AoU Journal 9: Who knows best?

Here & Now

AoU Journal No. 9 Spring 2017 ISSN 2058-9123 ÂŁ7

In focus: who knows best?

Young people in placemaking People take back control in Puerto Rico Does the community always know best?

Interview with Aarhus City Mayor

Contents

Front cover image: Jacob Bundsgaard, Aarhus City Mayor

1 Welcome 2 Editorial 3 The Academy in action 8

Smarter urbanisation for valuing local capital Should the AoU make more room for quantitative data?

Asks Nicholas Falk AoU

The Academy of Urbanism 70 Cowcross Street London EC1M 6EJ United Kingdom +44 (0) 20 7251 8777 academyofurbanism.org.uk @theAoU Join The Academy of Urbanism on LinkedIn, Facebook and Flickr Editorial team Alastair Blyth (Editor) Delano Bart-Stewart Steven Bee Stephen Gallagher Emeka Efe Osaji David Rudlin Lucy Sykes Timothy White Design Richard Wolfströme Advertise in this Journal!

If you would like to reach our broad and active audience, speak to Stephen Gallagher on sg@academyofurbanism.org.uk or +44 (0) 20 7251 8777

11

Foresight for cities Eleri Jones AoU and Rachel Cooper AoU report on the government’s long-term thinking on cities

14

A mug’s guide to place leadership Stuart Gulliver talks lays out his top tips

17

Heart in the Right Street - beauty, happiness and health in designing the modern city Nicholas Boys Smith AoU offers a glimpse of Create Streets’ new report

37 Making space for children

and young people in placemaking

Our future but also our

present; Sophia de Sousa AoU

and Louise Dredge 40

Localism and the battle over sites Tim White on the issues affecting Gypsy and Traveller site provision

43

Square pegs and round holes: Can academia engage with its community? Lucy Montague AoU reports

20 Lux LED!

By all means light up your

cities, but do it tastefully and

respectfully, argues Steven Bee AoU

46 Does the community always

know best?

Simon Bayliss AoU on his up

and down experience of engagement

22 From San Sebastián to the

world: a journey through culture

Mayor Eneko Goia reflects on

his city’s year in the limelight

50

My place People with places that are significant in their lives

52

Space for great places!

A gallery of ideas and reflections on great places

56

Urban idiocy Brilliant but flawed ideas for the city

25

Who knows best?...in focus

26

Living Danishly: Interview with Aarhus City Mayor James Gross AoU interviews Jacob Bundsgaard

30

People take back control in Puerto Rico Line Algoed on community land trusts that have trans formed informal settlements

34

From Occupy to occupation Kathryn Firth AoU speaks to some young practices making urbanism more democratic

58 Book Review: Masterplanning

59

My own view is...

John Worthington on the power of generosity

60

Academicians and Young Urbanists Who we are

The Academy of Urbanism is a politically independent, not-for-profit organisation that brings together both the current and next generation of urban leaders, thinkers and practitioners. Our mission is to recognise, encourage and celebrate great places across the UK, Europe and beyond, and the people and organisations that create and sustain them.

Welcome

Join the Academy Becoming an Academician, Young Urbanist or Friend at academyofurbanism.org.uk/ membership Support the Academy Sponsor one or more of our programmes of developing, learning, partnering and disseminating. Please contact Linda Gledstone on +44 (0) 20 7251 8777.

Principal Sponsor Grosvenor Sponsors* Alan Baxter Barton Willmore David Lock Associates Farrer & Co. JTP Milton Keynes Council Muir Group Perkins+Will Savills Space Syntax The Centre: MK U+I Supporters in kind* BDP Gillespies Jas Atwal Associates Kevin Murray Associates London Festival of Architecture Monocle Prentis & Co. Space Syntax Steve Bee Urban Counsel URBED * Spring 2017 Academy Team Linda Gledstone Director of Operations Stephen Gallagher Director of Communications Zarreen Hadadi Membership Executive Delano Bart-Stewart Communications Executive Bright Pryde-Saha Young Urbanist Co-ordinator Dogan Behic Accounts

When did people get so angry?

Those of us who engage with the tricky business of public consultation will have noticed a change in recent years. Running a workshop or charrette, or even just standing next to exhibition boards, has always included an element of risk and we all have stories to tell and scars to show. At URBED – my day-job – our nadir was a public meeting of 400 angry people in Rochdale where we did at one point fear for our safety.

However this level of anger has multiplied in the age of social media and it is no longer just the result of professionals getting things wrong (as we did in Kirkholt – sorry about that).

Today even proposals that should be relatively uncontentious can blow up into a major confrontation. A handful of objectors who might have been disruptive but outnumbered in a workshop can now set up a Facebook page that quickly becomes a focus for opposition. This opposition is fuelled by posts to the site, some of which are simply untrue, but all of which are unmediated by the sort of human interaction that you get in face-to-face consultation. Pretty soon you have a baying mob who have written off your carefully designed sensitive piece of urbanism as the work of greedy capitalist developers and their metropolitan elite designers (those jeans aren’t fooling anyone!).

This may not be on the scale of Brexit or Trump but it is part of the same process and it asks difficult questions of The Academy of Urbanism. We were going to call this issue ‘does the community always know best?’ but opted for the slightly less contentious ‘who knows best?’ Nevertheless, in a world where certain voices are amplified in the echo chamber of social media while others are drowned out, it is a question that we need to ask.

In many of our discussions about urbanism the Academy can sometimes retreat to rather glib responses that suggest that all we need to do is ask the community. We should be co-creating places with the communities that live and work there, who are the real place experts. This is something that the Academy still believes and which is explored in a number of articles in this issue. But, as the articles suggest, we should not pretend that this is easy, or doesn’t sometimes involve disagreements and difficult choices. As those of us who are consultants know, just as our clients sometimes get things wrong, so do the communities that we work with. The response to both needs to be framed with equal care and probably isn’t going to happen via the internet.

People may have become angrier and consultation and participation may have become more difficult but it is more important than ever. We shouldn’t allow this anger to persuade us to farm out consultation to community relations consultants or to close down dialogue for fear of a backlash. In my experience we need to engage with social media to counter ‘fake news’, but there is no substitute for face-to-face contact, a discussion bestrewn with humans who may disagree but are still willing to engage and to understand each other’s view. Hopefully this issue of Here & Now gives some pointers to how we might continue to do this.

David Rudlin AoU Chair

Chair’s introduction 1

Editorial

I wrote the first draft of this editorial the morning after the London Bridge Borough Market terrorist attack. Most of us will have watched in horror the television pictures and eyewitness accounts. Our heartfelt sympathy and thoughts going to the victims and their families and friends.

Yet again safety and security on our streets is under the spotlight. This was the third attack in Britain in as many months and the second which targeted people on our streets. Let us also not forget Nice. People are justifiably concerned about how to make places safer. The streets, market places and squares form the arteries of towns and cities and we as urbanists must continue to reappraise how we can contribute to making and keeping these valuable spaces safe.

While this edition of the Journal does not specifically cover safe places, the issues discussed will relate.

In My own view...“Give to get” John Worthington MBE AoU makes an apposite point “Generosity distinguishes collaborative urbanists and successful cities.” He notes the shift in public disquiet towards the integrity of our political systems 10 years on from the global financial crisis. Civil society, he argues has an important role to play in improving livelihoods by working collaboratively.

Separately, Eleri Jones AoU and Rachel Cooper OBE AoU reflect on how the UK Government Foresight project on the Future of Cities can offer a way forward through engagement.

Effective place leadership is key argues Stuart Gulliver, former chief executive of the Glasgow Development Agency. Although his piece focuses on development projects, the four underpinning principles are more widely applicable, from choosing the right people in the development team, creating a delivery culture, project passion and visits to other similar projects.

But how can we know whether all this will lead to better places? The empirical evidence-base for links between urban form, design and wellbeing as Nicholas Boys Smith AoU points out is developing as he looks at correlations between elements of built form and measurable wellbeing. It may be intuitively obvious that scale, greenery and well-connected streets are important, but it’s nice to have the empirical evidence to say so. Indeed, perhaps such evidence might answer Nicholas Falk AoU’s invitation to use quantitative data to support the qualitative assessments of places that the Academy carries out, in his review of the AoU’s latest publication Urbanism.

Alastair Blyth AoU Editor 2 Here & Now | AoU Journal No. 9 | Spring 2017

The Academy in action!

The Academy has been breaking new ground in 2017. Not only are we embarking on a thematic exploration into the high-tech world of digital urbanism, we have also responded to a UK government call for evidence on housing. On more familiar ground, we have also announced the finalists of the 2018 Urbanism Awards and report back from a hugely successful conference in Dundee on the future of streets.

This diversifying menu of activities represents the way we aim to listen to and be shaped by the things that interest and concern you. If you have an idea for an area of urbanism that you think the AoU should turn its attention to, please get in touch! Contact Stephen Gallagher, director of communications, on sg@academyofurbanism.org.uk.

Editor’s introduction | AoU in Action 3

THE URBANISM AWARDS 165 became 180 in April as the latest 15 finalists (below) of The Urbanism Awards were announced on the evening of the AoU’s Spring Debate, at which our very persuasive panel argued for and against the motion: “This house believes that good urbanists should generally avoid green fields.”

Assessment visits will be conducted over the summer that will showcase what it is that makes each of them tick – from people to policy to practice.

Academicians and Young Urbanists are encouraged to take full advantage. After all, as Stuart Gulliver tells us on p14, the “Visit-Inspect-Interview approach is a serious part of your role and if planned properly, will be your single best source of innovation, entrepreneurship and know-how”.

Find out more about attending an Assessment Visit at academyofurbanism.org.uk/awards

LAUNCH OF URBANISM Or launches, rather, as we report having taken the Academy’s new book on the road to Leeds, Manchester, London, Glasgow, Bristol and soon to Aberdeen, Scarborough and Edinburgh.

life, including not only vehicle access and human walkability, but safety and well-being, local economic needs and shifts in arts and culture. There has been a progressive shift from utilitarian corridors to ‘positive’ streets where people can feel comfortable, safe and even inspired by their surroundings.

The book picks up where Learning from Place 1 and 2 left off to showcase the next 75 Great Places that featured in The Urbanism Awards, from 2009 to 2013. Figure grounds, photographs, sketches and poetry by Ian McMillan combine with a written narrative to tell the story of entrepreneurship, ambition and people-power behind the reinvention or endurance of these fantastic places.

This Streets Beyond: Beyond Streets event engaged a broad audience of over 120, including built environment decision-makers and professional planners, academics and researchers, architects and urban designers, landscape architects, highway and traffic engineers, regeneration, health, housing, town centre managers, consultants, retailers, public art and cultural practitioners.

Buy a copy online: academyofurbanism. org.uk/urbanism-75-greatplaces-2009-2013/

The aim was to provide the leading forum for those concerned with the creation and development of quality public spaces; to consider the latest thinking and innovative approaches to the design, management and activation of the public realm.

November 2016

STREETS BEYOND: BEYOND STREETS November 2016

European City of the Year Bilbao, Spain Ljubljana, Slovenia Vienna, Austria The Great Town Corby, Northamptonshire Coventry, West Midlands Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire The Great Neighbourhood Byker, Newcastle Golden Lane Estate, London Smithfield, Dublin The Great Street High Street, North Berwick Humber Street Fruit Market, Hull Smallbrook Queensway, Birmingham

This collaborative learning event celebrated the 10th anniversary of The Academy of Urbanism and was organised jointly between the Academy, the University of Dundee, Architecture and Design Scotland and set within the Scottish Government’s Year of Innovation, Architecture and Design. The focus on streets and public space builds upon the highly successful ‘Place Making’ symposia series previously run by the University of Dundee, Academy of Urbanism, Architecture Design Scotland and other partners.

For more information visit: academyofurbanism.org.uk/streetsbeyond- beyond-streets/ The next step for those that led this event, including Dr Husam AlWaer AoU, Jas Atwal AoU and Kevin Murray AoU, is to hold an event this coming November on Neighbourhoods, at which they will explore the physical, social and economic attributes of previous AoU Great Neighbourhood Finalists.

DIGITAL URBANISM March

Streets and other urban spaces need to respond to the demands of modern

The Great Place Brunswick Centre, London Roald Dahl Plass, Cardiff Gaol Ferry Steps, Bristol

AoU Spring Debate

It is a topic that first emerged within the AoU back in 2013. It has featured at events and discussions, but never as the main agenda. So it was with some excitement that Brian Condon AoU and Tim Stonor AoU planned this Digital Urbanism meet at Space Syntax.

Drawing together around 20 Academicians and Young Urbanists and an interesting guest group of senior officers from Auckland government, we asked a simple question: what, if anything, could the Academy bring to the smart / digital cities agenda that is both distinctive and useful.

Starting an event with a hint of selfdoubt was an interesting tactic, but it seemed to work. People’s hopes and fears for the digital city revolution were laid bare.

4 Here & Now | AoU Journal No. 9 8 || Spring Autumn 2017 2016

as the physical manifestation of a polarised, unfair society and a stage on which violence and conflict play out.

Speakers included: Anwar Akhtar, director of The Samosa, on Multicultural Cultural Cities; Cllr Amina Lone, co-director of The Social Action and Research Foundation, on Feminism in Manchester’s Muslim Communities; and Alexandra King, partnership director at CityCo, on Ending Homelessness in Manchester.

Ljubljana, one of the European City of the Year finalists in the 2018 Urbanism Awards © Gilad Rom

Each of the talks was a full house, which just demonstrates that there are people ready to tackle these big issues.

Watch the talks at: 4x4manchester.com

Condon distilled the discussion brilliantly into four streams, each of which our group thought the Academy could look to apply some original thinking: Masterplanning and design; Infrastructure and Smart Systems; Human behaviour and behaviour change; Data for decision making in Urban Design.

Rudlin said: “The way we develop new homes has a huge effect on the quality of our towns and cities and the failure to build enough homes in recent years and the poor quality of much of what has been built has undermined the quality of urban areas and turned the public against the very idea of development.”

Condon is with the AoU working up plans to take this discussion on the road and already an event has been organised in Newcastle by Dr Emine Thompson AoU and hosted by Northumbria University and Space Syntax. If you are keen to attend, host or encourage a discussion in your city, please contact Stephen Gallagher on sg@academyofurbanism.org.uk.

For more information on joining the group contact Stephen Gallagher on sg@academyofurbanism.org.uk.

HOUSING WHITE PAPER May

Housing has been a concern of the Academy for a number of years and as such a working group was established to look at the design of new housing and planning of new suburbs and neighbourhoods. In light of the government’s Housing White Paper, the group took the opportunity to submit a response, a summary of which will soon be online.

The group, however, went a step further than the questions limited by the government. Drawing on the experiences and knowledge of Academicians via a questionnaire, they were able to suggest areas identified as lacking attention, which included design quality.

4X4 MANCHESTER May

Tolerant, safe, welcoming, radical.

Four strong and evocative words the meanings of which are being tested, stretched and considered perhaps now more than ever before. 4x4 Manchester – a series of four lectures in May each with four speakers – took these as their themes as they wondered about the morality of our urban environments. Is the city a den of iniquity and inequality? Or a steppingstone to Utopia? The city can be seen as a beautiful self-regulating system, allowing hugely varied communities to live side by side. Or it can be seen

Streets Beyond: Beyond Streets workshop session

AOU MANIFESTO Last year marked the 10th anniversary of The Academy of Urbanism and an opportunity to consider the 18 principles that we believe can begin to guide the formation of a great place.

Taking inspiration from the 2026 Urbanism Manifesto, currently being finalised by the Young Urbanists, and the Agenda for the Future of Urbanism, published with Barton Willmore, we will lead a review of the principles.

Starting at the Academy’s Mid-Year Review on 26 July 2017, it is hoped that we will be able to incorporate the thoughts and ideas of Academicians and Young Urbanists wherever you are based. To register your interest in assisting, please contact Stephen Gallagher on sg@academyofurbanism. org.uk.

Urbanism book launch in Victoria Quarter, Leeds

But as David Rudlin said in his response as chair of the Academy, there were parts that were welcomed, and others that were more complicated and left wide open.

Editor’s introduction | AoU in Action 5

YOUNG URBANISTS SMALL GRANTS SCHEME Dutch Cycling in London, Everyone can do it!

A bit of history 1885: United Kingdom – the city bike (now often called Dutch bike) is invented by JK Starley, inventor born and raised in Walthamstow, London.

1920-1930: In nearly all industrialised countries – bike boom!

1970s: In the same countries – car boom, followed by deadly years for cyclists and pedestrians. In 1971, motorists in the Netherlands killed 3,300 pedestrians and cyclists, including 450 kids. Air pollution became a major problem in the largest cities. Wanting their space and safety back, citizens started to protest and convinced their authorities to put people, pedestrians and cyclists at the heart of street design. Cycling is now the most popular way of getting around in the Netherlands.

2017: London is facing the same issues as Amsterdam in 1971: Air pollution, accidents, oil dependence... The mayor has decided to tackle these by increasing the cycling infrastructure budget. Planners and designers have set cycling design standards. Charities are lobbying for cyclists’ safety. Lots of Londoners have found the courage to start cycling, even though the infrastructure is often not safe yet.

But are current strategies and cycling habits the best to accelerate the process of making London more cycle-friendly? Unlike the Dutch in the seventies, Londoners have got the chance to learn from 50 years’ experience.

Learning from the Dutch

Empathy Walks

Saskia Huizinga started the project ‘Dutch Cycling in London’ to show Londoners, planners, designers and authorities the success factors behind Dutch cycling. She points to the differences between London and the Netherlands through her informative and satirical website, Twitter and Facebook pages ‘Dutch Cycling in London’.

Empathy Walks (EW) is an open source project that aims to build empathy with people from different backgrounds in the city. It aims to unlock narratives and open space for diverse voices to be acknowledged.

To expose the differences that have an impact on cycling safety, practicality and accessibility, Huizinga uses three categories: cycling lifestyle, cycling design and cycling policies. Here is a snapshot of a few differences!

In London, generally: Cyclists are dressed up like they’re racing the Tour de France Cyclists are mostly young and male Cyclists are pushed away from high streets Motorists, protected in their vehicles, and vulnerable cyclists and pedestrians are treated the same way by the law In the Netherlands, generally: Cyclists are dressed for their destination Cyclists are everyone Cyclists are the main users of high streets and support local economies Motorists are liable for at least 50 per cent of any damage if they’re involved in an accident with a cyclist or pedestrian, even if they are not responsible Want to know more? Visit us online on DutchCyclinginLondon.com, Facebook. com/DuCycLon or twitter.com/ DuCycLon, or contact us at hello@dutchcylinginlondon.com.

6 Here & Now | AoU Journal No. 9 8 || Spring Autumn 2017 2016

EW believes that walking other people’s paths can trigger understanding of each other’s experiences and existence – empathy, in other words – generating greater respect between citizens, and a better coexistence in diverse and dense urban environments that are often seen as anonymous and impersonal.

EW is motivated by the belief that walking together as a tool for building tolerance can add to collective approaches towards city-making, influencing urban design and planning towards more bottom-up processes.

The walks are developed through a six-step methodology that provides a simple and replicable toolkit to be applied in cities worldwide. It allows unvoiced stories to be walkable, and shareable. The steps are: 1. Finding a walk leader, often through community organisations already established.

2. Accessing the walk leader’s experience of the city through interview, mental mapping and a shared exploratory walk. The walk leader is invited to reflect on their participation in the city and to map their personal experience.

3. Co-creating the walk route, based on places of meaning for the walk leader.

4. Setting the walk and disseminating the invitation. Group sizes of between 10-15 people make it more interactive.

5. Walking together: During the event, participants are given a map of the area

Inclusive Cities In March, ‘Citymaking: voices of the LGBTQ+ community’ took place as part of the Small Grant’s project ‘The Inclusive City: an LGBTQ+ Perspective’ . The event was organised in collaboration with the Building and Social Housing Foundation (BSHF), an independent research organisation focusing on good solutions to housing and urban issues globally. and encouraged to note their feelings and how they empathise with the area through the walk leader’s description.

Analysis of personal maps and layering of information provided by participants will be used to measure the empathic power of walks.

6. Documenting the walk and disseminating the material.

The resulting qualitative data about places and effective cartographies of the city will be made available to people and planning authorities.

Empathy Walks also aims to offer training to local authorities on community outreach and to enrich urban studies through local, everyday knowledge from ordinary citizens.

Most importantly, EW aims to strengthen empathy as the backbone of any alternative narrative of the city, regarding all citizens equally as city makers and supporting connections that will allow cities to be places of holistic sustainable connections.

Get in touch! empathywalks@gmail.com empathywalks.wordpress.com

The event presented the results of the #MyQueerCity workshop where views were gathered around what an inclusive city means to Gender and Sexual Minorities in terms of housing, services and facilities, and infrastructure and public space.

Attendees were also encouraged to digress to include other needs and dreams that do not necessarily fall into these categories. These results were organised into the following themes: 1. Visibility (of people and issues): representation of LGBTQIA+ people amongst decision-makers, built environment professionals, public people of influence; as well as a presence in the public space.

2. Adequate spaces: spaces and infrastructure designed to responds to people’s needs.

3. Adequate services: services designed so that they are appropriate and fit the needs of LGBTQIA+ people.

4. Community solidarity and action: mobilisation and activism for LGBTQIA+ rights and wellbeing.

5. Financial and political support by

society and authorities: Recognition of issues specific to Gender and Sexual Minorities and explicit commitment by public authorities to address them.

