness not just through consumer choice but through a deeper sense of finding how to express themselves through creative work: Innovation by the community, not just for them. The outcome is a learning place, smarter places, enhanced capacities to drive change.
Scaling The innovation based view of building capacity suggests that strategies that are participatory and focus on livelihood, opening up opportunities and encouraging innovation are more likely to succeed than those which take a mechanistic, regulatory approach to discouraging unwanted behaviour. The challenge for this approach is how to scale up a locally driven approach to deliver at a wider scale – a challenge addressed by NESTA in its recent report ‘Mass Localism’. This report suggests that Government can learn from a broader trend evident across the wider economy, culture and society – that of finding distributed answers to problems and delivering solutions with citizens. This represents a shift from mass production to distributed production. It is an ‘open source’ approach based on trust, and on the positive feedback loop experienced by forward-thinking businesses that are opening up their R&D processes to their suppliers and customers.
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Government can learn from a broader trend evident across the wider economy, culture and society – that of finding distributed answers to problems and delivering solutions with citizens.”
Clearly, local capacity to act goes beyond the public sector. The experience with some of the best Development Trusts, regeneration legacy vehicles and community-based initiatives has shown the potential of local areaasset based organisations to provide long-term support and generate innovation around local needs. If sufficiently resourced and embedded in the locality their permanent presence and independence can enable the thick institutional networks and responsible risk-taking which are required for successful growth. This is a chance to drive enterprise and local wellbeing through a mix of interventions. A people-driven and distributed approach to culture which relies less on capital investment and more on support for creativity and education is integral to this. In effect, it is this type of approach which can grow new pathways that many places need.
Innovation, places and work Where is it that innovation might bring us in economic terms? Bruce Katz suggests a vision for cities that will be innovation-led, export-led, and lowcarbon. It envisages that cities will be making things rather than services, with any form of change driven by innovation and entrepreneurship. This he suggests will be a key element of the regional economy around cities. Typically, the regional economy is understood as having four elements: its 4
ACADEMY OF URBANISM CONGRESS VI, Glasgow 2011 Provocation Paper 2: Jobs
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Increasing move towards ‘nomadic workstyle’ of knowledge workers: of time in traditional corporate office, working at home and working from ‘3rd’ places’ such as cafes, libraries, open space, resulting in a potentially a huge demand for semipublic spaces that can be informally appropriated to ad hoc workspace”
size, its industrial structure (what does the City actually do for a living), its labour market structure (how will the workforce behave), and its balance (manufacturing/service; public/private; geographical). Futurologists suggest that a future export led regional economy might be informed by the following trends in industrial structure and labour force: [i] Regarding industrial structure, the technology foresight literature identifies six growth opportunities: • A 21st Century Manufacturing Revolution: not more jobs but growth through bespoke manufacturing-on-demand & servicisation • Smart Infrastructure; instrumentation to support micro generation, electric vehicle recharging, smart metering • Second Internet Revolution • Energy Transformation: renewable energy generation, batteries and fuel cells • New materials for low carbon future: building materials, nano materials • Regenerative Medicine: stem cell products [ii] In terms of the labour market, it is clear that work patterns are already changing. The labour market may play out in a number of ways but these scenarios may form part of the future labour landscape in 20 years: • Increasing numbers of self-employed and micro-business • Increasing move towards ‘nomadic workstyle’ of knowledge workers: of time in traditional corporate office, working at home and working from ‘3rd’ places’ such as cafes, libraries, open space, resulting in a potentially a huge demand for semi-public spaces that can be informally appropriated to ad hoc workspace • Move towards ‘Flexible Working Contacts’ – new employment model whereby the ‘core’ permanent staff is much smaller and greater number of freelance, consultants, temporary workers; more people working on contract rather than employed • Four different generations with different motivations and expectations of work. Generation Y (born in mini baby boom 1979 – 94) to the 1st generation of ‘digital natives’ The idea of an export led economy does not necessarily imply reliance on inward investment alone. Neither does it necessarily imply an economy whose sole purpose is export. From the 1950s on, regional scientists posited that industrial structure was a key determinant of the performance and prospects for a regional economy. By the 1980s, a rich literature and practice counseled planners to think strategically about their comparative
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What are the emerging behaviours of innovators, organisations and communities of work?�
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ACADEMY OF URBANISM CONGRESS VI, Glasgow 2011 Provocation Paper 2: Jobs
