The Scottish Government has clearly taken urbanism issues seriously with a slew of publications aimed at increasing the standard of new development, a curiosity about how high standards are attained in other countries and initiatives such as Design Awareness Training for Council officers and elected members through the Improvement Service and the recent Scottish Sustainable Communities Initiative. The alignment with traditional urbanism and sustainability is aimed at improving the quality of development in new communities and in extensions to existing settlements although some of the ideas spill over into the consideration of new interventions in established urban areas. The reasons for this adoption of traditional urbanism are fairly obvious. Firstly, volume builder residential developments are not improving and there is little sign that they will. Planners are usually unable to make significant positive changes to these developments despite a plethora of conditions, design briefs and codes. Many are wrong from the outset. Secondly, a proportion of sites allocated in Local Plans for housing are often ill-chosen in relation to their potential impact on the town, transport, intrusion in the landscape and on habitats and a standard product residential development will usually exacerbate these difficulties. Traditional urbanism is potentially more sensitive to context and place and has principles and methods of practice that create developments embodying much of what is regarded today as best practice in planning and urban design so even on a poor site, it may create a more sensitive response. Thirdly, experience from around the world says that traditional urbanism sells. The VINEX urban extensions in Netherlands such as Brandevoort, Leidsche Rijn and Haverlij designed by Rob Krier, Mulleners + Mulleners, Schippers Architects and others are all incredibly popular despite the country’s reputation as being ‘the most appreciative of modern architecture in the world’. It is the same story in the United States where New Urbanism is a major factor in selling new homes. Looking at Tornagrain in more detail, it is remarkable for a number of reasons. The basic statistics are for a town of 10,000 people set out as three distinct neighbourhoods each with local centres, a town centre, central park area, green belts between neighbourhoods and a realignment of the A96. The basic plan form was created over an intensive ten day programme of public meetings and design sessions in a completely open process and incorporates all of the New Urbanism principles. These sessions dealt with regional context, business, transport issues, infrastructure, ecology, landscape, housing, social and economic issues. The plan has proved to be resilient and has only changed in minor ways between the charette process and the submission of the planning application to reflect new issues raised by the community such as the provision of allotments and other factors emerging during the preparation of the Environmental Impact Assessment. The plan includes a supermarket, primary and secondary schools, police fire and ambulance services, hotel, community leisure and sports facilities, a park, health centre and railway station set in a mixed use framework. The future development of the town is controlled using a design code and transect which regulates almost all aspects of development. One of the keys to creating this plan is that Moray Estates has been in the area for hundreds of years and intend remaining there and so can afford to take a long term view of the development. The current estimate is that it might take 20 years to complete so this is no short term business like most of the house building industry. The parallels with Poundbury will not have gone unnoticed. Duany and the local communities around Tornagrain have produced a structured proposal for a mixed use settlement encompassing principles of walkability, variety of dwelling types, local shopping, schools and traffic attenuation. These are also attributes of Poundbury which has been successful in establishing a mixed use urban extension with successful businesses, employment and community facilities within a pedestrian orientated environment.

Of course the issue of most concern to planners and architects alike will be the architecture of the settlement and the chocolate box images which accompany the masterplan document. In the case of Tornagrain, like the parallel plans for Ellon, Cumnock and Poundbury, the landowner has set out to acquire a traditional settlement with buildings of a traditional appearance. Moray Estates maintain that over the twenty year development period for the town, it is inevitable that there will be variations in style but for now they are content for now to let the code produce a range of traditional buildings for the town. What distinguishes this recent urbanism in Scotland is the emphasis on the principles of town making and urban structure, the inclusiveness of the plan making process involving local communities, the elevation of sustainability to the status of core issue and the de-emphasis of architecture as end product. Another factor common to all these developments is that they are all being promoted by major landowners who are in the developments for the long term. These are all critical components of an urbanism approach. Getting the structure of the town right is the main objective and if that is done, planners shouldn’t need to interfere in design and the architecture debate can continue unimpeded in its bubble. It’s not about what things look like but how they work.

Architects may rail against New Urbanism for its association with the past and its chocolate box aesthetics, its perceived lack of radicalism, betrayal of modernism and a host of other reasons but for now, traditional urbanism seems to be the only game in town, in Scotland at least, and the work of DPZ, UDA and the Prince’s Foundation together with a few other practices are setting the pace in the design of new settlements and urban extensions.
Architects may consider urbanism to be an integral part of architecture - and it probably was once - but from the late 70s and early 80s in the UK, urbanism started to branch off and has become an established discipline in its own right while architecture has increasingly focused on the single building. Of course this doesn’t mean that architects and planners can’t or shouldn’t practice urbanism – they obviously do – but what it does mean is that a different agenda is being established in which the shape-making and form-giving that once passed for urban design or the underwhelming architectural masterplans for the property development industry wrapped up in elemental philosophy about space, sunlight and openness just don’t cut it anymore. Love them or hate them, traditional urbanism plans like Tornagrain represent a quantum leap forward for the practice of urbanism in Scotland over what has taken place in the last twenty years but the sound principles of urban structure expressed in these plans need to be evolved by all those involved in building towns and cities. There is a danger that this strong foundation will lose direction through early institutional acceptance and become ossified, like planning and urban design, in statutory box ticking and standard solutions. Traditional urbanism should certainly not be the only urbanism practiced in Scotland. Instead, Scottish urbanism should be a broad movement that accepts that the production of the built environment should not just be the domain of the increasingly irrelevant historic professions, the landed gentry or the property development industry but should embrace communities in a wider social, economic and political agenda.