6. Intersectionality: Recognising the overlapping or intersecting of social identities, and addressing the relation between various systems of oppression and discrimination – in order to make sure no members of the LGBTQIA+ community are left behind.

This project illustrated the gaps and inequalities faced by this minority group in the urban context, such as barriers to safe and adequate housing, lack of visibility and representation in city-making, concerns about safety in public spaces, the loss of community facilities, and insufficient funding and commitment by city authorities to tackle LGBTQ+ specific issues.

Yet, it also highlighted many creative solutions and enthusiasm around redefining and reclaiming queer spaces.

Two speakers from organisations making real change in improving conditions for LGBTQ+ people in cities also presented their work at the event. These were: Lucy Warin from Sexual Avengers – an activist network dedicated to ‘re-queering spaces’ through mobilisation and direct action; and Michael Nastari from Stonewall Housing – a charity focusing on advice or supported housing for vulnerable LGBTQ+ people (and finalist of the 2016-17 World Habitat Awards for good practices in housing organised by BSHF).

The floor was then opened to the public, which left space for discussions around various related topics, including the effects of gentrification on the LGBTQ+ community and whether there were good examples of inclusive city-making for LGBTQ+ people globally.

“Despite the many difficulties still faced by the LGBTQ+ community, I believe this event was overwhelmingly marked by a positive willingness and energy to act together to overcome barriers and move towards more inclusive cities, and also helped us reflect on links of solidarity with other underrepresented groups that make up the cities we live in today,” said Mariangela Veronesi.

For more updates on the project, please follow @MariVeroUk and keep an eye on the #MyQueerCity hashtag, or write to mariangela.veronesi@bshf.org to be included in the follow up email thread.

Editor’s introduction | AoU in Action 7

Smarter urbanisation and valuing local capital Following the recent publication of Urbanism, a compendium of the Academy’s Great Places from 2009-2013, Nicholas Falk AoU asks whether quantitative data could be used to support the qualitative assessments of the award judges. Two recent reports, ‘Competing with the Continent’ from the Centre for Cities, and European Union study: ‘The State of European Cities 2016’ may provide some clues.

The AoU’s strength, like the Good Food Guide, lies in the experience of its members. But its declared aim to ‘learn from place’ is ‘fiendishly difficult’, as the authors of Urbanism conclude. Hence there are no ‘templates or simple best practice lessons’ in this beautifully illustrated compendium. But even a food critic takes note of the cost of the meal, and judges more than just the taste. So after 10 years of looking at towns and cities all over Europe, are there ways of refining our judgements and recognising transformation in difficult circumstances?

Starting with the economy Huge progress has been made in recent years in handling ‘big data’, with GIS (Geographic Information Systems) allowing comparisons that transcend local authority boundaries. These lead to various forms of indices or ranking, such as those published by Monocle or the Economist Intelligence Unit. It should be worth looking at the places that score highly but that have not yet been assessed by the Academy. A good place to start is the Centre for Cities report, Competing with the Continent, on how UK cities compare with their European counterparts.1 Backed up

with a data tool that allows you to make your own comparisons, the report compares 330 cities across 17 European countries.

The report shows how poorly British cities generally compare with their Continental counterparts, apart from London and a few exceptional stars like Oxford and Reading. Indeed, the Centre for Cities considers the UK ratings to be most similar to places in Eastern Europe on factors such as skills, innovation and productivity, which is what they regard as most important. The poor showing can partly be explained by suburbanisation, which has in the past attracted the most talented to move away, and also by poor transport links and an over-academic form of education.

But there are also important political, geographic and historic factors that the report does not bring out. Provincial cities on the Continent benefit from having played much wider roles, which has left them with a legacy of fine buildings and public places. They also generally have stronger economic bases, particularly in smaller cities where there is often still a major manufacturer in premises that in the

8 Here & Now | AoU Journal No. 9 8 | Autumn Spring 2017 2016

UK would have been redeveloped for retail. As it is businesses, not local authorities that compete for markets we would do well to pay more attention to peripheral industrial towns that have ‘turned around’ such as Donostia / San Sebastián in the Basque Country (the winner of the 2015 European City of the Year award), or Kassel or Leipzig in Germany, which are profiled in Good Cities Better Lives.2 Connecting cities The UK’s evolution as an island off the coast of the Continent has also had a profound influence on the quality and size of its cities as well as their roles.

While Britain may have benefited from early industrialisation in the first part of the 19th century, thanks to plentiful coal, and was well suited to imperial trade thanks to a host of ports, its cities are not so well-connected today compared with those on the Rhine or other great rivers.

Maps within the Centre for Cities report highlight the close proximity of most British cities to each other, as also is the case in Belgium and the Netherlands. However in France and Germany, where towns are more

dispersed, there are well-connected clusters outside the capital city. For example, Heidelberg, which rates far above Oxford in patents per 100,000 inhabitants (a measure of innovation), undoubtedly benefits from its location in the high-tech state of Baden Wurttemberg, and proximity to industrial powerhouses such as Karlsruhe, to which it is linked by both tram and trains. As the report stresses though, large cities are generally more innovative than smaller ones, agglomerations can fight back if they have the right governance.

Even more insights can be drawn from a mammoth European Union study, The State of European Cities 2016: Cities leading the way to a better future. This report compares major cities with over 250,000 people in their ‘Functional Urban Areas’ in a superb series of maps and charts. Europe turns out to be less urbanised than some parts of the developing world, but has a much denser network of cities. Most people live in mid-sized cities, not capitals, and unlike the UK, European mid-sized cities do better than average.

Tackling inequalities Economic success is normally measured in GDP per head, or productivity, where only London, and surprisingly Dublin, stand out as ‘very high-income regions in the British Isles.

The contrasts between the English North and South are vividly shown. The EU study goes beyond the Centre for Cities in explaining economic success.

‘Several factors can boost urban productivity; human capital, the quality of the business environment,

Switzerland

entrepreneurship, quality of institutions, market access, access to capital, costs of land and labour, as well as research and innovation.’

Significantly, the cities that stand out in terms of Life Satisfaction include Munich and Leipzig, Antwerp and Graz, and Zurich, rather than the capital cities, which may offer useful lessons for our second cities. The cities that are thought as offering ‘good housing at a reasonable price’ turn out to be Eastern Europe, or in the UK in Tyneside and Belfast. So expensive housing may be one of the prices of success!

Inclusivity is about more than affordability, and there is an interesting comparison of the degree of segregation or dissimilarity, which

reflects the concentration of social housing. Here the cities in the former Soviet Bloc do best, and most capitals have worsened in the decade after 2001.

Mobility in terms of car dependence varies hugely, with the Netherlands doing best in taming the car, and Britain worst along with France. However, France is much more rural than the UK, and our authorities need to learn from cities like Vienna, where car trips fell from 40 to 27 per cent over a couple of decades, and in most cities cars are now used for less than 30 per cent of trips. In contrast, rail-based transport has greatly increased its usage in Western Europe. London and the South East stands out as having the most congested road network, perhaps

SmarterEditor’s urbanisation introduction and valuing | AoU local in Action capital 9

City Shuttle Trains

Aspern Landscape

because in the extensive suburbs cars are used much more. A fascinating chart shows how cities compare in access to public transport, with Bilbao, Lyon and Marseille doing notably well, while Dublin and Manchester lag behind. This shows that what matters is not just having a few iconic tram lines, but integrating the whole suburban rail network in a seamless system. The outstanding cycling cities are Groningen in the north east of the Netherlands and Copenhagen, both of which have bitter climates in winter.

Natural resources also matter, and the EU suggests measuring access to green spaces within a 10-minute walk, making use of the Copernicus Urban Atlas. As cities are denser than rural areas, they use infrastructure much more efficiently. Paris is denser than London in the first 10km but beyond that very similar. But the relationship between urban form or densities and environmental performance is not yet understood, and many small green spaces may be much better than a few larger ones. Pollution tends to increase with city size, as more trips are made.

The UK appears better suited to efficient public transport than much of the rest of Europe, which suggests that the declining usage of buses could be reversed. However it is in Scandinavian cities such as Malmö that the greatest progress has been made in tackling the causes of climate change. The Amsterdam Smart City initiative is

notable for its 80 partners working for a low carbon city, while Manchester is praised for its University Living Lab initiative and innovation district.

Urban governance comes last, but probably is the most fundamental key to success. In Europe as a whole, local government is responsible for almost half of public investment, whereas the UK stands out for being so centralised.

It is the metropolitan area that matters so that cities need to work as networks.

But the UK suffers from being amongst the lowest in local autonomy, far behind the leaders such as Denmark and Germany, and falling behind even the former Soviet Bloc countries in local self-rule and local public investment relative to GDP. Can the UK respond?

The UK is currently pursuing mergers into Combined Authorities where others are fragmenting. The average municipality in Switzerland, one of the best performing counties, has a population of 3,500 inhabitants, whereas in the UK it is around 150,000, five times the level in most of the rest of Europe. Unless ways can be found of generating fresh local sources of income, most of the UK is likely to fall even further behind. So the last report to be reviewed, PWC’s Good Growth Index, proposes an Agenda for Action that calls for ‘Proactive local leadership …to define the vision and identity for the place — what city stakeholders want the

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city to be famous for.’ This is surely one job where the Academy should be able to help!

Dr Nicholas Falk AoU is executive director of The URBED Trust.

1. Hugo Bessis, Competing with the Continent, Centre for Cities September 2016 2. Peter Hall with Nicholas Falk, Good Cities Better Lives: how Europe discovered the lost art of urbanism, Routledge 2014

Foresight for cities The future of cities Today, half the world’s population live in cities. This will rise to 60 per cent by 2030 and to 70 per cent by 2050 .

An estimated half a million new people join the world’s cities every week.

The UK Government Office for Science’s Future of Cities project looked to 2065 to provide policy makers at national and city levels with evidence, tools and capabilities to make evidence based decisions about the future of UK cities.

UK cities have risen up the political agenda.

Eleri Jones AoU and Rachel Cooper OBE AoU reflect on how the UK Government Foresight project on the Future of Cities tried to engage policy makers with evidence and tools to help them think about the long-term future.

The Future of Cities project was one of the most challenging Foresight projects ever attempted. Firstly, due to the breadth of its concerns, any one of the project’s six main thematic areas – Living in the City, Urban Economics, Urban Metabolism, Urban Infrastructure, Urban Form and Urban Governance – could have been a Foresight project in itself!

Milton Keynes City Centre © Destination Milton Keynes

unique insights into how Foresight is perceived, developed and utilised at different levels of government – and how Foresight at different governance levels might be better connected in future. Much has changed since the publication of the final project reports in April 2016, but we feel that the imperative to learn from the project’s ‘twin track’ approach is even greater than ever before.

But in addition to this broad scope, the Future of Cities project initiated a ‘twin track’ programme of City Foresight projects, which were led by cities at the same time as the national project.

These City Foresight projects1 were undertaken by different sectors in each place, depending on who took the initiative to apply for a small amount of seed funding made available by the Government Office for Science. To obtain seed funding, City Foresight projects had to consider the long-term future of the city, involve multiple stakeholders and demonstrate a plan to ensure legacy. But it was up to the city as to how this was achieved, the aim being to encourage cities to take ownership and develop a project that would respond most effectively to local interests and needs.

For instance, the EU Referendum result has shown us that there is a clear need for policy makers to be able to effectively understand and connect the aspirations of localities with decision-making processes across different levels of governance. Cities need to be equipped to develop and communicate genuinely sustainable and inclusive visions of the future effectively: their own imperatives and choices. Whitehall meanwhile needs to have methods for incorporating these visions into coherent national policies that create a future that ‘works for everyone’. We want to illustrate, through the lessons learnt from the Future of Cities project, how Foresight activities in the future can work to support these processes, in practice.

The ‘twin-track’ approach provided the national Foresight project with myriad logistical and analytical challenges.

But, it also provided some really

Over the course of the three-year Foresight Future of Cities project, 15 academic papers were commissioned to provide national level insights across

Editor’s introductionForesight | AoU in forAction cities 11

Image reproduced from the Lancaster Future of Cities project. The project encouraged young people to engage in the process of thinking about the future of Lancaster through a drawing/writing competition asking them to imagine their city, Lancaster, in 2065. According to one competition entry, future transport in Lancaster will include jetpacks.

the project’s six themes, as well as a series of opinion pieces and blogs.

Following a seminar tour of 25 cities across the UK and the initiation of the City Foresight projects, the evidence base swelled to include both academic and anecdotal insights at the city level.

Collation of such a diverse evidence base was a first for a Government Office for Science Foresight project and presented an exciting opportunity to engage Whitehall with genuine insights from those grappling with the day-to-day management and development of cities, rather than with academic evidence alone. In a context of devolution, as policymakers came under increasing resource pressures to deliver bespoke ‘Deals’ for multiple cities, this seemed like a winning combination. A city’s statutory strategic plans could be easily accessed through a council’s website, but a wellevidenced vision for the long-term future was not something that most cities produced. This type of thinking would be a unique and insightful output of the City Foresight projects. It would be coupled with high quality, strategic analysis drawn from the academic evidence base and reveal innovative solutions to policy questions, as well as contribute to the development of City Deals. However, as with most visions of the future, there were some unforeseen challenges.

Firstly, it became clear that the evidence base, despite its breadth, depth and diversity, was not going to produce genuinely innovative, new insights about the future of cities that

Whitehall could use to take decisions.

This seemed utterly counter-intuitive on the face of it. But the multitude of potential policy interests in ‘cities’ across Whitehall made it virtually impossible for the project to address, let alone inform, each specialised interest. For example, policy makers would express interest in hyperlocalised insights on health inequalities in Glasgow, which the project had gathered during a visit to the city. But they needed and wanted entire data series on health inequalities across the UK, and the project did not have the resource or capacity to undertake this type of commissioning. The key message which could be drawn from across the evidence, was that Whitehall should think about cities as systems, and as systems of systems, and to recognise the interdependencies inherent in these systems. This, of course, did not relate to any concrete challenge that policy makers were trying to address – it was a framework for holistic reflections about cities generally which didn’t sit easily with the departmental structures and ways of working that are in place and very much ingrained.

Secondly, as the City Foresight reports came through, it became clear that they had largely been about establishing shared challenges, values and aspirations about the future, rather than well-evidenced articulations of how the future of a city was to be delivered. The outputs from the projects often highlighted successes related to achieving consensus about the principles which would guide the

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future development of the city, and the establishment of new networks to deliver these. Cities often reported that running a Foresight project had helped stakeholders overcome past disagreements, as they found common ground through thinking about the future. In short, the outputs often focused on the process of running a Foresight project, rather than the specific decisions that had been made as a result. The value was seen to be in bringing people together. Young people formed youth chambers, whilst universities, councils and businesses came together to run public art exhibitions about the future of the city. Needless to say, despite the very positive, tangible outcomes, this was not viewed as helpful for decision making purposes in Whitehall, however interesting the artistic outputs might be.

Foresight for cities – lessons learned So, what can be learned about from this experimental approach to Foresight projects and how might it help cities in the future?

Firstly, as urbanists will know instinctively, cities are about lived experiences – decisions about how people live cannot be arrived at by evidence alone. However, Foresight, when applied at a city level, can support a negotiated process of discussion, engagement, debate and consensus building about the future of cities, which is underpinned by evidence. An excellent example of this is the Milton Keynes 2050 Futures Commission which was run from September

2015-2016, following engagement with the Foresight Future of Cities project2. This process balanced public engagement with academic evidence and expert input to develop a set of principles for the future development of the city. These were unanimously endorsed by all political parties and leaders in the council and the specific recommendations contained in the report are being implemented by a new team of officials.

Secondly, in lieu of a complete overhaul of the departmental structure and ways of working in Whitehall, there is clearly a mode of working that resulted in successful outcomes at both Whitehall and local levels. This is when a common focus brings the two together as demonstrated by the Future of Cities project in late 2015, when it undertook yet another experiment and launched the ‘Graduate Mobility Project’3. In this experiment, the project’s expert evidence base was used by a crossWhitehall group of senior officials to agree the 10 most pressing challenges for cities in the coming decades, from a national perspective. Whitehall officials selected one challenge for closer examination and local officials were invited to meet with them to present approaches to meeting that challenge from a city perspective. From this, it was possible to see what Whitehall could do to support the many different approaches to the same challenge that were happening across the country.

This made engaging with, and acting

on, an evidence base across multiple spatial scales, far more achievable and we feel that this provides a template for the future.

The future of cities: visions and networks If UK cities (large and small) are to show leadership and be places where inclusivity and growth can occur, it will be necessary to unleash creative and innovative thinking about the longterm future and create new networks and partnerships – as well as support (and innovate) traditional statutory planning processes and decision making. What became very clear from the ‘twin-track’ programme is that cities are instinctively keen to think creatively about their long-term future, to create new networks and learn from each other to gain inspiration about how to go about this more effectively.

To respond to this need, the project created the very successful ‘City Visions Network’, which brought together cities to share their approaches to creating future visions and how these could then be used to initiate projects and programmes of work. But how can this be sustained, now that the project is completed and the seed funding and support from the Government Office for Science is unavailable? Of course, there is an important role for Whitehall to support and encourage this type of undertaking – it is certainly in their interests to

Milton Keynes © Destination Milton Keynes

understand how people across cities are thinking about their future. But it is not clear that Whitehall is best placed to own and drive a network which is ultimately trying to negotiate and facilitate the complex process of integrating and interpreting the aspirations of cities and citizens for the future with nationally driven policy priorities.

We would argue that urbanists can take a lead. In fact, the Urbanism Awards process shares many of the attributes of the City Visions Network; a group of multidisciplinary experts, who are practiced in visioning the future of places, engaging with, and learning from, cities across the UK and beyond.

In this way, urbanists are not only well placed to support individual cities in undertaking Foresight projects, but can also take the lead on supporting a national network of people invested in thinking about the future of our cities.

Eleri Jones AoU was the project team leader for the Future of Cities Lead Expert Group and is now an associate at Space Syntax where she leads the Urban Policy and Foresight Team.

Professor Rachel Cooper OBE AoU is distinguished professor of Design Management and Policy at Lancaster University.

This article was written with the help of: professor Sir Peter Gregson, chief executive and vice-chancellor, Cranfield University; Geoff Snelson, director of strategy and futures, Milton Keynes Council; Fiona Robinson, MK Futures 2050 programme manager; professor Mark Tewdwr-Jones AoU, professor of town planning and director of Newcastle City Futures; Oliver Dean, managing director, MK21 For more information visit: gov.uk/ government/collections/future-of-cities 1. Links to the final reports from the City Foresight projects can be found in Foresight for Cities, Appendix A, p.51 gov.uk/government/uploads/ system/uploads/attachment_data/file/516443/gs16-5-future-cities-foresight-for-cities.pdf 2. mkfutures2050.com/ 3. gov.uk/government/publications/future-ofcities-graduate-mobility

Editor’s introductionForesight | AoU in forAction cities 13

A mug’s guide to place-leadership Drawing from his experience at the forefront of place-leadership, he was after all at the helm of the Glasgow Development Agency, Stuart Gulliver sets out four principles that underpin leadership success.

Leadership fascinates our society big-time. And although we have been writing, talking and arguing about leadership for at least 2,000 years it still continues to captivate and intrigue us. In place-leadership particularly we are interested in questions such as: what is the difference between placemanagement and leadership? Isn’t place-leadership these days simply about managing a strategic dialogue with the public? Is there, then, no role for ‘leaders’ in place-leadership? And if there is, what is it? What do we expect from our place-leaders and how do we know if they are any good? Such questions are vitally important today because, by common consent, poor and inadequate place-leadership lie at the root of the derisory performance of many towns, cities and communities.

By place-leadership I mean leadership as it might apply to differing scales of place, from town and city (at macro level) to district and neighbourhood (at meso level) and to individual development sites whether residential, destination or mixed (at micro level).

I refer to them all as ‘Development Projects’ and all will require similar place-leadership skills and behaviours.

The four underpinning principles I identify are, of course, not the whole leadership story – how could they possibly be? Leadership, after all, is an enormous and controversial subject. What they are in this instance, however, are the four things that I wish I had known more about when I first started to try and become a good placeleader all those years ago. So, first up is:

Gorbals, Glasgow

No 1. The quality of the people you choose to be in the development team.

Probably the single most important factor affecting place-performance, that is within your control.

To extravagantly misquote the famous quote attributable to President Clinton, “It’s people, stupid”. Good people are, without doubt, the necessary condition to achieve outstanding placemaking.

So many of the factors affecting placeperformance are actually outside your immediate control, but this one is not; and if experience teaches us anything it is that – terrific people and terrific teams really do achieve terrific things.

In fact I would go so far as to propose that selecting your development team is the most important job a leader does. If you were a football manager or orchestra leader, it would not even be worth discussing. It would be selfevident that you would only be as good as your team/orchestra – and so it is true of the development team.

And yet in Britain, the culturallydominant view appears to be that the successful delivery of a Development Project will be largely shaped by such things as organisational structure, governance arrangements, strong powers and, of course, the scale of monies made available. Rarely a mention of the quality of the development team or leadership.

There is no denying these elements are important to project success but I’m willing to bet that a particular situation combining good organisational structures, governance arrangements and good supporting powers but alongside a poor development team would lead to substantially worse outcomes than a situation less

14 Here & Now | AoU Journal No. 9 8 | Autumn Spring 2017 2016

well-endowed with organisational structures, powers and money but with a terrific development team. In my opinion the quality of the team would more than compensate for the structural and financial endowment.