advantages and intervene in particular sectors, referred to as “targeting.” In place of generic attraction strategies or efforts to improve the local business climate, planners began to husband their resources and nurture particular sectors that showed greater promise in terms of longevity, good jobs and diversification. While we have no definitive body of empirical work on the outcomes of industrial targeting, it is fairly clear that such efforts have ranged from highly successful to abysmal failures. Ann Markusen argues that industrial targeting efforts often disappoint their purveyors because they focus on firms, the individual members of an industry, as the central agents of economic development. Mobile investment when it does come does not always stay. When it stays it does not always embed in the local context to stimulate additional economic development. In this context, Markusen argues that stimulating the conditions for local economic development are important. Her argument suggests that there should be as much focus on occupations, or human capital, or the capacities at local level, what people can do, as industrial targeting. Key occupations are not confined to highly educated professionals but may encompass immigrants skilled in trading connections and knowledge of local markets, skilled workers and artisans, energetic and smart community activists, among others. Markusen suggests seven reasons why a focus on occupations may be a more appropriate basis for understanding and designing the conditions for more resilient economic futures: • First, the ability to specialize and export is based deeply on talents and synergy in the local economy. These may be better understood and tapped by identifying skill sets and talents embedded in occupations in addition to researching firms and industries. Although firms still decide where to locate and whether to hire or retain workers, the quality of workers is often key to their choices. Furthermore, new firms are often founded by members of key occupations. • Second, development is increasingly less linked to natural resource endowments, once thought to govern a locality’s specialization, and more heavily reliant on human capital. As a key input, labour is fundamentally different from natural resources in that it is relatively mobile, if less so than financial capital. Mobile labour is drawn to particular natural environments, but in a new and fascinating way — workers with choice opt for livable environments rather than exploited ones. A much greater priority is now placed on protecting environmental assets rather than spending them down. • Third, job commitment on the part of both workers and employers has waned. Firms are less willing to train workers for internal job ladders, because this is an expensive process. Firms are thus increasingly dependent on regional labour pools, and training is becoming increasingly externalized in regional institutions. Such 7
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The ability to specialise and export is based deeply on talents and synergy in the local economy”
ACADEMY OF URBANISM CONGRESS VI, Glasgow 2011 Provocation Paper 2: Jobs
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The human capital and innovation stories lend themselves to thinking about the creation of different communities of workers, of sponsors, of consumers”
training is best organized by occupation. • Fourth, there is now greater cross-over of skills among industries than is suggested by the stereotype of labourers on construction sites or teachers working in school classrooms. Many clerical and sales workers are employed by manufacturing firms, while many engineers and construction workers work in the service sector. As outsourcing and subcontracting proliferate, occupational talent is shared even more liberally — actors and directors create videos for medical instrument companies, while software engineers program for film companies and arts organizations. Thus, occupations that may appear to be local-serving are enhancing the productivity of other export-oriented sectors in the local economy. Function, skill and connections become more important than organization. • Fifth, the fast-paced and flexible economy places a premium on new firm formation. Entrepreneurial activity may entail significant costs and high rates of failure but it may account for the emergence of new local specializations and job growth. It is cumbersome to identify entrepreneurship potential by studying industries and much easier to work with occupations. Certain occupations may show higher rates of new firm formation, cross-over with other sectors, and/or maturation from local-serving to exporting activities. • Sixth, the digital revolution has made it easier to work from remote job sites. Workers are more likely to be committed to the region and neighbourhood than to the firm or industry and will search for livability, amenities and “lovability”. • Seventh, planners working to stem inner city decline and/or concerned with minority participation and jobs for underemployed groups may find occupational groupings easier to distinguish and target than industries. Designing economic development strategies to specifically redress socioeconomic imbalances is far easier when occupations (and individuals in them) are used as targets rather than industries (and the firms that populate them). The implication of these principles is that placemaking needs to include more about the human capital debate. This should include studying how industries and occupations form and operate. It should include discourse about how state and local governments fund and supply public services, which kinds of spending have long term growth impacts, and how consumers at different ages, locations, and levels of educational attainment and wealth spend their incomes. The human capital and innovation stories lend themselves to thinking about the creation of different communities, of workers, of sponsors, of consumers. These communities will have greater or lesser ties to the local context, and enabling these communities to form, function and collaborate has significant implications for the way in which we produce and manage the spaces of our places. If every culture creates spaces to enable their cultural view of the world to be supported, how 8
ACADEMY OF URBANISM CONGRESS VI, Glasgow 2011 Provocation Paper 2: Jobs
might a networked idea of people and space work which acommodates difference and creates opportunity?