This post was previously published in Prospect (Architecture Scotland) magazine Issue 135 in Summer 2009. It has been updated.

The decision to put the building on the market and move all services to other parts of the borough was made by the PCT board, despite last-minute pleas from John Allan of Avanti Architects and John Cooper of Architects for Health. This decision has sparked concern for a broad range of reasons including:

• the cultural and historic importance of the architecture
• the historical symbolism of the building in terms of health care
• the view that the building is entirely saveable and is not a maintenance basket-case
• the likely future of the building and the site – for example private clinic or luxury flats

Consideration of any single issue on this list might lead to the conclusion that the building should be kept and used for its original purpose never mind taking a holistic view of all the points. But there is another issue that lies in the territory of spatial planning and social infrastructure.

There are many examples throughout the UK of health authorities and others selling off city centre land and facilities at attractive prices in order to fund the development of new facilities on land that is cheaper but less well located for the very people who wish to use these facilities. More often than not, these new facilities are accessed by poor public transport facilities or demand the use of the private car. See TCPA Journal (November 2007) by Graham Haughton and Phil Allmendiger. (link here to pdf)

Over the past twenty years, planning in the UK has become increasingly regulatory rather than visionary. There is evidence that this might be changing since the introduction of a new planning system that has a strong emphasis on spatial strategy. However significant property moves by health, port or water authorities tend to become the spatial plans, rather than being determined by spatial plans – in other words planning often has had to adopt the plans of others as fait accompli even though there is little spatial or placemaking evidence that they are desirable.

Integrated strategic spatial planning needs to play a much stronger and influential role in coordinating the work of organisations like health trusts and port authorities. The fate of Finsbury Health Centre seems sadly predictable – another casualty of the obsession with money and moral bankruptcy that Monin was referring to - part of a wider culture of philistinism and short-termism which is peculiarly endemic in UK organisations that once were public goods.

Meanwhile express your views and sign the petition – all may not be lost.

Local distinctiveness has been described as an elusive concept. Essentially, it encompasses the unique physical, social and economic characteristics of a place and the interaction of people with those characteristics. There is increasing concern that the homogenising effect of the property development industry, retail trends, the underfunding of local councils and a mature tourism industry is affecting the individuality of places. Consequently, towns and cities as well as villages and rural areas are perceived as increasingly similar and visiting them may no longer provide a unique experience .

The search for economic advantage has fostered an interest in local distinctiveness, both as a means of ensuring the prosperity of a place through focusing on what is different, and as a means of supporting and enhancing the qualities which make the place special for local people.

Context The term Local Distinctiveness was coined by Common Ground in 1983 . Significantly this was a period during which there was a widespread feeling that towns and cities were not changing for the better. This was reflected in the rise of the conservation movement, the growth of NIMBYism as well as the mainstreaming of postmodernism in architecture and its adoption by developers.

In the context of urban design, local distinctiveness chimed with the writings of key individuals such as John Betjeman, Ian Nairn, Gordon Cullen, Jane Jacobs and Christopher Alexander. Today it is synonymous with contextualism, conservation, the work of the Prince’s Foundation and even the New Economics Foundation (NEF) through its Clone Towns campaign and its findings about the economic benefits of local markets.

Definition of local distinctiveness Local distinctiveness is closely linked to the environment, the economy and the social ambience of a place and has been defined as that which makes a place special, differentiating it from anywhere else. Local distinctiveness is the essence of what makes a place special to us. It is the sum of landscape, wildlife, archaeology, history, traditions, buildings and crafts - everything that makes somewhere truly unique.
Canterbury is a good example of a distinctive places but what exactly is the nature of the distinctiveness? Cathedrals exist as landmark features in many European towns. While they may be the reasons why towns are visited they may not be what make these towns distinctive. In Canterbury, the Cathedral is a landmark but it is also locally distinctive because of its links with:

• the murder of Thomas à Becket (national historical event) • Chaucer’s tales of pilgrimages to Becket’s shrine recorded in The Canterbury Tales (early example of written cultural history) • the continuing use of the medieval pilgrims’ inns (early tourism infrastructure) by town centre businesses (conservation of the built environment) • the specially written play Murder in the Cathedral by T.S. Elliot (interpretation of national and local history) • Michael Powell’s extraordinary 1944 film A Canterbury Tale that re-invents Canterbury as a romantic city and a city of the imagination at the heart of English art and culture • the continuity of the close relationship between Canterbury and the State (eg the signing of the Channel Tunnel treaty in the Chapter House) These factors combine with other distinctive elements of built heritage, such as St. Augustine’s Abbey (World Heritage Site), the medieval city and its walls, to create a package of local distinctiveness which cannot be found anywhere else. Rarity, authenticity and enduring value are, therefore, key features of local distinctiveness.

Non-cultural local distinctiveness Special landscapes and natural areas, eg the Lake District and The Fens, are also locally distinctive and are the result of a complex history of intervention by man with nature, interpreted by writers and painters and animated by local customs.

Manufacturing processes can be locally distinctive too - eg artefacts such as furniture, glass and pottery. Locally harvested delicacies, such as Whitstable Oysters, and manufactured food products, such as Forfar Bridies, are also distinctive but may be insufficiently strong in their own right to constitute ‘local distinctiveness’.

It is a combination of factors which makes local distinctiveness — local culture, events, traditions and the built or natural ambience in which they occur.