The good quality team would overcome the restraints.

It is a fact that the literature on placeperformance rarely mentions the importance of leadership as a success factor. Perhaps this should not come as a surprise since most of what we call the ‘literature’ has been written by academics and civil servants in government departments. Both groups often well-removed from the operational front line. It would appear that flesh and blood are rather difficult to fit into some of their preferred performance models. The real world is, however, much messier. Academics and government policymakers, with few exceptions, appear to think that once they have so clearly illuminated the road ahead, then mere journeymen are able to operate their well thoughtthrough instructions and procedures – and then, hey presto!

No 2. In a leadership role you must be obsessive about delivery – and even go so far as to aim to install a ‘delivery culture’ within the organisation.

Whether you like it or not you will be judged primarily by your ability to ‘make things happen’ – not ‘letting it happen’ or even ‘helping things happen’. It is ‘making things happen’ that lies right at the heart of successful leadership and so a good understanding and appreciation of the art and science of delivery needs to be a key competence of place-leadership.

Bringing what we might call a ‘delivery

culture’ to an organisation is a really difficult task since the notion of a ‘culture’ suggests it is more than a combination of management control systems and the processes of project management and performance monitoring – as useful as they are.

However, project management and similar processes merely inform the project – they don’t drive the delivery culture itself. That has more to do with team members taking responsibility for their actions and being responsible for their own performance. How often do you hear project leaders say, “If everybody cared as much as I do we’d be OK” – but the fact is they don’t and they won’t. Good team members perform well without supervision.

It is the commitment to the project, the team and the leader that drive the delivery culture. I suspect that a good, strong ‘delivery culture’ acts as the binding-agent of successful place-leadership. As a development professional in a major English city once said to me about their project leader: “He makes us feel good about ourselves and proud of our city”. Says it all.

Forward plans are frequently long on ‘what’ needs to happen and extremely short on ‘how’ we’re going to make it happen. For example, city economic strategies in this country appear to target almost exactly the same set of supply-side interventions aimed at raising skill levels, productivity, innovation, new firm formation and connectivity etc. but, in the main, saying very little meaningful or useful about how it will be delivered. Our development world is stuffed full of strategies and policies, all being ‘refreshed’ every year, but with so little on the detail as to how it will actually

be made to happen. We now need much more thought to be given to issues of delivery and operationalisation. Less emphasis on new strategies, but rather clear new insights on implementation.

No 3. As a leader you will need to care passionately about your Development Project – and that passion has to be, by inspection, real, self-evident and sustained.

This is not about you – it’s about the Project. Let’s face it, this is your baby and if you are not going to be enthusiastic and passionate about your Development Project then who on earth will be? Your team, your partners and investors will all be looking to be motivated by your unashamed enthusiasm and strength of commitment. This strength of feeling can only really come from you.

I suspect that if you cannot become a passionate, energetic and enthusiastic leader for your project then it is highly likely that you are in the wrong job.

This, of course, is not a crime by any means. It does sometimes happen.

However it probably does mean that you should usefully pursue other career opportunities with some degree of urgency.

Perhaps it is possible you could ‘go through the motions’, as it were, on team selection or even being ‘obsessive about delivery’, but you can’t bluff this one. You can’t bluff passion and enthusiasm for very long. It needs to be authentic and highly visible most of the time.

This passion and enthusiasm will help to underpin and sustain the courage you will need to fight for the life of your project when it comes under attack, as A mug’s guide to place-leadership 15

Kreuzberg, Berlin © Chris H

it surely will, particularly if it’s doing well. As one of my chairmen said to me: “Never underestimate how many people will want you to fail”. At the time this came as a bit of a shock, but, as time moved on, I clearly began to identify organisational life-threatening situations emerging from a variety of sources, particularly politicians and civil servants.

The best example of courage and determination to fight to defend their Project that I have ever seen at first hand was by George Mathewson – who was at the time chief executive of the Scottish Development Agency (SDA).

In the mid 1980s Margaret Thatcher was in full-flight abolishing the Greater London Council (GLC) and the six other Metropolitan County Councils in England when eventually the SDA, where I was a director at the time, came to the top of her in-tray and an advance army from Whitehall and the Treasury was dispatched to Glasgow to, as we anticipated, “do a GLC in Caledonia”. Now in my previous public sector life in England, the protocol for such an important visit from HQ would be, speaking metaphorically, to “stand by your beds, take your hands out of your pockets, keep still and only speak when you’re spoken to”. Mathewson completely reversed this supine behaviour and took the decision to take control of the agenda for their several weeks’ visit. He began each day with scrupulously researched and prepared breakfast briefings, which they hadn’t asked for, where he explained what the SDA did for a living and how successful it was operating, as it did, in such bleak economic circumstances. He had assumed, as it turned out correctly,

that Whitehall didn’t really understand what a national economic development agency was or what it did. He organised ‘compulsory’ field trips for Whitehall people to see at first hand the wide range of projects the agency was undertaking. The whole operation was a bold move which helped galvanise the whole of Mathewson’s team to the cause – and importantly, almost certainly, saved the SDA. No 4. Go and visit and study similar Development Projects to your own both in Britain and abroad on a regular and planned basis. This is not a ‘jolly’ – it’s an intrinsic part of the leadership job and should not be delegated.

This ‘Visit-Inspect-Interview’ approach is a serious part of your role and if planned properly, will be your single best source of innovation, entrepreneurship and know-how – and at the very least you will get to see what the competition is up to.

From my own experience this part of the job can only be done properly at first hand. Sending other people to do this job is, in the main, almost a waste of time. Other people will not see and hear what you will see and hear. The messages will be different. Seeing and talking with project leaders of similar projects is a core part of the leader’s role. So many of my best development ideas have been adaptations of/stolen from other people’s projects picked up on such visits – especially in Germany, which probably still remains the powerhouse of innovation, expertise and ambition in urban development in Europe. I wonder why that is?

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In the mid ‘80s I was starting to consider what the next model for neighbourhood regeneration might be, following the SDA’s extensive involvement in the Glasgow Eastern Area Renewal (GEAR) Project. I found the ‘bones’ of that next model quite by chance as part of the Berlin IBA (Internationale Bauausstellung – International Building Exhibition) which I visited for four days in 1987.

There I was privileged to meet HardtWalterr Hamer, the director of the city renewal part of the IBA which centred on Kreuzberg, a tough central district which had received substantial numbers of Turkish immigrants.

Hamer was a hugely impressive man who had developed a particular approach to inner-city regeneration in Berlin which he called simply ‘Careful Urban Renewal’. Hamer was a passionate urban leader and published his ‘12 Principles of Careful Urban Renewal’ – the rationale which was to lie behind the redevelopment of Kreuzberg – on the front page of a Berlin national newspaper and paid for it himself. That’s transparency and committed leadership. I cherry picked what I considered to be transferrable elements of the Kreuzberg approach and they formed the basis of the Crown Street Project which we developed in the Gorbals in Glasgow. The clear lesson here: no Berlin IBA visit – no Crown Street!

The Urban Hero and Place-Leadership.

There is a view in some quarters that we are all place-leaders now; that, in some sense, a kind of distributedleadership should be the goal for place-development in the future. In this context place-leadership in the public sector becomes just the latest form of public governance. I am not convinced that this should be the future direction of travel – or even that this approach is entirely capable of creating outstanding new places. I think we will still need urban heroes and heroic teams to deliver brilliant places that people want to live in, work in and visit.

Stuart Gulliver was chief executive of the Glasgow Development Agency for over 10 years, is emeritus professor at the University of Glasgow, an elected fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and has acted as strategic economic adviser to most major British cities. stuart@stuartgulliver.co.uk

Heart in the Right Street beauty, happiness and health in designing the modern city Improved computing power and available data gives us the opportunity to explore complex relationships and provide some empirical evidence for the linkages between design, urban form and wellbeing. Nicholas Boys-Smith AoU discusses findings of his study ‘Heart in the Right Street’.s.

A few years ago David Halpern, the influential psychologist who runs the Cabinet Office Behavioural Insights team (often called the ‘Nudge Unit’), made an alarming statement in an interview: “architecture and planning does not have an empirical, evidencebased tradition in the sense that … sciences would understand. There are very few studies that ever go back to look at whether one type of dwelling or another … has a systematic impact on how people behave, or feel, or interact with one another.”

The good news is that improving computing power, vastly greater public availability of data and refining statistical techniques are now permitting us to measure, analyse and compare the relationships between urban form, design, beauty, happiness and value as never before.

There has not just been a revolution in the ‘science of cities.’ There have also been dramatic steps in our understanding of wellbeing. Over the last 30 years it has been consistently shown that you can, literally, measure happiness. Asking a simple question such as ‘generally speaking how happy would you say you are’ and rating answers on a scale leads to results which, when asked to enough people, correlate well with ratings given by friends, independent observers and (significantly) with such drivers as income, employment status, marital status, health, personal characteristics (age, gender, and personality), and major life events.

So today is an exciting time for urban studies. We can research, as never

before, the links between specific components of the built environment and measurable wellbeing. We also think it is an important time for urban studies. The pressure to meet housing needs in the UK is leading to more and more pressure on density and on an increasing number of affordable and rental units being built as small flats within large blocks. Is this wise?

The social enterprise that I run, Create Streets, has therefore recently published a study, Heart in the Right Street, which was partly a summary of academic and statistically robust correlations between elements of built form and measurable wellbeing and partly a multiple regression analysis of the urban form and demographic indicator datasets against wellbeing and health indicators.1 Our findings have featured in The Economist and The FT among others. Some will be very reassuring, indeed familiar. Others may be rather more surprising and challenging. One thing is incontestable however. In understanding where people are happy, why and how, design really matters.

Greenery matters but it has to be in the right place Many studies have now shown a link between regularly looking out at an attractive green environment and mood, stress, recovery from mental fatigue and wellbeing. However, greenery needs to be done in the right way. It can be threatening. It can be expensive to maintain and therefore susceptible to budget changes in the future. There is evidence that green space is degrading into hard paving

for reasons of economy in the UK right now. Likewise green space that is too big and too far away tends to not make a difference to people’s everyday life.

UK focus group research shows that, given the choice, most people would rather have access to modest private gardens which they can use effortlessly every day and which seem to work better in managing family stress and wellbeing. American research shows how use of parks collapses at a distance of about four blocks. What is key therefore to capture the wellbeing benefits is to have frequent green spaces inter-weaved into the city either as private gardens, communal gardens or well-overlooked public spaces between blocks and where people really need them and frequent them. The evidence on street trees is particularly clear and they should be planted everywhere humanly possible.

Homes and height Some urbanists fetishize the excitement and innovation of the highrise city centre. In reality these work best only for a few. Urbanists would be better advised to advocate a middle ground (think Victorian suburb) that captures the privacy benefits both of suburbia and the connectivity benefits of city centre living. Most people don’t want to live in overly large blocks and there are very rational reasons for this preference.

There are numerous wellbeing indicators associated with homes and buildings at human scale, height and form. The most comprehensive literature review we have been able to find concluded that: “the literature

A mug’s guide to place-leadership Editor’s introduction | Heart in| the AoU Right in Action Street 17 17

suggests that high-rises are less satisfactory than other housing forms for most people, that they are not optimal for children, that social relations are more impersonal and helping behaviour is less than in other housing forms, that crime and fear of crime are greater, and that they may independently account for some suicides.”

This is not to say that towers are always bad. Indeed, consistently around 10 per cent of the population prefer them.

But they tend to be far more popular amongst the rich and the childless.

The rich can certainly cope with their higher management costs. Service charges in the Barbican Centre’s Shakespeare Tower are now £8,000 a year.

Top: Mt Pleasant © Create Streets and Francis Terry Associates Below: New Street © Create Streets and Gluckman Smith

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Clearly people can be happy in towers and miserable in houses and vice versa.

But in our analysis of 85 peer-reviewed academic studies that contrasted socioeconomically comparable groups living in high and low-rise accommodation, 67 (79 per cent) found that high-rise residence was negatively associated with some aspect of wellbeing. Various studies strongly suggest that a large number of unpredictable, unavoidable and unwanted encounters with large numbers of strangers lead to higher levels of stress, conflicts with neighbours and a sense of loss of control.

The urban fabric – streets, blocks and facades The type of streets that we build is very important. As will be familiar to many, streets that ‘plug into’ the surrounding city are associated with numerous positive wellbeing outcomes. A wellconnected, highly walkable, traditional street grid of differing natures and sizes with multiple junctions and route choices is best. Some streets should be pedestrian or bicycle only but most should be mixed use with generous pavements wherever possible.

But it is not just streets that matter.

So do blocks and facades. If larger residential buildings really are felt to be essential, research indicates that for most people inside and outside the building the best thing is to design them as if they were smaller buildings.

If their external facades are ‘broken up’ vertically they will promote more pro-social behaviour among passersby. In one study pedestrians in front of an active façade were nearly five times more likely to offer assistance to a lost tourist than at an inactive façade site. Of those who helped, seven times as many at the active site offered to let the tourist use their phone (seven per cent versus one per cent). Four times as many offered to actually lead the tourist to their destination (four per cent versus one per cent). Active facades help makes cities work: a Copenhagen Study calculated that there was around seven times as much activity in front of active facades as the passive. Activity brings all sorts of wellbeing, economic and crimereducing benefits.

As will be familiar, walkability is vital.

Studies have shown that residents of the most walkable neighbourhoods (ones which plug into city-wide connectivity) were nearly two-and-ahalf times more likely to get sufficient physical activity than residents of the least walkable. In cities with rising levels of obesity, air pollution, and congestion, getting more people walking is vital. These levels tend to be higher in more deprived communities, and thus the importance of improving these factors in social and affordable housing becomes even greater.

Beauty and design Beauty really matters. There is measurable emotional attachment to beautiful places – a 2011 US survey found stronger correlations between a place’s physical beauty and people’s satisfaction with their communities

than any other attributes. A 2008-2010 Gallup survey of 43,000 people in 26 cities agreed. It found that residents’ ratings of the aesthetic attraction of their cities and green spaces correlated significantly with residents’ attachment to their city. This is turn correlated with GDP growth. In this survey, aesthetic attraction to their city came third in the pecking order, and ranked above education, basic services or safety.

A third study has also found that a perception of beauty is significantly associated with community satisfaction and significantly more important than individual demographic characteristics.

A strong sense of place, that the development ‘couldn’t be anywhere’ also really matters. A recent report found that a desire to respect historic form, style, and materials had 84 per cent support in participant interviews.

This is psychologically credible, even sensible. Environmental psychologists have shown that alongside green space and soft edges we enjoy gentle surprises and pleasant memories. We dislike sharp edges, darkness, sudden loud noises.

Respecting the natural preference Urbanists can be proud of their discipline and very confident in its importance. However, they should also be careful to respect the natural preference that the majority feel for suburban life patterns and to remember the importance of beauty as understood not necessarily by them but by the wider public. Urban design is a service industry not an art form.

Nicholas Boys Smith AoU is the director of Create Streets For a version of this article with complete references, visit academyofurbanism.org.uk/heart-inthe-right-street.

Order a copy of Heart in the Right Street at createstreets.com/heart-in-the-rightstreet/4592561850

The strong preferences that most non-designers show for a more locationally and historically-referenced architecture is in contrast to many professionals who often place a higher focus on design innovation. A range of studies (including our own) have found a predictable difference between what most professional designers and the wider public prefer to see created in the built environment. We call it the design disconnect.

Heart in |the Right Street 19 Editor’s introduction AoU in Action

Lux LED! “Genius,” Thomas Edison the inventor of the light bulb said, “is one per cent inspiration, ninety-nine per cent perspiration”. Some may wish that the inventors of the Light-Emitting Diode had perspired a little less. While this technology has many benefits Steven Bee AoU sheds light on how it’s led to an overlit nightime environment.

The transformation of urban environments over the past generation as a result of new technology has been spectacular. How we build, use, manage and find out about places are all influenced by advances in materials, construction, connection and efficiency. The temptation to use as many of these goodies at the same time, and all the time, has proved too much for many designers and commissioners of new places over the last 20 years.

As a result, the familiar compositions of spaces and skylines in those cities attracting the greatest investment have been interrupted by striking new features that, whether beautiful or not, draw attention to themselves at the expense of their wider context.

This is not a new phenomenon. I dare say the Anglo-Saxon response to Norman Castles was just as sceptical, but that’s not my point. I address here the impact of one area of technology in particular – lighting, and the impact of novelty on two aspects of urban life – the illumination of buildings, and movement after dark.

Activity after dark is an important and distinctive component of urban life. It adds enormously to the vitality of places and has defined the way in which urban culture has evolved.

It’s one of the ways in which we can distinguish urban life from non-urban.

In most of the places with which we are familiar such activity is increasing, mainly because much of our leisure time is after dark, particularly in winter, and we are able (and encouraged, although the emphasis on the ‘nighttime economy’ misses the point) to make more use of this time.

Artificial light is not just essential; it enhances safety, security and amenity.

What began with fires in caves

advanced through torches and beacons, candles and lanterns, gas mantles and incandescent bulbs to the LightEmitting Diode (LED). LED technology provides a simple, cheap, reliable, safe and long-life solution to lighting up anything, anywhere, in any colour and to any intensity. We can flood, spot, project, glow, scatter, flash and dazzle whenever and wherever we choose.

This begs the question of who actually chooses, and when and where.

The Commission for Dark Skies (CfDS) was established by the British Association of Astronomers in 1989.

It achieved a great deal in raising awareness and reducing the general urban glare that obscures the wonder of the night sky. Improvements in the design of public lighting and light sources has made this not only possible but easier and more efficient. The distinction between light places and dark places not only protects our view of the stars but adds a sense of drama, mystery, romance and, of course, danger. The amenity value of dark skies get a mention in the National Planning Policy Framework (para 125), and policies are now established to protect dark sky areas such as National Parks. Ashford Council in Kent has adopted a Supplementary Planning Document providing guidance on light pollution, and there may be others. LED technology has made the replacement of street lights with low energy, directional lighting economic and environmentally responsible.

This saves money, improves safety and darkens our sky. (Provided the spectral content is balanced – a colour temperature of 3,000 Kelvin is apparently ideal – and don’t tell anyone but blue light causes brain damage.)

So far so good, but this illuminating facility has such potential that some

20 Here & Now | AoU Journal No. 9 | Spring 2017

designers tend to interpret the vast range of opportunities as an obligation to use them all and everywhere. It’s probably the case that, as with wonky buildings mimicking household appliances, we are still learning to live with the bewildering range of possibilities and that the novelty will eventually wear off.

The sooner the better. It may be that in newer cities the excitement of buildingscale branding, moving pictures, multicoloured, multi-storey illumination of buildings is a necessary part of their identity. For example, the night time view of the mega-urban extension of Phu Dong in Shanghai is a riot (not something normally tolerated in the Peoples’ Republic), but the lighting of the historic western-styled Bund, on the opposite bank, is closer to that of the great European cities that the Academy has explored; cities where the highlighting of landmarks, important buildings and spaces is generally more sober and selective; you might say respectful.

Somerset House, London © James Petts

Such selectivity is not guaranteed, however. London is one of the places where, too often, novelty outshines respect. Some of its historic features get the illumination they deserve – St Paul’s Cathedral, for example, Somerset House, St Pancras Station – all now lit to display their form and detail to great effect at night. It’s a pity the same can’t be said for some of the capital’s modern icons, such as the South Bank Centre and Royal National Theatre. Here the elegant, robust, well-crafted concrete is flooded in purple, turquoise and sky blue, bloody pink, presumably in an effort to make them popular. (Look to what’s inside, I say.) And the London Eye is now picked out not in the clear light that emphasised the elegance of its engineering, but in the Coca Cola red that belongs in Piccadilly Circus, not opposite the Cradle of Democracy.

Elsewhere attention is drawn to buildings best forgotten, with illumination that tries to justify their existence. The St George Wharf (Vauxhall) Tower is the prime culprit; its clumsy outline picked out in piping of blue-white light as cold and lifeless as its largely vacant interior (remember: 3,000K or your brain fries).

Which prompts me to spotlight another issue. Since the tragic helicopter accident while this building was under construction (sadly it was the building that survived), safety lights on tall structures have become enormous, and everywhere. Like giant luminous cherries they top every building and tower crane above head height, and dominate the great after dark views of London such as those from Waterloo Bridge. There have been complaints from as far away as Pluto. The building site around the Shell Centre is a particularly ridiculous example. Are the pilots let loose in central London’s airspace so myopic that they need such reminders to keep their distance? I can’t find any regulation regarding the intensity of such lights, so where is this apparent obligation coming from?

Now, while my blood’s up, there’s another aspect of night time activity that has fallen victim to this ultraaccessible new technology; Cycling.

As a member of the liberal wing of the Pedestrianists, I am willing to accept and welcome members of all urban sects. Some of my best friends … etc.

But many cyclists seem to think that they will be more easily recognised, and respected if they decorate their night time presence with as much illumination as possible. Not only can

Royal National Theatre, London © David Samuel

this be of infinite variation in intensity, but it can flash with any number of intervals and duration, and can be located anywhere on the bicycle from the front forks to the top of the rider’s head. Sorry, helmet. And some of them have two, or three, just in case. And it’s just the same at the rear.

