AoU Here & Now - Autumn 2024 - Major Sporting Events
Creating Healthy Communities
Marcus Adams examines ‘legacy’ with a look back at two completed projects.
Olympic Legacies in London and Barcelona
Kay Hughes weighs the costs and benefits of hosting major events.
L.A’s Car-free Olympics
Rymer Leverett considers L.A’s car free Olympic plan to be an exciting urban proposition.
Tailgaters
Leyla Moy explores tailgating culture in the United States.
Welcome to Wrexham
Harrison Brewer takes a look at the urban impact of Wrexham FC’s rags to riches story.
Arsenal
and the High Street
Rose Jump and Victoria Smyth look at the
Member Spotlight
Heather Claridge shares her story of growing up with the Academy of Urbanism.
MyPlace
Contributors reflect on the significant places in their lives
ArtPlace
Artwork inspired by the built environment
Book Review
Harrison Brewer dives into Jon Alexander and Ariane Conrad’s Citizens
Urban Idiocy
The Urban Idiot returns, irate at level crossings.
The City Observatory: Toronto
In the third instalment of BDPlab’s Good City papers, Sean Hertel and Harim Labuschagne explore how Toronto’s growth can be used to create a better city.
Urban Philosophy
Andreas Markides reflects on what has and hasn’t changed since the first Olympic Games in 776BC
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What a year this has been for the Academy!
Not only have our membership numbers grown to their highest levels yet (1,600) but we have also had a record number of activities both in number and nature.
We have had successful conferences in Leeds, Manchester, and Galway. We have instigated a brand new ‘In conversation’ series; the first guest being the brilliant barrister and author Hashi Mohamed. We have continued our excellent relationship with the Danish Embassy with joint events in London, Glasgow and Stirling. The monthly online Urbanism Hours and Coffee Breaks should not be forgotten either, as they continue to enrich people’s days regardless of location. We have also continued the practice of Diagnostic Visits, with two on the go in Cork and Naas.
There have been several more initiatives and events, with special mention to the Young Urbanists’ cycle trip to Barcelona as well as the launch of our Policy Forum under the masterful guidance of Matt Lally. As for the new format of our Here and Now - this has led to gasps of admiration as the journal goes forward under Harry Knibb and the editorial team.
As Chair I have been very proud of our record this year and delighted to see that urbanism continues to gain more friends. My thanks to the Executive Team as well as the Board whose unselfish work enables us to do much more than we have the right to expect. It all points to a bright future - especially with Congress, being curated by Shane Quinn, planned for Utrecht next June. And we wrapped up this year’s highlight, the Urbanism Awards, with a ceremony held earlier this month.
In closing I wanted to bid farewell to Jas Atwal and Alistair Barr who will be stepping down from the Board at the end of the year. Both have served the Academy for many years with passion, dedication and much energy. We will miss them dearly, though they are not going far and will continue to support the Academy and attend events.
Andreas Markides AoU Chair
Editorial team
Harrison Brewer
Connie Dales (AoU Exec)
Harry Knibb
Leyla Moy
David Rudlin
To join the editorial team or contribute an article to the Here & Now Journal, contact journal@theaou.org
Template design
Richard Wolfstrome
For all other enquiries, including sponsorship, contact Connie Dales at cdales@ theaou.org
Editorial
It has been a phenomenal year for sport. The Paris Olympics and Paralympics are of course crowning events, and what events they were. As well, we enjoyed the Six Nations Rugby, Snooker World Championships, multiple Tennis Opens, Cricket T20 World Cup, Euro’s football and the Tour de France.
Major events require painstaking planning, resources, commitment, and real estate. Especially in the context of the Olympics which are enormous, and roam the earth on a four yearly cycle. The venues and infrastructure required can be highly specific and have been criticised as unsustainable and costly. In response, we saw France taking a novel approach to venue creation.
Once these venues are created and the Games complete, what is left is the long tail of legacy. A fantastic opportunity if correctly approached, or a missed opportunity, if not.
As such in this publication, we address the twin topics of major sporting events and legacy. Marcus Adams from JTP looks back at two significant places to distil his placemaking lessons learnt, Kay Hughes addresses the legacy question through an analysis of Barcelona versus London, and Rymer Leverett considers if L.A’s 2028 car free Olympics could be the most exciting games yet.
Leyla Moy transports us with a piece on tailgating culture and, closer to home, Harrison Brewer sees a town refreshed through the power of football. Rose Jump and Victoria Smyth stay on theme to provide a fascinating exposé of the local economic impact of women’s football on local highstreets.
We have a new feature - our ‘spotlight’ series - in which Heather Claridge provides a personal account of her experience growing up with the Academy.
On top of this, we have a new ArtPlace from our resident artist David Rudlin, two new MyPlaces, and Jon Alexander’s book Citizens is given the Brewer treatment as Harrison sees a shift in approach to a more equitable future. And the Urban Idiot returns, irate at level crossings.
We continue our partnership with BPD’s Good City initiative and publish the Toronto essay.
Finally, the issue wraps with Andreas Markides, our resident philosopher, providing a considered look at the Olympics through time.
The editorial team
The Academy in Action
The past few months at the AoU has seen a jam packed summer of assessment visits across the UK and Europe, followed by an autumn full of bigger learning events.
In September the Urbanism Hour returned, the AoU partnered with Architecture & Design Scotland and University of Glasgow to put on the What next for place? conference, and the Young Urbanists put on a walking tour and pub night in London.
October saw our Remaking the post-industrial city conference in Manchester and the Young Urbanists’ Small Grants Scheme: The Findings event. Earlier in November we partnered once again with the Danish Embassy on a conference in Scotland, and the month will end with a couple of informal pub nights in Dublin and Edinburgh.
The main event this year has been the 2024 cycle of the Urbanism Awards, which kicked off in January and has seen a varied programme of activity all year. This wrapped up in midNovember with a spectacular Urbanism Awards Ceremony + Learning from Europe, held at 150 Holborn.
Coming up next year:
• Members’ Winter Party
Wednesday 22 January 2025, London
Tickets at theaou.org/party
• Congress: Healthy Urban Living
Weds 11 - Fri 13 June 2025, Utrecht
More info at theaou.org/utrecht
A full list of all upcoming events can be found in the Events Directory at theaou.org/events
With more for 2025 to be announced in the New Year
Creating Healthy Communities
Marcus Adams examines ‘legacy’ by looking back at two significant places completed over a decade ago to distill his lessons learnt.
“Communities thrive when design goes beyond buildings to cultivate relationships, empower residents, and honour the stories and legacy of the past. As architects and designers, our role is to design places that inspire connection and pride of place, ensuring their vitality endures for future generations.”
Urbanists have long advocated a holistic approach to placemaking and co-design, one that aims to foster strong communities as well as providing high-quality homes, local amenities and open spaces. We see new neighbourhoods as cohesive, integrated places where residents can truly feel at home. However, our role as architects and masterplanners typically ends when construction finishes, leaving us unable to experience firsthand how these communities develop and evolve.
With the new government’s pledge to accelerate housing delivery to boost economic growth, it is crucial that alongside this plan for rapid delivery, new homes are built within neighbourhoods which enable the creation of strong communities.
The Homes England Strategic Plan, published in May 2023, and how to deliver vibrant and successful places in the long term emphasises ‘pride of place’. Motivated by this challenge, we set out to re-visit two neighbourhoods we designed, which have now been occupied for over a decade, to see what works well and what lessons we could learn.
Graylingwell Park, Chichester
Graylingwell Park is a new community a mile north of Chichester city centre, on the site of a former Victorian asylum. In 2008, the Homes and Communities Agency (HCA) sold the 34 hectare site to developers Linden Homes and Affinity Sutton who appointed JTP as architects and masterplanners. Engaging with local people, a shared vision and masterplan was cocreated which identified community, creativity, neighbourliness and sustainability as core values to guide future decisions at Graylingwell Park. JTP subsequently prepared the outline planning application and detailed designs for the
first phases of new homes, with over 550 now occupied.
Graylingwell Park has been deemed a great success, and it is apparent that this is due to the delivery of many of the vision objectives and principles, with much of the credit going to the Chichester Community Development Trust (CCDT); a driving force behind delivering the Vision.
The HCA made creating a community development trust a requirement of the sale of Graylingwell Hospital. The CCDT was initially set up to respond to the needs of the new Graylingwell community, and it took responsibility for planning and running community buildings, and delivering community projects, events and activities. Thanks to its success, the CCDT’s remit was expanded to include the new community at neighbouring Roussillon Park in 2010 and extended to Keepers Green in 2019.
The CCDT’s remit is to empower residents by developing skills and supporting projects that create volunteering opportunities, employment and build community spirit. It is also responsible for encouraging a low-carbon lifestyle amongst residents through the implementation of the Green Travel Plan. The CCDT owns and manages community buildings and land, safeguarding these important spaces for the community, and reinvesting profits to create long-term economic, social and environmental benefits.
A key aspect of CCDT’s work is supporting parents with young families. Despite Chichester being an affluent area, hidden pockets of deprivation exist, particularly among families with young children. The provision of suitable places for children has therefore been a priority, with the child-friendly ethos of the Chapel with its indoor soft play and outdoor playground being a prime example.
