AoU Journal 3: The Art of Stewardship

Here &Now THE ART OF STEWARDSHIP

AoU Journal #3 Spring 2014

AoU Journal #3 Spring 2014

Here &Now Introduction from the Chairman 3 Editorial 4 The Academy in action 5 Congress 2014 and a round-up of recent AoU activities.

Space for great places! 10 A gallery of ideas and reflections on great places.

My own view is … 14 Urbanism is about how we manage the process of change, argues Nicholas Falk, founder director of URBED.

THE ART OF STEWARDSHIP

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Five urbanists and two Young Urbanists share their reflections on successful stewardship of places.

Long-term stewardship of London: 16 Sarah Yates asks what we can learn from the great estates of London and how have they adapted.

Saltaire’s role in regeneration:

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Helen Thornton looks at how to ensure a sustainable future for this iconic World Heritage Site.

Hong Kong 2020: the Dragon Tram Strategic Vision: 23 Young Urbanist Laura Mazzeo sets out how a coherent transport vision can foster better stewardship of the city.

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Re-imagining the identity of an area: 27 Young Urbanist Simeon Shtebunaev describes how saving a Victorian industrial building that houses low rent workshops will maintain a local economy.

Building a stake in Brixton’s future: 30 Nicola Bacon describes how listening to the voice of the community has been vital for shaping the local council’s plans for the future of one of its most deprived neighbourhoods.

Southville Centre: a long-term community asset:

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Ben Barker shows how a former school building has become a hub for community development.

Lamb’s Conduit Street and Starbuck’s were never easy bedfellows: 37 Here & Now (H&N) interviews Andrew Glover, partner of chartered surveyors Farebrother, to find the secrets behind the successful stewardship of one of London’s chic high streets.

AoU programmes 40 What we do and how to get involved.

Academicians 2014 42 Who we are.

…and a Final Thought…

David Porter on learning to learn from place.

Back Cover

AoU Journal #3 Spring 2014 Vieux Port Pavilion, Marseille Foster + Partners © Nigel Young

Welcome to the latest edition of the Academy Journal.You will see that we have changed the format a little to make it as accessible, useful and interesting as possible.

I hope that the revised format will encourage you to contribute to future editions. We are looking to increase the frequency of publication, and the more you can offer the better.

Our Awards, now in their 9th year, provide an archive of assessments of great places – now 120 – from which we can begin to detect common characteristics and trends. These will provide the themes for this and future editions.

The theme this time is Stewardship.

We have found that successful places often benefit from long term, dedicated management and investment. This may come from private landlords, local authorities or community interests, but the common factor is a long-term perspective on the returns to be gained from the resources invested.

The articles in this issue come from authors within and beyond the Academy and illustrate the diverse origins of and methods for such longterm investment, of time, money and energy.

A small group of Academicians were in Marseille recently to share the City’s celebration of the Award we presented to them last November.

Like all large cities, Marseille struggles to address problems of social and economic exclusion and inequality.

It has established a legally-binding long-term vision that covers and coordinates the efforts of a wide variety of public and private sector initiatives.

This is having a significant physical impact, and is building a stronger sense of optimism.

provide the basis and impetus for sustained improvements for the whole community if the City can hold its nerve. We will be returning to Marseille in June this year and are discussing some further initiatives with the City. I hope you will be able to join us.

In the meantime I hope you find this edition of Here and Now interesting and thought-provoking, and I look forward to seeing lots of suggestions and contributions for the next.

Steven Bee AoU Chairman

There are voices seeking to divert resources to address the most pressing needs, however. The urge to respond to urgent pressures is understandable, especially with elections imminent, yet the optimism and growing civic pride, reinforced by last year’s European City of Culture designation, could

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Editorial Stewardship of places that enable human interaction and that are sympathetic to the needs of local communities is more than just about maintaining buildings, as important as that may be.The commitment to the long-term future of an area demands not only a strategic vision but careful investment to sustain the right mix of both occupiers and users.

This issue of H&N looks at stewardship from the city scale to the street, across the UK and beyond.

In her reflection on the ‘Long-term stewardship in London: What can we learn from the Great Estates?’

Sarah Yates observes how these great estates have evolved to become more dynamic and proactive. She also identifies several common principles for successful stewardship from taking a strategic and holistic approach towards the urban framework but with a focus on the local, and flexibility, to being proactive.

In many ways Helen Thornton reflects these in her discussion on Saltaire, which as a World Heritage Site presents a unique context where not only is it important to conserve the legacy of the physical environment but also ensure that it remains relevant. It demands, as Thornton points out, striking a balance between a place to live, work, invest in, and visit.

From quite a different and yet no less important perspective, Laura Mazzeo argues that stewardship of a transport system can have a crucial role to play in creating coherent places. The Dragon Tram strategic vision describes how the development and management of a transit system that connects the waterfront at Kowloon in Hong Kong can be a catalyst for change. The point being that it isn’t just the management of the places themselves but the management of a vital artery that will ensure the sustainable economic development of these places.

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That stewardship is about taking responsibility is immediately apparent throughout this discussion and as the interview with Andrew Glover from Farebrother shows. It inevitably means that property owners and their agents have to sometimes eschew the easy decisions that lead to large short-term profits in favour of longer term perspectives about community and creating places that people actually want to be.

Communities can also take the initiative as shown in several articles.

Simeon Shtebunaev describes how at Portland Works in Sheffield a campaign against a planning application to turn the building into residential accommodation became a co-operative to manage small low-rent workshops supporting an existing small local economy and way of life. In Brixton, Nicola Bacon looks at getting the voice of the community heard and Ben Barker shows how an initiative to use a building for a community centre is spreading beyond that in Bedminster, Bristol.

Effective stewardship demands creative approaches to investment and development as Sarah Yates, Helen Thornton and Laura Mazzeo all point out. Indeed it is implicit in all of the articles. It is appropriate then that as this issue of the Journal goes to bed, The Academy of Urbanism is heading off to Bristol for its 2014 Congress where the city’s stewardship is in the hands of its first elected Mayor – an architect and urbanist. An opportunity, if ever there was one, to show what can be achieved.

The Journal Here and Now

We have rearranged the sections and added some new types of content to reflect what the AoU does, what it knows and what it thinks. We have brought the information on the Academy’s activities to the front – after all these are the things that helps it make a difference.

Of course Academicians are not short of an opinion or two and we have introduced places for these to be expressed. Not only do we have an opinion column but we have also invited David Porter to write a regular column that will round off each issue of the Journal. This time he starts a conversation on ‘Learning to learn from place’.

We have introduced a new section to which we invite all Academicians and Young Urbanists to contribute. It is a space where you can share the great places that you know. We are not too fussy about how you do this – just be creative.

However, the core of the Journal remains the themed section – this time stewardship – for which we will invite contributions from Academicians and Young Urbanists.

Alastair Blyth AoU Editor

AoU Journal #3 Spring 2014

© Destination Bristol

The Academy in action Congress IX: towards a greener urbanism 22-24 May 2014, Bristol

The Academy Congress is one of the major events within the urbanism calendar casting a spotlight on the future of our cities and towns. It draws together local, national and international perspectives with critical insight, intensive knowledge sharing and the kind of holistic thinking provoked by urbanists. It is a fantastic opportunity to learn about critical issues and initiatives in urbanism.

Over three days in May, we will take our Congress of urbanism to Bristol, voted European City of the Year in 2009 by the Academy and recipient of the 2015 European Green Capital title. Where better therefore, to be joined by Academicians,Young Urbanists and a host of collaborators to explore the theme of greener urbanism.

Bristol has a unique past entwined with innovation and commerce, with a well-trodden path of entrepreneurialism, activism and self-determination, evidenced by the peoples’ decision to appoint a democratically elected Mayor. Having completed his first successful year in office as Mayor, George Ferguson has matched the city’s penchant for new ideas with some significant proposals for re-organising

governance, including car-free ‘Make Sundays Special’ and 20mph limits recently introduced across a large area of the inner city. More proposals are on their way, such as a 10,000 seat arena in the new Temple Quay Enterprise Zone. Whilst some in the city remain sceptical, Ferguson’s aim to transform Bristol into a ‘laboratory for change’ is already in motion.

It is in this vein that the Mayor was quoted as saying: “we need to save the planet and we should have fun doing it.” The Academy’s Congress will confront this challenge, exploring the idea of what makes Bristol fun, attractive to incomers and ultimately green and healthy. What will make it the ‘greenest city in the UK’ in the future, not just from an environmental perspective, but also in terms of housing, governance, wellbeing, transport, technology, the economy, and more?

To begin to address this, Congress will draw together the success stories, challenges and new thinking from Bristol and beyond.

To find out what makes Bristol such an attractive place to live, work and visit, we will visit inspiring locations and venues around the city such as the Watershed Media Arts Centre; Queen Square and St Nicholas Market, both shortlisted for recent Academy Awards; the Brunel Mile – a

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new pedestrian link from Temple Meads Station to the city centre; and the bustling Floating Harbour, a focal point and case study in waterside regeneration.

We will elevate our view on greener urbanism to a national and global scale, learning from high-profile figures such as Jaime Lerner – the architect ex-Mayor of Curitiba who implemented a series of social, ecological, and urban reforms during his mayoral terms – and Prof Wulf Daseking – former director of development in Freiburg, whose 25-year vision transformed the Academy awardwinning city into a world leader in sustainable urbanism.

We will even take dinner on the ‘ship that the changed the world’ – Brunel’s SS Great Britain.

Building on successful previous Congresses, we strongly encourage you to join us in Bristol for what promises to be a spectacular event full of ideas, learning and lessons you can take away with you.

For more information visit academyofurbanism.org.uk/congress or contact Stephen Gallagher sg@academyofurbanism.org.uk.

Regent Quarter

Young Urbanists march forward The AoU Young Urbanists group was formed in the early part of 2013 and held an inaugural meeting in May. Since then, we have established a regular pub night – the first Monday of every month at the Island Queen in London’s Islington – and have hosted a fully-booked launch event (where we pioneered our ‘6x6’ presentation format); a study trip to Milton Keynes (pictured) with lectures by Academicians; and the first annual Young Urbanist pub quiz night, MC’d by Rob Cowan AoU. We were also proud to support, with The Cass, a one-day conference entitled ‘The Future of London Placemaking’ in November.

Since our launch in May, we have moved from 10 people to a network of over 80 members. In 2014, we are planning a three-part series on Food in Cities, with lectures focusing on production, access and consumption; we are looking to expand on our 6x6 nights; and are pleased to announce a mentorship programme between Young Urbanists and Academicians.

We feel very proud of what we have achieved in our inaugural year and look forward to an even bigger and better 2014. If you are interested in getting involved, the monthly pub nights are a great place to start. We hope to see you there!

For more information please contact the Young Urbanists steering committee through Bright Pryde youngurbanists@academyofurbanism.org.uk, or visit academyofurbanism.org.uk/young-urbanists

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AoU Journal #3 Spring 2014

guard approached to move the group on, and is perhaps an inadequate result of the need to balance commercial, residential and public users.

Further events will be held in the area to explore and propose positive answers to the observed challenges, ranging from engagement with the owner and residents, to working with businesses, designers and entrepreneurs to open up and relax the rules.

To find out more about what the team thought the area could do to improve, visit academyofurbanism.org.uk/cityx-rays.

Learning from neighbourhoods: Gospel Oak

November 2013, Gospel Oak, London

Learning from the Regent Quarter

September 2013, King’s Cross, London Led by Honoré van Rijswijk AoU and Marcus Wilshere AoU, a group of Academicians walked the Regent Quarter development in King’s Cross to explore its latent potential to become one of London’s most inviting public spaces.

The Regent Quarter development has achieved some considerable success in transforming a group of redundant 19th century industrial buildings, within an area historically notorious for anti-social behaviour, into an economically viable single estate. Three urban blocks, carefully managed by an agent, now provide a mix of commercial, retail and residential uses, connected and accessed by pedestrianlinked courtyards.

On paper, the Regent Quarter may be considered an example of conservation-led regeneration to celebrate.

Great places, however, are not just limited to physical fabric or levels of occupancy: social fabric – the community and activities that bring places to life – is also essential.

It was apparent from our preliminary research and the evidence provided on the day that it is this third ingredient that provides the final barrier to the quarter becoming a great place.

The group offered reasons as to why this fantastic canvas provokes so little animation; however the reasons that stood out seem to coalesce around the tensions associated with managing private land as a public space: use and activity, access and connectedness with surrounding streets and places of interest, and openness to different groups. This was demonstrated on the day as a security

On a cold night in November, a group of Academicians and local residents gathered to learn from the development history of London’s Gospel Oak. The event carried forward themes and ideas from an event held in 2012, which focused on walking, talking and drawing observations. During this event we explored different viewpoints and personal memories, professional and nonprofessional histories, objectives and subjectives, forming a patchwork of insights. We posed the questions: “What have we learned?” and “Where do we go from here?”