Other road users in the UK have to comply with The Road Vehicles Lighting Regulations 1989. This governs the position, colour, direction and intensity of their lights. Imagine if the drivers of cars, buses, lorries could choose where they fix their lights, whether or not they flash, at what angle and what intensity!

For the urban pedestrian, peripheral vision is essential. When negotiating the variables of a busy street after dark, constant checking at the limit of visual perception enables smooth movement and navigation through streams of people, and fixed and moving objects.

A glance to the side can coincide with a flashing cycle lamps off-mode, or be momentarily dazzled by a high intensity lamp fitted at eye level. Either can result in discomfort, disorientation or disaster for the pedestrian.

I was also disappointed to find that the Highway Code (Rule 40) allows cycles to have flashing lights, but recommends steady lights outside built-up areas.

This is surely mistaken; if we are all to take advantage of increased mobility and activity after dark, we must surely make it as convenient and safe for all those out after dark to see and be seen.

The relationship between pedestrians and cyclists is at least as important as the relationship between cyclists and motor vehicles.

The unity of those using humanpowered travel of all kinds would surely be strengthened by greater consistency in the lighting we use. And just to demonstrate that I’m not prejudiced, the same applies to joggers (cyclists without wheels) other pedestrians, and dog walkers who feel that their highvis clothing and their pets have to be supplemented with fairy lights.

Steven Bee AoU is a director and past chair of The Academy of Urbanism

It was disappointing (i.e. I was disappointed) to see that London’s Santander bikes, already fitted with flashing front and rear lights now project a green (for heaven’s sake) image of a cyclist on the road in front of them. This is supposed to warn other road users (not pedestrians, note) of their presence. I fear it may just further inflate the cycling community’s sense of entitlement to rule the highways.

Lux LED! 21

From San Sebastián to the world: a journey through culture Eneko Goia, Mayor of Donostia / San Sebastián, reflects on what being the 2016 European Cultural Capital and the AoU European City of the Year has meant for the city.

Together with Wroclaw in Poland, the city of Donostia / San Sebastián has had the privilege of holding the title of European Cultural Capital during 2016. An organisational challenge for a medium-sized city like ours, that with a population of 186,000 people is one of the provincial capitals of the Basque Country. This was also a year that left us with the title of European City of the Year as an unexpected present, awarded by an organisation as prestigious as The Academy of Urbanism.

San Sebastián has intensely enjoyed this experience. In actual fact, our experience began in 2008, when we decided to bid for this title Capital of Culture, and continued in 2011, when the European Union designated us to take on this responsibility. As I pointed out shortly before the year came to a close, we accept the values and principles that have marked our programme as guidelines for action for the city as a whole in the next few

years. Nothing finished when 2016 came to an end, but a path has begun that we want to continue to follow in keeping with the spirit that has guided our city during the year it has been European Cultural Capital.

A ‘Culture for Living Together’ was the slogan that summed up the programme that we tried to put into practice throughout the period that we were the Cultural Capital. This is an ambitious idea that is rooted in the violent situation that our country and our city have both gone through in their recent history, and aimed to promote culture as a tool for transformation and coexistence between people with different ways of thinking.

However, our recent past provides us with inspiration to work on a model for relations and this has been a really powerful lever which we have made use of to launch numerous initiatives that have been channelled towards a wide variety of cultural forms of expression.

Fortunately, the current situation in the Basque Country has nothing to do with the political and social reality that existed 10 years ago. Today, violence and terrorism have disappeared, and social and political coexistence is a palpable reality on our streets.

As a result of this, during 2016 we worked in areas such as linguistic diversity, the challenges of immigration in Europe, historical memory, human rights or reparation for victims. We organised meetings between artists from different origins and cultures,

San Sebastián

22 Here & Now | AoU Journal No. 9 | Spring 2017

Eneko Goia

Stop War Festibala, a three-day festival featuring cultural activites from music to children’s workshops and dance. © Donostia / San Sebastián 2016

we established closer links with communities and countries that we had no relations with, and we spread the Basque language and culture all over the continent. We discovered new urban spaces that weren’t usually being used, and we learnt to appreciate the cultural activity that formed part of our historical heritage.

Donostia’s name, linked with culture, has travelled from Washington to Tokyo, while also passing through London, Berlin, Brussels, Dresden, Dublin... In short, we have been able to reinvent ourselves, based on what we are, a small Basque city connected to the world; starting out from our roots to being on the cutting edge. Just like in life itself, this challenge has led us to improve as a city. We can now say that Donostia is a city that has grown, that has opened up to the world, and has established new personal and collective ties. It is a city that has learnt, with its successes and failures, to imagine, to dream, to set itself new goals and work collaboratively.

We have learnt from our successes, and very probably even more so from our mistakes. Thousands of people have taken part in organising and enjoying the more than 3,000 activities that have been organised during the year that the city has been European Cultural Capital. We have had some really great minority activities and others that were more popular and on a larger scale. But all of them have left traces behind, a residue of knowledge that now remains in our city’s RAM.

And of course: this international showcase has meant that thousands of people have come from all over the continent and the world, attracted by the call that this cultural year launched to all and sundry.

Being European Cultural Capital has helped our city to join new international networks. It has placed us in the forefront of cultural production in Spain, as the Spanish Observatory of Culture recognised, which placed San Sebastián fourth in the list of cities with the best cultural programme on offer in 2016. Today we are one of the ECOC (European Capitals of Culture), another international network that enables us to share experiences with Guimaraes, Mons, Wroclaw, Aarhus, Pafos or Galway, among other cities.

All this forms new action networks that in this case have cities in the leading role. The relationship between cities, organisations and institutions is taking shape in new ways that provide responses for citizens at local level as well.

This impressive process has been a huge learning process for the entire city: for its people and its associations, for its institutions and its advocates.

However, above and beyond all these indicators, I would like to stress two of the most important contributions that being the European Capital of Culture

have made to my city: it has provided San Sebastián with an international renown linked with positive values, which is something that is original and interesting in its recent history.

And secondly, through a wide variety of participatory dynamics it has made it possible to mobilise hundreds and thousands of people, organisations and groups around an idea, and a project whose legacy will undoubtedly bear fruit and live on beyond 2016.

In all modesty, we sincerely believe that the entire process that the city of Donostia / San Sebastián went through up to 2016 may come in useful for other cities like ours that do not just make do with what they have, but try and find new paths to be present in the world.

We think that our experience can be a model that can be learnt from and that conclusions can be drawn from. For this reason, I would like to take advantage of this platform to invite anyone who wishes to get to know the experience that San Sebastián has had at first hand to come and visit us so that they can share with us this fantastic journey that we have been on.

Eneko Goia, Mayor of Donostia / San Sebastián

From San Sebastián to the world 23

A New Culture of Urbanism ANNUAL CONGRESS XII AARHUS, DENMARK / 14-17 SEPTEMBER 2017 This is a major international event drawing together the latest research and practice on the challenges that will dominate the next 100 years of towns and cities across the world.

This 4 day conference will comprise: •

Orientation and learning visits to key parts of Aarhus including Gellerup, a 1960’s social housing estate undergoing major regeneration

•

International speakers including Anette Galskjøt, IFHP; Robert Adams, City of Melbourne; Jan Gehl, Gehls; Mayor Jacob Bundsgaard, City of Aarhus; Juliana Engberg, Aarhus 2017, European Capital of Culture

•

Explorations of current and emerging research and practice

•

New intelligent inquiry sessions to explore, test and improve approaches to: - Inclusive economic growth

- Designing inclusive places and neighbourhoods

- Social and physical integration & cohesion

- Housing for the future

- Creative, informal, experimental and pop-up urbanism

- Digital urbanism

- Infrastructure and placemaking

Exclusively for Congress, there will be a live community engagement event, designed especially to enable active participation by delegates who will have the opportunity to work with local residents and community representatives to redesign the Southern Harbour District of Aarhus.

Media Partner

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congress.academyofurbanism.org.uk In collaboration with

Who knows best?

In Focus In the following pages we ask not only Who knows best? But also, how do we leverage that knowledge for the good of the community or place that we are working in. Sometimes it’s not the knowing that is the issue, it’s the getting at that knowledge and using it.

Consultation is seen as the means by which to draw in all those in a community with some sort of interest in a local project. Although the criticism by cynics who say that it means nothing more than ‘telling’ may be a little unfair, perhaps too often consultation doesn’t happen until well after a project has started, and people are left feeling written out of the beginning of the story altogether. And in some instances, when ‘consultation’ does happen too many of the key decisions have been taken.

In many ways the articles in this section reflect less the notion of consultation and more the idea of broader engagement, and perhaps there is a difference between engagement and consultation. Engagement at least suggests that people are involved from the get go. It sounds more participative.

Simon Bayliss AoU reflects on the notion of engagement in HTA’s work on the Aylesbury estate (p46) although this didn’t thwart vocalised opposition by some groups. Which suggests another issue. It is a mistaken notion that a community is a coherent and cohesive body whose interests are to a great extent unified. In truth no such community exists.

Jacob Bundsgaard, the Mayor of Aarhus in his converations with James Gross AoU (p26) emphasises the importance of participation and picks up on the importance of engagement – with organisations moving from being issue driven to engagement driven. He has the confidence to recognise that the city authority does not know everything.

Line Algoed (p30) points to the gap between professionals and people living with the effects of their decisions. Noting that while professionals might be “taught” how space or cities work, they are not taught that there is a lot that they don’t know. She argues that real social transformation of a neighbourhood can only be done by the residents themselves.

Kathryn Firth AoU (p34) also picks up on the concept of engagement. She observes that there has been a loss of the civic and the collective but that this has been a powerful incubator for provoking change and to finding diverse ways of bringing many voices to urban issues.

All too often there are some voices rarely heard, yet these people are profoundly affected by decisions made on their behalf. Sophia de Sousa AoU and Louise Dredge of the Glass-House (p37) argue for better involvement of children in place making, arguing that in the same way that professionals make assumptions about communities in general, adults tend to make assumptions about children the adults know best.

Editor’s introduction Editor’s | AoU introduction in Action 25

In conversation with…

Jacob Bundsgaard, Aarhus City Mayor Living Danishly* Highlighting Denmark’s second city, European Capital of Culture 2017 and destination for the 12th AoU Congress, James Gross AoU travelled to Aarhus (pronounced ‘Or-hus’) to talk to the dynamic City Mayor Jacob Bundsgaard and find out what it is it that makes this thriving university city tick.

Jacob Bundsgaard © City of Aarhus

It would be remiss not to mention that my conversation with Jacob Bundsgaard took place in the 1941 Arne Jacobsen designed City Hall of Aarhus. The exquisite design of this building remains a beautiful testimony to bespoke architecture and more specifically Danish interior design. Everything from the curved staircase to the lobby seating and water fountain was penned by the master’s hand. I know this because I was the beneficiary of a comprehensive tour of the city courtesy of former city architect (and father-in-law of Oxford School of Architecture graduate and current city architect Stephen Willacy AoU1), Gøsta Knudsen.

He tells me that in the spirit of the building even the more recently installed CCTV camera housings were specially designed and machined to match the overall composition.

Knudsen’s energetic walking pace affords me an exhaustive tour of the inner area of this rapidly expanding city. The boldness of public buildings, and scale and commitment to public spaces is almost overwhelming, so I’m bursting with questions when I finally get to meet the man in charge of the DKK19.2bn (approx. £2.2bn) budget for the city’s operation, expansion, and administration.

Perhaps unique amongst city mayors, Bundsgaard makes reference to architecture and design no less than nine times on his welcome page on the city website2. The city has over 330,000 inhabitants and it accounts for more than half of the country’s architectural service exports. However, it’s not specifically architecture and design that we’ve been asked to discuss, it is the city’s growing reputation for putting volunteering at the heart of city decision making, and in particular, the growth plans created to allow Aarhus to expand by some 50,000 inhabitants by 2030.

26 Here & Now | AoU Journal No. 9 | Spring 2017

So from where does this ambition for community involvement across so many levels derive? Does everybody (including the city’s 20,000 civil servants) really buy in to it and what’s been the response from the private sector to having to demonstrate they’ve taken local opinion into account?

Jacob Bundsgaard (JB): The basis of Aarhus is that of the University City. From a population of 335,000 persons, 55,000 are students, of which a turnover of some 12,000 new students are welcomed every year. That’s 12,000 new people, mainly young people who arrive with new inputs and new perspectives, and who are finding new ways to know and use the city.

This turnover means that there’s a lot of reinventing [the term ‘rethinking’ is one of the main themes of the 2017 City of Culture] of how to make use of the city every year, which has a lot to do with the vibe, feel and liveability of the city.

James Gross (JG): So what characterises that ‘liveability’ in the context of Aarhus?

JB: If we ask people who live here if they like the city (and most, almost all people do) we go further and ask completely openly: what are the two top priorities that make a good city? The answers we get are: one, cultural life; two, closeness to nature. Plus, feeling safe and comfortable in the neighbourhood, not living in a state of alert – having good neighbourhoods where you can feel safe through volunteering, engaging with community and influencing and controlling development in the neighbourhood.

There is a long tradition of involvement through different channels to bring ordinary citizens close to the decisions that have been very high on the agenda.

We [Bundsgaard and political activist colleagues Johannes Lundsfryd, Vibe Klarup] published a number of contributions in a new book ‘Rodskud’ (Root). Our ambition has been to try to use existing structures and open them to more participation, plus ‘rethinking’ the aspects of citizen’s involvement. Much of this is not rocket science but cultural change.

JG: So where is that change needed in order to best take effect at the city-level?

JB: There is a large public sector in Aarhus and Denmark, and it takes time to develop participation in these areas and departments, and it’s something that requires policy shift; changes to mayoral perspectives; and attitudes to content and manner of communication.

Participatory budgeting is key. So, as an example the city took a pilot neighbourhood in Aarhus and gave them complete autonomy over rethinking public spending budgets in the area across departments and existing silos. In order to do this the city created an independent ‘Citizen’s Committee’ [JB sat on the committee (eight citizens and eight politicians) but a citizen was chosen as chairperson, and the deputy chair was from the opposition].

JG: Was there any specific reason for asking general citizens over academics and practitioners, where this city has such a high proportion of the latter?

JB: We took a deliberate decision to take a step back, which proved to be a more fruitful and involving process, even though less traditional. Consequently citizens became much more seriously engaged.

JG: Although you got this engagement, are there tensions that arise in the city where so much investment is directed towards public infrastructure of parks, squares, light rail/tram etcetera, versus demands and draws on, for example, caring for an elderly population or pressure on other acute services?

JB: There is always pressure and everyone always wants to do more and do better. However, there is a local and political consensus that investment in city infrastructure can help jobs and prosperity in the city and its businesses to finance further investment in social services and [despite needing to find a balance] is being seen locally as the ‘right thing to do’ [JG: There have been recent criticisms of the repaving and investment in the city’s Cathedral Square which is currently missing animation or programming and press reports have questioned who has benefitted this particular investment?]

The City of Aarhus is in a good position, so pressure on mobility and accessibility demands this investment in infrastructure. The Harbour development is a good example of [reclaimed] land that the city bought at market value, but as a consequence of [city] investment, is now increasing in value. We could easily use that increase to finance public demands elsewhere, but we made a decision that we did not want to do that, as the impact on liveability in the Harbour and on the creation of community would be too great, hence leaving the value invested in the project. Of course, this requires a longer-term view, and a careful attitude to balancing the budget and exercising restraint.

ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum © VisitAarhus

In conversation with... Jacob Bundsgaard, Aarhus City Mayor 27

JG: So how come this long-term view is capable of being taken in the context of political cycles?

JB: There is public support for developing a city that is socially balanced. The City of Aarhus has been a social democratic city for almost 100 years (save for a four year exception in 2002-2006), but besides that, there’s been a longstanding mandate to develop the city in a balanced fashion. So a commitment to develop 25% of the Harbour development as public housing is supported by the public in the city.

JG: Looking at the city’s plans for growth of 50,000 additional inhabitants by 2030, do you feel that the character and quality of the city could be at all negatively impacted by growth on such a significant scale, a common concern with UK cities?

JB: Creating more density becomes a dilemma for the two top priorities for the city’s citizens: that of access to [sustainable] culture, whilst retaining access to nature and countryside in close proximity. Although the city is a [predominantly] three-to-five storey settlement, concentrations of growth in the centre at 12, possibly even 20 storeys may be required.

Yet the city is blessed with space and activities on the periphery, such as natural retreats and holiday destinations. Larger 20,000 population concentrations are planned for the periphery with a greater emphasis on town and family housing [in close proximity to these assets].

JG: So in such cases, how does the city reach out to promote the benefits of growth in these more sensitive locations to an, as-yet, non-existent population?

JB: The key to this is not to programme too much of these developments from the outset. We’re learning to leave sufficient say for new and emerging communities to have a role and view as to how these new places can develop in the future and over time [an interesting contrast with the UK, especially TCPA calls for ‘comprehensively planned’ new development – JG], and allow room to ‘rethink’ projects down the line.

[Refreshing for a politician, Bundsgaard recognises that there are lessons to be learned once communities start to grow and expand, indeed, in a recurring theme, and the central premise of Aarhus as the 2017 European Capital of Culture, the notion of ‘rethinking’ features heavily in our conversation.]

JB: We’ve certainly understood that in planning places, room needs to be left to allow for ‘smarter solutions’. The high turnover of students as part of the city’s population and the scope this breeds for accommodating and welcoming new ideas has become part of the city’s DNA. Exponential development of technology and communication means than an ability to constantly recalibrate or readjust is becoming more and more 28 Here & Now | AoU Journal No. 9 | Spring 2017

important. The fact that urbanisation is a trend that seems set to continue to bring more people into the city, means understanding how those people want to live their lives and a reassessment of how we accommodate growth.

A good example is the increase in the numbers of families wanting to move into the city. Whereas a few years ago, families would typically look to move to the city outskirts or suburbs, now more and more families are looking to the city-central of Aarhus as a place to call ‘home’.

JG: On my tour of the city with Gøsta Knudsen, one of the locations that I visited was Institute X, the makeshift, pop-up community of artists and makers in the city’s railways district. I understand that it is one of the areas set for change and densification as part of the city’s growth strategy.

JB: Mas Peter of Institute X is a prime example of this [creative community] and I’ve followed that project from its earliest days. I’ll visit him quite often to find out what’s happening in that area of the city and to give him a channel to the highest possible political level, and find out what he thinks we’re doing and if we’re on the right track with some of the other developments in the city from his perspective, which is an ‘on-the-ground’ cultural/sub-cultural - I don’t know what it is exactly that he does but I know we want to retain it!

We’ve allocated some funds to his project and I told him (I don’t know what the English expression is) – you need to be the stone in the shoe that can be very, very irritating but also reminds you that you need to focus on the right things, so he’s basically being paid to annoy us in the right [constructive] way!

Being a municipality and an employer of 20,000 persons, means that we’re not the most agile and responsive of organisations, so we need these little organisations, helping us to know what’s going on at street level.

JG: So what advice do you have for community groups with a great idea to improve the city and who are seeking access to the best channels to mobilise and realise ideas?

JB: We’re seeing a new type of community organisation emerging in Denmark that I talk about in my book.

Traditionally community groups have been issue-driven, but we’re now seeing groups engaging in helping people engage. Helping people get their cause heard, and all on a completely volunteer level. That’s quite interesting for the municipality as it gives us the ability to refer private ideas to that organisation and I’m in a good dialogue with them and am trying to support them. However, it’s also important that they don’t get too close to us as an organisation, lest they get ‘eaten’ by a system focused on the efficient delivery of day care, elderly care, schools etc. The primary function of the municipality is concerned by high-level decisions that affect thousands

of people and these new groups are small-scale initiatives that will grow big and potentially global over time.

JG: Finally, as part of collaboration around growth and participation with communities, what’s next for Aarhus? What hasn’t been tried that remains a political and a community ambition for the city?

JB: There are a number of things. But particularly the whole issue of the ‘shared economy’. There is a certain amount of critical mass required both technologically and in terms of community capital. This goes beyond car-sharing, Airbnb etcetera, but expanded to include building face-to-face community communications, facilitated by some of these online shared economy platforms.

JG: Mayor Bundsgaard, thank you very much for sharing your thoughts with us.

Thinking back on the conversation – a final thought from JG I have a feeling, having experienced first-hand the progress the city is making in terms of creating a ‘shared platform’ and ‘shared voice’ for growth, that if progress is going to be made in truly ‘smart’ cities in this regard, then it’s likely to be here in Aarhus.

If rethinking place and structures is part of the city’s ambitions (as part of Aarhus 2017) to place it more visibly on the international map, then I suggest a visit to the AoU’s 12th Congress in Aarhus this September will afford delegates an insight into to a city on the verge of something big.

James Gross AoU is founder of Urban Place Lab Ltd. *Living Danishly is a reference to British Author Helen Russell’s interview and book as part of the Aarhus 2017 Capital of Culture Programme 1. AoU Journal #5: Risk, p40 2. aarhus.dk/sitecore/content/Subsites/ CityOfAarhus/Home/Welcomefrom-the-Mayor

Join us in Aarhus for our 12th Annual Congress: A New Culture of Urbanism, 14 - 17 September 2017.

Book at congress.academyofurbanism.org.uk

Jacob Bundsgaard, © City of Aarhus

In conversation with... Jacob Bundsgaard, Aarhus City Mayor 29

People taking back control in Puerto Rico When residents of seven unplanned neighbourhoods along the Martin Peña channel in the Caribbean island of Puerto Rico were faced with gentrification and spiralling poverty, they fought back by establishing the first community land trust in an informal settlement.