The fragility of local distinctiveness
Local distinctiveness is easily lost - it is elusive and fragile. Examples of subtle changes which can affect local distinctiveness and ultimately destroy it include:

• gradual erosion of the built fabric by minor changes and inappropriate development which cumulatively destroys the character of a place • destruction of the intimate feel of a place by modern infrastructure, eg road widening schemes, large scale new developments • the homogenising effect of conservation • changes in local economies, commercial rates, rental levels • globalisation of high streets driving out local shops • gentrification , lifestyle changes and fashion • environmental health regulations restricting the sale of local produce • cost-cutting measures leading to closure of facilities • lack of maintenance of important public spaces including vandalism and graffiti • loss of local pride • change in ownership of buildings especially pubs and shops • loss of a unique dialect or language • lack of an agreed vision for a place

Even if none of the above has occurred, congestion and disturbance can destroy local distinctiveness, merely because the place was not originally designed to accommodate large numbers of people. Planners and urban designers need to take these factors into account in writing local policies and in approaching strategic frameworks and masterplans.

There are a number of levels at which this process is disturbing. One of these is expressed by Edinburgh architect Malcolm Fraser: “I suppose this is us learning to be a good service-economy: to give up our most fragile and valuable natural environments to allow the rich to helicopter in for a spot of golf with associated gated-luxury housing, all tartanised by an architectural style the worst volume housebuilders would recognise, a Trumpton-meets-the-Shining confection of pointy heritage bits”. The jimmy-hat architecture of the outline proposals speaks of these trivial and patronising ambitions.

In an article in the Guardian in June 2008, Simon Jenkins noted that, “The point of environmental planning is not to capitulate to short-term market forces but to channel them to the public good. There can be no public good in building over the Balmedie dunes.” and “The truth is that Scotland is a victim of another colossal Trump try-on. This project is primarily about luxury holiday homes, not fairways. Scotland’s gullible politicians have been taken in by a New York billionaire.”

Wikipedia’s current definition of a banana republic contains much that doesn’t apply to Scotland and much that does, for example, “…a banana republic typically has large wealth inequities, poor infrastructure, poor schools, a “backward” economy, low capital spending, a reliance on foreign capital and money printing, budget deficits, and a weakening currency - rings bells yes?.” Worst of all for planning and the future of Scotland is the absolute lack of confidence and dearth of ideas that this decision says about what the country could be and should be.

For an refreshing view and intermittent commentary on the whacky world of regeneration and economic development look at John Lord’s blog at http://yellowbookltd.blogspot.com.

See also an article in the Economist on 6 November 2008 on why the controversial golf development may not make much money entitled “Trump’s Scottish Venture - Birdie or Bogey?”

Update: since the original post was written, Gareth Hoskins Architects have been appointed to masterplan the development ‘from scratch’ but obviously within the terms of the planning consent. This appointment may help to answer some of Malcolm Fraser’s concerns above. The development has also won the coveted Pock Mark Award for the Worst Planning Decision in Scotland by a substantial number of public votes organised by Prospect Magazine.

These short film clips featuring Lewis Mumford, author of the City in History, were recently published on the Planum website.

Before the end of 1961 the New York publishing company Harcourt, Brace and Co. had the first edition of Lewis Mumford’s highly successful book The City In History ready for publication. Two years later, in 1963, the National Film Board of Canada funded the production of six documentaries, each lasting 27 minutes, for a series entitled Mumford On The City. The material for the films, based on the book, was prepared by Mumford himself. The director Ian MacNeill wrote the film script and produced the various parts: The City: Heaven and Hell, The City: Cars Or People, The City And Its Region, The Heart of the city, The City As Man’s Home and The City and the Future. In 1963 Mumford was 68 years old and agreed to appear as the presenter of the six films, expressing his personal view about the future of the western city, interspersed with pictures of places, cities, archaeological documents, works of art and architecture.

The City in History remains a classic text of urban design. Mumford urged that technology achieves a balance with nature and hoped for a rediscovery of urban principles that emphasised humanity’s organic relationship to its environment. Forty-five years on, the film clips look incredibly old and the message delivered in a rather morbid and factious manner (to quote Jane Jacobs), with a slightly ‘Outer Limits’ or ‘Twilight Zone’ ambience. Yet some of the key ideas promoted by Mumford have increasing resonance with the sustainability and green agenda of the early 21st century. In the increasingly praxis orientated and commodified world of urban design, whether anyone is listening or not is another matter.

The Spring 2008 edition of JoLA, the excellent peer-reviewed academic Journal of Landscape Architecture established by the European Council of Landscape Architecture Schools, contains an article on the work of Gregor Graf which raises the question, “How do we read a city without signs?”. With a mixture of purist medium format photography and Photoshop, Graf has painstakingly deleted all traces of language and signage from view - as well as people and cars. His series of images featuring London, Linz and Warsaw are striking and unreal. It’s a wonderful collection of images linked here and on his site here (look for the Hidden Town link). The imagery is uncannily close to some contemporary techniques of urban representation employed by architects - minus the beautiful people.

His work is a step further in the direction pioneered by São Paulo where in 2006, city officials enacted a radical ban on almost all outdoor advertising. Photographer and typographer Tony de Marco documented the new ad-free world of São Paulo, publishing a sequence of images on Flickr. A city stripped of advertising with no posters, flyers or advertisements on buses or trains sounds like an Adbusters dream but it became a reality in 2007.

The implication of these unreal and real examples is that in the absence of signs, people need to re-learn what was once recognisable city terrain, marked out urban space, defined focal points and obvious boundaries. One of the São Paulo experiences was that it was initially easy for people to get lost when well known reference points - such as 48-sheet hoardings - were removed. Of course, residents were quick to re-orientate themselves around landmarks, buildings and urban form very much in the way that architects, urbanists and writers on the city would like them to behave.

