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.

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London has always been a source of influence, inspiration and curiosity. Paul Kelly and Kieran Evans’ FINISTERRE tries to identify the dreams that London holds for so many, and the reality of the city — the spaces between the landmarks, the spaces Londoners inhabit.

Presented and scored by Saint Etienne, the film takes us on a journey from the suburbs into the heart of the city over an imaginary 24 hours in just under an hour. Along the way we hear from characters that have influenced or been a part of the Saint Etienne story. FINISTERRE features the observations and reminiscences of Lawrence from Felt/Denim, Mark Perry, the editor of original punk fanzine Sniffin’ Glue, as well as Vic Godard from Subway Sect and artist Julian Opie, folk singer Vashti Bunyan, London-centric author Shena Mackay, and Nick Sanderson from Earl Brutus. Through the interviews and imagery we see London from an insider’s perspective. The result is a hymn to London, and an extraordinary record of the city today.

“Enraptured by the possibilities the city offers for creating exhilarating forms of social and cultural life… FINISTERRE should serve as an inspiration to London Lovers everywhere.” -Sight & Sound

“Beauty, pathos, magic — FINISTERRE, like the city it chronicles so lovingly, has it all.” -The Telegraph

** [four stars] “A feature-length love letter to a pop-art metropolis. The camera’s unequivocally seduced by the dazzle and the drizzle of the wonderland.” -Uncut

Kieran Evans has been directing short films, documentaries and promos for over ten years. His work has been seen at the Edinburgh Film Festival, the Sheffield International Documentary Festival, Resfest and onedotzero. He has directed promos for Death in Vegas, Nada Surf, Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Kylie, Echoboy and David Gray. His experiments with digital film-making techniques have led to commissions on broadcast projects for the BBC and Channel Four. He recently received funding to develop a feature film script with acclaimed author Niall Griffiths based on his book Kelly and Victor. Buy the DVD here.

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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.

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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

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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

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‘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

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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

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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

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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.

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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

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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.

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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

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Our current work on a masterplan for Gretna has brought us into contact with the work of Raymond Unwin. Unwin set out a plan for the development of Gretna early in World War I as a new settlement to house the considerable number of workers in the munitions factory that had been developed nearby on the Solway Firth.

In Gretna today, only a few streets and buildings are attributed to Unwin and his partner C M Crickmer but these have a special character and quality that mark them out from the rest of the town. Some of the characteristics of these areas include broad tree-lined streets with narrow roadways and grass verges, generous gardens and brick housing – either terraced or four-in-a-block – with shallow plans and long frontages.

The area is laid out in a winding picturesque pattern of streets focusing on set-pieces including a church and a formal park. It is so obvious that these areas are the work of a skilled hand with a particular attitude to building towns - it is more than just architecture.

In his book Town Planning in Practice: An Introduction to the Art of Designing Cities and Suburbs (published in 1911 but reprinted by the Princeton Press in 1981), Unwin wrote:

“My experience has been that when the town planner himself becomes the site planner, and concentrated the whole of his thought on one portion of the site, arranging buildings and open spaces upon it, he can generally improve considerably in detail on the preliminary scheme sketched out in connection with his town plan.”

“In site planning a thorough study of the site and a survey of its levels, its trees, the prospects which it affords, and any features of interest it contains are as essential to success as in the case of town planning. It has been too common for site planners to work out there plans on paper only, and to save themselves trouble by clearing away trees and hedgerows, wherever these happen to come in the way of the plan. No system can be more foolish, for a new building estate, at best, looks raw and poor, the gardens empty or filled only with small struggling shrubs and plants; and nothing so helps the early appearance of a building site as the preservation of existing trees, and even sometimes of existing hedgerows. Where for example, a road can be made to run alongside a well-grown old hedgerow a beautiful decoration and a special characteristic is at once secured for that road, and a sense of privacy for the gardens, which it would take perhaps many years to secure by new growth.”

“In planning out a site, whether large or small, one of the first considerations should be to determine the centre point of the design. In any but very small sites there are likely to be required some buildings of a larger or more public character than the dwelling-houses – such, for example, as churches, chapels, public halls, institutes, libraries, baths, wash-houses, shops, inns or hotels, elementary and other schools; and it would probably be well, having decided which, if any, of these are likely to be required, to group them in some convenient situation, and of them to form a centre for the scheme.”

Some of the pages from this book are available on Google Books.