The interactive 10x10 presentations (10 speakers each with 10 minutes to speak) and the active involvement of the local community contributed to a successful evening.

We were able to capture diverse perspectives and gain a better understanding of the neighbourhood’s dynamic.

Some of the key topics discussed included the role of the local community in the current regeneration process, the ad hoc and shortsighted approach to estate regeneration and the consequences of densification in response to London’s housing crisis.

The team is not finished there: the appetite for learning from Gospel Oak has prompted another event, which will again include collaboration with the local community to explore and debate the viability of comprehensive masterplan and redevelopment strategies, and the longterm benefits.

For more information visit academyofurbanism.org.uk/cityx-rays

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Civic Stewardship Symposium November 2013 Belfast, Northern Ireland

Over 60 participants converged from various parts of the UK and Ireland at Ligoniel Community Centre in Belfast for an interactive symposium on civic stewardship.

The day included keynote talks from Frazer MacLeod on the Stalled Spaces project in Glasgow and Pauline Gallacher on her hometown of Nielston – a place that is special because it is ordinary. Walking tours of the Ligoniel area, guided by local people, illustrated the effectiveness of civic stewardship work which has been organised locally over many years. A series of open and structured discussions elicited a number of important themes and ideas.

Participants were struck by similar approaches encountered on the various walking tours – concepts of common ownership, mutuality and reciprocity were obvious. In both Ligoniel and neighbouring Ballysillan/ Upper Ardoyne there is an amazing ability of residents to work with the government and the community, which is very refreshing.

The importance of local knowledge cannot be underestimated. In fact, a systemic approach (rather than systematic) is needed, where a light touch can bring forth substantial benefits.

The question arose: why do we always start with consultation and finish with a plan? – it should be a process of discovery to inform ideas rather than work towards a final masterplan. Indeed, the masterplan has a deadening effect and the idea of a discovery process is appealing.

Arthur Acheson AoU put forth the idea of a scientific method where elements should be tested to produce real evidence. The planning process needs to promote critical thinking at this evidential level (which may require small, low risk experiments to ensure that big infrastructure developments do not produce unintended consequences).

The symposium was then concluded by Arthur, who stated that community planning is a big opportunity which is being presented by new legislation in Northern Ireland from April 2015. This should be a discovery process at the level where there is energy to produce evidence to make the community plan actually work for the greatest benefit of the public and all places in perpetuity. The word ‘community’ is definitely there – it is in the new legislation.

The Civic Stewardship Symposium organised by the Northern Ireland Ministerial Advisory Group for Architecture and the Built Environment (MAG) supported by: Belfast City Council, The Landscape Institute Northern Ireland, Architecture + Design Scotland and The Academy of Urbanism

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Learning from Europe Istanbul, malmÖ, marseille November 2013, BDP, London

The Learning from Europe seminar at BDP brought together the finalists of the European City of the Year Award to give a more in-depth presentation of the challenges and changes facing their cities. What was most striking comparing the three cities was perhaps the level of ambition, or simply the enormity of the tasks being taken on – all in very different ways.

Indeed it is difficult to compare the explosive population growth of Istanbul with the rising sea levels faced

by Malmö, or the eclectic topography and culture of Marseille. Except for the fact that each city, as the evening’s chair Kevin Murray AoU put it in his closing remarks, resembles a great tanker trying to turn itself in a different direction. Appropriately, all three cities are also coastal cities.

A final question from Nicholas Falk AoU was clearly applicable to all three cities in their bid to change direction: can you manufacture leadership or is it just chance? For these three cities tackling enormous challenges, leadership is key. All three gave somewhat different answers, reflecting the urban fabric of their cities as well as the projects and strategies touched on throughout the evening: Christer Larsson Hon. AoU (Malmö) spoke of the need to set high goals aimed at the long term, as well as the need to attract the very best people to civil servant roles – both are factors in ensuring that investments last beyond the term of elections.

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From left: Prof Wulf Daseking, Honorary Academician; Kerri Farnsworth AoU, Lead Assessor - Cities; Gaëlle Goeau Brissonniere and Laurent Meric, City of Marseille; Kevin Murray AoU

Steve Quartermain AoU

Laurent Meric (Marseille) described how his team is trying to couple voluntary structures with governmental ones. Marseille has a huge number of voluntary organisations covering sports, culture, women’s rights and many more, which together create a rampart against upheaval.

Finally, Arzu Kocabas (Istanbul) spoke about lessons learned in light of the recent Gezi Park protests: architects and town planners in Turkey don’t necessarily emerge from their standard education as community planners; a 2003 conference on regeneration she was involved in organising introduced Kocabas for the first time to some of the terms being discussed here tonight. Gezi was therefore a wake up call, and an experience that hopefully helped teach some of these lessons.

For the full write up and videos of the speakers, visit academyofurbanism.org.uk/awards

is exciting and unique in its interdisciplinary scope, as it draws on the expertise of practitioners from a multitude of backgrounds: the private sector, architects, public health officials, academics, social workers and many more.

But how do planners decisively mitigate the wide array of agendas, whilst accommodating public concerns?

Roadblocks towards implementation arise when multiple and varying definitions of success cause confusion and ultimately indecision. These hurdles, he claimed, are unfortunately implicit in the system as we know it, and though there are ways of working around them, this reality calls for a radical probe.

Critical and creative reassessments of the mechanics of decision-making, governance structures, value systems, and procedural dynamics are needed to redefine the planning practice. Perhaps, Quartermain claimed, we need to think the unthinkable.

December 2013, London

In the Q&A session following Quartermain’s talk, it became clear among Academicians that the planning culture in Britain has remained relatively stagnant whilst the make-up and dynamics within society has changed around it. The increasing influence of the private sector over public sector directives and funding, in the wake of an economic breakdown, and with additional challenges of the growing diversity within communities, creates a whole new breed of challenges that planners must adapt to.

We were delighted to be joined by Steve Quartermain AoU, chief planner at the Department for Communities and Local Government, who masterfully wrapped up our 2013 End of Year Review with his insightful revelations on the existing challenges and opportunities of British planning in a talk titled ‘Theory is Great, Practice is Harder’. Urban and regional planning as a field, he mused,

Many insights of practical experiences shared amongst the attendees – from planning theory, to consultation, to implementation – emphasised the heightened pressure to invigorate the field with new, creative intervention possibilities. Recognising these challenges, the session concluded with optimism that the networked activities of the Academy may help to generate these solutions.

Theory is Great, Practice is Harder: Steve Quartermain

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Space for great places! © BDP

© John Lord

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2 1 A place for all ages

by Andrea Titterington AoU

gallery here & now This display of great places is an opportunity to share what we love and know about the urban environment. As you can see they range from small to large, inside and outside, and singularly identifiable to abstracted ideas of what a great place is. Please send us your great places so that we can share them in the next edition. Be imaginative and creative – we want to make these places live on our pages.

Send us an image, a drawing, a poem, a…you decide.

Please send contributions to Stephen Gallagher sg@academyofurbanism.org.uk

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At the centre of Liverpool is Chavasse Park, named after a local war hero who won the Victoria Cross twice. The area was badly damaged by bombs during WWII and the legacy of 1960s redevelopment left a nondescript grass area surrounded by concrete buildings. It is now a five-acre, Green Flag park with places to play, sit, enjoy the view and the surrounding restaurants, embraced by a hotel and apartments and flanked by the shops of Liverpool One. It is an event space, but one in which you can find a quiet corner – a place for all ages.

Carefully preserved under the space (visible through a specially formed glass dome and accessible via tours by the Maritime Museum) is the world’s first commercial enclosed wet dock built from 1710 to 1716 – the catalyst to the development of Liverpool into a world famous trading port. From being a place to be avoided, Chavasse Park is now a joy to be in and its pedestrian links to Albert Dock as well as other areas of the city centre

World Heritage Site have been transformational.

2 In the City of Culture: Hull’s Old Town

by John Lord AoU

Hull’s success in securing the nomination for UK City of Culture 2017 surprised some people, but it was well-deserved. The remarkable but little known Old Town stands out among the many pleasures and surprises in a city with a strong and distinctive personality.

The historic pattern of streets, alleys, courtyards and staithes is preserved largely intact: and there is a rich diversity of building types and styles.

The Old Town is still a centre for financial, legal and professional services, although these sectors have declined; there is a cluster of museums, dozens of pubs, a great market – as well as some encouraging signs that the area is being populated by start-ups, technology businesses and the rest.

What’s so nice about the Old Town?

With a few unhappy exceptions, it has evolved organically and by small incre-

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© Rory Hyde

© Paul Zara

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4 ments. The fabric of the area bears traces of Hull’s maritime and trading history. It hasn’t had its rough edges smoothed away by the dead hand of regeneration. When Hull’s 19th century docks system was completed, the Old Town was an island and it still has that quality of containment, even though it is no longer “a terminate and fishy-smelling/Pastoral of ships up streets” (Larkin).

I’m afraid it may not last. The urge to ‘improve’ the Old Town might be irresistible, and the quirks and eccentricities that make it special could be the first to go. The Old Town, and especially a proposed new public space by Holy Trinity church, will be a focal point for events and celebrations in 2017.

If the city can find a way to tackle the severance caused by the A63, a dual carriageway serving the port but separating the heart of the city from the magnificent river Humber, the benefits should flow into the atmospheric but very decayed Fruit Market quarter and on to the waterfront.

3 BK City, TU Delft, Netherlands

by John Worthington AoU

Walking through buildings can add to our repertoire of enjoyable urban places. Covered markets, shopping malls and even office complexes (Kings Place) are being selected for the Academy’s Urbanism Awards.

In response to a catastrophic fire in 2007, the Delft School of Architecture took the opportunity to rapidly provide new space by buying back one of the university’s original buildings that they had recently sold for housing.

BK City, the 36,000m2 complex, is home to over 4,000 students and members of staff, and is a community of creativity. The linear building complex is structured by a street within, animated by shops, service points as well as meeting and working spaces.

The street and main entrance look into the glazed workshop box, which houses technical studios. The street continues on through to pass at one side, but within, the main auditorium and ‘Why Factory’ (MVRDV) before ending at a coffee bar and exiting to

the local neighbourhood beyond.

Out of adversity the university has gained a new focus for the campus and a link between it and the community that hosts.

4 The Level, Brighton

by Paul Zara AoU

Brighton’s not well known for making better places, and there have been some true horrors (such as the square around the old town hall) but just recently the work to The Level, an inner city park, has given the city a new treat. The park has always been well used but, at the same time, it was shabby and unloved: street drinkers mixing with young families trying to enjoy this precious green lung.

Now a new skate park, a redesigned children’s play area and the delightful grass-roofed Velo café by Knox Bhavan, along with new landscaping and planting have transformed the park.

The café is always packed and, by being open in the evening too, it makes the park feel safer. Mainly funded by the National Lottery, this is a major asset in a crowded city and has been universally well received.

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5 A human place

© Alastair Blyth

by Alastair Blyth AoU

© xpgomes6

President François Hollande chose it to celebrate his election victory.

Countless trade union rallies assemble there. Hundreds of tourists flood the place daily.Yet the Esplanade du Trocadéro, a roughly 40m2 terrace of polished marble caught between the two arms of the 1930s Palais de Chaillot in upmarket Paris, itself seems pretty unremarkable. That is except for two things. Its history: Chaillot was the first UN HQ and where the UN General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948; and the stunning view over Paris. It’s the latter that probably attracts most people.

On a cold rainy day you will see a few hardy tourists venture across the square treading gingerly over the wet surface. The rain clears and quickly the place fills with people. The usual panoply of traders selling everything from bottles of water to die-cast models of the Eiffel Tower; street artists of one sort or another; and, of course, tourists visiting one of the ‘must-go-to’ places in Paris.

Having lived nearby for six years I was surprised to see so much activity here during the day and evening.

True, it is near the Eiffel Tower, but that is deceptively close and it is a bit of a hard slog up from the tower base across the river. There are cafés nearby, but you have to chance your luck across at least one of the six avenues that radiate from the Place du Trocadéro. So what makes it work?

Perhaps it is the view or the formality of the surroundings. Most definitely it is the humanity collected in one place doing so many different things.