Perhaps Robert Venturi and Denise Scott-Brown have more to offer here than they are given credit for. Their book Architecture as Signs and Systems for a Mannerist Time explores Venturi’s recurring affair with pluralism, multiculturalism, symbolism, iconograohy and popular culture. It is an important work that dissolves professional boundaries and broadens our view of urbanism - often in a disturbing way.

While urban designers and town makers concentrate on producing legible urban form through sequences of squares, streets, edges and landmarks (after Kevin Lynch’s Image of the City), the easy-read of contemporary urban areas will often be through advertisements and signs. Looking at the freshness and clarity of Graf’s ad-and-sign-free images set against Venturi’s challenging and dissonant work it is hard to imagine common ground between the two. But that may be exactly what towns and cities need in the 21st century.

related links:

• Gregor Graf
• Business Week: São Paulo: The City That Said No To Advertising
• São Paulo No Logo - a new identity
• Adbusters: when the centre collapsed
• Venturi Scott Brown and Associates

It has become fashionable to talk of networks of organisations, people, computers, transport and so on. In organisations there is talk of being more “networky” and getting away from the older more hierarchical ways of doing things. Conferences are organised around “networking” both formal and informal.

Yet, the more that you listen to this network talk the more you realise that people mean very different things by the term “network”. The purpose of this paper is to explore what network thinking means and how networks can be mapped and analysed.

Why is this important and useful? The structure of a network will affect how influence and information is distributed. Certain members will be potentially more influential because of their position in the network. Mapping the network can give guidance on the easiest ways to distribute information, the links that should be there to improve the network and how to avoid bottlenecking. It is used by commercial and government organisations to plot situations as diverse as:

• structures of trust, advice and communication within an organisation or group of organisation
• planning the development of network
• improving the functioning of project teams
• mapping communities of interest or expertise
• identify centres of expertise
• indicate key organisations and links to encourage community cohesion

What is a network?

The first thing to be said is that a network is not just a list. The term implies a set of connections between its members. These connections may consist of the flows of information , power, money or whatever but the implication is that an influence of some sort is passing from one to the other.

Networks can be dense or sparse - meaning that the number of connections is great or small. The total number of connections possible in any group of members where n is the number of members in the group is given by the formula:

Thus, a network of 10 members has a total of 45 possible connections. The density of a network is measured by comparing the number of actual links with the number of possible links and expressing this as a percentage. For all members of a network to be connected to it the number of links must be at least n-1. A well connected organisation will have a density of around 15% to 20%. Research shows that the best connected organisations allow its members to connect within two steps - ie that influence drops off sharply if it has to exert itself through more than two connectors. The exception to this is a strongly hierarchical organisation with well defined chains of command.

The following examples show the “kite” diagram developed by David Krackhardt of Carnegie Mellon University and used to illustrate the properties of a network. Ten people make up the network and they are related in different ways shown by the linking lines. The shading indicates how various members perform according to a number of different measures.

Fig 1 - Numbers of Connections (Degree centrality)

This shows an assessment of how many connections members have. This is known as “Degree centrality”. Diane has more connections to other members. Garth and Fernando are also well connected. Jane is the worst connected person in the network with only 1 connection.

But:

Influence over a network is not just a matter of how many connections you have. You may be connected to many people who have few connections to anybody else. Although degree centrality is easy to calculate it doesn’t tell the whole story.

Fig 2 - Shortest Pathways (Closeness centrality)

This shows how close various members are to all the others. This is measure of how central a person is to the workings of the network. Both Fernando and Garth are within 3 connections of all other people in the net. Diane is still central but is 4 connectors away from Jane.

This measure is important because research in organisations shows that influence fades if you need more than 2 links to get to another member.

It also indicates which members will have general influence over the network because of their position. If you want information spread fast, feed it to the most central members.

Fig 3 - Gatekeepers (betweenness centrality)

This shows a different sort of centrality. There are people who are the sole or main connectors to parts of the network. Links from the rest of the network to Ike or Jane all have to pass through Heather. She is a gatekeeper to a subsection of the network. This is known as “betweenness” centrality. People or organisations in this position can have great influence on the flow of information.

This is good in that they ensure that the network is fully connected - but potentially harmful in that they can filter that information according to their own agenda or make the network vulnerable to their departure.

Practical uses

So how can we use network mapping and analysis to help our regeneration activities? We have been involved in a number of projects that have used such mapping.

• a study of community cohesion in Pendle, Lancashire
• organising a conference on links between organisations involved in environmental projects in North Lanarkshire
• working with Government Departments in England to encourage mutual learning in methods of Public Involvement
• comparing the organisational structure of the Crown Street project in Glasgow’s Gorbals at various stages of its development

The same procedure was used in each:

• interview or survey organisations with a common interest and get them to specify their working links to each other. This is either done by getting them to list these links or to draw them on a constantly developing map
• draw the simplest possible map of these relationships
• analyse the various forms of centrality and identify potential links that could improve patterns of Advice, Trust or Communication within the network and advise on key organisations that are central to the operation of the network

More examples Fig 4 - Government Departments and Public Involvement

As part of a learning programme for Departments involved in Public Engagement, we asked participants to list the three organisations that they worked with most. These had to be operational links - sitting on the same committee didn’t count. This map is now being extended to show a wider range of organisations and to provide a “road map” for those concerned with public involvement. Shading shows organisations with the greatest betweenness centrality.