Cholsey Meadows, South Oxfordshire
Located in the village of Cholsey, South Oxford, the new neighbourhood of Cholsey Meadows occupies the site of the former Fairmile mental health hospital. The main Victorian hospital building, former chapel, and entrance lodge are all individually listed at Grade II and the surrounding parkland landscape is a Grade II Registered Park and Garden. In 2006, the HCA appointed Linden Homes and
Thomas Homes as preferred developers for the site and as with Graylingwell Park, a CDT was established to support Cholsey Meadows’ long term growth and community focus. JTP was responsible for the masterplanning, community engagement and for the design of the newbuild homes, whilst Woodfield Brady Architects prepared the plans for conversion of existing buildings.
Historically, a close relationship existed between the village of Cholsey and the former hospital, with many local people employed at the hospital and patients often socialising with villagers as part of their treatment. Through the community planning process, which engaged 70% of Cholsey village residents, the importance of Fairmile not becoming an isolated, separate community was highlighted and integration became central to the vision. This guided all subsequent decisionmaking, including renaming the site as Cholsey Meadows and ensuring that any new facilities would complement rather than compete with existing facilities in Cholsey.
Key to the vision was the sensitive repurposing the heritage buildings and spaces. JTP’s masterplanning process involved extensive evaluation of the condition and heritage value of the site to determine which buildings could be retained and converted. As a result, a total of 95 apartments were delivered in the converted buildings alongside 220 new build homes. Although the regeneration was residentially focussed, a series of commercial and community buildings were planned to deliver the social, environmental and economic objectives set by Homes England.
The vision masterplan clustered mixed uses around repurposed heritage buildings to create three hubs, each with different functions: the Enterprise Hub, the Social Hub and the Sports, Leisure and Cultural Hub. Cholsey Great Hall, the former hospital theatre, has been successfully managed by Cholsey Meadows CDT for over 10 years and runs a year-round programme of events, which cross-subsidises the hall’s use by local community groups. Large outdoor community gatherings are also held on the cricket pitch with events like Bonfire Night, May Day and an annual ‘Party on the Pitch,’ attracting hundreds of people from Cholsey and the surroundings. The Ox Shed, a privately run café/bakery with a family room and co-working space also draws
people in and encourages social interaction.
Along with the successes at Cholsey Meadow, there have been challenges. The Chapel currently sits vacant after the original plan to convert it for use by Fairmile Sports and Social Club did not materialise. The proximity of the Great Hall to the converted apartments led to restrictions in its use for events such as weddings and music events. This reduced the anticipated revenue generation and consequently the number of paid staff Cholsey CDT can sustain which, in turn, has placed a strain on the volunteers.
Our visits to these two thriving communities highlighted several lessons to be borne in mind when creating new communities:
1. Legacy Through Co-Design
A neighbourhood’s true legacy lies in the strength of its community. Co-design processes which engage existing neighbours, local stakeholders and where possible future residents in shaping the vision of a new place, is one of the most powerful tools designers can employ. By participating in the design process, communities can see themselves as “listened to” stakeholders, fostering a sense of collective ownership. The collaborative approaches at Graylingwell Park and Cholsey Meadows have been instrumental in building the foundation for these thriving communities.
2. Power of Community Stewardship
Lasting communities often share the frameworks and foundations which empower residents to shape and care for their surroundings. Robust community development mechanisms – like the CCDT at Graylingwell Park and Cholsey Meadow’s CDT – provide crucial support, adapting to the evolving needs of their communities. These trusts have mobilised volunteers and maximised the value of their endowed assets to help residents in their communities have better lives, and although the community trust models are not perfect, the frontline experience of their staff and members are invaluable resources.
When established from the outset, these organisations provide structures which help ensure the creation of a healthy, sustainable place. This is the type of legacy that we should strive for – one where the built and landscape environment serves as a catalyst for social resilience and civic participation.
3. Creating the Conditions for Communities to Flourish
Legacy also involves creating environments where communities can flourish. Physical infrastructure including buildings (often those unsuitable for residential use), streets and parks, form part of the equation but social spaces and amenities are where community identity takes root. At Graylingwell Park and Cholsey Meadows, early investment in community spaces encouraged integration, social interaction and a sense of belonging.
4. Honouring Heritage
The importance of heritage cannot be overstated. By repurposing historic buildings and restoring the landscape setting, Graylingwell Park and Cholsey Meadows retain their unique characters, providing continuity and authenticity that is often difficult to establish in new places.
Conclusion
Our research at Graylingwell Park and Cholsey Meadows underscores the positive impact of placing community needs at the heart of planning and design. These neighbourhoods demonstrate how thoughtful placemaking, paired with community governance, can create vibrant, wellintegrated places where people feel connected and proud.
As architects and planners, our responsibility extends beyond the physical. We must seek to foster the connections that turn houses into homes and neighbourhoods into resilient communities. By doing so, we can lead the way in creating healthy, connected communities that endure long after the developers, architects, and planners have departed.
Marcus Adams is Managing Partner at JTP
Imagery: Lead photo - Taken in Reggio Emilia during the 2024 Urbanism Awards; all other imagery courtesy of Chichester Community Development
Olympic Legacies in London and Barcelona
Kay Hughes weighs the costs and the benefits of hosting major events, arguing that with the right vision and long term thinking, great outcomes can be seen.
The Victorian State Government’s withdrawal from hosting the 2026 Commonwealth Games in 2023 and the subsequent hosting of a reduced event by Glasgow seems to have taken the gloss off of city bids for global sports events. The reputation of mega sports events is being questioned, are they viable, simply too costly or even desirable in the light of public sector fiscal constraint and climate change?
The doom-laden rhetoric about spiraling costs however misses the key lessons from recent history. It neglects to highlight wider benefits, such as the long-term value of new and improved infrastructure within a carefully considered masterplan, which is particularly facilitated by the fixture of an immovable deadline.
I have been involved in the design and preparation for two Olympic Games. Barcelona as a young architect working in a Catalan architecture practice on the Olympic housing masterplan in the late 1980’s and then later as Principle Design Adviser and then Head of Design at the Olympic Delivery Authority, the organisation tasked with transforming the 560acre industrial site to host the games. Recent visits to Barcelona and Stratford and the lived experience of what both places were like before the Games have given me a much more positive perspective.
Both Games bids had the ambition of using the Olympics as a catalyst for change and were focussed on long term regeneration. In both
cases the cost of the sports provision was small proportionally. In London 75% of the budget was spent on infrastructure and in Barcelona the reported percentage is 85%. It was these significant changes in infrastructure provision underpinned by a city or area masterplan that have realised the long term benefits that the cities possess today, which appear in both cases to have exceeded expectations.
In Barcelona this was delivered through a strong alliance between the Mayor Pasqual Maragall and Oriol Bohigas, architect and urban planner with Martorell Bohigas Mackay (MBM architects). MBM masterplanned the Olympic village, oversaw the transformation of the waterfront and contributed significantly to the planning of the new ring road and city expansion planning.
During the years 1989-1992, I witnessed Barcelona’s transformation from a city suppressed by the Franco era to a prominent European metropolis. Landmarks like the 1936 Stadium were repurposed and integrated into the city, new parks were created and the ensanche grid expanded for the Olympic village and the new Port Vell. The transformation of what was once a severely neglected industrial area of Barcelona was breathtaking.
In London, Ken Livingstone, supported by the Urban Task Force and Richard Rogers, instilled a vision and seized the Games as an opportunity to shift and extend the centre of London to the East. The transformation of the Olympic Park, like the transformation of Barcelona, was miraculous.
It occurred in a mere six years. Without the undergrounding of the pylons, flood risk proofing of the housing sites, wastewater cleaning, waterway cleaning, new landscaping, bridges, gas pipe connections from east to west, soil cleaning, and a new heat and energy plant, the schism in London’s fabric would not have been repaired or valued today.
Both cities had growing populations and a need to provide new housing and services. The deadline for the Games built a program that magically stepped over the laborious machinations of government decision making, to deliver quickly and well. Yes, for the Games initially, but the benefits over time are first and foremost for the people of those two cities.
Notably, both cities were focused on the legacy as much as the short-term sporting events. For London, Allies and Morrison fostered the masterplan over many years, considering Legacy first and retrofitting the Games. In Barcelona, local needs were met through the masterplan and the provision of new facilities before then extending to serve the games. For example, the Badalona Basketball venue was built to serve the local basketball team and then used for the games’ basketball trials. Still today one can go and enjoy the rowing venue in Badalona. Only a few venues do not remain in use today
The long-term value can be seen today in both places. The thriving city of Barcelona now has access to a wonderful seaside park and beaches for leisure. Yes, there are too many tourists, but most come for cultural reasons rather than the beaches and parks which serve the locals. I was there recently for the Americas Cup - the front is buzzing with local activity, the lifestyle of
Barcelonins, especially those living in the dark Barrio Gotica and dense city blocks, is served well by easy access to beaches and the costal park, supporting a high quality of life.
In London now a mere 12 years on with the adept hand of the London Legacy Development Corporation, a commitment to retain the values of the games to deliver sustainability and attract growth has been highly successful. A flourishing Cultural Quarter for London is emerging alongside the innovation hubs and a now established former Olympic Village, busy with parents sipping a post drop-off coffee or remote working. A total of 23,000 homes will be delivered in addition to education, sports and culture that the park surroundings now offer London. The move of the V&A, Sadlers Wells, BBC Music Studios, London College of Fashion, and UCL will further change the dynamic of the area, which offers facilities previously only found in the older parts of London. East London is emerging as a vibrant cultural and innovation centre, rivalling South Kensington, but with its own character. The park now has more visits than Hyde Park.