6 Southbank Centre

by Wayne Hemingway MBE AoU Place can have such a big impact on quality of life and one place that always lifts the spirit is London’s Southbank Centre. This was an area of bombed London that was brought back to life in 1951 through a supreme effort by Britain’s creative community. Architects, designers, artists and musicians all pulled together to create the site for The Festival of Britain, a site that has evolved over

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5 the decades and is a real destination now. At the centre of the Southbank Centre is the magnificent Royal Festival Hall, one of the world’s great ‘mid-century modern’ pieces of architecture, a truly democratic space that will always look fresh. This is partly a result of great design thinking in the first place, with judicious updating and modern interventions. The Southbank Centre has always remained ‘vital’ by adding new architectural interventions and allowing free access, and to a greater extent than almost anywhere in London, allowing the public freedom to choose how it uses the spaces.

Great places need custodians who respect their integrity and also understand their potential. I have personal experience of working with the team at Southbank Centre who do just that. The proposed new Festival Wing is creating so much discussion because so many feel ownership of this wonderful part of our capital city.

7 Place for making sense

by Diarmaid Lawlor AoU

My father loved scrap. His passion was to re-imagine redundancy. Washing machines became saw benches, crashed cars became trailers, hoardings became children’s toys. I used

6 to believe his favourite places were scrapyards. Now I realise they were just spaces on the way to his real favourite place: his imagination.

The Greek poet Cavafy wrote a poem about a mythical island named Ithaka. So beautiful was its legend that it captivated dreamers. Few ever made it there. The poem tells the tale of a band of travellers who set off for the island. They stopped many times on the way, each place more spectacular than the last. Alas, fantastic as they were, none were Ithaka, the purpose of all their travels.

Finally, they were pointed toward the island. They got to a bare place with nothing save the folds and seams of the landscape, and a silence broken only by the sound of the waves. In their frustration, they reflected back on their journey, and realised that Ithaka was not a single place. It was the journey. The place at the end was a space to make sense of it all.

In a world where young people can access all the information they need on anything they want anytime they want, their desire is space to make sense of things. Like scrapyards for my father, or Ithaka for ancient dreamers, ordinary places are these spaces. They help make sense of the world around us. They are my favourite places.

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8 Broad Street Bristol

by Richard Guise AoU

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Malmö Finalist of the European City of the Year 2014

My own view is…

Urbanism is about how we manage the process of change

By Nicholas Falk AoU

Now that so many excellent places have been selected for the Urbanism Awards, it is timely for the Academy to consider how towns and cities can learn to make the most of whatever assets they have. Clearly it involves more than just the look or liveliness of a place. ‘Beauty is in the eye of the beholder’ and a Victorian planned town like Saltaire is fundamentally different to a new mixed use quarter in Dublin’s docklands.

should be concerned primarily with transformation, that is, how the various stakeholders work together over the years in building a shared vision, attracting the resources, and putting plans into effect. What works depends very much on the context or the league the town or city competes in. Success depends on leadership as well as good luck, but there are many routes to success which the Academy might promote.

Nor it just a question of how well the place in question ties in with the surrounding area, or Lamb’s Conduit Street could never have won the Great Street award. Urbanism is about how we manage the process of change. As Academicians we

Academicians interested in the topic may want to follow my blog ‘postcardfromthefuture’ which draws lessons from unusual places I have been fortunate enough to visit.

More can be gained from the book that Peter Hall has just published,

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‘Good Cities, Better Lives: how Europe rediscovered the lost art of urbanism’, with my contributions. It sets out lessons for what the UK can learn from cities like Freiburg, Lille or Malmö that have moved up a league in attracting people to live, work and invest in them.

So why don’t we ask the question, what can post-industrial cities like Stoke or Newcastle learn from similar places, and how can the lessons be transferred?

Dr Nicholas Falk AoU is founder director of URBED (urbed.coop). Visit: postcardfromthefuture.wordpress.com

AoU Journal #3 Spring 2014

THE ART OF STEWARDSHIP

Lamb’s Conduit Street © Farebrother

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Long-term stewardship of London London’s great estates have played an important role in the development of the city for centuries, and as they have evolved they have become more proactive in their stewardship.What can we learn from their experience?

By Sarah Yates 1.The Portman Estate; 2.The Howard de Walden Estate; 3.The Bedford Estate; 4.The Grosvenor Estate - Mayfair; 5.The Crown Estate - Regent Street; 6.The Grosvenor Estate - Belgravia; 7.The Cadogan Estate.

The ‘new’ Great Estates: 8. King’s Cross; 9. Broadgate

‘Stewardship’ is a term that is inextricably linked with the history of land ownership in Britain: from medieval times, a ‘steward’ was someone, often a member of a lesser branch of a landowner’s family, appointed to manage the property of his more prosperous (or fortunate) relative or neighbour.

It is not surprising, therefore, that the ‘great estates’ of London – those urban areas owned for centuries and inherited by such aristocratic families as the Dukes of Bedford, Earls Cadogan, Dukes of Westminster and Viscounts Portman, as well as historic City livery companies and charitable foundations – have become associated with responsible and proactive management, or the ‘good stewardship’, of land and property.

Indeed, the chief executive of the London part of the Bedford Estates still has ‘Steward’ as his job title.

While in large part the success of the estates is due to a commitment to retaining and managing property over the long term, in recent years their approach to stewardship has become much more dynamic and proactive.

How the Great Estates developed

After the Great Fire of 1666 as development moved westwards

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from the City, London emerged from the piecemeal development of parcels of what was once pasture and agricultural land, bought by or gifted to individuals, companies or charities.

Key to the long-term success of the estates from the 17th century to the present day was the introduction in the 1660s of the leasehold system, through which the owner granted leases of land, generally over 99 years, to builders to undertake development.

Based on shared risk, this system ensured that the owner benefited from the building development and a regular income from ground rent at minimal outlay, while he or she retained ownership in perpetuity.

The builder-developer also profited by acquiring a prime site, and was often able to sublet individual plots to recoup his costs. It was this well-established but entrepreneurial approach that enabled the creation in the 18th and 19th centuries of some of London’s most renowned neighbourhoods and elegant streets and squares in areas including Belgravia and Mayfair (under the ownership of the Grosvenor family), Chelsea (the Cadogans), and Marylebone (the Howard de Waldens). Laid out by the estate surveyors, these were not just

residential areas but also contained all the shops, services and offices required by the community, including mews housing for servants; facilities such as schools and churches; and well-managed public spaces, roads and common amenities.

Many of these historic areas remain today, and so it might be thought that as the estate owner retained the land in perpetuity, successful stewardship of the estate, certainly in commercial terms, simply required him or her to gather rents. Indeed in a few areas, until relatively recently, this may have been the case.Yet the later and postwar history of the estates shows that estate landowners have faced numerous challenges that have in large part driven them to become more active stewards of their landholdings: compulsory purchase of land for housing, education and transport; stagnant ground rents; and punitive death duties, leading to the sales of large tracts of land in central London by estates such as Portman, Bedford and Grosvenor.

The impact of more recent legislation around leasehold reform has undoubtedly contributed both positively and negatively to how the estates have developed in the 21st century. Leasehold Reform Acts from

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Duke of York Square © Cadogan / NEX

1967 to 1993 have given residential owners the right to buy freeholds.

Many estates have been legally obliged, therefore, to sell, sometimes on a large scale. The Eyre Estate in St John’s Wood, 90% of which was originally single houses and where sales from the 1990s onwards would eventually reduce the estate to a handful of properties, is a particular case in point.

However, the capital generated from sales has allowed many of the larger great estates to reinvest and to initiate major works such as public realm improvements, which have enhanced not only their social, cultural and economic value, but also London as a whole. Well-known examples include the regeneration of Mount and Elizabeth Streets by the Grosvenor Estate, Regent Street by the Crown Estate, Marylebone High Street by the Howard de Walden Estate and the Duke of York Square in Chelsea by Cadogan.

The ingredients of successful stewardship

Over time the historic great estates have been able to develop a distinct model of placemaking for London, which continues to evolve. In recent years, it has not only been influenced itself by the increased focus on the

regeneration of inner-city areas from the 1980s onwards, but has also informed the development of new neighbourhoods and estates for the 21st century and beyond. These new estates are different in some respects from the originals, however.

“Over the centuries, London’s great estates have proved highly successful at creating and maintaining high-quality, vibrant places...”

They have been formed either by the gradual acquisition of a portfolio of frequently contiguous buildings in one area, for example the Soho Estates developed from the 1970s by Paul Raymond, and Shaftesbury PLC, which has holdings in specific West End locations such as Carnaby Street; or by the development of large-scale brownfield sites, for example King’s Cross. Several common principles have emerged: A strategic approach to the urban framework: estates recognise that the long-term success of an area was (and remains) dependent on setting out and maintaining the right masterplan and overall infrastructure, rather than viewing it as a collection of individual streets, buildings and

open spaces. Indeed the careful Georgian arrangements of residential terraced housing surrounding elegant squares has become of the one most distinctive and enduring features of London’s historic architecture.

Setting a framework of appropriate scale, density and legibility, along with roads and services, meant that over time the estate was flexible enough to accommodate new land uses according to changing market demands, while the landowner could replace outmoded or redundant buildings when leases expired. This tradition remained embedded over time.

Even in 1975, the critic Simon Jenkins was applauding the Grosvenor Estate’s proposal (though unexecuted) of 1972 to redevelop perimeter sites on its estate while conserving the quality and residential character of Belgravia and Mayfair. In examining every facet of the estate, including traffic, employment and housing, this proposal, he argued, was a “remarkable renaissance of the eighteenth-century tradition” (Landlords to London, p. 241).

In recent years the great estates have turned their attention again to this key principle, and in particular

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Granary Square, King’s Cross © John Sturrock

to the importance of a high-quality public realm in sustaining vibrant and attractive urban neighbourhoods.

Perhaps the best-known example is the regeneration of Marylebone High Street in the 1990s by the Howard de Walden Estate, now a vibrant shopping area and centre of regular community events and activities.

Similarly, the Grosvenor Estate has sought to upgrade key streets including Mount Street in Mayfair and Elizabeth Street in Belgravia, where physical improvements have included the removal of cluttered signage, better pavements and public artworks in order to provide an appropriate environment for high-end restaurants and luxury fashion retailers.

A commitment to flexibility over the long term: a commitment to managing an estate for the long term recognises the importance of a more considered approach to maintaining economic and social value, rather than to generating a quick profit and having little or no interest in the development once it is finished and handed over. Indeed, the estates’ commitment to the long term can be seen simply in the fact that many of them have a continuous history of ownership dating back to the 17th century and earlier.

As noted above, estates need to continue to adapt to external forces to survive: effective management of the estate requires flexibility and creativity, especially now because of the need to promote central London to investors and occupiers in a highly competitive international market. This is particularly important in estates with a large proportion of retail properties, where continuous research into new trends and a brand-conscious approach are essential in creating successful retail destinations. In this case, good stewardship does not just mean careful and responsible maintenance of properties and services, but a broader strategic approach that helps to sustain the right mix of uses and occupiers, and a creative approach to investment and development.

The Cadogan Estate, for example, has focused on a careful ‘curation’ of its prime retail estate in Chelsea by carefully selecting retail and

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restaurant tenants to ensure a diverse mix of international brands with independent stores, the latter now constituting 40% of the shops. There also, open market rent reviews have been replaced with annual indexation to better reflect the businesses, and if the retailer intends to assign its lease the estate has first right of refusal, so that it can maintain control over the occupier mix.

“Contemporary estates have learned from the original ones that a locally based, on the ground management team that understands the area is of vital importance...”

Many newer ‘great estates’ have been founded in a similar approach. At King’s Cross, for example, Argent and its development partners established a joint venture that provided a structure to finance each phase of the development against the value of the land and any completed parts, so that it was not necessary to sell off the early phases in order to finance subsequent development or

provide short-term returns. Likewise, many older estates have entered into joint ventures to expand the diversity of their portfolio or to enhance particular areas that require upgrading or refurbishment: the Bedford Estate has partnered with Exemplar to redevelop One Bedford Avenue, a site comprising two existing retail and office buildings fronting Tottenham Court Road, where the property mix represents a distinct contrast to the Estate’s better-known smaller and historic buildings to the east in Bloomsbury.

A focus on the local: in centuries past, and even today, the landowner lived on the estate itself and was often on familiar terms with tenants, occupiers and the wider community. A responsible approach to stewardship here included philanthropy and charitable giving, including, for example, support for local cultural, education and artistic initiatives, and provision of housing at low rents for those on low incomes.

The numerous London streets and squares with family names, titles or

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and especially long term through their lifecycle in order to maximise the value of the asset: letting, buying back or reversion, refurbing and then reletting. Historic and architecturally significant buildings are restored and maintained, not just to retain character but also to ensure that they remain commercially attractive to potential new tenants, and support uplift both elsewhere on the estate and beyond it. Here one of the most significant recent major projects is the Regent Street Vision long-term programme initiated in 2002 by the Crown Estate to significantly upgrade the commercial and retail spaces behind its 2km-long Grade II-listed facades to meet the demands of 21st century occupiers.