In 2016, they won the UN/BSHF World Habitat Award for creating a replicable instrument of land regularisation in informal settlements.

Line Algoed explores the impact this has had.

Several years ago, at an Academy of Urbanism event, I expressed my concern for residents who would see their neighbourhood metamorphosed through a large-scale urban development project, which was being presented at the event. Many of the residents would be relocated because of the project, and I wondered whether they had been asked if that’s what they wanted, or needed. Someone said that residents often don’t know what’s good for them, and that asking them to be too involved in planning would make the profession obsolete. I became determined to dedicate my career to find concrete examples that counter this statement.

Who knows?

Professionals learn that they are the ones who know best. At university, architects are taught that they hold the knowledge of how space works and planners are taught that they know how cities work. But they are not taught that there are a lot of things they don’t know. What it means, for example, to be displaced from the home you grew up in. What it feels like to live in a building that will be demolished. Or how things work in a deprived neighbourhood. The class gap in urbanism is a thing.

As an anthropologist, I was always convinced there were ways to bridge the gap between professionals in planning and the people living with the effects of urbanism projects. I went looking for projects that involved residents. Most projects I found saw this involvement as a box to be ticked. Residents were invited to participate to an ‘urban lab’ ‘curated’ by trendy urbanists, with post-it notes on the walls stating that ‘cities are made by people’. Has anyone ever doubted that cities are made by people? I started spending most of my time with people in neighbourhoods where these projects were happening, and noticed the distrust many had in urban planners and all types of interventions, including friendly looking ‘urban acupuncture’ or ‘DIY urbanism’ projects. These projects were imposed upon them, 30 Here & Now | AoU Journal No. 9 | Spring 2017

without really questioning whether they addressed people’s actual and most urgent needs. Real social transformation of a neighbourhood, I was always convinced, can only be done by residents themselves, and professionals should be there to help.

As an evaluator of the World Habitat Awards, run by Leicester-based NGO the Building and Social Housing Foundation (BSHF) in collaboration with UN-Habitat, I travelled to San Juan, Puerto Rico. There, more than 10 years ago, residents established the world’s first community land trust (CLT) in an informal settlement.

They learned about the CLT model mostly used in the USA (e.g. the Champlain Housing Trust in Burlington) and Europe (e.g. the East London CLT in Mile End) and localised it to turn it into an instrument that regularises their land tenure, while protecting their communities as a whole against gentrification. It was the project I was looking for and I decided to stay in Puerto Rico.

Puerto Rico, a US colony Puerto Rico is an ‘unincorporated territory’ or commonwealth of the United States. In 1898, after the Spanish-American war, the United States took the Caribbean island from the Spanish colonisers. Since then, the US has used the island mainly for its own benefit, first with sugar and tobacco plantations, later – to name a few examples – by recruiting soldiers for the World Wars, promoting emigration to US industrial cities for cheap labour, testing women’s contraceptives, trying out nuclear bombs on its maritime bases, and more recently buying up land for luxury resorts. The country currently suffers from a profound financial crisis, facing a $72bn public debt. The debt is declared unpayable and the country is filing for a type of bankruptcy. President Obama and the US Congress sent a Fiscal Supervision Board to the island and through the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management and Economic Stability Act (‘PROMESA’ by its acronym, the Spanish word for ‘promise’, rather ironically), this Board is imposing cuts on the public sector to pay back creditors. Schools are closing, affecting at least 27,000

paved streets and provided electricity and water.

But most of the houses in these communities had an inadequate sewage system, which is still the case today, and toilet water is drained directly into the waterway.

It is now so polluted that the channel stopped flowing.

The result is that with each heavy rainfall, not uncommon in the tropics, the communities get flooded with highly contaminated water. In the past, residents had seen large parts of their communities displaced to public housing projects or to other informal settlements in the name of ‘revitalisation’ – a term used in official discourse. People were not supposed to live in slum conditions, subsequent governments stated, yet the alternatives were not improving people’s lives either.

students, and hospitals are being defunded. The budget of the public university might be cut by half. The minimum wage of people under 25 could be brought down to $4.25 an hour to ‘encourage investment’, as the argument goes. Meanwhile, the debt has not been audited and few Puerto Ricans see themselves reflected in the discourse of having lived above their means. People are protesting tirelessly in the streets against austerity, but since Puerto Ricans are US citizens, many see no other alternative but to emigrate to the mainland. There are more Puerto Ricans living in the US than on the island, and in the last decade half a million people emigrated. In the meantime, myriad tax incentives, like the exemption of taxes on capital gains, are attracting millionaires to buy property and land.

One of PROMESA’s promises for economic stability is to make selling public land easier.

When the government announced 15 years ago that it would start plans to dredge the blocked canal and restore the mangroves, residents knew the threat of displacement was getting critical. They came together in a large community organisation effort (over 700 community meetings were held), which resulted in the appointment of community leaders and a Comprehensive Development Plan formally adopted by the Puerto Rico Planning Board. In these workshops residents explored options to allow them not only to participate in the infrastructure project but also, once the dredging happened, enjoy the improvements.

Urban planners and other professionals such as social workers and lawyers were there to support the communities in their effort to find a way to be able to remain in and improve the area where they grew up.

Fighting against planned gentrification It seems as if the entire island is being deliberately gentrified. Per capita income in Puerto Rico is less than half that of Mississippi, the poorest US state.1 Puerto Ricans are being pushed out of the island by austerity and lower wages, while wealthier people are being lured in through tax incentives. This has been happening since industrialisation in the 1930s and 1940s, when a US report stated that “to make Puerto Rico’s economy feasible for sustained growth, one million Puerto Ricans were required to leave the Island.”2 It is this threat of sweeping gentrification that made residents of seven unplanned communities based along the heavily polluted Martin Peña channel in the centre of San Juan, come together. Their communities were established by impoverished farmers displaced from their farmlands. With no housing available at affordable rents, farmers and their families settled on the swamplands around the channel, filling them with debris to sustain their houses built of cardboard, wood and tin. Over time the city, incapable of accommodating these large groups of rural migrants,

A community land trust to regularise land The community land trust model seemed to be the only model that would preserve the communities and their social history. Like other CLTs the land is separated from the houses making housing affordable, while the land is owned and managed by the community land trust which is a private non-profit organisation governed by community members. But so far it is the only CLT whose main objective is to regularise

People taking back control in Puerto Rico 31

© Proyecto Enlace del Caño Martin Peña

land in informal settlements and give people rights to the land in perpetuity, rather than leasing it for a limited number of years (99 years in most other CLTs). Residents receive surface rights deeds that are permanent and can be sold, inherited and even mortgaged. This permanence was essential for residents, as they feel a strong connection with “the land they created”3, and young people express a desire to grow old in their communities.

The residents were so well organised that they were able to push the government for a dedicated law, through which they could set up a public corporation, Project ENLACE. With professional architects and planners on board through Project ENLACE, community leaders were able to implement their Comprehensive Development Plan. Also through this law, 200 acres of public land were transferred to their community land trust. This may seem like a lot, and unlikely to happen in other countries, but as in many other Latin American countries the government of Puerto Rico had been handing out legal land titles to large numbers of individual households for decades.

This public policy of individual land titles followed the influential argument of the Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto, who said that the ‘poor’ were also entitled to private property and that a well functioning market economy was only possible with a formal property system. Through the community land trust, public land was transferred to the communities at once in a larger amount. Now, any increases in land value that will result from the dredging and related urban renewal projects will remain within the community.

This makes the CLT an instrument not only to regularise land and secure permanently affordable housing, but also to overcome poverty.

own communities, and urbanists can be there to help with their technical expertise. There are few examples of projects that do exactly that, but it is happening in Puerto Rico, and it could be happening in many more places.

Line Algoed is an urban anthropologist specialised in the intersection between urban planning, housing, community engagement and international development.

For more information on the Caño Martín Peña Community Land Trust, please visit cano3punto7.org For information on the World Habitat Award for the Caño Martín Peña Community Land Trust: bshf.org/ world-habitat-awards/winners-and-finalists/canomartin-pena-community-land-trust/ Recent article on the Caño Martín Peña Community Land Trust in The Guardian: theguardian.com/ cities/2017/jan/18/people-power-puerto-rico-canalcommunity-escaped-gentrification 1. Quiñonez-Pérez Argeo T. and Ian J. Seda-Irizarry. 2016. “Wealth Extraction, Governmental Servitude, and Social Disintegration in Colonial Puerto Rico.”

New Politics, 15(4): 91-98, p: 91.

2. The ‘Dorfman report’ published in March 1946 by the US Tariff Commission as quoted in Meléndez Vélez, Edgardo. 2005. “The Puerto Rican Journey revisited: Politics and the study of Puerto Rican migration.” CENT7RO Journal, xv1i (2): 193-221, p: 195.

3. Fuller Marvel, Lucilla. 2008. Listen to What They Say. Planning and Community Development in Puerto Rico. San Juan: La Editorial, Universidad de Puerto Rico, p: 112.

In view of the world’s rapid urbanisation largely concentrated in informal settlements, it is urgent we look at new models of collective property to regularise land and mitigate poverty. People need greater control of planning instruments to help them transform their 32 Here & Now | AoU Journal No. 9 | Spring 2017

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Editor’s introduction | AoU in Action 33

From Occupy to occupation A movement of design practices has emerged across Europe (at the time of writing we can still include the UK in this group) in the last decade that are deeply motivated by the political and economic contexts in which they are working. This trend intensified after the 2008 financial crisis, which prompted some to question who indeed they are working for. Kathryn Firth AoU spoke to a number of these practices to find out what motivates them to find a different way.

Many young architects participated in the international Occupy Movement, expressing their desire for change in the economic and political systems that govern our cities. While they and the practices to which they belong each take a somewhat different approach to effecting the built environment, what they share is a direct relationship with public authorities and the drive to combine education and research with actual projects towards the creation of buildings and places that are not consumer and profit-driven.

As we celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome, the ideas on which the European Union was founded are tainted by populism, nationalism – not to be confused with the civic – and globalisation. London, in particular, is suffering from prioritising growth and a high GDP over urban quality and inclusive placemaking.

In short, as is so often the case, a crisis acts as a catalyst to pose some critical questions: how is it possible to act locally and have an impact at the global level? More specifically to the practice of architecture, how can architects answer people’s often very basic needs without getting bogged down in complex forms and other bureaucratic hoops, and still set useful precedents?

Common to these practices that are attempting to counter the polarisation of wealth, and focus on buildings and spaces that are not places of consumption, is what can best be described as ‘engagement’. The crisis – the loss of the civic and 34 Here & Now | AoU Journal No. 9 | Spring 2017

the collective – has been a powerful incubator for provoking change and developing new attitudes toward the disciplines of architecture and urbanism and finding diverse ways to bring many voices to urban issues.

While there is a history of engagement – so often confused with consultation in places such as the UK – that might lead to cynicism, there is a renewed impetus to connect the practice of architecture and urbanism with social, political and economic conditions.

“The act of doing things yourself is political.”

Anthony Engi Meacock, Assemble, London: October 5th, 2016 A culture of independence – if you want something to happen, make it happen – encouraged many architecture students to opt for radical trajectories disrupting normative career paths. The perceived need for immediate action at the local level and the strong desire to initiate projects by themselves catalysed students to start conversations and collaborations on an informal level. The collective prevailed over the individual ego, as did the desire to intervene rather than be a spectator, provoking the emergence of self-sustained projects. There is a realisation that the tools of architecture and urbanism can be mobilised to provoke societal change. This is not the first time in history that architects have operated as a collective, nor politically in a bottom-up manner. For most of the young architects motivated towards community engagement this is novel and new territory – they are

not oblivious to history, but have a sincere belief that they can do things differently, more effectively.

within these practices nor a fixation on style. However, across most of the practices, research is a critical aspect of the work. This is not merely a desktop review of data but includes in-depth observation of a place, spending time on the streets, talking to locals about how a place is used and inhabited. Practice becomes a question of attitude as these designers interpret, even exploit, the role of the architect to act directly on behalf of a particular community.

Advocating for collective agency, these practices forge relationships between traditional authority and people in their particular locales. As these practices place themselves at the core of the production of common benefit it becomes critical to interrogate the architect’s roles and responsibilities.

The London-based practice We Made That states on their website: “All our work is public, and we aim to make imaginative and considered contributions to the built environment through socially engaged design processes. The relationship between local communities, development and creative practice is a particular focus of our work and we believe that – handled correctly – it can lead to enriched, exciting and engaging places.”

This ultimately sees the architect or urban designer taking on a multiplicity of roles, including project initiator, researcher, teacher, facilitator, project manager, convener, negotiator and, oh yes, designer...

Ateliermob took on all of these roles working with residents of an illegal settlement in Costa da Caparica, Portugal. 500 people live here without proper water infrastructure. Through a participatory process, the people agreed that a community kitchen, with running water and electricity, was a priority to improve their living conditions. Through the persistence of Ateliermob, originally supported by the Architecture, City and Territory Studies Centre of Universidade Autónoma de Lisboa and the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, the Municipality of Almada finally recognised the rights of the community. They formed a Neighbourhood Commission and the kitchen was realised. This was both a political and social coup.

While this statement might appear on promotional material of many ‘traditional’ practices, We Made That, like the other young practices referred to in this article, is not just paying lip service to the concept of socially-engaged processes. There is a rigour in the engagement that extends beyond merely holding a consultation event. Indeed, in some cases they stay involved far beyond the realisation of the project informing its potential evolution. For example, at Blackhorse Lane in the London Borough of Waltham Forest they held free training in production skills within the workshop they designed.

Assemble worked in residence with local activist group Pathfinders for nine months to inform public realm improvements at New Addington, Central Parade in Croydon. The project started with a three-month collaborative research process with local residents, businesses and community groups. Assemble built

Projects respond to their context and ask a simple question: how can we collectively improve the lives of the people inhabiting a particular place? Often there is no clear methodology or theoretical basis operating

From Occupy to occupation 35

1:1 models of their proposals on site, testing them by hosting a week-long festival of events in the public square for the whole town to share.

Deconstruction was involved in the demolition of BNP Paris Headquarters in Brussels and is selling its stock, furniture and fittings, on the internet.

‘City School 2015-2016: The Library from Militari’ was co-ordinated by studioBASAR and financed through the Mobilizing Excellency Program, created

by Porsche Romania and developed together with Bucharest Community Foundation. Closed for more than five years, hidden in the back of a food market, the Gheorghe Lazăr library occupied the ground floor of an apartment block. The library became the studio of a multidisciplinary team of students and architecture, urbanism and sociology graduates for six months. The City School team took the library out of hibernation and it became a living room for conversations and workshops with neighbours, the library users and librarians from other branches to inform how the library should be reinstated. The experience resulted in the first edition of the City School Activation Guide, which provides lessons learned, inspiring similar projects in other branches.

Creativity extends to the birth of alternative business models. Some practices are opting for parallel economic activities by generating revenue through diverse services such as renting out excess office space or teaching. Others have developed architecture cooperatives that act as public service organisations or NGOs that are exempt from VAT, while others are exploring the mechanisms of real-estate development to propose new ways of conceiving and financing projects. Ateliermob is now becoming an NGO in order to avoid paying tax.

Young practices understand the power of virtual communication – social media – and how it can catalyse action that, in turn, can have an immediate local and global impact. Tiago Mota Saraiva of Ateliermob has influenced municipal decisions via Twitter – indeed, he was able to report police violence in the community on Twitter, resulting in immediate outrage; and StudioBASAR has found that it can organise informal meetings in just a few minutes using social media. The call to action that has a built environment agenda ultimately operates the same way we see the call to other forms of political mobilisation today.

On top of the many roles these ‘bottom-up’ architects play they also fund or subsidise projects. Most of these practices are far from economically viable. While they aim to find alternative forms of income, finances remains a major issue as they struggle to make personal and their practice’s ends meet. It is no great surprise that most of these practices depend on public subsidies: from local, regional, national or European funds. Most of them are aware that public money is a volatile source. The survival of these practices is often only possible due to the scale of their projects.

They tend not to require vast funds to be developed or to run. However, while size isn’t everything it can matter – if these types of practices want to keep their independence and realise larger scale projects they encounter serious financial challenges.

Funding is derived from multiple sources.

StudioBASAR, for example, received €10,000 from EUCSR (European Union Corporate Responsibility Fund) for the library project. Assemble’s clients are local authorities, institutions and trusts. Project funding is often supplemented by sources such as the National Lottery Fund, BIDs (Central Parade, Croydon) or by the Mayor of London’s Outer London Fund (Blackhorse Lane workshops). Meanwhile, Rorot 36 Here & Now | AoU Journal No. 9 | Spring 2017

Is it that these practices reject the traditional client – the private developer – or that organisations whose primary objective is purely financial gain would never commission architects with such extreme ‘ground up’ approaches to a design project? Over the past decade there has been an improvement in the quality of the public realm and buildings – both functionally and aesthetically – however, how much of this is due to enlightened regulation?

Whether in rural areas, city centres or the suburbs, these practices are able to re-establish or create centralities. This does not mean a transport hub, retail centre or cultural district. These are centralities that emerge from the collective intelligence and from the existing context and communities already present in a locality. These projects are able to grasp commonalities, allowing people to live together, be productive together, form links that transcend difference. By acting at a granular local level these young practices are recreating, at a very small scale, the essence of the ‘Esprit Européen’: the ideal of diversity and equality – the anti-thesis to one-size fits all urbanism.

There are still many questions around this process of the democratisation of architecture and urbanism. The number of practices devoted to this endeavour is still a very small percentage of the profession. However, it is inspiring that across a growing diversity of practices there is a drive to become more aligned with current political, social and economic discussions and debates.

In a time when being an ‘expert’ is frowned upon by a large part of the population these approaches have the potential to form a bridge between diverse constituencies.

Kathryn Firth AoU is a partner at FPdesign and a director of The Academy of Urbanism.

This article has been supplemented by discussions with Flavien Menu, who curated and chaired “The Bedford Tapes”: a day of debate at the Architectural Association including the practices cited aaschool.ac.uk/VIDEO/lecture.php?ID=3505

Making space for children and young people in placemaking Children and young people are not just our future, they are also very much an important part of our present, moving through, inhabiting and interacting with our built environment, just as adults do. Drawing from the experience of working with developers, Sophia de Sousa AoU and Louise Dredge of The Glass-House Community Led Design make the compelling case for better engaging young people in placemaking.

According to the 2011 census, children and young people under the age of 25 represent almost a third (30.7 per cent) of the UK population, making them a key audience and user of our spaces and places.

children entirely from the conversation. This is missing a trick. Children’s acute observations often offer a much more immediate commentary on the impact of the quality of our places on our daily lives.

The views, concerns and aspirations of children and young people should not only be sought, but valued as an essential part of setting an informed brief for how we shape and improve our villages, towns and cities. Placemaking provides opportunities not just to enhance the quality of our places, but to empower and inspire children and young people about their potential and the potential of their environment.

Take the example of a very young girl who participated in a walkabout to assess a housing estate, led by The Glass-House during an engagement event run by the social enterprise LS14 in Leeds. When we found ourselves at the top of a large green hill, the girl told us how much she loved rolling down it. It was a shame, she said, that at the bottom of that hill there was a large patch of nettles. The rolling down bit was great fun, she said, the landing at the bottom, was not. This, perhaps, was only a small cosmetic problem for adults but it drew attention to an issue that had been affecting local children’s use and enjoyment of a local green space and which was an easy problem to solve with better upkeep and maintenance.

Hard to reach or not reached?

Engaging children and young people in placemaking is often seen as a challenging enterprise, with those leading design processes struggling to find the right approaches and mechanisms to empower children and young people to participate in and influence the decisions that affect how their places are shaped.

In our experience of working amongst a wide range of stakeholders involved in shaping places, we’ve come across many instances where in placemaking processes, engagement activities are held either at times at which children and young people are not readily available to participate, or in ways that are neither attractive nor accessible to them.

Younger children in particular are often treated not as participants, but as a logistical problem to solve by offering childcare activities that liberate their parents and carers to engage, but that effectively remove Image: Young people in the shelter they designed and built as part of The Glass-House Young Spacemakers Design Training course

The tendency to engage young people in isolation can also have its limitations. Many young people have complained to us of having been asked their views, but having had no opportunity to enter into a dialogue about how their needs and aspirations are shared or conflict with those of other age groups. In 2007 and 2008, we held a debate series in partnership with the Young Advisors Network to probe the question: Are we designing young people out of public space? The message from young people who participated was clear: don’t isolate us physically through the design of public spaces, nor in the decision-making processes involved in their creation.

When children and young people are brought together with other age groups to look at design and placemaking questions from a range of perspectives, there is potential to develop a much

From Occupy to occupation | Making space for children Editor’s andintroduction young people| inAoU placemaking in Action 37

“The most memorable thing I learned today is that our opinions and voices actually affect the place around us.” more comprehensive picture of local views and needs.

A Mega Soft Play Day organised by a group of mums in Tidworth in Wiltshire (with the support of project partners in the Unearth Hidden Assets research project: The Glass-House, the Open University, Wiltshire Council and the Army Welfare Service) provided a unique opportunity for children, parents and carers to engage in a range of play activities and get involved in informing future play provision in their town. A creative corner for dreaming up designs for play spaces, engaging voting stations for play activities and environments, one-to-one conversations and an online survey were just some of the mechanisms used to gather a wealth of data on a community’s interest in play activities, understanding questions of access, affordability and the popularity of different activities.