LLDC have done a good job, but none of this would have been possible without the public investment in infrastructure. Certainly, the removal of the pylons would not have occurred and this on its own would have stymied much future development. Without an immovable deadline, the transformation of the Olympic site would likely have been delayed or even abandoned. The housing crisis would worsen, environmental improvements would be incomplete, and the public would miss out on the benefits of what has become a new centre for London.
The costs of such indecision would be significant, both in terms of direct development sunk costs and the opportunity cost of unrealized potential. Projects like HS2 and the TransPennine Railway illustrate how political indecision can lead to wasted public funds on delayed or cancelled infrastructure that reduces the life chances of future generations.
It’s clear that the Olympic Games accelerated development and delivered significant infrastructure for the public good, maximizing benefits and investment potential. Without the Games, it’s unlikely that this transformation would have occurred.
We are likely to see a move to reduce spending on future events, but I would argue that the higher investment needed for infrastructure to underpin a good masterplan is necessary. This means that the public sector needs to embrace the opportunities that sporting events offer and optimise their outcomes by using urban design planning. They also need to be smarter at developing options for land value
capture, where the private sector has in the past benefited from windfall profits on the back of the public investment, and commit to more retrofit options to reduce carbon. In an environment where adaption must be one of the strategies for mitigating climate change, infrastructure investment is sorely needed.
So yes, I hear the doubters, but we should not underestimate the value of a good masterplan, allied with strong political will and governance, in delivering much needed infrastructure benefits to meet an immovable deadline. The worries of the immediate cost are only warranted if the bidding city is not using the big events as a catalyst for ambitious renewal. The Victorian State Government may have missed out on a valuable opportunity. I doubt that they will benefit in the same way both East London and Barcelona did post-Games. In the long term, that could cost them much more.
Kay Hughes was former Design Director at HS2, leading a multidisciplinary team to deliver the project’s Design Vision. With extensive experience in architecture, urban design, place making and infrastructure, she has held senior roles at the London 2012 Olympics, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and Sport England. Kay has chaired a number of design review panels, is part of the VeloCity placemaking team and a Board Member of the Major Project Association. She is passionate about the role of design in infrastructure to achieve social, economic and environmental.
Why L.A.’s car-free Olympics is the most exciting games yet
Rymer Levitt considers L.A’s car free Olympic plan to be an exciting urban proposition.
When Los Angeles secured the hosting rights for the 2028 Summer Olympics (in a rarely observed double allocation with Paris 2024), the usual complex programme of stadium planning and construction didn’t ensue. This is because LA 2028 will be the first Olympics with 100% existing or temporary venue use. Instead, the planning focus was on how Olympic-sized crowds are going to get around the low-density, sprawling City of Angels where public transit is scarce, and walking is often not an option.
As if transporting the crowds wasn’t enough of a challenge with the network of frequently congested, multiple-lane motorways, L.A. County’s mayor announced that the plan was to make it the first ‘car-free’ games, a proposal that would mean no spectators would drive to events. A daunting challenge, but an exciting one; they are taking advantage of a never-seen-before opportunity to use the Olympics to drive their urban agenda without building any venues.
Obviously, stadiums and venues are an important part of hosting an Olympics, however previous games’ vast programmes of new venues have often drawn criticism. Concerns around underutilisation post-games and the opportunity cost of funding begs the question: are they being built for the benefit of local communities or to appease the IOC and global visitors? It’s a factor in the growing discourse asking whether the Olympics and sporting-event
led regeneration is misaligned with actual urban requirements – does building a permanent Olympic-sized velodrome benefit local communities or would that money be better spent elsewhere? There are some indisputable benefits; the Olympics can attract and accelerate investment into urban areas by up to a decade according to some scholars. Ken Livingstone stated that the London 2012 bid was not for 3 weeks of sport, but instead as the ‘only way’ to
attract investment and build housing in the ‘neglected’ East End. And it worked.
But how did LA develop such a strong sporting infrastructure in the first place?
It’s interesting that three out of five of America’s summer Olympics will have been hosted in L.A. considering the scale and spread of the sporting infrastructure across the country (eight of the world’s eleven 100,000+ capacity stadiums are in the US – none of which are in L.A. or even California). L.A.’s combination of cultural draw with sporting infrastructure for multiple teams in major sports leagues means it has remained the US city best poised to host. But other cities have strong sporting infrastructure credentials. New York and Chicago both have a solid number of existing stadiums, and the additional benefit of a well-functioning and well-used public transport infrastructure – but both have tried and failed to secure hosting rights. This is because of 2 reasons – L.A. have hosted before, and they have the expansive facilities from local universities, USC
and UCLA (Chicago and New York have big universities, but not ones with comparable sporting prowess and facilities). Hosting before means that L.A. already has some of the more Olympic-specific venue requirements, like a velodrome. By using university facilities, the organising committee has more event-ready venues and preexisting student accommodation that can help in athlete housing provision (and the games perfectly coincides with the months when students won’t be there).
The opportunity that the preexisting sporting infrastructure provides is clear. It is the first true experiment showing how if no Olympicspecific infrastructure needs to be built (i.e. venues, athlete villages), to what degree can hosting accelerate urban agendas, such as improving public transit.
To capitalise on this opportunity, the car-free Olympics was proposed, where driving to venues would be banned and public transit alternatives would be provided. LA started their transportation transformation with the Twenty-
eight by ‘28 initiative – 28 projects that were planned or accelerated in preparation of the 2028 deadline. Since 2018, only 5 have been completed but the other 23 are in progress. Additionally, they plan to borrow over 3,000 buses from other cities to transport spectators to venues (borrowing buses might be a temporary solution to transport, but it is a step in the right direction). However, a totally car-free Olympics is ambitious, and maybe unrealistic, but it is an example of using the Olympics and the strict deadline that they provide, to accelerate public transit development. Having the existing sporting infrastructure gives them the budget and time to have ambitious transport development plans.
The Olympics and similar mega events aren’t going anywhere. They must be a tool for host cities in urban development, not a burden. This is what we are seeing in the planning for LA28, which should get urbanists excited.
Rymer Leverett is a Graduate Consultant in Urban Development & Mobility at Arup
Tailgaters
From parking lot to mobile city and back again, Leyla Moy explores tailgating culture in the United States.
At 8 a.m. on a Sunday in November, the asphalt surface of Regent Street is shatteringly crisp with frost under car tires. The parking lots are abuzz, though - they’re heaving with people huddled in red and white, drunk and convivial perched on folding picnic chairs and leaned up against their sleeping vehicles. To the untrained eye, it’s loitering. Here in Wisconsin, it’s tailgating
I didn’t know it then, but tailgating in my hometown of Madison, Wisconsin isn’t even the real deal. The form of the city, squeezed as it is onto the isthmus between Lakes Monona
and Mendota, limits space for sprawl in the central city. Atypically in the world of Big Ten American college football, the 80,000 capacity Camp Randall stadium is located barely off centre and has no associated parking lot for fans. This, coupled with sub-zero temperatures as the season wears on, makes the decadesold American tradition of pregaming with parking lot beers both a challenge and a triumph.
The throngs you’d expect at an NfL game are both more expansive, spreading like liquid to fill ever-larger parking lot containers, and more
formalised than the Madison facsimiles I was acquainted with. In sprawling stadium parking lots, tents create makeshift roofs above cars parked in facing perpendicular rows separated by wide, circulatory gaps - viewed from above, it’s a bustling, temporary city powered by portable grills and body heat.
Aaron Perri, equally fascinated by ways tailgating culture reflects and reframes the modern city, writes of the parallels between the parking lot transformed by tailgating and the surrounding city’s geometry, character and
incidental vibrancy. The ‘tailgate city’ is inherently adaptable, entrepreneurial and surprisingly inclusive, hosting babies transited between the back seat and their parents arms as well as it does elderly sports fans perched on picnic chairs. In Perri’s experience, social boundaries melt away at the tailgate, leaving only indomitable team spirit. Further, the remaking of the sprawling parking lot, the quintessential concrete-bound urban dead space, into a place to gather, reveals a great deal about our desire for sociable spaces.
Both football and cars are deeply entwined with American culture, having risen in popularity concurrently from the 1900s onward. The expansion of college football into ever-larger stadiums to capture the demand of an increasingly auto-owning public created a feedback loop wherein parking lot sprawl came hand-in-hand with investment into stadiums and sport. Naturally, this sprawl led to stadiums - and their hordes
of hungry fans - that were detached from the amenities of the urban centre. The resulting tailgates, buoyed by advances in portable grilling technology, were responsive to an evershifting game schedule, creating the bones of a city that could be dismantled, packed and driven away.
Key in the stadium parking lot’s transformation into a vibrant, temporary place is a certain spatial alchemy that accompanies fan frenzy - everywhere people have occasion to gather, whether for anticipatory hours or fleeting moments, we can’t help but reshape our surroundings.
Fan culture, fervent and visible as it is online, is perhaps most striking in its physical manifestations that overlay urban spaces and leak out from built containers. Following a shift in concert camping culture post-pandemic, the spaces around stadiums are now increasingly transformed outside of football season by folding chairs, singalongs and
nervous anticipation as fans sacrifice comfort in hypervisible shows of devotion to their idols. In Munich, the 50,000-strong crowd that flocked to watch the Eras Tour from Olympic Hill (which faces the stadium) was possibly the summer’s most visible testament to Taylor Swift’s ubiquitous influence. Spurred by vitality, celebrity lookalike competitions animated public spaces around the world in a matter of weeks. The magic and madness of anticipating and watching a great spectacle serves as a lightning rod to transform a place - from a sprawling parking lot to Olympic Hill to Soho Square at 1 p.m. - into an ephemeral community.