Commitment to a long term future

landholdings represent the legacy of this relationship. The tradition is maintained today in the provision of housing for keyworkers and similar initiatives. Through a centuries or even just decades-long association with an area, estate owners and managers have an intimate knowledge of and association with it and a mission to retain and promote its distinctive character and spirit: Soho Estates’ mission, for example, is to ‘keep Soho’s soul’. This familiarity with the local was often in large part due to the role of the agent or manager, responsible for the hands-on approach to running the logistics of the estate on a daily basis: organising rent collection, dealing with tenants’ or occupiers’ queries, providing valuations, and so on.

Today the agent – in the form of either internal support teams or external consultants – has become much more professionalised, but intimate knowledge of an estate through maintaining good relationships with tenants and occupiers is still essential to maximising assets and capital. The

agent’s role is a much more strategic one, including identifying parts of the estate that can be upgraded, unlocking value by restructuring leases, or recommending areas for investment or properties to buy back.

Contemporary estates have learned from the original ones that a locally based, on the ground management team that understands the area is of vital importance in maintaining the integrity of the estate.

A proactive and holistic approach: through the benefit of retaining assets in single ownership, and an imperative to sustain value in the long term, estates have taken an organic and holistic approach to renewal and development. A landowner with majority ownership in a certain area can set and maintain high standards of quality for the benefit of all occupiers, visitors and users. Even where the long-term interest has been sold minimum provisions are often in place in terms of estate management to ensure quality and consistency of approach. Estates have employed a continuous process of managing properties over the short, medium

Over the centuries, London’s great estates have proved highly successful at creating and maintaining high-quality, vibrant places and neighbourhoods. Their approach to stewardship can be summarised as one that represents a commitment to the long-term future of an area by carefully investing in, maintaining and managing the economic and social, as well as physical aspects, of it.

It is this holistic approach that is being taken forward by new areas under development and in single ownership as the next phase of London’s great estates are emerging in areas as diverse as East Village London in the Olympic Park, Earls Court and Covent Garden under Capital and Counties PLC, and Paddington Central, under the ownership of British Land.

Sarah Yates is an independent researcher.

This article draws on ‘Great Estates: How London’s landowners shape the city’, an exhibition and associated publication produced in 2013 by New London Architecture and curated by Peter Murray AoU. The publication is available priced at £10 (plus £5 postage and packing) from New London Architecture newlondonarchitecture.org.

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Saltaire’s role in regeneration Cultural and heritage regeneration along with sustainable development to ensure future economic prosperity are key to managing the iconic World Heritage Site of Saltaire.

By Helen Thornton

New Mill, Saltaire

The industrial village of Saltaire was inscribed by UNESCO on the World Heritage List for being an outstanding example of mid 19th century philanthropic paternalism which had a profound influence on developments in industrial and urban planning in the United Kingdom and beyond.

It survives in a complete and wellpreserved form as testimony to the pride and power of basic industries such as textiles for the economy of Great Britain and the world in the 19th and earlier 20th centuries.

The integrity of Saltaire as a model

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site. Beyond the site’s boundaries, development has surrounded the property to the east, south and west for the last century, with the remnant Aire river landscape to the north.

industrial village is almost total. The boundary of the property coincides with the extent of Titus Salt’s original development: the model village and its associated buildings, the majority of the mill complex and the Park. Some buildings (representing only 1% of the original buildings) were demolished in the past but those existing at the time of inscription and the layout of the complex are still intact. Mill machinery was removed after industrial activities ceased in the mid1980s. There are limited opportunities for new development within the

An intensive programme of sensitive rehabilitation and conservation of the entire complex has meant that its attributes – form and design, materials and substance, and function (in terms of a living community) – continue to thrive and express its outstanding universal value. The original rural river valley setting has gradually disappeared over the last one hundred years but significant views remain. Given that part of Salt’s original intention was to locate Saltaire in a healthy environment, the buffer zone is important in this respect. The World Heritage Site is also entirely within the Saltaire Conservation Area (designated 1971) and all buildings of significance are listed (1985).

The story of Saltaire since the late 80s is, by now, a familiar one but it remains an inspiration for heritage regeneration projects in the village and its immediate setting. Salts Mill’s saviour was the late Jonathan Silver who purchased the Mill in 1987. Silver was an entrepreneur, art lover and businessman, who had

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already worked with Sir Ernest Hall in the regeneration of Dean Clough in Halifax. His idea was to open a gallery featuring the works of his friend David Hockney, who was born in Bradford. The mill now exhibits the largest collection of works by Hockney, combined with high quality retail outlets and restaurants and it is a major national attraction. The new uses are very complimentary to the original layout of the Mill; visitors can easily appreciate the vastness of the space, and its structure. The success of Silver’s project was to inspire others.

The adjacent New Mill, constructed in phases from 1868 onwards was, by the early 1990s in a very poor condition. In 1992-1993 New Mill was extensively refurbished and some later parts of the Mill were demolished to make way for essential car parking and an access route was opened through the building. New Mill has been converted to offices for the local Health Authority and luxury apartments. Partitioning of the large spaces has been designed so as to be easily reversible.

Regeneration can be many things: the revival of historic buildings, the consequential and deliberate revitalisation of economic prosperity, re-designing the type and scale of economic activity to meet the demands of environment and the future, the reawakening of what is possible, and the building of a skills legacy for the future.

Shipley College has also played a central part in the revival of historic buildings and a renaissance of business and learning activity. A general further education college based entirely in Saltaire, Shipley College has had stewardship of several significant buildings and it takes a full part in the life of the village. When the Saltaire Grammar School that Titus Salt established relocated to new premises the college took on the former school building. It was extensively restored in the 1980s and a new annex building was created to the rear. The Dining Room building created by Salt was converted to classrooms on two floors, but in such a way that the conversion could be reversed.

Victoria Mills, Shipley

Several years ago the college also leased Victoria Hall, which is used for community events like the Saltaire Festival, adult education classes, weddings and other celebrations.

Most recently Shipley College and Titus Salt School have set up a collaborative project working with key local employers, supported

by Bradford Council to develop Bradford’s young business talent. This partnership represents a long-term commitment to students’ education and to creating a vibrant and regenerated local economy.

These young people are employees (and potentially employers) of the future and established businesses have recognised that the education of Bradford’s young people needs to be relevant and focused. Employers who are already involved include Yorkshire Water, Provident Financial Group, Beaumont Robinson, Incommunities, UKAR, Rance Booth & Smith Architects, Rex Procter & Partners and Tandem Marketing. This Centre of Excellence is based in Victoria Hall and ties in well with the original philanthropic objectives of the building. The business centre fit-out is reversible and respects the layout, design and appearance of the room – it is an inspiring space.

Achieving successful regeneration in Saltaire

Regeneration of the buildings has been very successful in Saltaire and virtually all its original buildings are in

use with vibrant businesses, retailing or residential uses all sustaining the historic environment. How has this been achieved?

Flexibility

A flexible approach has been taken to the conversion of the buildings and the new uses they have been put to. A key challenge has been to maintain this vibrant balance of uses whilst retaining an understanding of the historic value of the setting. There is a need for positive responses to the changing needs of organisations that have contributed so much to regeneration.

Planning protection

In planning terms there is of course a presumption in favour of the preservation of the World Heritage Site and its setting. Development that would adversely affect the character, appearance, setting or views into or out of the World Heritage Site will not be permitted. Developers are required to demonstrate that full account has been taken of the impact of their proposals upon the site and its setting, and that their scheme will have no adverse affect upon it. Early consultation, flexibility and close working with conservation professionals is the key to good design.

Evaluating capacity

An environmental capacity study has done much to guide and inform development in Saltaire. The need for such a study was identified

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in the 2000 World Heritage Site Management Plan to aid the longterm management of the site.

Essentially its purpose was to evaluate the level and type of change that the World Heritage Site and its setting could accommodate.

The study was commissioned by Bradford Council in 2005 and undertaken by Atkins Heritage. It was completed in 2006 and awarded a Royal Town Planning Institute Heritage Award. Environmental capacity is defined as ‘the ability of the environment of a place to accommodate specific types of change or development without degrading its special interest, character, fabric or setting.’

“We were confident of success because of the success of Saltaire World Heritage Site.We kept revisiting Saltaire to review materials and soak up the vibrant atmosphere.”

The study started by identifying the key values of the site – fabric, character, quality of life and, to understand more fully the issues and threats to those values – traffic, tourism, development. There was an assessment of the relative nature of those threats whether they were classified as minor, moderate or significant. The study established monitoring indicators for those of greatest concern. There was public consultation on the development of the indicators. Its recommendations included a series of monitoring indicators that could be used to aid the long-term management of the site. The study has enabled a positive and proactive approach to change.

Drawing inspiration from Saltaire

Victoria Mills is a 19th century woollen mill situated within the Buffer Zone of the World Heritage Site in Shipley, Bradford and within sight of Salts Mill. The development

by Newmason Properties has created over 450 luxury apartments complete with roof gardens, balconies, concierge service, landscaped gardens, a river frontage seating area and tennis courts. Andrew Mason, chief executive of Newmason Properties

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has continued the entrepreneurial spirit of Saltaire.

Andrew writes: “Both Alec (my business partner) and I met up with Robin Silver once we had bought Victoria Mill. We had both read the book ‘Salt and Silver’ by J. Greenhalf... Salt’s vision of a model village influenced our thinking throughout our project as did other key regeneration areas such as Salford Quays, Liverpool Docks, Newcastle and Glasgow. We visited all these places during our reflective phase.

“The pallet of materials we used for construction and conservation was partly due to the legacy of how well the buildings of Saltaire had performed. Both Salt and Silver were inspirational characters who had vision and, although on a smaller scale, we also had a vision. Helped

by City of Bradford Metropolitan District Council and English Heritage, who were encouraging throughout, we wanted to create a super place to live with lots of amenity value.

“We were confident of success because of the success of Saltaire World Heritage Site. We kept revisiting Saltaire to review materials and soak up the vibrant atmosphere.

We drew inspiration all the time as we could see all the major buildings from our site. We wanted to do the job right as they had done. There was always a fear of failing the comparison test….those Victorians knew how to build! Our buildings needed to be significant and high quality design but they needed to be stand out and be different. Since we opened for business we have had excellent tenancy, sales and turnover rates and low vacancies.”

The development has won a string of awards including the Bradford District Design Awards for Architecture 2008, a Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) Residential Award 2008, the Premier Award for Best Large Development in North England and Wales, the RICS Award for Building Conservation 2005.

Continuing investment

Regeneration projects continue to improve the public realm in

Saltaire with a very recent significant investment in a new road junction at the south west of the site. This scheme sets out to improve safety and provide a high quality public gateway for the interpretation and appreciation of the World Heritage Site. Traffic calming, a shared public realm and better road crossing points should bring benefits to residents, local traders and visitors alike.

Victoria Road – the principal street running north-south through the heart of Saltaire and providing access to several significant listed buildings and stunning views of Salts Mill and Baildon Moor to the north – is subject to investment in excess of £700,000. This scheme seeks to restore authenticity and integrity to the street, improve pavements with high quality original materials, and upgrade accessibility and readability of this historically significant street and its frontages.

Planning for the future

The Management Plan written at the time of inscription in 2001 is now being thoroughly reviewed and re-written and a major public consultation exercise is ongoing.

A new plan will have detailed objectives for the next five years and aspirations for the next 30 years.

A new vision for the site is being formulated around the key aim to be a welcoming and inclusive place with a vibrant community, which takes inspiration from its past, whilst planning for a sustainable future and striking an effective and creative balance between a place to live, invest in, work, learn and visit.

Saltaire aspires to be a place where World Heritage significance is fully acknowledged, appreciated and understood by present and future generations. Everyone working in and for Saltaire strives for the highest standards of interpretation, protection and conservation in support of deliverable economic development and tourism. Sustainable development, cultural and heritage regeneration remains central to these aims.

Helen Thornton is Saltaire World Heritage Site officer for the City of Bradford Metropolitan District Council

AoU Journal #3 Spring 2014

Hong Kong 2020: the Dragon Tram Strategic Vision The Dragon Tram strategic vision for Hong Kong shows how one of the city’s historical icons – the tramway or ‘Ding Ding’ – could be a catalyst for change leading to the remodelling of the harbour edge at Kowloon.

By Laura Mazzeo

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It is 2020. Hong Kong’s future looks brighter than ever. A revitalised and accessible waterfront on Victoria Harbour, a diversified economy, a vibrant tourism sector and a healthy urban fabric have made it one of the most liveable cities in the world.

High density finally rhymes with sustainability.

Whether riding a modern tramway or biking to work on the longest waterfront promenade in the world, residents of Hong Kong now enjoy amazing views of Victoria Harbour.