This model of activity, engagement and research can gather valuable data, test ideas, support network building – all crucial to shaping places well – and while doing so, provide a valuable local service or activity.

that will help them become more engaged and active citizens and contributors to the success of their places.

Empowering through placemaking

Working with developer St James of the Berkeley Group, The Glass-House delivered what we see as an important pilot for testing how a development process can give young people a role in the design of a local development, and empower them with life and employability skills. We engaged with over 30 Year 10 students from Phoenix High School in London’s White City neighbourhood, in a four-month programme that aimed to inspire and empower local young people in and through changes to their neighbourhood. The students learned about design, regeneration and development through a series of hands-on workshops and site and study visits; developed design ideas for a new public open space which they presented to the project architect and the Board of St James; gained career insight, advice and work experience placements; and met with local business owners and interest groups to explore the impact and opportunities of new developments in the area.

“I like how I get to learn and think about things in a new way.“ Student from Sacred Heart Catholic School, near Elephant and Castle, London

“My experience in the White City project was fascinating. It has helped me improve many skills, in particular communication and confidence skills.”

Sumeya, student from Phoenix High School, White City

Engagement in design and placemaking also offers a tremendous opportunity for empowering children and young people with new skills, knowledge and confidence. Engagement done well can empower them to be both more constructive contributors to local decision-making on design and placemaking, and at the same time embed life skills and a sense of agency

In another partnership project in south London, we used media and design to help young people in Elephant and Castle to explore their relationship with their environment and share ideas for the future of their place, in connection with a large multi-stakeholder regeneration project. Through a combination of activities designed to raise awareness

38 Here & Now | AoU Journal No. 9 | Spring 2017

the complex, but empowered Eleanor as a contributor and champion of the project. Speaking about her role in the process:

and confidence about their relationship and role within their neighbourhood and specialist training in media production, the students produced high quality creative outputs, using them to express their views on their environment with clear and powerful messages.

The students’ reflections revealed a more nuanced understanding and engagement on a range of issues, from civic responsibility to art, design and nature:

“I was a patient here when I was 14 years old and I wanted the new hospital to have open spaces, greenery and natural light. When I drew my picture seven years ago, I didn’t expect I would play such an important part in the design of the new Alder Hey. Since then I have been involved in many amazing design decisions and I’m really excited to show the facility to some of the patients who are going to benefit from this fantastic new hospital.”

“I learned and noticed how places can intentionally and accidentally exclude or include people and groups.”

“The rain first brought the emotion of gloom but I then felt the rain on my skin and realised that each raindrop was a story. Each photograph captured these memories and in that created new memories.”

In placemaking, we have a responsibility to respond to the needs and aspirations of children and young people, just as we do for adults, and provide opportunities to engage, inspire and invest in them as active citizens and contributors to both our present and our future. Children and young people have a huge amount to offer in helping to define the shape of our places. We should do more to unlock and enable their knowledge and ideas to create more inclusive and delightful places and spaces for everyone.

“The most memorable thing I learned today is that our opinions and voices actually affect the place around us.”

In this instance, as in White City, the primary goal of involving young people in placemaking was to unlock opportunities and skills for young people through creative, open collaboration between private, public and third sector organisations.

Connecting children and young people with the design of a new state-of-the-art facility dedicated to supporting and caring for their health and wellbeing, was a crucial part of the development of the awardwinning Alder Hey Children’s Hospital (Alder Hey in the Park) in Liverpool. Their consultation brought together ideas from almost 1,000 patients and a Children and Young People’s Design Group made up of current and former patients helped to inform detailed design decisions throughout the process. The overall concept for the new hospital’s design was inspired by a drawing by 15-year old Eleanor Brogan, a former patient of the children’s hospital. Her contribution was not only catalytic in terms of informing the design of

Sophia de Sousa AoU is chief executive of The Glass-House Community Led Design.

Louise Dredge is a Young Urbanist and is head of creative engagement at The Glass-House Community Led Design.

For more information on The Glass-House projects referenced go to: theglasshouse.org.uk/stories Information on the transformation of Alder Hey available here: alderhey.nhs.uk/alder-hey-in-the-parkdesigned-by-children-for-children/

Opposite page: Students present their design analysis and ideas for a new public open space in White City, west London Right: Children creating ideas for their dream play spaces at a Mega Soft Play Day in Tidworth, Wiltshire

Making space for children and young people in placemaking 39

Localism and the battle over sites While pro-localist narratives celebrate the ‘voice’ given to subordinated groups, the very opposite is often true. Tim White looks at the effect of localism on traveller communities.

Over the past half century, the UK government has been torn between localist and statist approaches to Gypsy and Traveller site provision (see Figure 1).

Despite its many flaws, the statist principles of 1968 generated numerous largely council-owned and managed sites on which residents paid rents. In 1994, this was replaced by a localist policy encouraging, but not obliging, councils to help Gypsies and Travellers develop sites by stimulating independent, private provision. Another brief statist push from 2006 required local authorities to carry the needs assessment for sites, but had the promise of central government intervening were these not achieved.

The deadline for determining post-2006 government intervention was yet to be reached when the Coalition government returned to localism in 2011, which remains a key approach to this day. As before, each council is ‘encouraged’ to respond to the local need for site provision, setting its own target. However,

Figure 1: Localist vs statist approaches to Gypsies and Travellers (Ryder, 2015)

1968 Statist

1994 Localist

2006 Statist

2011 Localist

• Duty placed on councils to provide Traveller sites (council sites on which rents were paid)

• Duty scrapped – councils asked to help Gypsies and Travellers to buy their own land and develop own sites

• Obligation on councils to assess Gypsy and Traveller accommodation needs. If councils failed to reach targets the Government could intervene • Obligation to meet pitch targets abolished – all councils told to determine their own pitch numbers – no government intervention if target not met • Greater power for Parish Councils in planning • Referenda

40 Here & Now | AoU Journal No. 9 | Spring 2017

continued assessment is not prescriptive. Unlike within previous policies, there is no benchmarking by regional planning bodies to correct underestimated assessments, or any intervention if the assessment goes unmet. It is feared that localism will affect the livelihoods of many Travellers and Gypsies.

The consequences of the 1994 localist policy were clear. A lack of compulsion resulted in few local authorities initiating serious site provision measures, largely due to public opposition. Authorities were no longer compelled to work in unison and they feared the ‘honeypot’ effect. That is, if they acted alone, there would be a large influx of Gypsies and Travelers that couldn’t be catered for.

Similar issues are evident today. In a survey of the East, South East and South West of England, the Irish Traveller Movement in Britain found a 52 per cent drop in planned site provision when compared to targets under the previous Regional Spatial Strategy. A 2015 London Assembly report also showed that since 2009, local opposition had resulted in the development of only 10 new pitches, most of which were on-site extensions. This meant that initially, the GLA was unable to allocate a third of its £1.55m pitch funding.

Nimbys, together with political capital-seeking local authorities, are often blamed for using their newfound localist powers to the detriment of these communities. This has been of particular controversy within the greenbelt, where ‘experienced negotiators’ have benefitted. Resident associations with plentiful capital and access to expertise, often accompanied by powerful lobbying groups like CBRE, have navigated policies in their favour. Meanwhile ‘non-experienced’ negotiators like Travellers and Gypsies are unable to compete in the bureaucratic minefield. Some argue that localism upholds a prejudiced British pastoral aesthetic in which counterculture must be removed to ‘preserve character’. This narrative has often seen the Localism Act overpower consensus on

An activist poses with a cross outside a burning caravan, as riot police surrounded Dale Farm residents and activists. © Mary Turner, The Advocacy Project

planning suitability, as local politicians refute expert evaluations. Such issues have only been reinforced by the increased competition over previously low-value, unwanted and unused land. There has been particular outrage when the ‘exceptional circumstances’ of greenbelt development are comparatively lenient with commercial ventures such as airports.

With localism, the government has both dropped local authority duties to cater for Gypsy and Traveller communities and given more power to popular residents’ campaigns as a means of rejecting sites.

This example suggests a fundamental moral flaw in localism, as mainstream and majority views are reflected to the detriment of the needs and rights of marginalised groups. Such a scenario ultimately conflicts with the interests of the ‘greater good’.

Therefore, if it is accepted that protecting minority rights is fundamental to the liberal tradition, then localism can be seen to support illiberal actions.

There is, however, no shortage of demand for sites.

The biannual DCLG Caravan Count suggests that the number of caravans in England (mostly belonging to Travellers and Gypsies) rose by 2,936 between January 2010 and 2016, totalling 21,306. Over the same period, the provision of social rented sites by local authorities has fallen from 37 to 33 per cent. To make matters worse, official figures on these communities are decreasing as a result of new definitions in planning legislation. Members living in a fixed residence are permanently losing their Gypsy or Traveller status.

Council needs assessments are therefore finding that fewer local authority pitches are required.

Michael Bullock, managing director at housing market specialist Arc4, calculates that 60 per cent of current Gypsies and Travellers living on council pitches will not meet the new definition.

“liberal democratic principles may not always be best served by devolving decision making power down to local communities because it is entirely possible that local communities might use this power to enact policies or initiatives that violate liberal principles and make the lives of certain members worse” (Parvin, 2009, 354) Tim White is a Young Urbanist and has completed an MPhil in Planning, Growth and Regeneration at Cambridge University. Motivated by improving socio-spatial equality, his latest research focuses on progressive housing concepts in London.

With the shortfall in authorised sites, these communities must seek roadside or other such unauthorised locations, often struggling with a cycle of eviction. Needless to say, this is leading to a vicious cycle that reproduces social distance, further marginalising and impeding the opportunity and living standards of nomadic households. This also worsens the situation for sedentary citizens. The famous Dale Farm case alone cost the local authority around £4.8m.

Unauthorised sites may also cost the local community more due to being established in inappropriate locations.

Localism and the battle over sites 41

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Square pegs and round holes: Integrating the unpredictability of community engagement within the slow-moving machine of academia A crucial aspect of urban design is the social responsibility to engage meaningfully with communities and the public at large, responding to and protecting the interests of society.

However, community engagement is not commonly included in urban design course curricula. And with good reason.

Dr Lucy Montague AoU reports back on her experience of merging the two.

Whilst we might readily agree in principle with the inclusion of the community in urban design and the inclusion of live projects in built environment education, there are many questions raised by this objective. How should it be done? Is it effective? How can it be resourced? And how on earth do you fit the square peg of community groups into the round hole of academia?

Of course, community planning is far from a new area of debate or practice. There are compelling arguments for a range of approaches to this type of interaction, demonstrating how decision-making powers might be shared amongst the different actors and how the process can be embedded within the local community.

The intricacies of achieving effective and meaningful community engagement are well documented. But they strongly suggest that it can be an instrumental achievement that secures not just a more responsive design, but also endorsement from stakeholders.

This translates to a sense of ownership within the community crucial to the long-term success for the place/space in terms of occupancy and maintenance.

Yet the idealism of this scenario must be tempered with reality. In current times the goals of communities’ engagement, and the means by which they may be achieved, are particularly challenged by economic constraints impacting on local authority budgets.

When the financial and therefore human resources

of the public sector are severely diminished, the capacity for urban design guidance is typically virtually eliminated as a non-essential service. Usually, this results in a swell of provision from the voluntary sector, attempting to address the deficit (for example the technical aid movement in the 1980s). Local councils across the UK are suffering extraordinary cuts in their financial resources due to decisions at a national government level. It is in this context that the community engagement module has developed within the MA Urban Design at The University of Huddersfield.

So far ÂŁ106m has been cut from local government budget in Huddersfield and a further ÂŁ50m is still to go. In order to continue to provide essential services such as healthcare and education they have been forced to scale back the delivery of non-essential services and develop an entirely different model in which the council has a more indirect role, enabling community groups to maintain or change local spaces.

Additionally, one could argue that universities have a civic role to play: engaging with the place within which they are geographically located. In this vein, I speculated on the possibility to simultaneously build the capacity of the university to actively engage with local communities, to address the shortfall of public sector services and to create an unusual learning opportunity for our students.

Square pegs and round holes 43

In at the deep end…

However, as I mentioned earlier, community engagement, and live projects in general, are not commonly integrated into the design curricula.

Combining the rigid timetabling restrictions and slow-paced bureaucracy of a university with the unpredictability of live projects and flexibility required to work with community groups leads to a stressful and risky venture. Ultimately, the inaugural alignment of the scheduled module and a live community project pursued this year was achieved by initiating contact with multiple council teams seven months in advance, asking for leads on community groups that may be interested in working with us. One of these teams – The Parks & Open Space Team – was particularly responsive and after many discussions and much correspondence they advertised our skills offer to groups. This generated six formal expressions of interest. I then shortlisted a few who seemed the most appropriate. I talked to each of these in order to better understand their objectives, expectations, how established they are, membership numbers, availability, and level of organisation in order to judge which group would be best for the students to work with. Of course, at each stage this was not a particularly linear process.

One of the groups presented itself as particularly suitable as they were well co-ordinated, had realistic expectations, feasible timing, were geographically accessible to us, and had a project appropriate to the skills set of the students and to the scope and scale of the module. This was a residents’ group in a village outside Huddersfield whose interests focus on improving the quality of their public spaces. Having successfully improved small areas of planting and the state of some of the village’s ginnels (alleys), they sought support with their most ambitious project to date – the re-design of the local park, ‘Two Furrows Rec’.

Their core membership of around 10-15 people, supplemented by up to 40 additional residents who

44 Here & Now | AoU Journal No. 9 | Spring 2017

actively participate in one-off events and activities, suggested an adequate yet manageable number for participation. I had extended conversations with the group’s chairperson to test the feasibility and held an initial meeting with the group to establish how they would like to move forward and work with the students.

The result was a date and objectives for an evening event with them and an extension, at their request, to include engagement exercises with local school children in the village, as primary users of the space.

Further discussion with the local primary schools led to a programme of several events throughout the module’s duration. In parallel with all these developments, I maintained contact with the council to ensure that they were aware and supportive of our collective endeavours. This also needed to be reported back to the group to alleviate their concerns that this might be an ineffectual exercise. Once this rough plan had formed and the scope of participants identified, I had to rush through ethics approval at the university.

At this point, and only at this point, it became possible to partly relinquish control to the students and assume a supervisory role. Ultimately, despite many months of preparation, this timing was tight for the scheduled start of module.

The students worked to plan and deliver four events: three with the schools and one with the residents group. In each instance, weekly tutorials guided the students to consider the objectives of the overall engagement process and therefore each event in order to devise agendas and activities to achieve them. This was done with the consideration of the literature around participation principles, methods and techniques (which the module introduced in parallel through seminars) and others’ experience of communities’ engagement (contributed through guest lectures from speakers giving public sector, private sector and research perspectives). Practical considerations were of course also a factor, especially limitations to both the time available and financial resources. The events were not intended to be radical

in their approach but to introduce the students to this type of work, so they included fairly typical exercises covering analytical work, trying to draw out participant’s understanding of the issues with the space, how they currently perceive and use it and generative work in which they responded to precedents, proposed ideas and modelled elements within the design.

A worthwhile endeavour?

Inevitably the results were imperfect due to the complexities of any engagement, the very restricted time available to develop the project and the students’ inexperience. It was also somewhat more demanding than it might have been as it required the students to consider two very different types of participant – the residents’ group and primary age children. There were however several positive outcomes: • The council has saved resources by using this engagement as the formal consultation for this space required by their review of parks and open spaces prompted by the budget cuts.

• A proposal for the ‘Two Furrows Rec’ has been codesigned with the community, one which they endorse and feel they have ownership of. The community has had far greater input this way and a more tangible output than they would have had as part of the council’s usual consultation process.

• The residents’ group and the local primary schools have been provided with a list of possible funding sources they would each be eligible for that could enable implementation of their design. They also have professional documentation of a design they have developed and endorsed which can be used to support these funding applications.

aspects of communities’ engagement. Their individual retrospective reflections demonstrate learning that will support their future endeavours.

There were countless opportunities for this endeavour to have had a less positive outcome. Several key factors influenced this. Fortunately, I had constructed the module documents (required over a year in advance of delivery and with external approval for any changes) with a dangerous level of ambiguity that allowed the specific project to be accommodated even though it could not have been known so far in advance and will necessarily change every year (unlike the documentation). Equally fortunately, ethical approval was uncharacteristically quick and forthcoming.

And perhaps most fortuitously the communities’ involvement did not fall through at the last minute leaving me with a project-shaped gap in the module. With extreme advance planning, creative interpretation of academic bureaucracy and acceptance of risk and uncertainty beyond any comfortable level, the square peg of a live community project was hammered into the round hole of academia. It has been complex and time-consuming to set up and manage but the benefits would seem to justify this outlay: not least the temporary creation of a tangible link between the ivory tower of academia and the communities within which we are located, whilst reinforcing the civic role of urban design.

Dr Lucy Montague AoU is a senior lecturer in urban design at the School of Art, Design & Architecture, The University of Huddersfield

• The students report a challenging and enjoyable learning experience that has been grounded in theory but also actively introduced them to many

Square regs and round holes 45

Does the community It is not often that architects find their offices occupied by protesters as happened to HTA during their work on the Aylesbury Estate. However, as Simon Bayliss AoU suggests, it can be helpful to be challenged in these politically polarised times.

The Aylesbury Estate in the London Borough of Southwark is one of the largest of its kind, built between 1963 and 1977, with over 2,750 homes contained within some 60 blocks of between four and 14 storeys tall. Constructed using a prefabricated concrete system, it was laid out to a modernist vision with the primary circulation and access to homes via a second floor walkway – a street in the sky – but link bridges connecting the community have in part been removed to reduce antisocial behaviour. The ground is thus cleared of front doors leaving a street frontage of garages and fences to maisonette gardens with front doors located two storeys above. This creates a challenging environment, externally at least, which does not function as originally intended and, though certainly not conforming to the ‘crime-ridden brutal high-rise sink estate’ rhetoric used to launch this government’s estate regeneration strategy, there are a great number of problems with the design of the estate and unacceptable differences in the health and wellbeing of the community compared locally.

An Area Action Plan (AAP) completed by the council in 2010, which proposed comprehensive redevelopment of the entire estate, was used to develop two early sites and as a basis for selecting a development partner.

HTA have been masterplanners and lead architects for Notting Hill Housing since 2012, both through the bid selection process and design development for the detailed consent for the first 950 homes with various community facilities, and outline consent for a further 2,600 homes. Since selection of our team in early 2014, we have engaged in a full programme of workshops, walkabouts and exhibitions to help further develop the proposals from the bid stage concepts, to both maintain the core principles established in the AAP, and inform delivery. Positive engagement by many of the existing residents as well as those living adjacent to the redevelopment area has helped shape building massing, housing layouts, the locations and character of new open spaces, and influence every other aspect 46 Here & Now | AoU Journal No. 9 | Spring 2017

of the design, phasing and delivery.

But there has also been some very well publicised opposition to the proposals by groups against the very principle of renewal, centred on more general concerns about losses of council-owned social rented housing. Although played out in part through the engagement process, a more effective campaign was channelled online with attention turning from council and developer towards HTA and other architects working on the redesign of the estate, aiming to ‘shame’ the architects away from regeneration work.

Arguments were made in favour of retention and refurbishment to minimise the long term costs of living and ensure future affordability as housing costs all around continue to spiral. It was indeed true that unlike many other projects tackled by the practice, we were never asked to consider alternative proposals for the Aylesbury, this having been established through the AAP process. Had we been able to do so and, having been closely involved in all of the engagement over the past five years, we strongly believe that redevelopment would still have become the choice of residents.

This is in part because of problems inherent in the layout of the estate and building construction, expensive if not impossible to fix through alterations and refurbishment, but more importantly because engagement with residents has supported a fundamental need to remove the identity of a single large estate, to recreate a more traditional street-based neighbourhood better connected to the surrounding city. Indeed, research into the procurement of the original estate shows that even with the best of intentions – both political and design – there were widespread calls for the Aylesbury to be demolished long before it was even completed.

The ethical argument made in favour of refurbishment to retain cheap housing is countered by the moral obligation to prevent some of those most in need of

always know best?

Aylesbury Estate © Nico Hogg

support, being consigned to poor quality homes in places without opportunity from which, given the choice, most would choose to leave.

ensure residents’ views have adequate power and influence and at the appropriate time.

Agreeing what constitutes a better place or improved homes and the acceptable price to pay for change requires leadership from the councils responsible for the well-being of their residents, with open and robust processes that ensures regeneration is properly considered and not derailed by those with either no direct personal stake, or worse a vested interest in alternative outcomes.

Of course, deciding what’s best for any community is a difficult matter, even for the community itself to agree on. Our early experience of seeking better outcomes through resident engagement was itself counter to the expert-led orthodoxy that produced such poor places in the first place. Refurbishment costs are notoriously difficult to predict and improving the performance of the homes and public realm can still fail to adequately impact on key social problems.

Ultimately, estate regeneration must be about transforming the lives of communities that have suffered a great deal due to poor quality homes and places. The method of achieving transformation is for councils and communities to jointly decide, with help from designers who understand the issues, are willing to listen and able to communicate. We should be clear that positive change is likely to include arrival of new residents gaining a stake, but that this cannot be at the expense of the existing residents, who have long contributed to the place. We must collaborate to ensure that whatever the method, we create places that all of us would consider making our home, shaping our towns and cities more positively for the future.