Fig 5 - Map of Organisations involved in Environmental Projects in North Lanarkshire

The map below was developed for a conference on development of a network based on environmental projects. This version was developed before the conference through a short questionnaire. A session in the conference further developed the map and this was used as a the basis for analysis that showed the existing and potential centrality of the local authority in developing the network - but also the shortcomings of links within the authority itself (yellow nodes).

Fig 6 - Map of Organisations involved in Community Cohesion in Pendle

This map was prepared using a series of interviews and leaving a basic map for completion by the interviewees. The subsequent analysis revealed a series of local “broker” organisations that acted as intermediaries between regional organisations and local projects. These are shown against a blue background and are totally connected - ie all brokers link with all other brokers. The network is particularly well connected compared to some other community cohesion networks in Lancashire.

Conclusions

1. As can be seen from the above examples, mapping can be a practical tool in defining a network and making some assessment of its likely performance. It is a well recognised technique that can uncover some unexpected issues and opportunities.
2. Simple networks can be analysed visually. Networks of any size will need computer support in drawing the simplest diagram and in analysing the various forms of centrality.
3. Maps can be used as “clickable” way finders on the internet. Each node can contain a web address that leads to an organisation’s website.

This post was contributed by Drew Mackie of Drew Mackie Associates

The Town and Country Planning Association (TCPA) has been particularly active in drawing attention to the merits of these Freiburg developments in its excellent revamped journal (only available online to members). Articles by Nicholas Falk on the general lessons of the developments (JTCPA Vol 76 no 10 October 2007) and Steve Melia focusing on mobility (JTCPA Vol 76 no 11 November 2007) provide an excellent overview of the developments.

The list of achievements at Rieselfeld is almost endless and mind-boggling from a UK perspective, it would be remarkable to achieve but a few of these. For example:

• the city council controls the process from the outset rather than responding to private developers
• the community is closely engaged in the development process at every level - there is a definite sense of pride and local distinctiveness
• planners allow individual designs within an overall framework of design codes - generally the design of the buildings is simple, contemporary and refreshingly style-free in comparison to the UK preference for pastiche
• there is a rich and diverse landscape with strong links to an adjacent country park - the overall feel of the development is green and open despite a grid layout and 3-5 storey buildings - and there is an integral SUDS which is an attractive central feature of the development (see top image)
• cyclists and pedestrians have priority throughout and there is a direct 7 minute tram link service to the city centre - in addition to this the speed limit is 18 mph (30 km/h) within the development
• there is a predominance of underground car parking throughout or carports with storage above - even housing blocks at the rural edge of the development have basement parking
• there is a wide range of community facilities include kindergarten, children’s centre, sports area, churches, gymnasium, meeting centres, primary and secondary schools, sports clubs and day nursery - the schools are the hub of the community
• there is a district centre with shops and a church shared by Protestants and Catholics
• there is combined heat and power throughout with connection to a district heating system combined with low energy building and considerable use of solar power

click on this image to enlarge | to close, ESC or click on X bottom right

At Rieselfeld, many aspects have combined to create something special. The masterplan and the physical aspects of the development are a major part of this - they are many years ahead of the dumb architect led masterplans so common in the UK. But the crucial elements lie beyond the physical plan. These are:

• a development culture in which the public sector plays a strong central role in contrast to private sector dominance in the UK
• small development parcels commissioned by groups of people who are going to be the occupiers rather than by developers who have no long term interest in the scheme
• the local authority controls the process of site release preferring to release small sites to groups rather than large sites to developers
• a considerable mix of tenures, house types and sizes throughout the development and these are indistinguishable from each other
• a different system for funding infrastructure such as transport facilities, energy and waste systems

Rieselfeld is not the only example of excellence in the development of eco-communities and sustainable extensions - Hammarby Sjöstad, a suburb of Stockholm is currently considered one of the world’s most sustainable communities as reported by the Guardian on 5 December 2007. There is a CABE case study of the development here. It is to be expected that many more of these developments will take place in Europe over the next few years. The UK has much catching up to do.

Useful links:
Freiburg Rieselfeld Photoset
Solar City Freiburg
Lessons from Freiburg - URBED
Solar Cities: European Habitats of Tomorrow
Rieselfeld Website

This is the first part of an atmospheric short film made by Wladimir Manshanden in 2001. It explores the city of Eindhoven mostly between dusk and dawn through its transport corridors, infrastructure, factories, construction sites, spontaneous landscapes, as-found objects and odd events. The gloss of the city centre is avoided although it is often present in the distance.

The film demonstrates a great love for the edginess of the city. The cafe society, globalised economy and commodified environments of the city centre are ignored in favour of the peripheral, the accidental and the transitional - places full of expectations and possibilities, surreal objects and strange lighting. It is also about networks and linkages - there is a strong sense that the city is connected up not just within itself but to region, country, Europe and the rest of the world.

The excitement transmitted by the film is about the dynamism and complexity of a great city. It draws attention to the value of peripheral areas and the character and inherent interest of transitional zones. These areas are arguably richer and more interesting than the designer environments of much contemporary development simply because they have the potential, the possibilities and the history which are designed out of many property developments.

The soundtrack is the ambience of Eindhoven itself overlaid with tracks by Autechre, Plastikman, Michael Brook and Pieter Nooten.

The second part of the film is below.