Leyla Moy is a Young Urbanist and Urban Designer and Planner at fabrik.
Imagery: Previous page - TIAA Bank Field tailgate via Athens Banner-Herald; above - Taylor Swift crowd in Munich, via @ZsofiaBodo on Twitter
Welcome to Wrexham:
How football, finance, and foreign ownership turned one town’s fortunes around
It’s a rags to riches story for Wrexham FC, but what about Wrexham town itself. Harrison Brewer takes a look.
Across the UK and Europe are scattered thousands of clubs in thousands of towns, each with their own tales of wins, losses, relegations, and cup finals. Whole weekends can be ruined by the machinations of twentytwo players running around for ninety (or so) minutes. Similarly, life-long happy memories can be forged by those same players
lifting a piece of silverware into the air. Club fandom is a funny thing. Everyone will likely know a sports fanatic and more often than not, that fanaticism will be tied to a club in a place they’re connected to, but as the sport has grown, so too has the fan base, and this connection between sport and place has become a little more blurry.
Football has become a global export and the Premier League is watched by about 4.7 billion people1. With the growth in popularity, teams with traditionally local fanbases have been joined by supporters from every continent, some who have never stepped foot in the grounds let alone the towns they call home. A globalised
league has also brought in global owners, often coupled with huge financial backing, that can turn a team’s fortunes around in less than a year. Your once-neglected small town side can be transformed into a heavyweight outfit capable of scaling the slippery pole of league football. This is precisely what happened to Wrexham AFC.
Wrexham is a small town of 45,000 on the Welsh borderlands and home to Wrexham AFC, the oldest club in Wales and the third oldest professional association team in the world. I hope I don’t offend any die-hard Wrexham fans when I say the club is not known for its successes. A spotty history of promotions and relegations which culminated in worsening financial issues and eventually administration by 2004 left the club relatively unknown outside of the town and the occasional pub quiz question. In 2008, the club dropped out of the Football League.
As the club struggled, so too did the town. Wrexham was defined by the coal industry which dominated the economic and social landscape of the area until, like many other towns across the British Isles, deindustrialisation saw jobs and businesses leave the town and investment with it. That is until two Hollywood stars took an interest. The rest of the story is well-documented. Four seasons of television have told the tale of how Wrexham rose from the ashes and have once again entered into British football’s most competitive leagues. It’s a rags to riches moment for Wrexham but not every club and town is so lucky.
Wrexham’s story is an exception to the fates of many football clubs across the United Kingdom. Darlington FC faced a similar fate and has been fighting an increasingly up-hill battle to improve its footballing prospects and by extension that of the town. Darlington was recently designated a new Civil Service hub by government in an effort to redistribute growth and development as part of the Levelling Up Agenda. The consequences of this move have yet to come to fruition. England’s rugby leagues are also coming under increasing scrutiny as mismanaged clubs go into administration and its top flight league shrinks as historic heavyweights struggle to survive in an increasingly globalised and financialised sporting environment. With it, decades of sporting heritage and locally-rooted institutions are facing insolvency.
Some may ask why it’s important to protect sports clubs whilst the world faces numerous crises, all demanding time, attention, and money. Urban regeneration and the development of new towns rely upon anchor institutions to attract investment, support growth, and provide a beating heart for new developments.
Often these institutions are new hospitals, universities, or business campuses. Yet, I’ve rarely seen sports clubs and associations viewed in the same light outside of major sporting events, such as the Olympics or Commonwealth games. As I alluded to at the beginning, sports can elicit all kinds of emotion, passion, and pride in place that other less evocative anchors don’t tap into. By bringing them into the fold, platforming them as key anchors and community organisations, I believe that urban extensions, New Towns, and redevelopment can bring along existing residents and combat the social gentrification and exclusion that often comes with the land value uplift associated with regeneration.
Sports clubs are evocative of an intangible cultural heritage that is embroiled in all different kinds of socio-political identity. We can’t talk about football without talking about workingclass identity through the 20th Century, a point that the Netflix documentary ‘Sunderland til I die’ made so powerfully. In Sunderland, the club’s decline echoed the decline of working-class opportunity and a growing sense that the success of the town was
connected to the success of the club. The ‘Stadium of Light’, as Sunderland FC’s ground is known, refers to the lanterns coal workers would hang in the mines as they worked. Their kits often celebrate that industrial heritage such as the all-black third strip they wore during the 2017-2018 season. If we travel down south to the capital, we can look at my own club, Arsenal FC, started by munitions workers in Woolwich before relocating to North London. Arsenal’s footballing heritage made it famous but the club also blazed the trail for nonEnglish players entering the Premier League and produced some of the best and most recognisable black players for England. North London was a hotbed for National Front support and for many, Arsenal football club was a publicfacing representation of black britishness, expressing the important relationship between identity, British culture, and football. This has also been celebrated recently through kit designs (notably Arsenal’s Jamaica third kit became the unofficial uniform of Notting Hill Carnival in 2023) and the stadium’s mural showing a
multiracial fan base enjoying the beautiful game.
Inadvertently or not, Wrexham’s new owners have leveraged this untapped potential and lifted the town up. The town has seen a significant uptick in tourism, both within the United Kingom and internationally. Restaurant groups have opened up new locations in the North Wales town and a new footballing museum is due to open in 2026.
Investment in sports and sporting heritage can bring wider economic benefits to leftbehind places but take this with a pinch of salt. Fans, the force that keeps these clubs alive, and their supporter associations must be key stakeholders in this process. Football clubs are not off-shore bank accounts nor simply a good investment. They represent the place and the people there who, through thick and thin, boom and bust, promotion or relegation, stuck by their own and cheered for them anyway. It’s a fine balance but if done right, we may yet see the fortunes of football coming home
1
Harrison Brewer is an AoU Young Urbanist, sits on the Here & Now Editorial Team, and a Planner at Arup.
Imagery: First page - Racecourse Ground by John Lord; previous page - Pontcysyllte Aquaduct by Johnlsl; this page - Wrexham
Town by Christopher Jones
The Premier League here refers explicitly to the men’s game. Another article in this issue explores the fascinating regenerative effect that the Women’s Super League is having on our streets as well.
What is the impact on the high street of Arsenal Women playing at the Emirates Stadium?
Rose Jump and Victoria Smyth look at the local economic opportunity of women’s football on the London high streets
The Emirates Stadium is now the main home of Arsenal Women. This is a key move for Arsenal F.C, whose women’s team used to play the majority of their matches in Boreham Wood, on the outskirts of London. The average attendance at Emirates Stadium for a women’s game day in 2023/24 was 52,029, compared to Boreham Wood which has a capacity of 4,500.
At PRD, colleagues have done a lot of research for the GLA on the changing role of London’s 600 high streets and town centres, and how this can be seen through visitor numbers and spending patterns. The economic impact of large music concerts on local businesses is well documented - see The Swiftonomics of Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour. Through this research we wanted to explore the local economic opportunity of women’s football on London’s high streets, and how crowds are affecting visitor numbers and spending.
The Emirates Stadium is positioned next to four different high streets – Finsbury Park, Highbury Park, Holloway Road, Seven Sisters and Lower Holloway. These are diverse in function and use – with Highbury Park smaller and more local, and Holloway Road having much bigger spends. Our analysis focuses on five Arsenal Women’s fixtures hosted at the Emirates Stadium within the 2023/24 season. The aim was to identify any patterns to explore further. It is important to note that when there is no women’s fixture held, the stadium may be in
use for a men’s game and footfall and spend for these days is included within our baseline visitor numbers and spend analysis.
There were two key findings:
Visitors
The number of visitors spending more than 10 minutes on nearby high streets is up on WSL match days, and people stay within the local area after games. This was the same across all four of our high streets. The greatest increase was in Highbury Park, which has a much lower baseline visitor numbers.
Spend
Local matches correspond with some of the highest Sunday morning spend on nearby high streets. There is evidence that women’s crowds are spending more before games in the local area. This may be due to the spending habits of fans, as well as the timings of fixtures. The biggest increases were on Holloway Road, but there were increases across all high streets.
What does this mean for the high street?
1. Matches benefit multiple high streets, not always the ones with existing high visitor and spend numbers
2. Boosts in spend across different days and times brings more opportunities for high street activity on non-premier league matchdays
3. A greater diversity of visitors, likely to spend in different establishments. Women’s football fans are younger and more likely to be women+ which will impact on spend patterns and can be complementary to men’s football crowds (Two Circles, 2024)
This is a work in progress and it’s revealed lots more that we’d like to investigate, such as:
• What is the spend breakdown between different types of shops and pubs/ restaurants? How does this compare to Premier League and non-match days? It may be that the same establishments have more customers, but we’d expect there to be some differences in the types of businesses
supported on women’s games.
• Are there similar patterns across other clubs? What’s the impact of Chelsea both at Kingsmeadow and Stamford Bridge, and Tottenham both at Leyton Orient and the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium?
• What is the impact on the high streets around smaller grounds when teams move to their main stadium?
Ultimately, this research has confirmed what match-going Women’s Super League fans will have seen on the ground - women’s football games have a positive impact on the high street. Dwell times and spending habits of women’s football fans are different, and complementary to those visiting on Premier League match days or non-match day high street users.