Most practitioners in the field of regeneration would surely agree that genuinely affordable housing is essential to our collective well-being, a healthy society and thriving cities and, whilst we might consider that we have much to contribute in shaping better places for the future, the terms and method of delivery remain a political matter which, to properly influence, we would all need to become elected politicians. Or activists perhaps.

So whilst some of the language of this mostly online engagement made challenging reading for those just attempting to design better outcomes for residents, and indeed delayed progress of regeneration through influencing the need for a second Compulsory Purchase Order (CPO), it was perhaps helpful during such politically polarised times in encouraging architects to consider their position in the competition for the moral high-ground within regeneration.

Creating good places takes time. The best places found in our towns and cities have been steadily improving for generations and the newly formed place requires many years of preparation before implementation begins, and perhaps decades to become established before success can be judged properly.

Partly resulting from this debate in 2016, HTA together with Levitt Bernstein, Pollard Thomas Edwards and PRP – all housing practices with long histories in regeneration - published Altered Estates, a report to investigate key factors required for successful estate regeneration. It explored approaches for options appraisal, design, sustainability and engagement, to

Those entrusted to making and reshaping pieces of our urban fabric must interrogate the physical characteristics of the place and its role in the wider region, to appreciate the influence of the site’s heritage, its success and failings, from which to develop an understanding of how a successful new place may emerge.

Does the community always know best? 47

Aylesbury Masterplan Š HTA

Š astonishme (Flickr)

Although stakeholder engagement is now written into the planning process, many Consultation Exhibitions merely present the finished proposals with minimal actual engagement. This can be a seriously wasted opportunity. As designers, through committed and considered engagement, we can develop a better understanding of the social and economic drivers that have built a community and created the spirit of the place, which in turn can benefit the project, contribute to our future heritage and transform the lives of many people over the long life of a successful development.

As in ordinary life, the introduction of social media into the development world has also provided an effective tool of argument and insult, often from those quite removed from the issues. Thus making positive progress generally requires the debate to return to the community centre, with drawings and models that communicate and share objectives and to direct progress towards preferred solutions.

This is particularly heightened in the case of estate regeneration, in which our practice has worked for over 40 years, where to be successful the project must bring about often fundamental improvements to a place whilst safeguarding an existing community. It has also become yet more important with the removal of housing grant and regeneration funding, which enabled wider consideration of options for refurbishment and renewal, extension and infill, to tackle inherent design problems whilst minimising disruption.

With many councils now only able to fund estate regeneration through cross-subsidy from developing market sale housing within the site, change will typically require the expertise and funding capabilities of a private sector partner. Thus the impact on existing residents will inevitably be more significant and the engagement process yet more important in communicating the potential changes and the benefits that regeneration could bring and so establish an agreed way to proceed.

Over the past decade engagement methods have expanded to include web based tools and social media to reach more stakeholders and provide improved access to more information, reflecting modern lifestyles and responding to changing demographics and cultures within communities.

48 Here & Now | AoU Journal No. 9 | Spring 2017

Adopting these tools helped us reach more people and gain greater consensus at recent regeneration projects at South Acton, Ealing and Ebury Bridge in Westminster, where digital media helped increase attendance at events and thus overall engagement in the design process. Regular topic based workshops, door knocking and individual surveys, helped define options that residents could select through large exhibitions at key stages. Clear messages from residents and local stakeholders, by vote and questionnaires produced a clear mandate for the council to progress comprehensive or partial redevelopment, with increased density creating a mixed tenure community more representative of the surrounding city, whilst cross-subsidising the refurbishment of retained buildings and increased investment in new public realm and amenities. At South Acton it has been reported that before work began 80 per cent of the community stated a desire to leave the estate but, six years on, 80 per cent have chosen to remain and move into one of the new homes.

Which just goes to show, while challengers from afar can indeed make us consider outcomes, it is residents with everything to lose that we must work harder to include.

Simon Bayliss AoU is managing partner of HTA Design LLP

Positive Engagement at David Lock Associates The increasing demands being placed upon the planning system for local accountability to be at the forefront of planning practice and decision making mean that the process of involving the community in planning can frequently be treated as a science.

At David Lock Associates we believe that engaging with individuals and communities is still very much an art and requires imagination and creatively to both inform and engage effectively.

We have a wealth of experience and knowledge as to what works and continue to search for new and innovative ways to engage positively in the planning and building of our future communities.

For more information contact our team on 01908 666276.

davidlock.com

Why infrastructure investment matters | Bridging the divide in Bristol 49

My Place

People with places that are significant in their lives ‘Give me a child until he is seven and I will show you the man’. This is as true now as when Aristotle first said it about two thousand years ago, so why haven’t we at The Academy of Urbanism learnt the lesson?

10 years ago, when the Academy was founded, I volunteered to organise events in schools. The response was politely dismissive. What could a country schoolmaster possibly contribute to a scholarly elite of 100 urbanists – someone who had never even heard of Jan Gehl?

I persevered and organised an exhibition entitled ’My Arch’. I asked my students to find an interesting arch, have themselves photographed with it, and write a short essay, explaining its significance for them. To give them more of an incentive I undertook to find an equal number of adults to take part. Our most famous catch that year was the architect, Norman Foster, and our saddest story came from a Big Issue seller from Glasgow. What all the contributors had in common, however, was a real awareness of the value of place.

The following year I organised another exhibition entitled ‘My Tower’, and the year after that, ‘My Place’. The invitation to select a place, any place, which has a special significance for a person, opens up so many more possibilities than limiting the scope to a single architectural feature like an arch or tower.

Towards the end of the last decade, John Mullin AoU set about exploring the relationship between people and the places that matter to them. Here & Now brings you some of the highlights of his extensive and evocative archive.

One of the most moving stories came from the architect Frank Gehry, who told how, as a child, he and his grandmother used to play with a sack of wooden offcuts, building cities and freeways; how he had thought he might like to do that as a career and how as a young adult he was repeatedly discouraged by his teachers.

Many of you reading this article will have weathered this kind of discouragement from parents and teachers. “Be a banker”, they say, “and make lots of money!” “Marry a banker and have lots of babies!” These attitudes will continue until YOU change them. If you are a grandmother, play with your grandkids, and encourage their dreams of designing the perfect city of the future. If you are a dad or a mum, become a governor at your kids’ school and encourage the staff to do ‘My Place’ events with The Academy of Urbanism. If you are a Young Urbanist, volunteer to go in and do an urbanism workshop at your old school.

Those seven year olds will remember you and one day they may change the face of Britain.

Why not begin by contributing to this magazine’s My Place page. Simply have yourself photographed at a place which you feel has a special significance.

Then tell us about yourself and the place in about 250 words. Attach the photo and text, then email them to johnbrucemullin@hotmail.com.

With children of whatever age there are those who will seek to cut corners on homework assignments, like the boy who submitted a picture of himself in a g0-kart, claiming that his place was behind the wheel. But perhaps this humorous little act of rebellion by a child says a lot about the man he will become. Perhaps another Nico Rosberg? Or even Bernie Ecclestone!

Or what about the girl bouncing on a trampoline at the bottom of her garden? Does she dream of being an Olympian and will she remember that day on the trampoline when she accepts her gold medal?

50 Here & Now | AoU Journal No. 8 9 | Autumn Spring 2017 2016

Norman Foster

Nunthorpe Hall John Mullin AoU

in my heart and will need surgery. I have to take it easy, with no strain on the old ticker, so I can just rest on the bench over there where my mum and I enjoyed the sunshine after our birthing exertions, and watch other people do the gardening.

This is my place – my portal, my entry point into the world, for I was born in the room with the blind on the first floor. Now before you get the idea that I am one of the landed gentry who abound in this part of the world, complete with country estate, Range Rover and a matched pair of Purdey sporting guns, I hasten to point out that this stately pile in the leafy village of Nunthorpe near Stokesley was, at the time of my birth, a maternity home. My real home was in the grimy industrial town of Middlesbrough, just a few miles but a whole world away.

And when it is all over (for I am always convinced that I won’t come round after an anaesthetic), the gardeners can just pop my ashes into this rather elegant urn. I can end where I began and this will be my place again.

And now, when I return to it after a gap of seventy years, it is an old folks’ home – how appropriate! Perhaps I can just book in and spend my final days sitting in this beautiful garden, for I learned this morning that I have a faulty valve

The Soller Transect John Thompson AoU A transect is a term in ecology referring to the change in plant and animal habitat which can be observed whilst moving away from a body of water.

Urbanists have borrowed the term to refer to the change in human habitats which can be observed not only in moving from the sea to the mountains, but also in moving from the outskirts of a city to the centre. The concept of mixed use neighbourhoods along a transect now opposes the idea of zonal development, introduced by the Modern Movement, which has been responsible for all the soul-less urban environments that are still being developed all over the world Arriving by boat at Puerto Soller and then taking the tram up to the town of Soller is a special experience for anyone, but for an architect and placemaker this transect is a singular

joy – here is SPACE, PLACE and LIFE; a series of human habitats leading from the fishing port, through the olive and lemon groves to the bustling town centre. It did not develop through the efforts of town planners, but organically, in response to the needs of the communities along the route of the tram.

Perhaps that is why it is so perfect, and so resilient. For as fishing and agriculture have given way to tourism as Soller’s main industry, so the town has adapted; with legislators, the business community and the voluntary sector working together to conserve the best of the past, whilst welcoming the new commercial opportunities which tourism has provided.

My Place 51

Space for great places!

Urban Void Steffen Lehmann AoU

The great places here are 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 abstract 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.

Send contributions to sg@academyofurbanism.org.uk

This image of an ‘Urban Void’ captures a great place! It’s a new public space created in a deprived neighbourhood in Ripoll, Girona, Spain.

A long public walkway is leading to a shaded meeting place, an ‘Urban Void’ inserted between existing housing blocks, overlooking the Ter River.

52 Here & Now | AoU Journal No. 8 | Autumn 2016

I like this intervention because it creates a public ‘stage’, a balcony for the people and a memory of the Spanish courtyard typology; but elevated, prominent and easily accessible for all.

It is an inviting inside/outside space where you can’t be quite sure if it’s an exterior square, or a frame to look at the city and the river.

Reims Dr Inès Hassen AoU

Reims, a medium-sized city located in the north-east of France, is a great place to me as it possesses a strong and fascinating historical character.

The beautiful gothic cathedral of Reims, positioned in the heart of the city, hosted the coronations of French kings. Hence, the twenties art deco architecture of Reims offers a rich aesthetic experience that reflects the city’s renewal after the First World War’s destruction.

Tilbury at dawn Kieran Toms

A wiser man than me once said that the freedom to make and remake our cities and ourselves is one of the most precious yet most neglected of our human rights. Lots of other people have drawn a connection with place and time. So, to consider a great place: why not consider time too? Somewhere, or nowhere perhaps: In between Grays and Tilbury at dawn, early one autumn.

Why not? It is London, and all that London represents, but barely. (Or is it London at all?)

Looking west, beyond the forgotten industrial sprawl that keeps it ticking, is all of our capital, distant. Yet we can see it and are still in its orbit. A rare vista.

At Primrose Hill or Richmond Park at sunset you might be joined by hordes with cameras. That is the city too, coexistence with strangers. But here, and now, you are joined by nobody (except a club of friends who have also walked since midnight.) Behind us, to the east, the sun is rising.

Cities are full of these juxtapositions: places that are man-made, but whose creator’s intention has been changed, and whose purpose, and perhaps even whose existence, has been forgotten.

Whose connection with their origin is sometimes tenuous or sometimes lost and reimagined or sometimes just lost. Created, then given over to new possibility. It is up to us to give these places meaning now. A space on which to assert ourselves and our values.

This place - unappreciated, and unfrequented and unpopulated - is this the perfect encapsulation of the urban?

Yes, yes it is. But so is everywhere else in the city.

Gallery 53

Yangon, Myanmar Alex Frankcombe

Yangon is a city of makers and entrepreneurs, where all land is mixeduse and cars mingle naturally with pedestrians without the need for signs, line markings or the influence of urban designers. Walking through downtown, I am energised by my surroundings in spite of almost-unbearable heat.

On every street there is life, whether it’s children playing football, a group of men circling around a board game, street vendors selling food, or cottage industry workers resting during their break. The streets are filled with colour; not only are apartments individualised by their occupants, but people reflect the city’s vibrancy through their bright clothing. Buildings from the days of the British Empire with intricately detailed facades rub shoulders with modern Asian-style apartments. Yangon is a city in transition, and as it enters modernity I can only hope that with the influence of both the East and West it remains uniquely Yangon.

Victoria Park, London Leanne Hoogwaerts

Victoria Park is many things to many people, all at once. It’s a place of transit and it’s a destination. It’s where you catch your breath by being out of breath after too many hours spent on the tube, a place to gather and to be alone. The built environment would be nothing without these hallowed green spaces.

54 Here & Now | AoU Journal No. 9 8 | Autumn Spring 2017 2016

Muscat, Oman Zarreen Hadadi

Gee’s Court / St Christopher’s Place London Julia Thrift AoU

Muscat has managed to maintain its historic and cultural identity whilst encouraging low density urban development. Set in a stunning mountainous landscape by the sea, the city is humble in its growth compared to its skyscraper filled neighbours in the Arabian Peninsula.

The people of Muscat are similarly humble in the old souks, which are distinct and flow well into the port area of Muttrah. The city has well considered urban design from the corniche to modern architectural jewels of the opera house and Sultan Qaboos Grand Mosque. Muscat offers a taste of what I’d consider good urbanism and is well worth exploring.

This isn’t so much a place as an experience: turning off Oxford Street, London’s busiest road, and into Gee’s Court, the narrow entrance to St Christopher’s Place, is a little like Alice’s experience of falling down the rabbit hole. One moment you are in noisy, bright, over-crowded, trafficfilled Oxford Street. Just seconds later you are in a calm, shady passage way,

with the view ahead of people sitting outside cafes, taking life slowly. Places that are enjoyable to walk around are rich with interest. The lesson for designers here is not to copy this unique, eccentric bit of the city, but to remember that good urban design surprises and delights our senses.

Gallery

Editor’s introduction | AoU in Action 55

Urban idiocy

Brilliant ideas that ruined our cities Part six: bottom-up planning

Would the idiot dare to suggest that community consultation is a bad idea?

Of course not. The idiot would never suggest that we should maybe be a little more French, with a dash of Napoleonic authority, and not worry so much that everyone should be consulted before replanning a piece of city or maybe building a high speed railway line.

That we shouldn’t spend years running consultations and holding public enquiries, only to upset everyone and end-up with a messy, overpriced, much delayed compromise. No, of course not, the idiot would never suggest that.

However, as with most urban idiocy, stupid things are generally done by people trying to do the right thing.

When good ideas are misapplied, taken too far or implemented unthinkingly, bad things happen. This is particularly true of an idea like community planning, where dissent is not to be brooked and where anyone arguing against the ever-greater involvement of local people in the built environment risks being branded as authoritarian. In compiling this issue of the AoU Journal the editors promised me a debate about community planning, but a debate becomes a little one-sided when no one is prepared to argue against the motion.

So let the Idiot try, purely as devil’s advocate you understand.

There was a time of course when a paternalistic planning profession were entirely comfortable in the belief that they knew best. In the replanning of postwar Britain they imagined an urban future that would create a better society in new towns, redeveloped city centres and high-rise council estates.

Consultation with existing and future residents played no part in their plans and the irony was that, at the time at least, their proposals were popular.

People flocked to exhibitions such as the display about the rebuilding of Coventry after the war – not to voice their opinion, but to admire what was being done in their name.

But the planners overreached themselves. The future that they sold to the public turned out to be less

appealing than the bright models and artists’ impressions had promised.

They also started to pick battles with communities that were less susceptible to the seduction of their future vision.

The backlash against authoritarian top-down planning resulted in the publication of the Skeffington report of 1969 and the birth of the community architecture and planning movements that took hold in the 1970s. Since that time the views of the community have been central to the planning system in the UK. And quite right too.

Unfortunately like all really good ideas, the notion of bottom-up planning makes no sense when taken too far and this has left some professionals confused as to their role. There are those who would argue that the community always knows best and that the job of urban professionals is to use their skills and learning to facilitate this will. To do anything else would be to display an arrogance that the ‘professional knows best’ (and we all know in what poor regard experts are currently held). At a recent seminar a speaker who had been arguing for a co-creation approach to urban planning was asked what would happen if the community opted for something profoundly at odds with the principles promoted by The Academy of Urbanism? The speaker responded by questioning by what right we felt that our views on urbanism were more valid than those of the community who surely knew their area best? Nods all around the room and a questioner left feeling like they had been unmasked as a heretic. But really if that is true, what is the point of urban professions or indeed an Academy of Urbanism?

Before we accept this unquestioning approach to community planning we should perhaps ask ourselves some questions.

The first is; who is the community? This may seem easy enough if the scheme is the redevelopment of an estate for the people who currently live there. But even then one might ask whether the community are the older generation who come to consultation events or the group of youth huddled in the cold outside, or the people in the pub, or the single mothers without childcare? A

56 Here & Now | AoU Journal No. 9 8 | Spring Autumn2017 2016

Consulation?

well-planned consultation exercise will of course seek to engage these ‘hard to reach’ groups. However, you can never speak to everyone, nor can you assume that everyone will have the same view.

What happens when different groups disagree, which voices should be listened to?

This is even more complicated when one set of people are being consulted about something that is for the benefit of someone else, such as future residents, train passengers or energy users. How should we consult these future users and even if we can, how are their views to be balanced against those of the existing community? The latter are often called NIMBYs, but really why should one set of people accept something that they see as harmful for the ‘greater good’. This lies behind the widespread resistance to new housing where understandable concerns about congestion and the loss of green fields often combine with much deeper concerns about the intrusion of outsiders.

Which leads us to our second question: how do we do necessary but unpopular things? The previous UK government’s promotion of the idea of localism left this question unanswered. The champions of localism argue that

policy can emerge from the bottom-up views of local people with no need for top-down structures such as regional planning. This is superficially attractive but fails to answer the above question, which is why we are failing to build enough homes. Planning that emerges solely from the bottom up could never build a waste recycling works, a freight depot or a power station, all things that are necessary but harmful locally, just as it will never build enough homes.

A further question is how do we deal with social equity? Localism is very good at empowering communities that are well-organised, well-resourced and articulate. Essentially it gives power to the middle classes, a good Conservative policy dressed in socially concerned clothing. So how do we avoid bottomup planning only benefiting places with cohesive communities and local leadership? We all know of wonderful community projects like Coin Street in London, The Burrowes Street in Walsall or the Eldonians in Liverpool. We could name many more but not so many to avoid them being exceptions. There is an idea that working class communities generate strong leaders, and perhaps this was true in the days before social capital, the church and trade unions were so weakened. But today with transient diverse populations we can’t

assume that communities will develop strong leaders, nor that they will be able to speak for the whole community.

Community initiatives and campaigns are brilliant but there will be many places that aren’t able to muster these resources. The places most in need of community planning are therefore potentially the least able to benefit from it.

The final question is how are the community supposed to know how to create great places if even built environment professional are not sure? We might argue that this is just the point - planners have shown themselves incapable of creating good urbanism while local people have an intrinsic understanding of what makes great places. But experience suggests that this isn’t the case. Ask people what they want and you will find that they don’t want more housing, or traffic or even shops, yet they do want lots more parking, green space and low density housing. These are all perfectly understandable requests but don’t necessarily correlate with what we know creates great places.

would only be able to speak for their area not for wider society. Many of the things we value, from the National Health Service to public transport services, could not have emerged from a bottom up system. Maybe we should devise a system by which each community elects two or three people to represent their views in coming to a collective view with all their neighbouring communities? Sorry, my mistake, that’s called a local council.

Urbanists need to work with communities, of course, but they also need to have their own views about what creates good places, to disagree where necessary and to balance the competing needs of different communities. It’s a lot more difficult than saying that the community always knows best.

The Urban Idiot

So a reliance on bottom-up planning will lead to a more unequal urban world. Communities don’t speak with one voice, but even if they did they Coin Street

Editor’s introduction | AoU Urban in Action idiocy 57

Rethinking Masterplanning Book Review When the proverbial person at a party asks what we do for a living, it can be slightly uncomfortable to admit to being a masterplanner. It can sound Fascist, even State Socialist and, as Joe Ravetz points out in these pages, it is hardly gender neutral. How has such a politically incorrect term become so central to the process of urban design and indeed urbanism?

This book goes a little way to explaining this, but its main objective is to propose new forms of masterplanning that are less authoritarian, rigid and top down.

Many of the authors in this book seek to deconstruct the idea of a masterplan and to rethink it as something that is more inclusive, holistic and sustainable. Moving from the blueprint to the systems’ approach, from the topdown to the co-created.

In doing so many of the authors (if not perhaps all) recognise the paradox in this argument. Masterplanning is in many ways the antithesis of the loosefit, evolutionary, participative city that many of the authors argue for. For all of the talk of co-creation and bottomup process, a masterplan is nothing unless it is fixed through some form of collective authority that can only really be top-down.