Tourists flock to the city to tour the dramatic urban landscape and constant waterfront activities. People of all ages can navigate the city easily.

Local environmental agencies and universities have teamed up to create a research institute that studies the benefits of ‘at-grade’ (on the surface, without any change of level) public transport on the resilience of ageing waterfront cities. That is why now in 2020 Hong Kong is seen as a global example of what can be achieved when city design and public transport functions work together to create a truly sustainable lifestyle.

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The current reality

Before this can all come to fruition, one of the densest cities in the world must face a series of harsh realities.

Today, although 90% of residents use public transport, the current system is fragmented and inefficient being in the hands of multiple private operators. Private interests and profit making come at the expense of a holistic user-oriented public transport strategy for the city.

“The Dragon Tram strategic vision also offers a unique opportunity for Hong Kong to set a benchmark and explore new ways of using public transport infrastructure...”

The Mass Transit Railway Corporation (MTRC) is first and foremost a property developer extending its network where new properties can be developed rather than connecting residents of existing areas conveniently to their place of work or leisure. Bus and mini-bus companies lobby heavily against reducing the number of lines serviced running through congested central areas, even

though they are under-used and cause major gridlocks at all hours. They also firmly oppose the removal of large bus termini occupying vast tracts of land at ground level in core urban areas. These sites could otherwise be better used as public spaces or for more active uses in more vibrant streets. Besides, private car ownership has also increased dramatically these past five years due to the influx of wealthy Mainland Chinese residents able to afford chauffeurs and reluctant to use the overcrowded MTR, causing ever increasing traffic congestion and raising concerns over worsening air pollution conditions.

Inequalities are undeniable and getting starker. Speculation on the real estate market is pushing the price of housing up forcing a large portion of the population to live in ever-smaller accommodation. This in turn puts increasing pressure on remaining open spaces and lowrise developments. Waiting lists for international schools are lengthening by the day and access to affordable education is threatened. The lack of a diverse cultural offer is also a growing

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concern. All this can be blamed on Hong Kong’s complacent attitude and neglect of a holistic approach to the planning of its territory, partly due to over a decade of political change and heavy reliance on mainland China for economic prosperity.

Today, Hong Kong is still relying on outdated planning frameworks approved in the late 90s. It is only a matter of time before international ranking of city liveability and competitiveness, which put Hong Kong among the top five, start reflecting these shortcomings.

Connecting the dots – revealing opportunities through big picture thinking

Interest groups have long advocated that Hong Kong provide its residents and visitors with a world-class waterfront promenade on both sides of Victoria harbour. Twentytwo action areas have been defined where improvements to accessibility and provision of recreational uses should be implemented. However, no coherent framework gives consistency to those isolated projects.

The lack of vision and planning coordination for the harbour front has long been blamed on the absence of a Harbour Authority, whose establishment is still under discussion and scrutiny to this day.

Meanwhile, West Kowloon and East Kowloon, the two largest remaining development sites on Kowloon peninsula have seen new planning frameworks approved, which include an at-grade reserve for an Environmentally Friendly Transport System (EFTS). This convergence of aspirations is an opportunity to connect the planned EFTS line in the East to the one in the West along the waterfront. The new tramway line would generate a coherent framework for all 22 Victoria Harbour ‘Action Areas’, enabling better access to recreational uses and water activities and encouraging greener ways of moving around the city such as cycling and walking.

Starting a conversation on stewardship – city-making take over

If stewardship is the careful and

responsible supervising and management of something entrusted to one’s care, the Hong Kong model of City stewardship is all about outsourcing city management through the allocation of very specific and localised projects to private consultants through different government departments working in isolation from one another. For economic reasons, public-private partnerships or private enterprises running public projects have been the norm. This has resulted in a lack of co-ordination and synergy at city level and has deeply affected the way public transport services are planned and managed.

The self-initiated vision for an urban modern tramway along the entire Kowloon Peninsula Waterfront by MUDstudios has since attracted the interest of local tramway operator Hong Kong Tramway - Veolia (HKT).

HKT has therefore commissioned MUDstudios to look at a first stage of the vision: the Kai Tak and Kwun Tong area. MUDstudios’ work aims to help the community better understand and visualise the benefits that an at-grade

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modern tramway would represent for the area and its residents.

The study for a modern tramway at Kai Tak was presented to the Kai Tak Public Engagement forums in December 2013 and has received positive coverage in the press (the presentations were made in the form of a video in English [https://vimeo. com/81165343] and Chinese [https:// vimeo.com/81165342]).

HKT continue their efforts to promote the sustainable vision to government departments and stakeholders. Through fostering public interest and a dialogue with the private sector, MUDstudios seeks to gather support from the community and decision makers in government to build momentum towards implementing this holistic urban vision.

A common thread for regeneration – quicker, lighter, cheaper with a vision

In this context, the Dragon Tram vision for a modern tramway along the northern edge of Victoria Harbour is more than just a transport project. It offers the opportunity to use the infrastructure works necessary to implement the transport function as a catalyst for quicker, lighter and cheaper regeneration projects to achieve the final vision for a continuous, vibrant, accessible and green harbour front. Working within a strong and flexible framework as opposed to a fixed masterplan allows targeted projects to better respond to current needs, or easily adjust to shifting priorities and aspirations.

A holistic transport system – towards an integrated user-oriented network

An at-grade tramway along the harbour would facilitate and encourage the usage of all public transport rather than compete for ridership with other modes of public transport. It would allow better integration with water transportation such as ferries and water taxis, other surface transport modes such as buses, mini-buses and bicycles

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and of course the MTR. Smaller and smoother interchange nodes would release large areas currently used by bus termini. The proposal suggests that bus termini be moved to the periphery to release land for public service and economic uses in the dense core areas. Those peripheral transport interchange nodes would then include park and ride facilities and allow better synergy and complementarity between the different modes of transport.

“This vision is neither limited in scope nor modest in its ambitions.

However, the economic, social and environmental challenges Hong Kong faces today are no less daunting” The large passenger capacity, operational flexibility and affordability of modern tramways as well as the modifications to the road network necessary to accommodate new dedicated tram lines, pedestrian promenades and biking lanes would all help to reduce traffic congestion, significantly improving air quality in dense central areas.

Multi-task public transport – pushing the boundaries

The Dragon Tram strategic vision also offers a unique opportunity for Hong Kong to set a benchmark and explore new ways of using public transport infrastructure: from new business models using taxes on adjacent commercial development and advertising to fund public transport infrastructure to combining tramway stations and infrastructure with surrounding utilities.

These may include public spaces, retail, public utilities, micro urban farms, energy generators, WiFi hotspots, a communications backbone; but also park-and-ride facilities, cycle storage, electric car charging stations, a weather and air quality monitoring station, refuse collection stations or local in-town check in facilities. The fixed installations required by tramways can become highly integrated spines and

local nodes of services for residents and visitors alike. The possibilities are endless and ours to create.

Ultimately, the strategic vision aims to help the city reconnect with its heritage. It proposes a green alternative to car dominance, reshaping a more efficient and diversified public transport system, offering accessible at-grade transportation to an increasingly ageing population and finally, acting as a common thread and a catalyst to rethink and regenerate its waterfront for recreational and 21st century economic activities.

Through a bold reconfiguration of the urban and landscape fabric, it sets a new benchmark in terms of urban liveability while fostering a sustainable economic model. But above all, by looking at the bigger picture and claiming stewardship of the city by its residents and users, the proposal reveals the opportunities offered by the existing planning framework. It creates a common thread for smaller regeneration projects, rationalises the transport network into a user-friendly system and explores ways of using public transport infrastructure to make Hong Kong more efficient and liveable.

Together, these principles provide a unique roadmap for Hong Kong’s future. This vision is neither limited in scope nor modest in its ambitions.

However, the economic, social and environmental challenges Hong Kong faces today are no less daunting. The Dragon Tram proposal sets out a bold framework for the type of change that will position Hong Kong for the future it deserves.

Laura Mazzeo is a Young Urbanist and founder of MUDstudios, an urban design studio in Hong Kong which has developed the Dragon Tram Strategic Vision.

Visit mudstudios.net

AoU Journal #3 Spring 2014

Re-imagining the identity of an area A campaign to turn a Victorian industrial building in Sheffield into a student residential development became a mission to reinvigorate a living legacy to Sheffield’s industrial past and make it the cornerstone of regeneration in the area to support a vibrant community.

By Simeon Shtebunaev

The industrial built heritage has been one of the casualties of the rise of the neo-liberal economy in the UK, acting as a backdrop to many of the social and economic issues of England’s post-industrial Northern cities.

Mentioning urban regeneration in places such as Liverpool, Manchester and Sheffield inevitably leads to the issue of existing building stock and conservation. In a predominantly service-based economy the creative industries and retail businesses are seen as the panacea for places such as the Northern Quarter in Manchester, Ropewalks in Liverpool and for the unashamedly branded Cultural Industries Quarter (CIQ) in Sheffield.

Portland Works (Grade II*) bears many of the chronic conditions of a Victorian industrial building in the North of England and was seemingly set on a similar course – to be renovated and converted to bedsit student flats. However, it provides low rent workshops to a surprising number of craftsmen, considering its dilapidated state – a living legacy of the ‘little mesters’ of Sheffield.

Metalworkers, woodworkers, furniture makers, an engraver, a knife maker, independent artists and musicians have all served as the core stakeholders group around one of the largest Community Benefit

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Societies in England, which has been formed under a fairly straightforward slogan ‘Save Portland Works’. Since its initiation, the campaign has managed to attract sufficient attention and support in order to block the proposed planning application, raise enough funds and acquire possession of the building. Still in its infancy the society’s priorities are the repair and maintenance of the building, but there are already plans for apprenticeship schemes and support of start-up businesses.

Portland Works is one of the last functioning little mesters’ workshops – the building type that accommodated Sheffield’s cutlery manufacturers and made its name eponymous with the steel industry. It was also the first place in the world to produce stainless steel. Located in the Sharrow area of Sheffield, it is a neighbour of Stag Works, a similar building famous for providing studios to bands such as Def Leppard.

“The current poor state of the building and the bureaucratic nature of access to funding will mean several very tough years ahead” Sharrow, historically called Little Sheffield, is located immediately to the south of the city centre. It is an area of ethnic diversity, a relatively young population and home to the Sheffield United football ground. In his book ‘Neighborhood Politics: Chicago and Sheffield’ political scientist Larry Bennett writes that as a result of the city’s urban renewal policies of the 70s and 80s, namely the mass house clearance of Sheffield’s neighbourhoods, a strong sense of locality and communal action has been instigated in Sharrow.

The most prominent contemporary manifestation of this historical sense of community is the Sharrow Lantern Festival and it is partially due to this pre-existing mindset that the success of the Portland Works campaign can be attributed.

The Sheffield Ring road – another inheritance from the 70s – has not only accelerated the fall in rent prices by cutting off the neighbourhood completely and making it unattractive for the already struggling businesses

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in the city centre, but also kept it off the radar of major developers for decades. In recent years it has begun to show the initial signs of gentrification – an inner city neighbourhood with a concentration of a variety of international restaurants giving it character and cheap accommodation for both residents and businesses.

Campaign against planning application becomes campaign to buy and manage

Some developments have crept onto its edges, notably the Forge – one of the many indistinguishable schemes of flats to mushroom in the studentrich soil of Sheffield. In this context, a planning application from the landlord to convert Portland Works into bedsit flats was lodged in early 2009, leading to the initiation of the ‘Save Portland Works’ campaign. Initially a campaign to prevent the approval of the planning application it soon turned into a campaign to buy and manage the building. In the words of Derek Norton, the Chair of the current committee: “The question arose ‘what do we want?’ If the planning application was turned down, the landlord would seek to raise rents and, on the evidence of the past, offer very little in return.”

The campaign has been successful due to, but not exclusively, several factors: the importance of the building in historical terms and the social and industrial heritage of the craftsmen, the very strong link with education establishments, the existing community in the immediate locale and lastly the economic conditions of the global recession, which led to a reduction in the demand for student housing and retail in the area and allowed time for the campaign to grow.

Admittedly, the historic value of the building and the manufacturing ‘living legacy’ have been one of the main drivers behind consolidating the social capital of the campaign and attracting the attention of the media, but the building’s poor state of repair also worked in favour of a speculative redevelopment into flats. It is the existing pocket of economic activity that has strengthened the case for appealing against a change of use.

The residential future of the Works would have meant dislocation of the existing businesses and a fate similar to Liberty Works in the Cultural Industries Quarter of Sheffield, which saw a highly successful student development, yet one which has contributed little to the residential community.