Neighbourhoods as places of work Traditionally, property investment has generally focused on the location, identity and quality of individual buildings. It has tended to focus less on the contribution that the building and its occupants can make to the character and economic health of the surrounding neighbourhood. However, there is some emerging thinking that value for both the user (business value) and investors (exchange value) are created by the quality and wellbeing of the neighbourhood and the building. This in turn could drive the potential to create new public value in placemaking understood here as a combination of organisational behaviour and spatial actions over time. This line of argument importantly depends on a wide definition of place, beyond the purely physical. The emphasis on the experiential idea of space has resonance within the best workspace projects, which consciously aim to complement the offer of ‘space’ with a series of processes fostering collective social belonging and inhabitation to support the diverse needs of its users. At a larger scale, questions are arising in regards of how changes in work patterns are affecting office locations, with some papers focusing on CBD areas. Boundaries between public and private spaces are being blurred and many corporate businesses are willing to share spaces in a process of “communalisation.” This process of communalisation is a developing behaviour not just within organisations. It is a characteristic of innovation oriented communities, entrepreneurs and a generation who have grown up as collaborators across virtual and web based networks. It may be an important element of the conditions necessary for local capacity building, different forms of engagement with an by the institutions of place. It may be an important element of the process of local, and meso economics underpinning firm formation in a place as described by Markusen. It may be that these conditions are necessary to the formation of the innovation eco system described by Hutton, and the innovation led, export led, low carbon export urban economy described by Katz. On this basis, the pattern of communalisation may be expressed in a number of ways, spatially in the organisation of workspaces, communities doing things together similar sharing values; in the development of ‘hackspaces’ and mobile workspaces; financially and organisationally through the use of ‘cloud’ sourcing and open source communities and discourse. There are distinct behaviours and rules that frame how these processes work. Undoubtedly, these behaviour and culture will shape space. Understanding them, and enabling them may form a key element of future neighbourhood planning. Organizational expectations of office locations in terms of segmentation and specialisation of activities are changing. How might these be met in the urban context? If the tendency of communalisation of nearby public and semi-public space within a neighbourhood is happening, what are the 9
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communalisation...