Through The Academy of Urbanism’s awards scheme we have assessed 165 places. From this we can observe that masterplans have played a pivotal framing role in many of the great places that we have assessed; from the tiny town of Westport in Ireland to Cerdà’s Eixample in Barcelona, from James Craig’s masterplan for Edinburgh New Town to Richard Grainger’s Grainger town in Newcastle and Mayfair in London. The same is true of newly built neighbourhoods, be they Aarhus Western Harbour, Freiburg’s Reiselfeldt or Glasgow’s Crown Street.

All of these great places have strong masterplans and few were created through a collaborative bottom-up process. Yet these imposed, even authoritarian, plans have created diverse lively urban areas. It is a puzzle that is explained in this book in chapters by Jonathan Tarbatt and Ombretta Romice (together with her colleagues in Glasgow). The masterplan is some kind of holding frame – which the two of us have identified as a ‘trellis’

or a ‘lattice’. The framework might be fixed, but this very rigidity creates the conditions for spontaneity and for places to evolve over time. Time is the component that is missing from many modern masterplans which have been conceived as end-state visions, almost as if they can be wished into existence and emerge fully formed over night.

Good masterplans are never complete.

They create a framework, both physical and regulatory, on which places can grow and evolve.

This book is an important contribution to the understanding of this process, resurrecting the tarnished idea of the masterplan and illustrating its relevance to the modern city. With an ever-expanding global urban population, there is an urgency to understand this process. The skyscraper and the mega structure are not the inevitable result of rapid urbanisation that they can sometimes seem. If we can re-teach ourselves the art of masterplanning, we can accommodate rapid population growth

58 Here & Now | AoU Journal No. 9 | Spring 2017

whilst also creating lively, resilient towns and cities. This book is a valuable starting point to begin this relearning.

David Rudlin AoU, Kevin Murray AoU The Academy of Urbanism

Rethinking Masterplanning is edited

by Husam AlWaer AoU and Barbara Illsley ISBN: 978-0-7277-6071-5 Buy this book from the end of June online at: icebookshop.com (for hardcopies).

Have your book endorsed by the Academy Academicians are now welcome to submit their books to be endorsed by the Academy.

Contact Stephen Gallagher on sg@academyofurbanism.org.uk for more information.

My own view is...

Give to get!

by John Worthington MBE AoU

Generosity distinguishes collaborative urbanists and successful cities. The drive for material success, short-term gain and personal ownership has blunted our empathy for others and sharpened the celebration of “winners” at the expense of the “loser”. The financial crisis of 2008 highlighted two conflicting socio-economic ways forward. Growth from increasing consumption through credit in contrast to investing in long-term sustainability through the intelligent use of resources. 10 years on from the fiscal crisis one senses a dissatisfaction with the integrity of our political systems.

There is a growing recognition of the role civil society can play in improving livelihoods by working collaboratively to pro-actively stimulate responsible change.

Over the years as a director of The Academy of Urbanism (2009-15) and Commissioner of the Independent Transport Commission (2011-17) I’ve watched the role of collaborative urbanism within civil society develop.

It has matured independently, but supportive of formal governmental, political and institutional structures. civil society, together with the public and private sector, has a growing role1 in enabling citizens through collective action to: share power, co-design and shape actions for the common good.

Collaboration requires the generosity to see others’ point of view and embrace shared values to ensure an equitable outcome. The Independent Transport Commission’s study of highspeed rail2 identified that to capture the full value of infrastructure investment requires collaboration between all parties to accept a process of change, coupled with the integration of spatial and operational innovation to create a place that people valued. Civil society

through local groups such as civic trusts, community interest companies, or educational institutions can play a role in developing awareness, changing perceptions, increasing skills and undertaking exemplar projects, some of which may become transformational.

Leeds Sustainable Development Group (LSDG) was established by David Lumb AoU in 20093 as a ‘budget-less’ organisation committed to taking immediate action to by 2020 to “create a better city centre for the benefit of all”. By 2013 ‘New South Bank: A vision for Leeds City Centre South’ was published, and by 2016 LSDG had achieved their first goal with the completion of Ruth Gorse Free School, allowing the group to concentrate on the delivery of the Hunslet Stray, a linear park providing a public amenity for planned and future development.

Canning Town Caravanserai (CTC)4 is the outcome of a GLA/Newham Council competition to capture the interim value of a five-year period between demolition and new build, helping create an identity for the area and provide a place for local life.

In 2014 the project gained charitable status to spread the learning and champion Caravanserai as an active form of place shaping.

CTC was a brave pilot that shaped the early careers of more than a hundred participants from all parts of the globe.

It was a touchstone for docklands regeneration and a living manifesto for a new generation of public spaces.

University (ARU) and Writtle College, the aim was to collaboratively develop a clearer identity for Chelmsford by understanding its opportunities and assets. The finale was the Town Commons, a hands-on proposal-making workshop facilitated by Matthew Taylor (RSA) and Paul Finch (CABE), which drew together participants from the five intensive weeks of events and concluded with over 100 ideas, eight pledges for action and a first big step in an ongoing process.

Six years on in a city which was identified as “cash rich, community poor”, small initiatives and huge generosity of energy by the committed is seeing the emergence of a growing confidence and distinctive identity.

The Ideas Festival5, in its sixth year, is growing. The Ideas Hub, now an established charity, is providing leadership and supporting the development of a stronger community.

The four initiatives presented show how, through generous civic actions, we can each contribute to shaping better urban places. It requires the integrity, perseverance and bravery to take risks. It’s a long journey where each step looks to be insignificant, but over decades can grow to be recognised to have changed perceptions.

John Worthington MBE AoU is a collaborative urbanist, founder of DEGW, and past director The Academy of Urbanism 1. AoU Journal #8, p40 2. theitc.org.uk/our-research/current-projects/ high-speed-rail/

Changing Chelmsford is a community inspired programme for change.

Formed in 2010 as a collaboration between the county, city, RSA and AoU, working closely with Anglia Ruskin

3. academyofurbanism.org.uk/david-lumbspotlight/ 4. caravanserai.org.uk/ 5. ideasfestivalchelmsford.org/

Rethinking Editor’s masterplanning introduction| My | AoU owninview Action is... 59

Academicians

DIRECTORS From top left to right Kathryn Firth Andrew Burrell Prof Kevin Murray Henk Bouwman Janet Sutherland John Thompson (Honorary President) David Rudlin (Chair) Steven Bee Dr Debabardhan Upadhyaya Tony Reddy Biljana Savic Tim Stonor Alistair Barr

ACADEMICIANS Arthur Acheson Prof Robert Adam Marcus Adams Lisa Addiscott Maria Adebowale- Schwarte Dr Husam Al Waer Julie Alexander Kyle Alexander OBE Pam Alexander OBE Malcolm Allan Joanna Allen Ben Allgood Nigel Anderson Ewan Anderson Charles Anderson Kathryn Anderson Simon Andrew Catton Ian Angus Debbie Aplin Judith Armitt George Arvanitis Jamie Ashmore Jas Atwal Thom Aussems Jeff Austin Jeanette Baartman

Dr Samer Bagaeen Alastair Baird Jamie Baker Prof Chris Balch Yolande Barnes Prof Hugh Barton John Baulch Will Bax Alan Baxter CBE Simon Bayliss Ian Beaumont Matthew Bedward Paul Bedwell Simon Bee Andrew Beharrell Neil Bennett Robert Bennett Duncan Berntsen John Best John Betty David Bishop Philip Black Deirdre Black Adam Blacker Alastair Blyth Christian Bocci Martin Boddy Nicholas Boys Smith Rosemary Bradley Noel Brady Angela Brady OBE Torben Brandi Nielsen Chris Brett Eddie Bridgeman Mark Brierley Jane Briginshaw Annabel Brown Patricia Brown Robin Buckle Craige Burden Sarah Burgess Mark Burgess Jonathan Burroughs Richard Burton Peter Butenschøn Prof Georgia Butina Watson Peter Butter Karen Cadell Gerry Cahill Bruce Calton

Kelvin Campbell Fiona Campbell Charles Campion Steve Canadine Tony Carey Fredrik Carlsson Prof Matthew Carmona James Carr Sam Cassels Philip Cave Tim Challans Marion Chalmers Joanna Chambers Dominic Chapman Richard Charge Ian Chater Ming Cheng Alain Chiaradia Nick Childs Dominic Church Tom Clarke Shane Clarke Clare Coats Dr Jim Coleman Robert Coles Garry Colligan Paul Collins Martin Colreavy Max Comfort Brian Condon Charlotte Cook Karen Cooksley Prof Rachel Cooper OBE Ian Corner Cara Courage Will Cousins Rob Cowan David Cowans Michael Cowdy Timothy Crawshaw Toby Crayden Chris Crook Adam Crozier Paul Cureton Linda Curr Peter Cusdin Ned Cussen Justine Daly Jennie Daly Jane Dann

60 Here & Now | AoU Journal No. 9 | Spring 2017

Alex Davey Philip Davies Mark Davy Eric Dawson James de Havilland Neil de Prez Sophia de Sousa Ian Deans Ioanni Delsante Toby Denham Guy Denton Nick Dermott Clare Devine Herbert Dreiseitt Prof John Drever Eugene Dreyer Craig Driver Peter Drummond Tony Duggan Paul Dunne Paul Durnien John Dyke Nigel Dyke Richard Eastham David Edwards Stephanie Edwards Elad Eisenstein Luke Engleback Gavin Erasmus Karen Escott Roger Estop Prof Brian Evans Wyn Evans Roger Evans Martyn Evans Patrick Eve Dr Nicholas Falk Kerri Farnsworth Sir Terry Farrell Max Farrell Mahmood Faruqi Ian Fenn Jaimie Ferguson Stephanie Fischer Andrew Fisher David Flannery Prof Carlotta Fontana Sue Foster OBE Bernie Foulkes Jane Fowles Simon Foxell Edward Frampton Alan Francis Peter Frankum Daisy Froud Sandra Fryer Mark Furlonger Tim Gale Catherine Gallagher Carole Garfield Lindsay Garratt Tim Garratt Angus Gavin John Geeson Peter Geraghty Lia Ghilardi Andy Gibbins Ian Gilzean Menelaos Gkartzios

Stephen Gleave Dick Gleeson Pippa Goldfinger Guy Goodman Keith Gowenlock Michele Grant Marcus Grant Mark Greaves David Green Ali Grehan James Gross Richard Guise Paul Hackett Leo Hammond Tim Hancock Philip Harcourt Geoff Haslam Roger Hawkins John Haxworth Michael Hayes CBE Peter Heath Tina Heathcote David Height Russell Henderson Simon Henley James Hennessey Paul Hildreth Colin Hill Steve Hilton Stephen Hinsley Marie Hodgson Eric Holding Peter Hollis Stephen Hollowood Glenn Howells Stephen Howlett Jun Huang Simon Hubbard Anthony Hudson Nigel Hughes Michael Hurlow John Hyland Tony Ingram Julian Jackson David Jackson Philip Jackson James Jackson Colin James Timothy Jemison Cathy Johnston Howard Jones Gregory Jones Peter Jones Eleri Jones Rory Joyce Claudia Juhre Gesine Junker Martina Juvara Dr Kari Kankaala Dr Kayvan Karimi Philip Kassanis Despina Katsikakis Daniel Kaye John Kelpie Steve Kemp Jonathan Kendall David Kennedy Angus Kennedy OBE Justin Kenworthy

Anne Kerr Mary Kerrigan Ros Kerslake OBE Anne Kiernan Graham King Martyn Kingsford OBE Angela Koch Chris Lamb Charles Landry Richard Latcham Derek Latham Diarmaid Lawlor Michael Leahy Emilie Leclercq Prof Steffen Lehmann John Letherland Stephen Lewis Alex Lifschutz Fred London John Lord Mark Lucas Aylin Ludwig David Lumb Nikolas Lyzba Kirsty Macari Carol MacBain Robin Machell Roddie Maclean Peter Madden Keiji Makino Geoffrey Makstutis Grace Manning-Marsh Andreas Markides Paul Martin Christopher Martin Dr Katherine Martindale Agustina Martire Andrew Matthews Bob May Steve McAdam John McAslan John McCall Frank McDonald Prof Michael McGarry Kevin McGeough Martin McKay Craig McLaren Mette McLarney Craig McWilliam Nikola Miller Joel Mills Stephanie Mills Dr Negin Minaei Shane Mitchell Lucy Montague Dr John Montgomery Rob Moore Cllr John Moreland Paul Morsley Richard Motley Ronnie Muir John Muir John Mullin Neil Murphy Prof Gordon Murray Dr Claudia Murray Peter Murray Deborah Murray

Dr Lucy Natarajan Stephen Neal Jon Neale Katy Neaves Marko Neskovic Francis Newton Lora Nicolaou Dr Olli Niemi Ross Nimmo Malcolm Noble Hugo Nowell Richard Nunes Craig O’Brien Calbhac O’Carroll Killian O’Higgins Emmet O’Sullivan Stephen O’Malley Dr Dellé Odeleye Simon Ogden Tiago Oliveira John Orrell Emeka Osaji Trevor Osborne Paul Ostergaard Erik Pagano Chris Pagdin Dr Susan Parham Phil Parker Kevin Parker Michael Parkinson Fiona Parry Sowmya Parthasarathy James Patterson- Waterston Richard Pearce Adam Peavoy Russell Pedley Ross Peedle Prof Alan Penn Hugh Petter Richard Petty Graeme Philips Justin Phillips Alex Phillips Jon Phipps Karen Phull James Pike Prof David Porter Sunand Prasad John Prevc David Prichard Paul Prichard John Pringle Stephen Proctor Steve Quartermain CBE Helen Quigley Shane Quinn Colin Rae Christian Rapp Andrew Raven Mike Rawlinson Layton Reid Stephan Reinke Lawrence Revill Eric Reynolds Elizabeth Reynolds Christopher Rhodes Patrick Richard Sue Riddlestone OBE Antony Rifkin Marion Roberts Prof Peter Roberts OBE Steve Robins Dr Rick Robinson Dickon Robinson Sandy Robinson Bryan Roe Nick Rogers Angela Rolfe Raj Rooprai Anna Rose Richard Rose- Casemore Graham Ross

Jon Rowland Dr Andrew Ryder Robert Sakula James Salman John Sampson Prof Flora Samuel Clare San Martin Peter Sandover Ryan Sandwick Hilary Satchwell Arno Schmickler Sharon Scott Dominic Scott Symon Sentain Chris Sharpe Richard Shaw Cath Shaw Keith Shearer Yihan Shen Gorana Shepherd Michael Short Paul Simkins Dr Richard Simmons Erin Simmons Tim Simpson Anette Simpson Andrew Simpson Alan Simson Anna Sinnott Ann Skippers Malcolm Smith Jef Smith Roger Smith Dave Smith Carol Somper Carole Souter CBE Adrian Spawforth Ben Spencer Andy Spracklen Catherine Stevenson Peter Stewart Alan Stewart Susan Stirling Rosslyn Stuart Peter Studdert Nicholas Sweet Seiji Takamatsu Ian Tant Jonathan Tarbatt Nick Taylor Sandy Taylor Ed Taylor David Taylor Rebecca Taylor Nicholas Temple Ivan Tennant Alison Tero Prof Mark Tewdwr- Jones Gary Thomason Dr Emine Thompson Rob Thompson Alan Thompson Matt Thompson Dale Thomson Dr Ying Ying Tian Niall Tipping Damian Tissier Andrea Titterington Eime Tobari Ian Tod Steve Tolson Paul Tostevin Robert Townshend Rob Tranmer Stephen Tucker Richard Tuffrey Neil Tully Jeffrey Tumlin Stuart Turner Roger Tustain Nick Tyler CBE Julia Unwin Richard Upton

Giulia Vallone Hans van Bommel Mattijs Van Ruijven Atam Verdi Jonathan Vining Andy von Bradsky Prof Lorna Walker Thomas Walker Julia Wallace Russell Wallis Ann Wallis Alan Wann Ralph Ward Nathan Ward Andy Ward Elanor Warwick David Waterhouse Stuart Watson Camilla Ween Oliver Weindling Dr Michael Wells Jan-Willem Wesselink Allison Westray- Chapman Pam Wharfe Peter Wheelhouse Victoria Whenray Paul White Lindsey Whitelaw Mike Wilkins Stephen Willacy Peter Williams Martin Williams Patricia Willoughby Marcus Wilshere Richard Wolfströme Nick Woolley Gary Worsfold John Worthington MBE Tony Wyatt Louise Wyman Wei Yang Stephen Yarwood Gary Young Bob Young Rob Young Paul Zara Parsa Zarian Jack Zheng Qu

Roland Chanin-Morris Simon Chinn Heather Claridge Alison Collins Saul Collyns Lindsay Conn John Cooney Daniel Cooper Jonathan Couturier Robert Cox Rebecca Cox James Cox Charles Critchell Hugh D’Alton Lilly Dai Dan Daley Poppea Daniel Hanaa Dasan Sean Davey Aurelio David Aaron Davis Vito De Bellis Felix de Gray Aya Dibsi Amy Dickens Ina Dimireva Louise Dredge Isabelle Dupraz Akrem el Athram Ben Eley Alexander Evans Nadia Everard Alexander Farr Tobias Fett Thomas Findlay Alisha Fisher Diana Fjodorova Martin Fleischmann Andrea Forsberg Hannah Fox Alex Frankcombe Anna Freiesleben Matthew Gamboa Jorge Gerini Andrzej Gierak Ross Gilbert Nicholas Goddard Jose Gomez Sanchez James Goodsell Katsushi Goto Ian Gracie Amanda Gregor Julie Guilhem Zarreen Hadadi Ali Haddad Jamie Harrison-Grundy Rosie Haslem Ines Hassen Francesca Heathcote Sapey Laura Heinritz Alice Hewitt Simon Hicks Alan Higgins Sarah Hill Dominik Hoehn Sinead Holmes Thomas Homfray Leanne Hoogwaerts Hasanul Hoque Lewis Hubbard Saskia Huizinga Henry Hunter Julia Hurley Rachel Hutchinson Emma Hutton Thomas Hyde Loukia Iliopoulou Ross Irvine Fred Jerrome Jennifer Johnson Alice Johnson Alice Johnson Osman kalifa

YOUNG URBANISTS Esra Abdelrahman Khalifa Abubakar Alexandros Achniotis Sidra Ahmed Eva Aitsam Amer Alwarea Patrick Andison Ben Angus Jennifer Angus Kinda Ayoub Nouha Ayoub Alexander Baker Claudia Balseca Simon Banfield Phillippa Banister Sangeetha Banner Jacqueline Barrett Laura Bartle Chris Bate Sarah Birt Natasha Boardman- Steer Masie Bowes Michael Bredin Ciaran Brown Laura Burnett Harriet Carter Chow Chun Chi Cecil Nairita Chakraborty Victor Chamberlain

Jacob Kalmakoff Foteini Kanellopoulou Gauri Kangai Georgios Kapraras David Kemp Charlotte Kemp Robert Kerr Isobel Knapp Anna Kravec Melissa Lacide Tatum Lao Christian Lapper Yeonhwa Lee Alex Lee-Bull Mark Leitner-Murphy Ruperto Lira Philip Liu Iacovos Loizou Stephen Lovejoy Tierney Lovell Laetitia Lucy Alina Ludviga Madeleine Lundholm Ava Lynam Danielle MacCarthy Richard MacCowan Belinda Mackay Giacomo Magnani Claire Malaika Tunnacliffe Theo Malzieu Nick Mann Patricia Martin del Guayo John Mason Kathryn McCain Carl McConnell Chloe McFarlane Hector Mendoza Rachel Meunier Shawn Meyers Darcy Millar Jose Monroy Graeme Moore Lucy Moore Tristan More Antonia Morgan Jelly Moring Clémence Morlet Katerina Nagnopol Maria Newstrom Louisa Nie Pauline Niesseron Jim Nightingale Bobby Nisha Szymon Nogalski Alex O’Hare Killian O’Sullivan Eleana Orr Floriane Ortega Edoardo Parenti Sejal Patel Victoria Payne Claudia Penaranda- Fuentes Francesca Perry Mailys Pineau Victoria Pinoncely Kerstin Plain Julie Plichon Bright Pryde-Saha Kseniia Pundyk Longning Qi Mura Quigley Cristina Racsko Emma Rainoldi Dinar Ramadhani Ziad Rayya Ronald Riviere Reuben Ross Jonah Rudlin Renelle Sarjeant Charlotte Savage Ross Schaffer

Alexei Schwab Shane Scollard Eleftherios Sergios Jonathan Sheldon Amanda Sheppard Safeer Shersad Shreya Shetty Claudia Sinatra Roxana Slavcheva Emilia Smeds Andy Smith Henry Smith Rihards Sobols Bethania Soriano Emma Spierin Matthew Spurway Mark Stewart Catherine Street Rebecca Sumerling Lucy Sykes Tracey Taylor Katharine Thomas Natalie Thomas Gideon Thomas Gavin Thomson Kieran Toms Jasmine Tredget Chloe Treger Joanna Turner Gozde Uyar Mariangela Veronesi Emilie Walker Michelle Wang George Weeks Dr Frederik Weissenborn Robert Wellburn Roger White Tim White Jennifer Wiles Niall Williams Derek Wilson Evelyn Wong Nicola Wood Mengqian Wu Mirjam Wurtz David Yates Yigong Zhang Maria Zouroudi

HONORARY ACADEMICIANS Prof Wulf Daseking Jan Gehl George Ferguson CBE Christer Larsson Manuel Salgado

IN-RESIDENCE David Rudlin AoU Artist Frank McDonald AoU Writer Ian McMillan Poet

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