Using Portland Works for student projects

Students have been one of the groups with which a well-developed symbiotic relationship has emerged throughout the campaign. The connection in particular with the University of Sheffield’s architecture and journalism departments has brought many ideas to the table and

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Works campaign have been previously engaged in other live projects in the area. The product of the university’s involvement has been the accumulation of graphical and physical representations of numerous ideas, studies of the fabric of the building and most importantly the creation of a much wider group of stakeholders.

The involvement of volunteers and students has enabled the society to tap into a unique skill pool and receive valuable academic backing, whilst offering in return a fascinating piece of research for a range of disciplines.

Indeed, it is currently working with at least four universities across more than seven disciplines with the aim of itself becoming a place of education concentrated around manufacturing and guidance to similar projects.

Building on knowledge from other campaigns

The Portland Works campaign has grown on the back of existing local organisations such as the Sharrow Development Forum and Little Sheffield Development Trust, a group with the same aspirations and which battled for the purchase of the neighbouring Stag Works.

The importance of this pre-existing organisational knowledge has been paramount. Knowledge transfer workshops have taken place with funding from several organisations and set a valuable framework for future activities. nonetheless developed into research undertaken by Julia Udall and Dr Cristina Cerulli, with ‘the aim of development and implementation of a framework for collective production and action where engaged scholarship, community activism and community economic development converged to Save Portland Works from speculative redevelopment.’

In the past three years there have been two live projects in Portland Works – a six week intensive project which involved up to 15 masters of architecture students developing ideas for their ‘client’. Five more have taken place in the immediate area in the past and several of the people involved in initiating the Portland

Community consultations and open days were launched in 2009, developing ideas and business models for the future of the works. After the refusal of the planning application a community share issue was launched in June 2011 and closed in June 2012, achieving the threshold target of £200,000 and enabling the purchase of Portland Works to go ahead. A loan from the Architecture Heritage Fund and several more donations has secured the immediate repairs to the building. However, a significantly larger amount will be needed in the long term.

Asked about how to counteract some of the effects of gentrification, the artist Grayson Perry replied: “It’s simple. Make cheap spaces available

for artists to live and work.” What started as a campaign against a planning application has now fully developed into an Industrial Provident Society, which has purchased the building and assumed stewardship, maintaining as a core principle the offer of low cost workshop and studio spaces.

Retaining the character of the area has been essential, as any residential development backing onto industrial buildings would have brought with it a plethora of regulations such as the redesignation of the area from industrial to residential – further bringing more and more residential amenities. The redevelopment of the building will ultimately attract new occupants and start making a profit; however, having in its core a co-operative model of ownership could provide an alternative way of managing the regeneration of the building and the immediate area. The current poor state of the building and the bureaucratic nature of access to funding will mean several very tough years ahead before any profits materialise.

This could, however, provide time and space for a more considered approach to managing the regeneration of the building.

Certainly, the ongoing research taking place in Portland Works and the aim of the society to eventually support other similar developments in the area and beyond, suggest an aspiration for a more intelligent model of gentrification, one which would try to sustain its initial occupants rather than ultimately displace them.

Simeon Shtebunaev is a Young Urbanist and also Part I Architectural Assistant at BDP ‘Neighborhood Politics: Chicago and Sheffield’, Larry Bennett, Routledge 2013, was originally published 1997.

The book ‘Re-imagining Portland Works’, Cristina Cerulli and Julia Udall, Antenna Press, 2011, Sheffield can be seen at: issuu.com/c_cerulli/docs/ reimaginingpwbookopt/1 More information on Portland Works can be found at portlandworks.co.uk

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Building a stake in Brixton’s future Listening to the voice of the community has been vital for shaping Lambeth Council’s plans for the future of one of its most deprived neighbourhoods.

By Nicola Bacon AoU

Brixton Village

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Windrush Square, Brixton

In Brixton in South London, one day in October last year, protestors ate processed cheese and drank cheap cider to highlight their concern about the opening of a new branch of Champagne + Fromage (a Covent Garden based shop and restaurant then proposing to open a new branch in Brixton). In this time of austerity and cuts to the welfare state, protest is to be expected. But it is rare that resistance focuses on the opening of a café and what it signifies.

deliberative workshops involving over 70 people, focusing on the future of Somerleyton Road, a narrow strip of land to the east of Brixton in the London Borough of Lambeth, used mainly for depots and temporary buildings. Deliberative workshops allow a relatively small number of people to explore an issue in depth.

Concerns about gentrification loomed large in the ideas and proposals that residents put forward for Somerleyton Road.

Brixton’s changing demographics and economy are worrying many residents. The most visible change is in the way the town is used at night – food businesses are thriving and people from outside the area who tend to be whiter, and more affluent, than many local communities now flood into the market area.

Many residents voice concerns about the loss of what they valued about Brixton in the past. There is a perception that people who are less affluent are being squeezed out of the area and that the best interests of longstanding residents are becoming peripheral to its future. There is a sense that there is little control over change.

“Many of the ‘gentrifiers’ of 20 years ago are now at the forefront of concern about local people being priced out of the area.”

Envisioning the future

Social Life was set up almost two years ago with the strapline ‘putting

Last year, Social Life ran a series of

The need to protect what is valued about Brixton’s local character, its street life and cultural heritage was voiced. There was also a wish for low-cost affordable rental housing for local people, to underpin and support the area’s diverse communities.

Most importantly, local people wanted to see power and influence over decision-making for the local community, both during the planning process and long-term through some form of local governance.

people at the heart of place making’.

Too often, the experience, wants and needs of the people already living in communities is ignored when institutions make plans to change local neighbourhoods. When places change – because of new development or regeneration – there is an opportunity to intervene, to improve how they function, change who lives there, how they get on and get by.

What emerged from Social Life’s workshops has shaped Lambeth’s plans for the site. The council is planning to develop new homes that it will own, a mixture of social rented housing (at council rent levels) and market rented homes, on longer tenancies than usually offered; to create new community facilities and public spaces; and new community ownership and governance structures.

Somerleyton Road is within the Coldharbour ward of Lambeth, which is the most deprived ward in the borough. It is a relatively small and unremarkable site that has become important out of proportion to its footprint. Although Somerleyton Road is close to the centre of Brixton, it feels cut off by three railway lines, and by the design and layout of streets and buildings. Over the last few years,

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it has become the focus of campaigns for a new way of developing Brixton that shifts priority towards empowering local communities and economic and environmental benefits for local people. There have been animated, sometimes angry debates about how this should happen.

Somerleyton Road became home to the first people arriving from the Carribean in the 1950s. The Windrush generation moved to Brixton as it was close to the Clapham deep shelter, their first temporary refuge.

And in Somerleyton Road they found low rent, and available homes.

The street is now home to two communities, the Carlton Mansions Housing Co-op at the top of the street and Moorlands estate on the east side of the road, opposite the area that is to be developed. Carlton Mansions is a small long-standing co-op, set up in the late 1970s, but who are now under threat of eviction.

The Moorlands estate’s low-rise brick housing nestles behind the modernist barrier block, Southwyk House, feeling much more separate from central Brixton than its physical location would suggest.

Giving voice to the community

Social Life began work with Brixton Green in January 2013. Brixton Green is a community-owned setup to campaign for a better way of developing Somerleyton Road. We ran two open events and a series of 12 deliberative workshops, involving 79 residents, which we called ‘Action Planning Workshops’. The workshops were structured around four themes: housing, long-term stewardship, employment and businesses, and health, education and culture.

Conversations were productive, creative, and intense. For many they were linked to broader questions about Brixton’s future: “Great ideas but what is the reality of it all? Would it push out local people? Or add to gentrification currently happening?”

We wanted to find ways of involving the many different communities in Brixton in our discussions, and build on the strengths that already exist in the neighbourhood. Easy in theory, but difficult to do. The aspiration was echoed by the people we spoke to.

One person spoke of their wish to

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“bring life at a curiously dead strip of Brixton. There is so much vibrancy in the area – however currently Somerleyton Road is a wasteland.”

‘co-operative council’, promoting the involvement of residents and local communities in service planning and delivery.

Our focus was on safety, belonging, neighbourliness, wellbeing and resilience, as well as generating ideas about housing and community facilities. Neighbourhoods do not thrive because of buildings or infrastructure alone, and we wanted to explore the way people felt about where they live, and how relationships between neighbours could develop.

Early in 2012, Lambeth Council made a commitment to work with the local community to develop new plans for Somerleyton Road and formed a project team with Ovalhouse, a longstanding community theatre company that plans to move to the top end of Somerleyton Road, and Brixton Green.

Responding to change

In urban areas change is inevitable, but in Brixton the nature of change, and who it should benefit, have become hotly contested. The voices of established communities – black and white – now compete for space with newcomers. Many of the ‘gentrifiers’ of 20 years ago are now at the forefront of concern about local people being priced out of the area.

For communities under stress, the prospect of changes to the local area can trigger questions about identity. In our workshops, underlying questions ran through the discussions: Who should the new development be for? Whose interests should be paramount? Who should benefit?

Lambeth Council has been under pressure to respond to these concerns. The council’s Labour administration has branded itself a

The November 2013 Lambeth Cabinet report on the Somerleyton Road project states: “the Council recognises that there is an opportunity to do things differently at Somerleyton Road and to deliver a flagship project co-operatively. The approach … will be shaped by local people, be unique to Brixton and give us the best chance of meeting people’s aspirations.”

Lambeth intends to develop the site itself. It plans to let at least 40% of the 280 new homes at ‘social rent’ (i.e. council rent) levels, and let the rest at market rents.

It also wants to see new public spaces and community facilities.

Lambeth’s decision to develop and then manage these homes themselves means that it will retain long-term control over the street, and a clear stake in the future of the neighbourhood. Lambeth is also keen to set up new structures

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Lambeth is carrying out further analysis of ownership and management options, including a community development trust and a housing co-op. During Social Life’s workshops there was support for community ownership, however concerns were also raised. Could this be captured by one section of the community? What safeguards should be put in place? Who should be represented on any new structures?

Should the people already living on Somerleyton Road in the Moorlands estate have a particular say over its future? For the council, and its community partners, their task is now to work out how to manage these risks, build confidence in their approach and overcome cynicism.

It is unrealistic to expect the development of a small site alone to bind together a town that is facing the sort of profound changes that Brixton is going through. However, the Somerleyton Road project suggests a new way forward for inner city developments, giving local people more effective influence than traditional models of consultation and involvement. And ultimately creating secure and affordable homes, a good neighbourhood and high quality of life for everyone living in the new housing, and people in the surrounding area.

Nicola Bacon AoU is a founding director of Social Life (social-life.co).

Social Life was set up by the Young Foundation in 2012 to take forward work on social sustainability and innovation in place making.

to involve local residents in the long-term management of the site.

Lambeth is working on a new way of financing the site that shifts the risk away from the local authority and local community. The idea is to issue a bond to pay the costs up front, rather than enter into the more usual deal where developers

buy the site, take on the risks, and keep the ability to negotiate changes in their plans. The Council, Brixton Green and Ovalhouse are procuring a development partner for the site. Brixton Green have already taken over one building, number 6 Somerleyton Road, and are turning this into meanwhile space.

They work with housing developers, housing associations, councils and community organisations to put the lived experience of residents at the centre of plans to shape our built environment.

For more about Social Life’s work in Brixton, the report can be downloaded at social-life.co/publication/somerleytonroad-workshops/.

To look at the blog of their work, go to somerleytonsays.wordpress.com/.

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Southville Centre: a long-term community asset How a former school building has become the hub for community development

By Ben Barker

Ideas are like tadpoles.You start off with hundreds, but few become mature frogs. So it was with the Southville Centre in Bristol. In the 1980s the secondary school was consolidating to its main site and leaving the Victorian building that was its home for the first two years.

One tadpole was to use the vacated building as a community centre, another was for housing development.

Would it become a frog or a toad?

It actually became one of Bristol’s most successful community centres and the HQ of Southville Community Development Association (SCDA) and quite a few other groups.

Community action, plus some political pull and funding generated from a housing association that now shares the site led to an official opening by the local MP in September 1991.

Avon County Council had transferred the Grade II listed building to Bristol City Council (BCC) for £1. The newly formed SCDA, a charity and not-for-profit company, secured a 999 year lease. The long lease comes with challenges, such as full repair and maintenance of an ageing building, but it has two main benefits. Firstly, stability – we know that, as long as we can afford to run it, the building remains ‘the community’s’ pretty much forever. Secondly, credibility – having a

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well used and well maintained asset is a great way to demonstrate to others (including potential funders) that this is an organisation they can rely on.

Since then SCDA has really had two main purposes: pay the bills to keep the building going and do ‘community development’ with the neighbours.

“...support it during the development stage and then cut it, more or less, adrift. If people want it, it will probably survive.”