Rose Jump is a Senior Consultant at PRD, a place and economy consultancy
Victoria Smyth is a freelance Economic Development Specialist and trainee Geography teacher
Member spotlight
Growing Up with the Academy: Young Urbanist, Academician, Director and Mother Heather Claridge
From Aarhus to Aberdeen, Heather Claridge shares her AoU story
Imagine the buzz of Brixton Market, the vibrant heart of South London. Here I stand, 400 miles from home and clutching my Academy of Urbanism tote bag, a beacon to a fellow urbanist I’ve never met. A chance connection, facilitated by the Academy’s network, has brought us together. We share a passion for tactical urbanism and breathing life back into neglected spaces. The afternoon unfolds with a tour of the area, brainstorming challenges, and forging a new connection –all thanks to the Academy’s connections.
This is just one example of the many enriching experiences my membership has brought. The Academy of Urbanism has been a constant companion throughout my professional journey, shaping my interests, propelling me forward, and providing a network
that feels like a true tribe.
Joining as a Young Urbanist in 2017, while juggling a master’s in Urban Design and Glasgow City Council felt valuable. An interesting Academy event renewed my passion for truly understanding the soul of a place and how design can be a force for environmental and creative good.
Volunteering as a Young Urbanist wasn’t about CV building, it was about entering a vibrant and friendly community. Supporting the Aarhus and Cork Congresses was so much more than logistics. Late-night conversations fuelled with a shared passion for cities exemplifies the community spirit of the Academy. Meeting Jan Gehl, a champion of peoplecentred design, wasn’t just networking; it was a chance to learn from a giant whose ideas about ‘human-scaled places’ will continue to shape my design philosophy.
Becoming an Academician in 2020 wasn’t just a status change, it opened up new opportunities and a chance to give back. Mentoring Young
Urbanists became a privilege, allowing me to share my knowledge and hear about my mentees interests and aspirations. Participating in a panel discussion alongside the esteemed Tinna Saaby, former City Architect of Copenhagen, wasn’t just another conference; it was a chance to learn from a master and share the stage with someone I deeply respected.
Urbanism Award assessment visits offered a different kind of experience. In Govanhill, for instance, chatting with the primary school headteacher was a chance to understand the realities of an inner-city school serving a richly diverse and challenged community.
Becoming a mother in 2021 to a daughter brought a fresh perspective on urban design and its impact on liveability. For instance, it made me even more attuned to the importance of creating safe and accessible public spaces for children and families and places with opportunities for all.
As a woman in my thirties, navigating work and motherhood, I wanted to share my different perspectives and was thrilled to be selected as a Board Director.
Today, as the Design Director for Scotland’s national design agency (Architecture and Design Scotland), I know the knowledge and leadership skills I have gained through the Academy have been instrumental.
I’ve kept close to many of my friends who are Young Urbanists and even joined two YU cycle trips. First in 2020, between Vienna and Bratislava, where we met the inspiring Eva Kail who shared her insight on being a leading voice in gender planning and design. And then this year, to Barcelona and Girona, where we met many inspiring local urbanists. I’ve loved sharing ideas and stories with all the interesting participants on these trips.
The Academy remains a constant source of inspiration, professional guidance, and a supportive network. Whenever I need a fresh perspective on a specific place, I know exactly where to turn. Thank you Academy.
Pictured: Top left - Young Urbanist Cycle Trip to Barcelona; top right - volunteering at Congress 2017 in Aarhus; bottom leftchairing at Congress 2023 in Cambridge
MyPlace
People with places that are significant in their lives
Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts
Katy Harris - Senior Partner, Foster + Partners
I was snapped here on a contextual studies visit to the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts when I was studying Communication Design at Northeast London Polytechnic way back in 1980. I recall the exact feeling going into that building which had newly opened. It literally brought tears to my eyes, similar to the feeling I got when my architect parents dragged me and my siblings around the vast and lofty cathedrals of Europe on holidays.
Little did I know that a year later I would be working for the architect Norman Foster, and lo and behold put on slide duty - as we had just moved offices and they needed a massive sort out – and FOUND the photo of little me! Bizarre chance and 41 years later I am still here (looking a bit older!).
The Sainsbury Centre still brings tears to my eyes when I visit, something about that big, majestic, lofty but somehow calming space. I have actually worked on three exhibitions about our work in the Centre in my career too, so it’s probably the Foster building that I have made the most visits to and in that sense it is MY PLACE.
I grew up in a working-class family in Beeston, Leeds and it is only now that I appreciate the good fortune of growing up in a household
where nothing came in abundance. We made everything we needed, building our own furniture, sewing our own clothes or repairing the car on the cobbled street outside. In today’s world, we are desperate for such an inventive lifestyle where we can do more with less.
My grandmother was my only mentor. She would encourage me to pursue my passion and say “That’s great! Do more”. At the same time there are memories of those who told me “Drawing is of no value, stop it, you’ll never make any money out of drawing’. But creativity was a way for me to escape the reality of a difficult childhood. I would play with Lego bricks in dialogue with my action figures or be constructing objects out of card whilst always drawing. My tools were limited but I made a connection between drawing and making, very early on in life.
As a Sikh, my world revolved around faith. I learnt the values of self-belief, community and ‘seva’. Self-belief gave me the tools of empowerment, which I used to realize the career path that I am still on today: community taught me the values of teamwork, togetherness, equality and inclusion: seva meaning ‘selfless service’, involves helping others in a variety of ways, without personal gain. It has a been a way of life for me and something that helped me stay grounded throughout my career.
ArtPlace
Artworks inspired by the built environment
Tree Figure Grounds
David Rudlin
Director Urban Design, BDP
I always feel slightly uncomfortable being called the AoU’s Artist in residence. What I do is mostly traced over photos, it has a certain craft to it but its not really art. What it does have is a degree of obsession. This obsession was particularly evident in the large-scale city figure ground drawings that I did with my friend Shruti Hemani for our book Climax City.
Since moving to Wales these same impulses have led me to draw trees. This image is of an abandoned farm on the hill behind where we live, I pass it all the time walking my dogs and every time it looks different. The hillside is littered with these abandoned farms and most of them have their tree.
I initially started to draw the branches, but this was hopelessly complicated, so I realised that the trick was to draw the ‘ground’ rather than the ‘figure’. The result illustrates that the humblest trees are cities unto themselves. Given that the thesis of our Climax City book was that cities are the complex emergent forms it should be no surprise to find their parallels in nature.
Citizens Book review
As practitioners in the built environment, we often sit within the narratives and frameworks that make up the planning and development sector within the UK. Most conversations I have about planning reform revolve around the financialisation of land and property, the balance of decisions tipped in the favour of developers and the financial viability of their schemes, and the blandness of modern developments built across the country. As a consultant, I’m often told that we can advise and inform decision-making at the earliest stage but in practice, every actor adheres to an age-old story of delivering shareholder value and opting for gradual change over radical transformation. So we find ourselves constrained by the bureaucracy of decisionmaking and the process of determination. However, when I read ‘Citizens’ I saw a step change in that thinking. The book maps out a way forward by questioning the stories we tell ourselves and encouraging us to write a new one.
‘Citizens’ divides the evolution of modern society into three stories: the subject story, the consumer story, and the citizen story. The subject story is paternalistic and hierarchical with a strongman figure at the head and we, the subjects, would do best by following their example. The consumer story offered a way forward,
reframing us as customers with the power to shape the future through choosing one product over another. Buying free-trade, avoiding single-use plastic, and buying home-grown
goods was sold to us as our only meaningful contribution to addressing inequality, halting climate change, and supporting our local industries. And yet, neither story has left
us satisfied - rioting, extremism, unprecedented levels of inequality, and an increasing existential threat to our planet has led us, and the authors of the book, to search for meaning in other narratives.
The consumer story is breaking apart and the institutions, structures, and systems that hold it together are bursting at the seams. Many have lost faith in government, in the economy, and in global institutions to resolve the problems we face. From the ashes, seedlings of collectivism, participation, and action have begun to germinate. Alexander and Conrad name a few champions of the citizen story including Imandeep Kaur, the founder of Civic Square, a partnership of civic and community organisations with a mission to regenerate a longforgotten neighbourhood in Birmingham. Civic Square is about empowering citizens to be the change they want to see in their streets, to lead their own communities, and solve their own problems, rather than waiting for change to happen to them. I’ve long followed the Civic Square project and long for the scaling of these ideas across the country but the challenge civic organisations face to meet these challenges head-on is huge. Resourcing themselves, fighting against vested interests or reams of policy, and building momentum is only made harder in a world where the consumer story, and its obsession with financial value, is still king.
Returning to our world of urbanism, I am caught wondering where we are best placed to support this shift to a citizen-led future. Stakeholder engagement has long been a pillar of our planning system
but anyone can see that whilst the power local communities wield is sizeable, community participation isn’t as effective nor sometimes as helpful as it could be. We could talk about NIMBYs versus YIMBYs and our planning system’s aptitude for telling us what we can’t, rather than can do. We could point towards a role for strategic planning in setting regional objectives and enabling muchneeded development to take place despite local opposition. We could also take a look at embedding more radical approaches to participation into our systems and processes, namely Citizens’ Assemblies in Paris or participatory budgeting in Mexico City. Yet, I fear that without concerted efforts by us across all parts of our work and an equal effort by policymakers in Whitehall, citizen-led urban futures will always be slightly out of reach.
Here are three ways that I think we can learn from ‘Citizens’ and encourage that shift:
Firstly, where can add value is by redefining value. Can we move away from a world in which economic or financial value rules our decision-making towards one where social or environmental value takes precedence?