The few streets of Unwin’s work in Gretna amply demonstrate how he was able to turn principle into practice - as he was able to do conspicuously in Hampstead Garden Suburb above. They also sit very comfortable in the 21st century – they are safe and walkable, they keep traffic in check, they have generous private and public open spaces together with well placed centres and focal points.

Raymond Unwin has provided us with excellent examples of how to create new neighbourhoods and has given Gretna a worthy pattern for extension and new building.

Link to more information about Unwin on the Letchworth Garden City website.

Link to previous post about the Gretna Masterplan commission.

Link to Gretna photoset.

Technorati Tags: masterplan, Gretna, Raymond Unwin, C M Crickmer, new neighbourhoods

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This animation of the historical development of the beautiful Channel Islands town of St Helier was part of our study for the States of Jersey in 2005.

The study was commissioned by the Planning and Environment Department of the States of Jersey and originated in the Island Plan which was approved in July 2002. In particular, Policy BE1 stated that:

“The Planning and Environment Committee will initiate an appraisal of the urban character and townscape of the town of St. Helier as an aid to the process of preserving and enhancing its character and in guiding policy formulation and the assessment of planning applications”.

The appraisal of the urban character of the town coupled with design guidance for each character area forms the core of the study. The guidance is set in a strategic policy context which identifies potential change in each area and makes proposals for conservation and physical intervention. The design guidance could enable the States of Jersey to take a new approach to assessing and processing planning applications.

The complete Final Report is available to download from the States of Jersey website (in chapters). and includes sections on the methodology, the key findings, issues from urban design perspective and proposition for the content of future planning guidance.

Our co-consultants were Drew Mackie Associates (consultation), Yellow Book Ltd (strategic vision), Gordon Urquhart (historical research and conservation) and Malcolm Fraser Architects (interventions).

See also our companion study of the Local Distinctiveness of Bolton Town Centre.

There is a image gallery of St Helier here.

Technorati Tags: animation, historical development, St Helier, urban character, townscape, design guidance

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An amazing image from Gizmodo though the story is deeply boring and actually very disappointing. The original news item came from the Daily Mail which also shows the proposal for this site - a building nicknamed the Cheese Grater designed by Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners - shown below. One image says so much….and the other so little.

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Looking at this remarkable image of recent flooding in England (courtesy BBC and Getty Images), it seems likely that those who built the church and the surrounding buildings not only knew a little bit about the forces of nature but also had some very sensible ideas about building towns.

In the same week, another sort of story about a town on high ground was reported in the Independent. Entitled ‘Kabul of the North reels from a royal insult’, the article describes how the Princess Royal was in Cumbernauld to open a new £40m shopping centre and celebrate the town’s 50th birthday. Apparently she told Councillor Bob Chadra that she was planning to get on a flight to London “as soon as possible”.

The Independent makes the point that the remark may not have been intended to cause offence but the rest of the article does not stop short of presenting the town in a poor light. Twice winner of the trivial Carbuncle Architecture Award for the most dismal town in Scotland and featured in the The Idler Book of Crap Towns, Cumbernauld has lost any gloss that it might have had in the ‘60s and ‘70s, or from Gregory’s Girl in the early 1980s.

Cumbernauld was a Mark 2 New Town built to house overspill and slum clearance from Glasgow. The town centre on the hill was an iconic architectural statement which, as Charles Jencks wrote in 1973, was:

…an attempt to achieve the urban diversity, variety and life of old cities by mixing functions in a compact ‘downtown’ centre. - Modern Movements in Architecture (Penguin Art & Architecture)

The aerial view above tells the whole story - in marked contrast to the comfortable scale and integrity of that water-logged landscape in England.

The town centre today is but a small part of the original concept – a first phase of megastructure development which no one had the will to look after, demolish or extend. For subsequent developers, it was easier to build tin sheds and that is what surrounds the original centre today.

Architects Hugh Wilson and Partners and the New Town Development Corporation doubtless thought they were creating something great - a simple statement of power and intention the idea of which was perhaps more elegantly illustrated a few years later by Hans Hollein (Hans Hollein - Flugzeugträger in der Landschaft, 1964, Sammlung des Museum of Modern Art, New York).

But it is just architecture - it is brutal, iconic, photogenic, exciting and very 1960s - a good graphic but a bad town centre. It expresses a single simple view of how to build towns which has largely been left behind. Collaborative, involving, community orientated, integrated, coherent and adaptive it is not.

Link to Modernity on Open2.net - the BBC Open University Portal
Link to Images of Cumbernauld from Resources for Learning in Scotland

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