Using the building as a resource

Maintaining the building has always been a struggle. The local area was considered to be ‘average’ among Bristol’s 35 wards, so funding from BCC was sparse. Regeneration funding pre-global collapse passed it by. One exception was a Lottery grant around the year 2000 of £300,000 to open up the basement and improve the internal circulation.

Lack of external funding taught SCDA self-reliance. The building has had to earn its keep. Even with the expansion following the Lottery grant, the building is really too small both to meet local demand and to spread its administrative overheads. Despite several efforts SCDA has been unable to obtain a second building nearby.

The hunt continues.

Customers, whether for the café, nursery, meeting rooms or events, expect and generally get high standards of cleanliness, efficiency and a friendly smile. SCDA moved fairly rapidly from a makeshift reliance on volunteers to a skilled and professional staff. SCDA is unashamedly a community business with financial targets to secure.

Such surpluses as there have been are re-invested in new projects and services, building maintenance and staff conditions.

SCDA has used a not very flexible space to respond to local needs and demand. A convenient baby boom in the area has over-subscribed the nursery which has expanded to occupy spaces less requested by the training wings of cash-strapped public agencies. Over the last 20 years SCDA has walked a financial tightrope and nearly come off a couple of times, but, so far, so good.

Playing a role in community development

SCDA’s community development role has been less structured and more opportunistic. It has relied on enthusiastic amateurs and, every now and again, securing Lottery and other grants of various sizes to employ a series of short-term community

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workers. One of the earliest developments led to the Southville Local Exchange and Trading Scheme.

‘LETS’ is sometimes disparagingly referred to as ‘a glorified baby-sitting circle’. In reality it was much more than that with its hundred or so members offering each other services from gardening to acupuncture and lifts to conversational French.

But, baby-sitting, too! And all this at five ‘Squids’ an hour. The ‘Squid’, or Southville Quid, is, like the pound sterling, an invented currency, being a store of value and a means of exchange.

Southville LETS started in the mid90s and still continues as part of the wider Bristol LETS. It exemplifies the key characteristics of SCDA’s community development approach: find something that depends on people rather than money or institutions like the council. Keep the costs very low. Support it during the development stage and then cut it, more or less, adrift. If people want it, it will probably survive.

Around the turn of the century, SCDA organised some meetings with local people to ask what they liked about the area and what they didn’t.

Some clear trends emerged. People liked the proximity to the city centre and the friendliness of neighbours.

The two big concerns were too many cars and not enough green spaces. SCDA’s responses became the Sustainable Southville Project. SCDA can’t claim to have ‘solved’ the first problem that gets gradually worse each year, although it did produce a locally researched cycle map. The expected Residents’ Parking Scheme to be introduced in 2014 by Bristol’s Mayor is an example of ‘top down’: probably a necessary process for this sort of problem, but whether it will work is hotly debated.

Creating more green spaces is actually quite difficult, too. The Victorian contribution was to preserve open space in a period of major urban development. A further contribution was to blow holes in that development in the 1940s.

Between the two, SCDA reckoned that there were around 10 ‘parks’ of reasonable size, although the range is very great. It was determined to

© Nick Sarebi

establish a support group for each one on the lines of the Dame Emily Park Project (DEPP) which SCDA had supported in 1998. Increasing the quantity of green space was difficult, but quality could be improved.

“So, 23 down and with only 976 years of the lease to go, there’s no reason to think that SCDA will not stay on the tightrope, even in lean times.”

DEPP is another example of a group (tadpole to frog) that has become independent, still survives and has secured well over £100,000 of investment, mainly in children’s play and from Landfill Tax. Over the next decade SCDA helped to establish groups including the Friends of Greville Smyth Park (FroGS); the Friends of the Avon New Cut (FrANC); the Gores Marshalls for Gores Marsh and Luckwell Improvement Project (LImP).

These and other developments were made possible by Heritage Lottery grants and short-term development staff. Of course, it’s important to start these organisations off right, but their continuation depends on the enthusiasm and commitment of local people. A key community

development role is to find and support these special people.

Giving birth to new ideas

Four other projects also illustrate SCDA’s role as incubator: Benches, Patchwork, Good Gardens and the Arts Trail. The Benches Project, Patchwork and the Good Garden Awards started as part of Sustainable Southville: too many cars, not enough walking/cycling. They also responded to the green space agenda. Older people using Southville Centre had complained of the lack of seats in some places. In response and over several years, SCDA secured small sums and has now installed halfa-dozen street benches at around £1,000 each. Patchwork involves the identification of small, unloved, rubbish-strewn spaces.

Again, this was an idea pinched from elsewhere. The Patchwork Group has now cleared and continued to care for several patches. Their work has two main consequences: a planted site is much less likely to attract flytipping and other groups follow the lead. There are now around twenty spaces cared for by the Patchwork Group or others within a 10 minute walk of Southville Centre. The Front Garden Awards started badly about ten years ago. SCDA aimed to

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encourage walking by improving the look of streets. Gardens, where they exist, are very small. SCDA looked at how others had done it and the formula seemed to be to have a paid co-ordinator (which we didn’t) and to ask for nominations of good gardens.

We asked for nominations in the local press, but got zilch. We changed tactics, hastily printed some certificates and delivered these to ‘good gardens’ in streets near Southville Centre. To our surprise, some people stuck their certificate up in their window. Next year we had the certificates professionally designed (for free) and expanded to more streets. Now, the Awards cover a large swathe of Greater Bedminster up to a mile from the Southville Centre. Last year around 40 volunteers delivered over 2,200 certificates, about one-third of which were displayed. This high level of community involvement cost around £200 per year for printing and has been widely copied.

In the late 80s, BCC took a chance. They decided to trust local people to make good use of a Victorian building” The Southville Arts Trail is a pinched idea, too. Bristol’s first Trail was in nearby Totterdown. Some Southville locals were involved as participants or visitors. Following a meeting at Southville Centre, we decided to have a go too, but at a different time of year. An initial £3,000 was secured from a local business with an arty CEO to print a map. Within a few years the enthusiasm of local artists made the trail independent of SCDA with participation ranging from professional artists to local schools and over 50 venues, mainly private houses. Each year, Southville Centre is shown as ‘Venue 1’ and the building is filled for the May weekend with a range of art and craft work illustrating the skills of local people.

Building upon community cooperation 2007 was an important year for the neighbourhoods of this part of Bristol. We knew that BCC was proposing to establish 14

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‘Neighbourhood Partnerships’ covering the city in 2008. Rather than wait, SCDA contacted other voluntary agencies, some of which were ‘SCDA’s children’ and set up the Greater Bedminster Community Partnership (GBCP) comprising the wards of Bedminster and Southville.

Although this fitted a BCC agenda, it also built upon a tradition of co-operation between Bedminster area community organisations. By 2013 GBCP had around 100 partner organisations, big and small. GBCP’s postal HQ is Southville Centre.

GBCP, like SCDA, reflects locally held concerns, including improving green spaces, encouraging cycling and walking and the needs of older people. SCDA is a founding and active member of GBCP achieving many of its community development aims in conjunction with other partners. A recent GBCP project, strongly supported by SCDA, secured £100,000 from the Mary Portas Fund to promote high streets within walking distance of the Bedminster neighbourhoods.

So, 23 down and with only 976 years of the lease to go, there’s no reason to think that SCDA will not stay on the tightrope, even in lean times. The competing priorities of maintaining the building and devoting energies to community development will continue as will the ways in which these two aims reinforce each other.

In the late 80s, BCC took a chance.

They decided to trust local people to make good use of a Victorian building.

It might not have worked, but overall, it has worked rather well.

Ben Barker is secretary of the Greater Bedminster Community Partnership Find out more about the SCDA at southvillecentre.co.uk

© Geoff Haslam AoU

AoU Journal #3 Spring 2014

Lamb’s Conduit Street and Starbuck’s were never easy bedfellows When style brand Monocle launched a global search for “a cluster of small creative retailers on one city street” Lamb’s Conduit Street emerged top of the pile. Intense asset management and a very proactive landlord were key to this success. However, Lamb’s Conduit Street in Bloomsbury, London is more than just a trendy ‘must-go-to’ place. Here & Now (H&N) talked to Andrew Glover, partner at Farebrother, the chartered surveyors responsible for managing a portfolio of buildings in Lamb’s Conduit Street, to find out the secrets of this successful example of stewardship, and to learn what lessons there may be for other high streets.

H&N:

Its collection of small scale independent retailers has set Lamb’s Conduit Street apart from most other high streets for several years.What sort of different thinking is needed to choreograph this especially when the urge to increase rents is so strong and it might be easier to play safe?

AG:

A good example came from an opportunity presented to us 18 months ago. After getting a mixed reception from residents, other cafés and restaurants in the Bloomsbury street, an American coffee giant exited its lease leaving 70 Lamb’s Conduit Street empty in the run-up to Christmas in Autumn 2012.

© Farebrother

This left our team at Farebrother with a tricky problem in the buildup to the busiest retail period of the year. Did we play safe and fill the unit with one of the many every day retailers who would now love a prime pitch on Lamb’s Conduit Street? Or should we gamble by taking a different approach? We are lucky in asset managing a significant proportion of

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Lamb’s Conduit Street for a client who sees the property as a long term investment in the future of the street.

This dictates that we take a long term approach to asset management, ensuring a mix of tenants that help values to steadily rise and maximise occupation of both the commercial and residential elements of the street over that period. So, at 70 Lamb’s Conduit Street we decided to organise a pop-up shop competition to win its use – rent-free – from 5 December 2012 until 2 January 2013.

We organised it with support from many of the Lamb’s Conduit Street retailers such as Darkroom, Cube, Oliver Spencer, Folk, Maggie Owen and Ben Pentreath.

Of the 90 plus entries, the proposal that caught our eye wasn’t one of the chains interested in capitalising on this excellent pitch, nor one of the student groups that we couldn’t be sure would staff the shop consistently over the Christmas period, but one from an ex-Vogue Editor, Abigail Chisman, with a brilliant and vibrant idea to open a Designer Jumble Sale.

Abigail’s idea was to sell catwalk cast-offs at up to 90% less than their original value and to donate some of her profits to charity which also appealed to the ethos of the owners, and so successful was her tenure that we asked her to stay until the end of January because our over-riding principle was to enhance the street and to improve footfall at this crucial time for all.

H&N:

You found an interesting way to resolve an immediate problem that was far from ‘off the peg’, but what is the key to managing a high street like this in the long term?

AG:

Wind back five or 10 years and the mood on Lamb’s Conduit Street was very different indeed. The retail offer was poor, there were vacant units, low footfall, stagnant rents and low tenant engagement across the board.

But working closely with the client, we went back to the drawing board, determined to improve the retail offer in a sustainable way, attracting independents with their owners behind the counter, encourage trader groups and foster creative use of

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THE ART OF STEWARDSHIP

© Farebrother

public space.The key to re-inventing Lamb’s Conduit Street – just to the north of the A401 Theobald’s Road – was the retailers themselves.

We were convinced that Central London’s retail was too concentrated on a few core streets in the West End, and figured that if we could attract the best up-and-coming prospects we could create a new, different destination at Lamb’s Conduit Street.

“The letting policy focuses more on occupation than pushing the rent beyond what is sustainable.”

A good place to start was Cockpit Arts, an award-winning social enterprise and the UK’s only business incubator for designer-makers.

Cockpit Arts Holborn [it’s other arm is in south-east London’s Deptford] is around the corner from Lamb’s Conduit Street in Northington Street and houses 165 designermakers. Among these was Thornback & Peel, which creates beautiful, screen-printed pieces ranging from furnishings to wallpaper for the home.

Also graduating from Cockpit Arts to a shop on Lamb’s Conduit Street was Susannah Hunter, whose leather handbags are used by Uma Thurman, Helena Christensen and Nicole Kidman. 52 Lamb’s Conduit Street is

occupied by Darkroom, which sells designer jewellery, bags, wallets and accessories, and has been described

by The Guardian as “a geometric palace full of exquisite modern craft”.

In fact, the newspaper went on to say that Lamb’s Conduit Street is “as civilised as shopping gets in the capital.” For us, “civilised” can’t just mean designer goods. We have also leased number 70 to Ryman because other tenants need to buy stationary and to pick up parcels [Ryman will be adding a post office counter] without trailing into the Midtown maelstrom of High Holborn.

The icing on the cake came in October 2013 when seminal US retailer J Crew opened its first European men’s only store on Lamb’s Conduit Street. GQ magazine said it had been “counting down the days” for J Crew to open alongside cutting edge independents like Thornback & Peel and Darkroom. Again, it simply added to the mix.

H&N:

Is there a danger of focusing on retail?

Doesn’t a high street need more than retail to be a vibrant place?