Secondly, I think that we, as experts and specialists, are perfectly placed to build capacity, translate the legalese of our planning system, and use our presence in ‘the room where it happens’ to bring citizens in with us. Should planners not be agents but enablers, cracking open the black box of planning rather than ferrying applications back and forth across the policy
divide?
Thirdly, I believe we need to reconcile our role as planners and designers with our identity as citizens and community members. My work as a planning consultant and my life as a resident and citizen are often siloed - rarely do I work on schemes in my neighbourhood or even my own city meaning that I rarely apply my local understanding and knowledge, my love of where I live, and my responsibility to my neighbours. This is not to say that I don’t impart value in the work I do nor that we should only work in the neighbourhoods we reside in. Rather, I think that we can do more to empower those who do understand, who do live where we work, and who care just as much if not more than we do.
A shift to a citizen future is not destructive. It requires us to shape the rules of a rulesbased system, to remove the obstacles of entrenched power, and to empower new modes of participation. As a planner myself, my profession is uniquely positioned to sculpt this change, to unpick process, and bring others into the fold. ‘Citizens’ has the map but it’s up to us to pave the way for a citizen-led future.
Citizens by Jon Alexander and Ariane Conrad is published by Canbury Press. It is listed at £12.99 and can be purchased at all good bookstores.
Harrison Brewer is an AoU Young Urbanist, sits on the Here & Now Editorial Team, and a Planner at Arup.
Urban Idiocy: Railways
Brilliant ideas that ruined our cities
Ever since Dr Beeching in the 1960s railways have been a particularly good place to find urban idiocy. We all believe railways are a good thing, and that they should be used to promote Transit Oriented Development (TOD) around stations. But the rules and bureaucracy we have introduced have made this almost impossible.
Last week the new papers carried articles about the £100M bat shed being built by HS2. This will be a kilometre long and will be built where the line emerges from a tunnel in Buckinghamshire. The aim is to protect a local colony of Bechstein bats from being hit by trains emerging from the tunnel.
Sir Jon Thompson, Chair of HS2 had been grouching about the bat shed at an industry conference which is how the press picked up the story. He suggested that Bechstein bats may be rare in the UK but were ‘relatively available’ in Europe (presumably not in the shops). He complained that there was not any real evidence that the trains would have any effect on the bats, or indeed whether the shed would work.
Nevertheless, the 1981 Wildlife Act meant that a licence was needed from Natural England and this left no choice but to build the structure. Except of course that Buckinghamshire Council deemed it an eyesore and refused to give it planning permission. The result? More
costs and delays and national hand-wringing about why we can’t build railway lines and why they cost so much. The railways really are an excellent example of urban idiocy. This is idiocy that happens when everyone involved is trying to do the right thing, with the best of intentions, but the outcomes make no sense whatsoever. In the case of HS2 it explains why the line is costing more than £100M/km whereas the most expensive French line along the Mediterranean coast came in at £16.8M/km.
As the Department for Transport’s former Chief Scientific Adviser, Professor Roderick Smith said in 2017, “I am really concerned with the way [HS2] is developed and I think an incredible number of completely inept decisions have been made which will add to the cost, decrease the utility, and frankly bring the project into almost a laughing stock”.
This doesn’t just relate to bats, and it isn’t confined to highspeed rail. Let us consider for a moment the example of level crossings. It doesn’t take long on YouTube to find hair-raising videos of people doing stupid things on level crossings. Driver’s cab footage of a farm truck, oblivious of the approaching train, clearing the track with inches to spare. Pedestrians chancing their arm on a level crossing once the gates have closed. Level crossings are obviously a very, very bad idea and it is entirely
understandable that there should be rules to prevent any new ones being built.
And yet this perfectly reasonable conclusion means that it is far more difficult to build new lines or reopen old ones. Take an example that the Idiot has written about previously; a proposal to reopen a short section of track closed by Dr Beeching in the 1960s. The line would connect a sizable town to the railway network, creating an opportunity for a major town extension of up to 10,000 homes. The plan was to capture the value generated by the new homes to fund the reopening of the line. Initially the railway seemed like the easy bit. The track had remained open as a goods line until relatively recently and some of the track was still in place. The initial cost estimates were a modest £10M although this excluded the last half a mile into the town where the line had been severed by the ring road and sold off to an industrial estate.
However even before the difficult issue of how close to the town the new station would be, a much bigger problem became apparent. There were eight farm tracks crossing the line, although camera surveys suggested that they were little used. Given that the initial train service was only planned to run once an hour, the Idiot didn’t see the problem. But problem there was, because there was no way in which a ‘new’ line could be opened with level
crossings.
So, the scheme was redrawn, with bridges carrying the farm tracks over or under the railway depending on the topography. As a result, the cost of the line multiplied to more than £100M. Even the consultancy studies to design and get approval for the line were projected to cost almost as much as the original capital estimate.
Helpfully, the consultants suggested that cost savings could be made by terminating the line at a Parkway station outside the town although they accepted that this would have an impact on passenger numbers. So, it was OK to reduce the usefulness of the line to potential passengers but not to take the risk of a level crossing.
As a result, the line will almost certainly never get built, the station will never get reopened, and the thousands of homes predicated on the reopening of that station will never happen. All of this to prevent the small risk of a farmer not paying attention at just the moment that a train is coming past. It gets more complicated when we consider Network Rail’s Shared Value Policy. This states that when a change is required to a railway line in order to open up land for development, Network Rail expects to receive a share in the uplift in land value. This probably wouldn’t apply to our example above. But it is an issue elsewhere, where new settlements are being planned around railway stations – which after all is exactly where we should be building them. The policy says that if a new bridge is required to open up the land for development
(which would include the replacement of a level crossing) then Network Rail are due part of that uplift. The policy does say that they have to act in a reasonable way, and should require ‘no more that it is due’. However, it states that the starting point is 50% of the uplift in value where the bridge is the sole ‘keyholder’ to the site. You can sense that Network Rail are not entirely convinced that this will come across as a reasonable request. The policy states ‘External parties may refer to it as ‘ransom’ but NR does not regard it as such and indeed it is a recognised part of the regulatory targets imposed on NR through the Office of Rail and Road (ORR) settlement process’.
If a site has no prospect of being developed without a bridge and therefore has no value, then why shouldn’t the railways benefit from the value that a bridge would create. Network Rail is not alone in this respect, similar rules relate to the Canals and Rivers Trust.
The Idiot has been involved in a scheme for a new settlement around a railway station where the road bridge next to the railway station needed to be widened. The scheme also included a number of the public footpaths that used level crossings and Network Rail were objecting to the proposals unless they were replaced with bridges. How much of the value uplift created by the designation of this new settlement should go to the railway?
In other places development around stations is effectively split in two by the railway with only one bridge between the two sides severely
compromising the layout. In another case the masterplan was proposing a new green bridge over the line to access land that was planned to meet the scheme’s open space requirements. It wasn’t opening up land for development, but without it the scheme was unable to meet the local plan policy.
In each of these examples the developers were very concerned about Network’s Rail’s shared value policy. The cost of building over a railway is already huge but the value implications of the policy were potentially far greater. What happens is that developers just don’t want the hassle; they would prefer to avoid the issue and either compromise the scheme or find an easier site.
We need to introduce a sense of proportion to these discussions. Agreed level crossings are a health and safety issue, and bats should be protected. But should we not be able to weigh these important issues against the benefits of a scheme going forward? In today’s environment it is hard even to have these conversations without being shouted down by lobby groups or risking being held responsible if an accident did take place on a level crossing. Absolute rules are attractive because they brook no dissent and don’t allow developers to wriggle out of their responsibilities, but they can also lead to nonsensical outcomes.
Create, edit, write for the AoU
Here & Now Journal
We’d love to hear ideas and opinions from, see art and photography by, or curate with more of the AoU community in future issues of the quarterly Here & Now Journal.
Join the Editorial Team and help source, refine, and curate articles as part of a friendly, passionate team who meet regularly online to plan the next issue.
Write an opinion or research piece that dives into an idea or theme under the broad umbrella of urbanism. Perhaps you have a particular view on density, or greenbelts, or density in greenbelts that you would like to share in a public, yet safe and supportive space. Send your idea in?
Share a creative, reflective artwork through MyPlace and ArtPlace.Through photography, illustrations, and other media, these are an opportunity for the artists within the AoU community to depict the urban experience.
Review a book that speaks to urbanism - whether through a political, practical, or creative lens. Give your perspective on the key lessons from a book, and whether we should all be reading it!
The City Observatory Papers:
Toronto: Growing Pains 3
A partnership between BDPlab and the AoU
Toronto: Growing Pains
Every year 120,000 new people call the Toronto region home. The city is struggling with how to accommodate this growth but Sean Hertel and BDP’s Harim Labuschagne want to ask not whether the city should grow, but how growth can be used to create a better city.
What does population growth tell you about a city? When the growth gauntlet is thrown down by central government, often with funding attached, what should cities do? Will they see this as an opportunity, or will they recoil and retreat? If the former, can the city muster the courage and resources to ensure there is enough land, infrastructure, and services to pull this off? If the latter, is it a matter of not being able to accommodate growth or simply not wanting to? This article is a thought experiment. One that more city-builders should engage in: instead of focusing solely on how to accommodate growth we ask what growth can provide? New people, and the economic and social capital they bring should help cities like Toronto achieve
long-stated objectives including building a more resilient, inclusive creative and prosperous city. The alchemy for great things.