Eindhoven photo-set

Link to Historic Eindhoven Newsreel

Link to City of LEDs

Link to mefeedia videos and podcasts

In an article in the Guardian on 8 December 2007, Robert Macfarlane described a walk around the perimeter of London’s Olympic Games site with Iain Sinclair. The walk was to be in Sinclair’s words, “…a complex transitional ecology of CGI imagery, doomed allotments and virtual arcadias.” Light industrial spaces, car-wreckers yards, abandoned beer cans, graffiti and floral excess typified the walk. The idea that urban landscapes such as this have any value - cultural, historical, aesthetic, ecological (anything other than monetary) - is not central to most regeneration practice in the UK.

Stephen Gill’s photographs of the Lower Lea Valley published in October 2007 under the title “Archaeology in Reverse” capture the infinite variety and richness of the area. They are a record of the area prior to its clearance and new life as London’s Olympic Park. They are also an inspiration for planners, urban designers and landscape architects who can see value in transitional and spontaneous landscapes. The sanitised images of the Olympic proposals seem dumb and one-dimensional in comparison.

The connections between the imagery of Gill, landscape urbanism movement and the writings of James Corner and others are obvious. The idea of terrain vague – a concept denoting vacant land which is not always even physically vacant as an unused resource within the city – has been around for some time. The concept contains both the lack of something as well as possibilities and openness to something new. Celebrating the culture of the city and valuing the terrain vague of post-industrial transitional areas have been keynotes of the inspirational regeneration of the Emscher Park in Germany’s Ruhrgebeit. Among a great deal of environmentally-sensitive new development (much of it of very high quality) this former heartland of coal and steel has found new uses for industrial buildings, consolidated others as romantic ruins and landscape features, and treated its spontaneous landscapes as valuable urban woodlands and wildlife havens.

Many of these principles and approaches to post-industrial landscapes will be embedded in our forthcoming report on Sheffield which will be completed in early 2008. See this link for further details.

Link to Stephen Gill’s excellent website.

The major retrospective exhibition of the work of Gillespie Kidd and Coia currently showing at the Lighthouse in Glasgow features two films on the approach of this distinguished architecture practice. This short video clip made available by bd-online is a mini-lecture on St Paul’s Glenrothes, Fife (1957) by Andy MacMillan.

The mini-lecture is notable not just for its clarity and modesty but also for the way in which the proposed building was seen as an important landmark in the new town. The process of arriving and entering the building was thought out with considerable sensitivity and is a perfect transition from external space to sanctuary.

Glenrothes is not a great achievement of 20th century urban development - it is a Mark I New Town with a very suburban and dispersed layout, not unlike many public sector housing estates from the same period. St Paul’s seems to be a very sensible response to issues of identity and orientation in an undistinguished landscape.

Link to other GK&C videos from Building Design Magazine
Link to the exhibition website
Link to the Twentieth Century Society

The introduction of shared spaces and the removal of traffic signs, formal traffic control and signal controlled junctions is gaining momentum in European towns and cities as part of a European Union supported initiative. Spiegel Online reported last week on the German town of Bohmte where road signs and traffic regulation are being abolished. This report follows on from an earlier article last year which announced the EU experiment.

Hans Monderman is often credited with promoting this approach to humanising urban space. An article in Wired back in December 2004 clearly set out Monderman’s ideas. These include:

• removing signs and relying instead on the surrounding townscape for clues about traffic flow
• careful lighting of roads and adjacent pedestrian areas as a single design
• extending pavement activities to the edge of the street, further emphasizing the idea of shared space.
• ensuring eye to eye negotiation of right of way by human interaction rather than commonly ignored signs.
• eliminating kerbs - instead of a raised kerb, pavements or footpaths should be denoted by texture and colour.

In the UK, this approach to traffic and people has been promoted particularly by Martin Stockley and by Ben Hamilton-Baillie who recently carried out a series of case studies for CABE on better street design. We have worked with Martin Stockley Associates on proposals for Renfrew Town Centre and Keswick.

We have also promoted shared surfaces and a more flexible approach to traffic and pedestrian interaction in proposals for Keith, Ardrishaig, Nelson and St Helier. This approach is reflected to some extent in the Department for Transport’s design guidance Manual for Streets which marks another gradual move towards higher standards of street environments.

Other sites discussing the Spiegel Online article are listed here.

There is a report and description of related work in Kensington High Street, London here.

Technorati Tags: shared spaces, Hans Monderman, CABE, shared surfaces

‘This is the Town Planning Exhibition. We won’t show you models, designs, drawings or technical material because we know that you wouldn’t want to look at them. …We would like to persuade you that [...] you have the right to contribute you opinion and your action. You are the central figures of all that Town Planning invests in its work’

Predictably this upset architects especially Bruno Zevi who wrote in his column for the weekly L’Espresso magazine, ‘The exhibition manages to annoy everyone…’, and defined the trio as ‘the anarchists who rip up plans’. It’s rather as if nothing much has changed.

The intention of the three films and the entire layout of the exhibition is very clearly stated in the final words of one of the three films:

‘Go to your city, man, and work with those who want to make it more human, more similar to you’

The full commentary and explanation of the films is available here. See all three films in sequence below.

Planum has started an archive of interesting short movies on town planning currently featuring the 1980s renaissance of Barcelona, the life of small spaces in New York and German and French short films on city building from the 1930s.

Technorati Tags: consultation, participation, Tenth Milan Triennale

Keswick is one of the gems of the Lake District - a town that has managed to remain desirable despite considerable change since its heyday in the 1950s.

There has been a settlement at Keswick since at least the 13th century, but the earliest recorded map that shows the town as a recognisable urban entity is dated 1787. Since then the town has been mapped at frequent intervals enabling an analysis of the important ages of the town from an urban design perspective. There is photoset of Keswick here.