AG:

But Lamb’s Conduit Street isn’t just about retail: it’s a place where people

AoU Journal #3 Spring 2014

other high streets not to re-invent themselves along Lamb’s Conduit Street’s lines – although there is also certainly an argument for a coordinating role such as that played

by Farebrother or some of the area’s Business Improvement Districts.

H&N:

So, what is next for Lamb’s Conduit Street?

AG:

live, work and play. The letting policy focuses more on occupation than pushing the rent beyond what is sustainable. The last thing we want is for the street to lose its soul because the people who make the street what it is can no longer afford to be there. We knew we were succeeding when in August 2009 local entrepreneur and designer Ben Pentreath decided to hold a cinema night on adjoining Rugby Street. Closing off the street and inviting the local community to a showing of French romantic comedy Amélie was a tremendous success.

What was also gratifying was that local traders Vats Wine Bar and Cigala chipped in with free coffees, Green & Blacks donated ice creams and French’s Dairy also helped out, simply in the cause of adding to the community feel. As well as pubs and cafés, Lamb’s Conduit Street is home to a doctor’s surgery and an undertaker.

H&N:

Is there a wider significance to the success of Lamb’s Conduit Street?

Can 180 office, retail and residential units in the heart of Bloomsbury be a template for the revival of beleaguered high streets across the UK?

AG:

Certainly we believe that the majority of Lamb’s Conduit Street being in a few long-term investors’ ownership helps.

Rather than the piecemeal approach taken across many of Britain’s high streets, created by fragmented ownership, Lamb’s Conduit Street shows how a high street can be asset managed and planned for the long term.

“The layout of Lamb’s Conduit Street isn’t particularly userfriendly. Our dream scenario is Le Touquet-style shared space, where people can enjoy a coffee on the pavements” The fact that its owners are committed to the long term and not just trading assets on shortterm business plans ensures a more gradual approach can be adopted for the street’s growth. The mix is also crucial, and Lamb’s Conduit Street does provide a good example of how even in Central London residential, retail and leisure uses can co-exist cheek by jowl. Many of our tenants do not own a car, and to have a range of uses and amenities on their doorstep is just the sustainable environment they need.

There is no reason, then, for

Having worked with the landlord to change the tone, atmosphere and mix we want to make even more of what we’ve got. The layout of Lamb’s Conduit Street isn’t particularly user-friendly. Our dream scenario is Le Touquet-style shared space, where people can enjoy a coffee on the pavements, others can walk down the street and cars are not completely eliminated. In the summer we want to see tables out on the pavement, maintaining the vibrancy and buzz shoppers enjoy inside the street’s stores.

We are also debating weekend use of Lamb’s Conduit Street. Without in any way detracting from its charm we want to make it better known as a destination, and in particular to attract more people on a Saturday.

Sunday is a difficult question – and is an obstacle to mixed use as a concept for high streets across the UK. Our gut feel is that Lamb’s Conduit Street’s residents like the peace and quiet that comes with its shops being closed on a Sunday, even if its bars and pubs are lively every day. We are also always on the lookout for opportunities to regenerate tired and under-used buildings that might fall vacant on Lamb’s Conduit Street.

No one likes an eyesore, and with the landlord always on the lookout for the potential for improvement we can’t afford to stand still.

It’s important for us to keep a close eye on what residents and tenants want from Lamb’s Conduit Street, and to that end we work closely with all stakeholders on PR initiatives, public realm improvements and events.

Andrew Glover is partner at Farebrother Find out more at farebrother.com

THE ART OF STEWARDSHIP

39

AoU Journal #3 Spring 2014

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ACADEMICIANS

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Eddie Bridgeman | Guy Briggs | Jane Briginshaw | Annabel Brown | Patricia Brown | Samantha Bryans | Mark Burgess | Jonathan Burroughs | Richard Burton | Peter Butenschøn | Prof Georgia Butina Watson | Peter Butler | Peter Butter | Gerry Cahill | Bruce Calton | Fiona Campbell | Charles Campion | Steve Canadine | Tony Carey | Fredrik Carlsson | Simon Carne | James Carr | Sam Cassels | Lynne Ceeney | Sue Chadwick | Tim Challans | Marion Chalmers | Joanna Chambers | Sarah Chaplin | Dominic Edward Chapman | James Chapman | Peter Chapman | Richard Charge | Stephen Chatfield | Alain Chiaradia | Nick Childs | Tom Clarke | Anne Cleary | John Henry Cleary | Clare Coats | Joktan Cohen | Dr Jim Coleman | Robert Coles | Jason Collard | Garry Colligan | Paul Collins | Martin Colreavy | Max Comfort | Brian Condon | Charlotte Cook | Karen Cooksley | Prof Rachel Cooper OBE | Dr João Cortesão | Will Cousins | Rob Cowan | David Cowans | Toby Crayden | Emily Crompton | Chris Crook | Adam Crozier Ciaran Cuffe | Linda Curr | Hal Currey | Ned Cussen | Justine Daly | Jane Dann |

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BE

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An d

DIRECTORS

AoU Journal #3 Spring 2014 Alex Davey | Philip Davies | Nick Davis | Paul Davis | Mark Davy | Eric Dawson | Peter de Bois | Neil de Prez | Sophia de Sousa | Ian Deans | Toby Denham | Guy Denton | Nick Dermott | Hank Dittmar | Lord John Doune | John Drever | Paul Drew | Eugene Dreyer | Peter Drummond | Michael Duff | Tony Duggan | Brian Dunlop | Rosamund Dunn | Paul Dunne | Paul Durnien | Prof Mark Dyer | John Dyke | David Edwards | Elad Eisenstein | Luke Engleback | Dan Epstein | Gavin Erasmus | Karen Escott | Roger Estop | Prof Brian Evans | Prof Graeme Evans | Roger Evans | Nick Ewbank | Dr Nicholas Falk | Ross Faragher | Kerri Farnsworth | Max Farrell | Sir Terry Farrell CBE | Ian Fenn | Jaimie Ferguson | Frances Fernandes | Andrew Fisher | Diana Fitzsimons | Clive Fletcher | David Fletcher | Prof Carlotta Fontana | Sue Foster OBE | Bernie Foulkes | Ted Fowler | Jane Fowles | Simon Foxell | Alan Francis | Peter Frankum | Jerome Frost | Daisy Froud | Tim Gale | Catherine Gallagher | Nora Galley | Jeremy Gardiner | Carole Garfield | Lindsay Garratt | Tim Garratt | Will Garrett | Angus Gavin | John Geeson | Lia Ghilardi | Andy Gibbins | Prof Mike Gibson | Ian Gilzean | Christopher Glaister | Stephen Gleave | Dick Gleeson | Guy Goodman | Keith Gowenlock | Gerry Grams | Michele Grant | Mark Greaves | Jonathan Greenfield | Ali Grehan | James Gross | Simon Guest | Richard Guise | Patrick Gulliver | Ben Hamilton-Baillie | Tim Hancock | Derek Harding | Rob Harris | Geoff Haslam | David Hastings | Philip Hayden | Helen Hayes | Michael Hayes CBE | Peter Heath | Michael Hegarty | David Height | Wayne Hemingway MBE | Simon Henley | James Hennessey | David Hennings | Mark Hensman | Paul Hildreth | Stephen Hinsley | Ian Hoad | Marco Hobbensiefken | Tom Holbrook | Eric Holding | Peter Hollis | Stephen Hollowood | Alec Howard | Stephen Howlett | Robin Hoyles | Jun Huang | Anthony Hudson | Jonathan Hughes | Richard Hulbert | Michael Hurlow | John Hyland | Julian Jackson | Philip Jackson | Sarah Jackson | Colin James | Dr Noël James | Timothy Jemison | Dr Ying Jin | Cathy Johnston | Gwilym Jones | Howard Jones | Stephen Jordan | Rory Joyce | Dr Kari Kankaala | Dr Kayvan Karimi | Andy Karski | Philip Kassanis | Dr Harald Kegler | John Kelpie | Steve Kemp | Jonathan Kendall | Angus Kennedy | David Kennedy | John Kennedy | Justin Kenworthy | Mary Kerrigan | Ros Kerslake | Anne Kiernan | Janice Kirkpatrick | Mark Knight | Angela Koch | Chris Lamb | Charles Landry | Derek Latham | Michele Lavelle | Diarmaid Lawlor | Adrian Lee | Marcus Lee | John Letherland | Michael Lewis | Stephen Lewis | Kevin Leyden | Einar Lillebye | Michael Liverman | Joe Lobko | David Lock | Fred London | John Lord | Mark Lucas | David Lumb | Maja Luna Jorgensen | Nikolas Lyzba | Barra Mac Ruairí | Carol MacBain | Robin Machell | Roddie Maclean | Keiji Makino | Geoff Makstutis | Jordana Malik | Grace Manning-Marsh | Louise Mansfield | Riccardo Marini | Andreas Markides | Peter Marsh | Dr Kat Martindale | Mike Martyn | Phil Mason | Peter Massey | Andrew Matthews | Bob May | Dr Alice Maynard | James McAdam | Steve McAdam | John McCall |

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HONORARY ACADEMICIANS

Prof Wulf Daseking | Jan Gehl | Christer Larsson

HONORARY TREASURER David Miles

ARTIST IN RESIDENCE David Rudlin

POET IN RESIDENCE Ian McMillan

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…and a Final Thought…

FOOD FOR THOUGHT LEARNING TO LEARN FROM PLACE PART 1

By David Porter We are seriously misinformed about information. Everyone seems to agree that there is more information in the world than ever before. But is there more wisdom? Are we actually better informed about our world than people 40 (or 400) years ago?

Part of our problem is that we bundle very different things together under that single term – ‘information’. Compared with the world of food, for example, our vocabulary for talking about ‘information’ is, if you will forgive the pun, starved of helpful terms. With food we can talk of global food production, without confusing it with what is available to conveniently buy, and we don’t confuse that with what we can store locally in our fridge, and we don’t confuse that with what we can comfortably eat (and digest) in a meal.

With ‘information’ the same word is used to describe global production; the available supply; the locally storable and the comfortably digestible.

With food we have a word for consuming it – ‘eating’ and although we have a word for consuming information –‘learning’, we tend to associate this with schools and colleges, not thinking of it as an essential activity of everyday life – we cannot think without learning.

In many ways ‘digestion’ is a better word than ‘consumption’ for it describes the way something which was ‘out there’, becomes digested and ‘part of us’. We are not only what we eat but we are what we know. Learning is as essential a biological function as eating, breathing and sex. In all these cases something is transferred from the outside world to become part of us. More amateur biology – a lizard has eyes that are not so different to ours – a retina with many millions of receptor cells. Light falls on these cells and any difference in the pattern of light stimulates them, but the lizard does not ‘see’ these changes unless the pattern of change – of movement – can be recognised as representing prey. Then the lizard ‘sees’ and strikes

with great speed. All the other shifting patterns of light that stimulate the retina are neither here nor there – it is only the patterns that specifically represent food that stimulate the lizard’s brain. It is the message ‘this could be grub’ that is information for the lizard. As Gregory Bateson put it: “information is news of difference that makes a difference.”

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We are not so different from lizards for very little of the stimulus that activates our senses makes it into our conscious mind. As many of the acid-victims of the 1960s found, if you open the doors to perception too wide, you go crazy. To remain operational in the face of the huge influx of stimulus we use much of our huge brain capacity to filter out what is coming in and predict what will happen next – a double act that we invented long before we transferred it to ‘predictive texting’ and ‘spam filtering’ for our gadgets. It is a wonderful skill – intuition.

Editorial Team Alastair Blyth Stephen Gallagher Olga Surawska

The thing about information is that it should inform so it changes, in a small way, our minds. My issue with ‘information’ is not its supply, which seems close to infinite, but its digestion which, as a biological function, has a lower and upper threshold – too little and we go hungry, to much and we blow-out and become inactive. Being bloated on ‘information’ is similarly uncomfortable.

We are not in need of more information but better information – the learning equivalent of a varied, balanced and healthy diet. The balance is what intuition is for and I’ll return to next time.

David Porter AoU is Professor of Architecture at the Central Academy of Fine Art in Beijing _

Gregory Bateson began as a biologist, became an anthropologist then helped found cybernetics and information theory, was a pioneer of ecology, studied communication in dolphins and human schizophrenics, inventing ‘double bind’ theory. The quote is from ‘Mind & Nature’. Did he influence Christopher Alexander? If any of you know, please let me know.

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Editorial Panel Steven Bee Sarah Chaplin Kevin Murray David Porter Dr James White Saffron Woodcraft Cover Marseille The European City of the Year 2014 Vieux Port Pavilion, Marseille,

by Foster + Partners © Edmund Sumner