Let’s look at Toronto a city of 2.7 Million, Capital of Ontario and Canada’s most populous and economically important city. It is the anchor of the Greater Golder Horseshoe region an urban expanse that bends around the north, east and south shores of Lake Ontario. The Ontario population projections see the Greater Toronto Area growing from 7.2 to 10.5 million between 2022 and 2046. This is part of a wider picture which saw Canada’s 41 million population grow by 1-million people last year almost entirely through immigration . As a Toronto-based urban planner, this is quite a time to be talking about planning for growth.
Sean Hertel Harim Labuschagne
Sean Hertel is a Toronto-based urban planner, Principal of Hertel Planning and a lecturer in the schools of planning at Toronto Metropolitan University, University of Waterloo and York University.
Harim Labuschagne is a senior architect and director of design in BDP’s Toronto Studio, focusing on large scale master planning and urban regeneration projects.
The usual script
In newspapers, magazines, travel blogs and city-building publications the usual story that Toronto tells itself is:
1) That it is perhaps the most diverse and livable city in the world.
2) That it has more cranes in the sky than Dubai or New York.
3) That it’s a model for growth and development.
4) That it’s vibrant, exciting, and safe and
5) That its core hasn’t hollowed out like its American counterparts.
The script says it is the perfect city, a mix of Europe and North America - “New York run by the Swiss” as the locals like to say or the classic, “Vienna surrounded by Phoenix.” It’s a city of lively streets and mixed, accessible suburbs served by a network of streetcars and good transit connectivity. While much of this is true - I’m not going to say otherwise - I (SH) admit to having a difficult relationship with Toronto. It is the city where I have lived and worked (in and on) for the past 25 years but for me, cities are personal, or at least they should be. If it was a person I would be asking; Who are you? Where do you come from? What to do believe in? What are your values?
“New York run by the Swiss” as the locals like to say
This is especially true when a city is in growth mode, when the answers to these questions are changing, and new questions are being asked: Why grow? Why are we doing this? What do we want from it? What can growth get us that we don’t already have? What’s really possible?
Tell Me Your Story
I remember my first visit to Montréal, Quebec – I was a young planner and needed to get away. Winding my way, on foot, up Mount Royal, after which the city is named, I found it laid-out below me: A grand silent vista over the modern city and its French colonial counterpart towards the St. Lawrence River in the distance. Montréal told me her story, and I understood her. Walking on the sidewalks below, riding the Metro, sitting in a square drinking a coffee, the city and I continued our
Figure 1 - Projected Growth: Toronto and the Greater Golden Horseshoe region to 2051
Source: Province of Ontario, Ministry of Transportation, Towards a Greater Golden Horseshoe Transportation Plan Discussion Paper (June 2021)
quite confab. I felt her comfortable confidence and friendly defiance, and the swagger of a place that was the first in Canada to host a World’s Fair (1967, marking Canada’s centennial) and Olympics (Summer 1976). I was in love, and she didn’t even blush. And Toronto? Crickets. Silence. Nothing.
I moved to Toronto from Windsor, Ontario. This is a city located on the south bank, (yes south) of the Detroit River across from Detroit, Michigan. Like many young people, I came to Toronto to find work in my chosen profession. As a planner there was no question that Toronto was my place. So, there I went and here I remain. But I still don’t call it “home”.
I have fond memories of my first years in the city, feeling a sense of belonging and wonderment. This was not from walking among the canyons of commerce in the downtown core or from the night life, but from getting my TTC (Toronto Transit Commission) Metropass and my Toronto library card. Those two cards affirmed that I belonged, that I could stay if I wanted to. And I did. But riding the streetcars and checking out books was all there was for me. A remoteness and unknowingness
took hold, between Toronto and I, and remains today.
Toronto is supposed to be ‘world class’ or at least it aspires to be. What this is, exactly, I don’t know. But I’m certain of what world class is not: Its not sidewalk garbage bins that are quite literally, themselves garbage – dirty, falling apart and over-stuffed; Its not sidewalks that bulge and buckle, patched with temporary asphalt fixes that stay that way for years; Its not street sewer grates clogged with several seasons of leaf litter causing mini floods from climate change-fuelled torrents of rain; Its not public spaces falling into decrepitude, unloved; Its not public transit that is increasingly unreliable, unsafe and often shut
Sidewalk garbage bins that are, quite literally, themselves garbage
for emergency repairs and; Nor is it new buildings that don’t deserve to pierce the sky and cast shadows, grand and breathtaking only in their ugliness and banality. Such was not always the case, up to about 25 years ago Toronto did the little things right, which was actually quite a big thing. Toronto did it in a typical ‘nothing to see here’ fashion: cleaning the streets and sidewalks; oiling the swing sets in the parks; keeping up with maintenance; investing in the things that made differences in people’s lives, especially those with lower incomes, like transit and libraries and community services. What has all this to do with growth? It is a question that
Figure 2: Toronto’s booming skyline: White denotes existing buildings, blue shows buildings under construction and purple shows proposed buildings – either approved or in the process of approvals. And yet downtown Toronto is still half as dense as downtown New York;
Source: Joe Berridge: The Accidental Metropolis
no one seems to be asking: does Toronto’s growth rate of an average of 25,000 people annually worsen these problems or help us solve them? Could it once more help us be the city we should and could be, a place that looks after its own, that picks up the garbage, that gives us a sense of satisfaction – though far from exciting – of living in a good city? Toronto was once called “Toronto the Good.” Those times may be gone but we’re still here, and lots more of us keep arriving. Lots of us. So, what now?
The Yellow Belt
The first task, of course, is to build enough homes and like most North American cities Toronto is facing a housing crisis. Indeed, things have gotten so out of hand that New York City is said to be more affordable (There is a city with a story to tell!). Toronto is not building enough homes (or at least not the right kind) to accommodate its growth and the housing crisis, together with the lack of affordability, is the result. Part of the solution is a massive development of the downtown area with hundreds of proposed new towers. However, this is not sufficient
The planners of the old city brokered a peace with their suburban counterparts
and the strategy also needs to intensify the city’s suburbs which largely remain low rise, low density houses.
Back in 1998 when the six municipalities that used to make up Metropolitan Toronto were merged into the current City of Toronto a Faustian Pact was made. The planners of the old city brokered a peace with their suburban counterparts in
which they agreed to designate ‘stable neighbourhoods’ sparing low-density housing areas from significant development. These are the yellow areas on the plan above. Growth would instead be directed everywhere else, the rub being that ‘everywhere else’ didn’t amount to much. As a result, this agreement is being increasingly questioned, in the name of addressing the housing crisis.
Figure 3: Land uses: Designated uses from the Toronto plan. The yellow zone contains single family detached houses and zoning has not allowed any high or midrise development. This ‘Yellow Belt’ covers a huge area compared to the Red areas where higher density development is permitted.
The Toronto Plan
The three steps in this process of intensification are set out on the Toronto Plan: 1) revising the planning rules for the ‘stable neighbourhoods’ the light yellow area on the plan. 2) Building higher along the Avenues, marked as brown lines on the plan and 3) to develop more than 100 Transit Oriented Development schemes around existing centres and transit stops. We will deal with each of these in turn.
1Loosening the Yellow Belt:
The low-density suburbs that make up Toronto’s ‘Yellow Belt’ constrain growth as much as the Ontario Green belt that surrounds the city region. The Yellow Belt comprises 35.4% of the city’s land area and almost twothirds it’s build-up area. Designated as Stable Neighbourhoods, zoning ordinances for these areas have restricted them to low-rise homes. In 2023 Toronto Council opened-up residential zoning in these neighbourhoods in response to years of pressure
Existing House
1UNIT
from housing activists, architects and planners (myself included). Through sweeping reforms that the city called ‘Expanding Housing Options on Neighbourhoods’ (EHON) the new zoning ordinances allowed as-of-right multiplexes with up to four units on all residential plots.
This was subject to performance standards, but effectively allowed for the housing density to quadruple. It is the first in a series of moves promised by Toronto’s planning department (still subject to City Council approval). The aim is to build a Goldilocks zone between single homes and high
Source:
3UNITS
The aim is to build a Goldilocks zone between single homes and high rise apartments
Figure 5 - Toronto Plan:
rise apartments, what in the UK is being called ‘gentle density’
These EHON reforms will further loosen Yellow Belt zoning restrictions to permit town houses and small-scale apartment buildings up to 6-storeys and 30 units on major streets. These are not the Avenues that we will come to in a moment but the busier collector streets in the interior of neighbourhoods. Public consultation on these changes is ongoing.
2Densifying the
Avenues: The second part of the plan is to grow taller and denser (but not too much!) on the Avenues. Policy already permits taller mixed-used buildings (6 to 11 storeys) along arterial streets that are designated as ‘Avenues’ in the Toronto Official Plan (the brown strips on the plan on the previous page).
This is good in theory, but in practice, the zone allowing taller buildings is limited to lots directly fronting the street, making it difficult for developers to assemble enough land with sufficient depth to make mixed-use mid-rise buildings physically functional and financially feasible. The existing rules also seek to manage the
height transitions between low density neighbourhoods and the higher density Avenues with results that often look a bit ridiculous: a modern take by on the ancient ziggurat?