Late 18th century

The 1787 map shows a layout which is recognisably Keswick with Market Square and Market Place clearly established as the focus of the town, and the centrally placed Moot Hall

Long thin buildings ran at right angles north and south from Market Square into what are now the Bell Close and Heads Road car parks. The outlines of what would become Station Street, St John’s Street and Lake Road are clearly visible, as is Main Street striking out to the west. The town did not extend north or west to the River Greta at this time.

Mid 19th century

By 1867, Keswick had grown westwards to the Greta Bridge along Main Street and along the Penrith Road to the east. This period also saw the sporadic growth of large estate houses and a number of pencil factories in the west of the town. However the most significant developments during this period were:

• the opening of the railway between Penrith and Cockermouth in 1865 with Keswick Station situated on the north side of the Greta
• the development of mills by the River Greta adjacent to the town centre

Late 19th century

By 1898 the expansion of the town centre north towards the Greta was complete. To the east, the residential area based on Blencathra, Helvellyn, Southey and Greta Streets was also largely developed. Stanger Street was developed to the west of the town centre and the villas at the east end of what is now the Heads were also built, marking a significant departure from Keswick’s original compact form. The town had its own gas works, located at Otley Road.

Significantly, the Victorian town was catering for the needs of visitors with developments including:

• laying out Fitz Park between the station and the town centre (1882)
• the new Keswick Museum on Station Road
• Keswick House Hotel was built on a site adjacent to the station
• improved boating facilities at the north end of Derwent Water

Early – Mid 20th century

There was very little change in Keswick during this period except for the development of residential areas around Greta Hamlet and at the Headlands, both shown on the 1924 Ordnance Survey plan. Although these developments are small they are significant as they marked a move away from the scale and materials of what was then typically the Keswick-Cumbrian traditional building and Victorian and Edwardian architecture towards developments which were suburban in layout, bungaloid in architectural style and un-rooted in the local area. During this period, Hope Park was gifted to the town as public gardens including a pitch and putt golf course.

Mid - Late 20th century

The 1957 Ordnance Survey plan shows Keswick as a place of contrasts. On the one hand the town centre was at its most densely packed and urbanised. On the other hand, lower density residential developments at Great Crosthwaite, the Heads and Headlands, Windebrowe Avenue and along Ambleside Road allowed the town to spread the town into the surrounding landscape. The Pencil Factory in its current form makes its first appearance on the plan, occupying the site of an earlier factory near Greta Bridge.

21st century

The 2005 Ordnance Survey map shows a dramatic change in Keswick from 1957. This change is marked by three factors:

• the closure of the railway
• the erosion of traditional urban structure in the town centre
• the increasing suburbanisation of the surrounding landscape

The closure of the railway created a number of opportunities for development around the former station with the extension of the Keswick Country House Hotel and on the former track to the west, a Leisure Pool and residential developments.

The clearance of sites in the town centre – including the former abattoir and the gas works as well as business premises to the north of Market Place – has enabled the construction of Bell Close car park and the linking of Victoria Street and Bank Street (both former cul-de-sacs) to provide a town centre “bypass”.

The construction of the car park on Heads Road did not require the same degree of demolition and clearance. The Co-op development on Main Street has also reduced the perceived density of the town centre by setting back new development from the original building line.

Low density residential development has continued in fields to the east and north of the town, as well as in the Crosthwaite area. Business and industrial uses have consolidated around the Pencil Factory and along Penrith Road.

The future

Our recent masterplan work for the Keswick Area Partnership has highlighted the need for the town to change, to grow and to be refreshed by:

• regenerating and diversifying the local economy to create new jobs in sectors other than tourism, and
• attracting and retaining working age adults and their families

This is not a choice between tourism and diversification. Tourism is Keswick’s staple industry and the competitiveness and profitability of the industry are a precondition for future prosperity. But a modern tourism product needs to be complemented by a more diverse, knowledge-based economy, encouraging enterprise and creating opportunities for talented individuals.

Refreshing the economic and community life of Keswick means that the town will need to accommodate change and development. This will be a big challenge: for obvious reasons, Keswick has a very restrictive planning regime, in which any form of development has to be justified and the conservation of the town and its natural environment are paramount. When flood risks are added into the equation, Keswick is a town whose default position is to refuse development.

We understand the concerns that underlie these policies, and we would not want to see Keswick’s special qualities compromised. However, there are real dangers for the community if the planning regime is so restrictive that it becomes a barrier to change.

The implication is that Keswick has already achieved some sort of ideal state, but this is clearly not the case: beyond the historic core and some other attractive enclaves, much of Keswick’s urban environment is banal and undistinguished. Much of the town’s late 20th century expansion took the form of bland suburban sprawl - as shown in the animation - which should not be repeated, but the corollary of this is that quality development and good architecture and urban design have the potential to improve Keswick, strengthen the town’s identity and reconnect it to its landscape and cultural heritage.

There is also an image gallery of Keswick.

Previous posts on the historical development of UK towns from an urban design perspective include Bolton and St Helier.

Technorati Tags: Lake District, tourism and diversification, restrictive planning regime, Keswick, landscape and cultural heritage

Sean Henry’s Couple is the latest large figurative artwork to appear in the landscape of the UK. Set in Newbiggin Bay in Northumberland as part of a major regeneration project for the town, it is likely to be a popular addition to the beautiful coastal landscape of the area. We feel slightly connected to this project as we produced an investment strategy for the town with Roger Tym and Partners in 2000. There is a photogallery of the town here.