is a characteristic of innovation oriented communities, entrepreneurs and a generation who have grown up as collaborators across a range of networks”
ACADEMY OF URBANISM CONGRESS VI, Glasgow 2011 Provocation Paper 2: Jobs
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A placemaking approach based on simple rules and enabling mechanisms would focus on open yet hierarchical urban networks, diversity and flexibility”
design, management, governance and tenure implications for investors, building owners, users and the wider community? And more importantly: how deeply embedded are such trends across a wide range of office users? As 22% of the UK workforce works in low paid jobs, this includes at least a sizable part of the office workforce. This should be a reminder of the diversity within the sector, with different incentives and workspace strategies at play. This idea of difference and diversity is an important element of the future of neighbourhood planning. Whereas the perceived wisdom in the 1970’s was comprehensive area development with the perfect let to a blue chip client, it may be that thinking more incrementally is a better way forward. This creates a more messy environment, which permits a range of behaviours and mix of uses. This mixing and diversity is an important part of the enabling aspect of place, the condition which supports the creative behaviours of a range of communities, entrepreneurs and investors. For example, ‘Industry in the City’ a report prepared by Urhahn Design for the GLA identified the opportunities and challenges of embedding spaces of making and doing into the city fabric, mixing these spaces with other uses and amenities to create places where there are opportunities for a very wide variety of economic use. This changes the nature of spatial organisation from concentrated to distributed. For this to work, what matters most is the character of the neighbourhood, the opportunities, the flexibility of spaces, the amenities, the quality of life. The development of this model, as a viable model for modern urban development could result say in organisations saying we don’t need 1,000 people in one building, we can have little bits of building and we’re going to then work within the city and have a distributed organisation often in a number of buildings within the same neighbourhood. They question is how might this inform neighbourhood planning as places of work and living? Initiatives from the bottom up, transitional schemes, small, speedy, and temporary may form a basis for planning and development of these new city spaces. For instance, Jan Gehl’s proposals for Broadway in Manhatten are interesting. To give areas of the city back to the pedestrian they have painted street surfaces street, making it half the width for cars put deck chairs out and seen whether it works or not. It can be reinstated if it doesn’t work. But the point is if it sticks then it becomes part of planning. On this basis, transitional schemes are based on the idea that the people who live in urban areas can act as ‘agents’ on behalf of their communities, capable of both remembering simple rules and generating a creative response to them . A placemaking approach based on simple rules and enabling mechanisms would focus on open yet hierarchical urban networks, diversity and flexibility. This would work spatially from the whole neighbourhood to the building typology.
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ACADEMY OF URBANISM CONGRESS VI, Glasgow 2011 Provocation Paper 2: Jobs
Simple rules for better urbanism closely mirror those that facilitate emergent systems in modern society, such as business and information technology. They reflect shared values and a social contract between the elected and the electorate; one based on a more collaborative, ‘we will, if you will’ relationship between government and community. This involves a willingness among civic leaders to be less concerned with establishing a direction for the city and more involved with enabling, encouraging and generating the best ideas. Increasingly we might see the transitional as an alternative strategy to ‘command and control’ planning. Are we going to see the comprehensive and the incremental, the permenant and the temporary working in parallel. Two different ways of doing things but both viable and needed together, producing a new and perhaps more appropriate model for regeneration. At the level of local institutions, this could form the basis of the ‘Third Place’, in between institutions which link private sector, public sector and create spaces for innovation, enterprise and creativity. If this institutional capacity is linked with flexible, diverse use of space, then the future of neighbourhoods, towns and cities as new communities of work may be transformational.
References Investing in better places - http://www.smith-institute.org.uk/file/Investing%20in%20Better%20Places.pdf Delivering Better Places - http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Resource/Doc/336587/0110158.pdf AOU 10x10x10 Folkestone - http://www.academyofurbanism.org.uk/projects/10x/provocation_folkestone.pdf AOU 10x10x10 Dublin - http://www.academyofurbanism.org.uk/projects/10x/provocation_dublin.pdf AOU 10x10x10 Reading - http://www.academyofurbanism.org.uk/projects/10x/provocation_dublin.pdf AOU 10x10x10 Bristol - http://www.academyofurbanism.org.uk/projects/10x/provocation_bristol.pdf A+DS Learning towns - www.learningtowns.org Ann Markusen meso economics - http://www.hhh.umn.edu/img/assets/6158/japa_ve1.pdf Ann Markusen Creative Placemaking - http://www.nea.gov/pub/pubDesign.php Will Hutton ‘Innovation eco system’ - http://www.buildingfutures.org.uk/projects/building-futures/debate-series-2010/this-house-believes-theroad-to-recovery-is-paved-with/ Professor Stuart Gulliver - http://www.csft.org.uk/speaker_profiles/professor_stuart_gulliver 11
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The Academy of Urbanism is an autonomous, politically independent, cross-sector organisation formed in 2006 to expand urban discourse. The Academy brings together a diverse group of thinkers, decision-makers and practitioners involved in the social, cultural, economic, political and physical development of our villages, towns and cities, and is an active membership organisation. The Academy of Urbanism 70 Cowcross Street London EC1M 6EJ T: +44 (0)20 7251 8777 F: +44 (0)20 7251 8777 info@academyofurbanism.org.uk www.academyofurbanism.org.uk
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