3TOD: The city is also planning to get denser at existing and planned rapid transit nodes. Transit-oriented development is being promoted at and more than a hundred stations across the conurbation in areas designated as Major Transit Station Areas (MTSAs). The policy prescribes a minimum density of
people and jobs per hectare (pjh) depending on the importance of the station. At commuter rail stations the policy is 150 pjh, at light rail transit stations it is 160 pjh and at subway stations it is 200 pjh.
To up the ante, the Province has also established a Transit Oriented Communities (TOC) program to amplify and accelerate station area development. Among TOC implementation tools are land assembly and Ministerial Zoning Orders to override or accelerate municipal planning review processes. In effect, prime real estate is assembled, pre-approved by Provincial decree for high density residential development, and offered to the development industry in quick order (I would elaborate here but the process is quite opaque).
What we do know is what’s missing from this calculus: truly affordable housing, and other public benefits. At the time of this writing, nowhere are this authors aware of any TOCs that require developers to provide below-market rate or public housing of any kind, or significant public works or services, for the privilege of developing and profiting from prime real estate. Such a lost opportunity, given that the government controls the land and approvals process.
Figure 6 - Massing model of the East Harbour TOC: The area
The cost of “growth should pay for growth”
Which brings us back to the parlous state of public infrastructure in Toronto and the potential role of growth in paying for improvements. Unlike its counterparts in the Unites States, Toronto has few direct and stable revenue streams to pay for the infrastructure and services people need. It is heavily –many municipal policy and finance experts say overly – reliant on property taxes.
Each budget cycle begins with a projected budget shortfall of at least $100-million with predictions that services will need to be cut unless the provincial and federal governments come up with more cash. This dance is a long standing tradition of Canadian cities and Toronto is perhaps its foremost exponent. Until this year sub-inflation property tax rises had increased these pressures. While this year saw an unprecedented, but much needed, hike of almost 10 per cent, the experts say this still isn’t enough and property taxes in Toronto remain the lowest in the region.
Growth adds to the revenue conundrum, increasing the tax base but also the demand for infrastructure and services. Provincial legislation is based on a ‘growth should pay for growth’ principle and allows municipalities to levy charges on new development to pay for public transit, roads, sewers, parks, and the police. This leads to a second dance between the city and the development industry about the level of development charge
levies. The suspicion of developers is that these charges are really property tax subsidies for existing residents paid for by future ones. Subsidizing existing residents or not, Toronto development charges have more than doubled in recent years, adding to the already skyhigh (literally, for residential highrise, which accounts for most of the new housing created) housing prices. The development industry claims that taxes, application fees, and charges account for about
Growth adds to the revenue conundrum, increasing the tax base but also the demand for infrastructure and services.
Figure
half of the cost of a new dwelling.
Thickening the plot further, the federal government through its new Housing Accelerator Fund is offering billions of dollars to support housing growth by funding housing-related infrastructure and services. To qualify councils must pass prescribed zoning reforms and introduce processes to speed up approvals.
In Canada it is the Provinces rather than the Federal Government who are normally responsible for planning and development policy. There was some initial irritation at this jurisdictional trespass, but the Provinces are warming to the idea (whilst spinning ways to make it their idea all along). The City of Toronto has already cashed a large cheque for $471-million for its efforts thus far.
The hows and whys of growth
There are many growth ‘hows’ to talk about but we must address the ‘whys’. What is clear is that the system isn’t working. Municipal budgets are still squeezed, development charges are too high and impact affordability while services and infrastructure remain
lagging (we have not had space to mention the false starts with the rapid transit system). There’s much blame to go around; The City, the Provincial and Federal governments, developers, professionals including planners, the voters and taxpayers, the YIMBY and NIMBYs. Toronto like its global counterparts around the world has had big problems to fix: Growing inequality – where living in the city is great if you have money, and not so great if you don’t; Climate change is stressing already fragile infrastructure, causing more frequent flooding in some places and drinking water-depleting droughts in others; No city, growth or no growth, is immune from the ravages of poverty and mental illness.
Perhaps the greatest peril is a lack of imagination. We never asked: why are we doing this? What’s at stake? What kind of city are we building, and for whom? Crickets. Silence. Nothing.
So let’s start with a few ideas:
See growth not as a problem but as part of the solution to the challenges we have. To-
ronto is a hot place right now for growth and investment, so we can and should leverage that to produce the outcomes we need. If we don’t demand better we won’t get it.
Focus on quality instead of quantity. Non-negotiables should include inspired design, environmental performance, and buildings and places that will not only last but will be worth living and lingering in. Demand places that people will care about.
Leave space, in both a literal and procedural sense, for unplanned ‘happy accidents’ –coming to grips with the conundrum that the best places in our cities (think about what people, especially visitors, post about on Instagram and TikTok) often come about in spite of planning not because of it.
It’s time, if not already too late, to start imagining and expecting more. To aspire not to greatness but to goodness. We planners use the word ‘good’ quite a bit. Something is ‘good planning’, or ‘good design’, or we had a ‘good process’. We are not sure we know what that means anymore. We don’t think we’ve ever really asked. Toronto is growing, and fast. Tens of thousands of new homes, and all the revenue generated along with it, is in various stages of approvals and construction every year. The most talented and hard working people from around the world are choosing to come here. We have the money. We have the talent. But do we have the imagination and the will to do some good with all this? Growth isn’t waiting for us, and so far the results aren’t good but they can be.
The Olympics: Then and Now Urban philosophy
After an Olympic summer, resident philosopher Andreas Markides reflects on what has changed since those first games 3,00o years ago - and what hasn’t.
As I was watching this year’s opening ceremony to the Olympics I could not help but marvel at the durability of this idea and the magic that surrounds it. It is well known that the Olympics were first held at a small place in the Peloponnese called Olympia (hence the name) in 776BC. I visited this place a few years ago and it is still aweinspiring! Its purpose was to celebrate Zeus, the king of the Olympian gods and the event comprised religious and music competitions, in addition to sport. Amazingly, the ancient Olympics were held every 4 years without interruption for over 1,000 years!
Whilst marvelling at the idea, I also pondered at any differences between those ancient games and their modern version. The differences are profound. Leaving aside two fundamental aspects of modern-day Olympics which are the doping malice and the extreme cost of staging the Games, it is undoubted that a major difference between the two eras is the athlete’s professionalism.
Historically it has been recorded that the first Olympian was a cook from the nearby city of
Ellis who simply turned up and competed in the stadion race (about 180m long). Today’s athletes spend endless amounts of money training and in many (but not all) cases they turn professional (which also means that they are financially supported) in order to have the best chance of winning. The importance of funding is illustrated by the UK’s record at the Olympics. Following a rather barren spell at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics (just one gold won) the decision was taken to increase funding primarily through the National Lottery. The effect was immediate when, four years later, in the Sydney Olympics there were 11 gold medals. Since then, the UK
customarily wins more than 60 medals of all colours at each Olympics. Compare that to India, one of the most populous but at the same time poorest nations in the world, who have won a total of less than 40 medals at all Olympics since 1900.
Nowadays money is central to athletes’ preparations as well as to their subsequent rewards. I read somewhere that, following her outstanding win in the 800m, Keely Hodgkinson’s worth is now estimated to be in millions. In contrast, Olympians in ancient times were rewarded with a laurel wreath on their head!
Money and professionalism may be two big differences between the ancient and modern Olympics. However, the biggest difference in my view is our attitude to war. In ancient times it was customary for wars to be halted whilst the Games were going on. All the different Greek city states would simply call a truce and instead get on with competing at the Games! I thought of that noble idea when I was watching the torch being passed from the hands of one outstanding athlete to the next and I knew that, at that precise moment, there were Ukrainian and Russian soldiers being killed in the heart of Europe, just a few thousand miles to the east of Paris.
So, with all these changes has it all gone wrong?
Looking at the Paris Olympics, especially in the face of the national election results that preceded it, staging the Olympics was a healing process for the whole nation. The bitter rows over dual nationality, identity and racism were at least momentarily forgotten. The Olympics succeeded in unifying the nation as demonstrated when the former athletics champion Marie-Jose Perec lit the astonishing flying cauldron with another national treasure, the judo star Teddy Riner. Significantly both had come from families from the French Caribbean island of Guadeloupe. As subsequently reported in Le Parisien, at one point Perec said to Riner:
“Look at us: both black, a man and a woman and we are lighting the Olympic cauldron at the Paris Olympics. It’s something incredible.”
Isn’t this power of the Olympics to heal and to bring people together, the same phenomenon experienced by the whole country in 2012 when the Olympics were held in London? Then there is also that utter sense of jubilation as well as pride when a home athlete (say Keely Hodgkinson) wins. There is no doubt that there is something special about the Olympics. The ancient writer Lucian perhaps captured that value best with the following quote:
“Oh, I can’t describe the scene in mere words. You really should experience first hand the incredible pleasure of standing in that cheering crowd, admiring the athletes’ courage, their amazing physical conditioning, their unbeatable determination and their unstoppable passion for victory”.
The power of the Olympics is best illustrated by the fact (or it may just be a myth) that, if a city in ancient times had an Olympian, they would then knock down their defensive walls, claiming that ‘with an Olympian amongst us, we no longer need walls to defend ourselves’!
So, a lot may have changed about the Olympics but their power to bring unity, jubilation and hope remains as strong today as it was in ancient times.
Andreas Markides is Chair of the Academy of Urbanism, and Chairman of
Markides Associates
Urban Model of the United Kingdom & Ireland Large urban modelling allows analysis of spatial inequalities providing insights that influence national and regional policy on issues including mobility, land value, health and carbon.