Together with Antony Gormley’s Event Horizon in Central London, Another Place at Crosby Beach near Sefton, and of course the Angel of the North at Gateshead, these works have generated wide interest and appeal. They have also been greeted with enthusiasm by public art commissioning agencies since the popularity of the genre offers the prospect of many more similar, if less able installations, across the country. Mark Lawson wrote an interesting piece on this in the Guardian recently entitled ‘The lure of UFO spookiness and sheer improbability’. On the same day, the paper carried another article entitled ‘So what on Earth’s the big attraction’ in which the Angel of the North was identified as the UK’s second most disappointing attraction - after Stonehenge. Art, regeneration and tourism have always been mixed up to some extent - one person’s sculpture is another person’s regeneration initiative and there will be many who are happy that the Angel of the North does not have a visitor centre.

There is nothing new about placing large objects in the landscape - to impress others, to commemorate events or simply as landmarks. What is new here is context and scale. All of these works are wonderfully sited and change the way in which the landscape is seen. They open up new perspectives on familiar areas and encourage engagement with the landscape of town and countryside in a way that much public art signally fails to do.

The current popularity of this figurative art inevitably raises the ‘me-too’ issue and it would not be surprising if many less able look-a-like projects were proposed over the next year. It would be sad if these diluted the impact and popularity of the original family of works.

Link to more images of Event Horizon

Technorati Tags: figurative artwork, regeneration and tourism, public art

This is a slideshow of two pieces of strategy work. The first two images are part of our work for North Lanarkshire Council on the Kelvin Valley Action Plan showing a landscape restructuring of the River Kelvin valley and Forth and Clyde Canal corridor.

The next six images are from our strategy work with yellow book for Motherwell, Ravenscraig and Wishaw showing how new development on the former steelworks site could start to integrate with the surrounding urban areas and benefit the existing centres.

Three key themes were identified for the area:

Diversification: To ensure that (i) wherever possible, economic, civic, community, leisure and cultural activities are focused on the three centres, and (ii) each achieves a diverse and sustainable mix of activities and land use.

Infrastructure: To establish a high quality integrated road, rail and bus network, connecting all the communities in the MRW area to each other, and to the national networks.

Design and quality: To set the benchmark in Scotland for (i) quality architecture and urban design, and for the creation of successful public places and open spaces, and (ii) cleansing, lighting, safety and customer care, and marketing and promotion in partnership with the public sector.

This British Transport Film from the 1960s enlivened by John Betjeman takes a trip from King’s Lynn through the wide, flat fields of Norfolk to Hunstanton and the sea.

It sums up a quality of insight and commentary on towns and countryside which has all but disappeared. Betjeman’s holistic approach blends history, poetry and design with people’s lives and the towns and countryside in which they live and work. It’s a refreshing and engaging approach which contrast sharply with the single issue linear thinking of much commentary today. It is gentle and humble - though smug and perhaps medieval too. It seems implicit that this environment should not change.

Interestingly, Betjeman was travelling to the home of Alison and Peter Smithson’s Hunstanton School which was completed in 1956.

Alison and Peter Smithson were fiercely intellectual and proselytised the cause of Modernism throughout the 1960s and 1970s. They were unafraid to criticise the prevailing orthodoxy or bring new ideas to the Modernist blueprint. The school is one of the most celebrated buildings of mid 20th century Britain.

Since the 1950s and 60s the UK has largely adopted a sort of modernism as the de facto style for interiors - the battle with chintz has been won - although the exteriors of new houses are likely to be Georgian or Tudor. The UK can also welcome individual buildings in a ‘modern’ design (well sometimes…) but is less inclined towards extensive areas of new building in a contemporary idiom. The message is that towns and countryside should be old but buildings can be modern …maybe.

Perhaps in reality Betjeman and the Smithsons got on.

open2.net link to Hunstanton School, From Here to Modernity

open2.net link to Alison and Peter Smithson, From Here to Modernity

Technorati Tags: John Betjeman, single issue linear thinking, Alison and Peter Smithson, Hunstanton School

A Flash slideshow featuring public realm strategy work in Renfrew, Byres Road in Glasgow, Ashington in Northumberland and West Port, Dundee.

At Renfrew, we were asked to develop proposals for Hairst Street and High Street which would bring about significant change in the town centre environment. We worked up a shared surface proposal with Martin Stockley Associates which is shown on the slideshow.

The work on Byres Road was part of the Byres Road and Partick Centres study with Halcrow. We proposed a series of new urban spaces at the intersections of side streets with Byres Road.

In Ashington, we produced a range of proposals for sites and buildings in and around the town centre and some of these have been implemented.

The study of West Port, Dundee proposed structuring development framing new public spaces along a stretch of dual carraigeway constructed in the 1960s.

This animation of the historical development of central Bolton was part of our study for Bolton Council in 2005 led by Kevin Murray Associates.

The Local Distinctiveness Study provided the research baseline for Building Bolton, incorporating consultation, urban analysis and policy recommendations. The team (KMA, Drew Mackie Associates and WMUD) devised a unique approach to Bolton town centre – linking the inputs of different stakeholders to ideas and propositions for the future evolution and management of the town centre.

The Final Report is available to download (3.76 MB PDF) and includes sections on the methodology used, the key findings, emerging issues from an urban design perspective and propositions for the content of future planning guidance. The report was used to inform the Council’s Building Bolton SPD which is available here.

Technorati Tags: animation, historical development, central Bolton, urban analysis, Local Distinctiveness