AoU Here & Now - Summer 2024 - The Urban Task Force 25 Years On

Crookston looks

five years, and reflects on his time as a member of the Urban Task Force.

The Better of Times or the Worse of Times?

Ian Gordon reflects on the UTF from ‘outside the tent’ and tells a tale of two urbanisms.

In conversation with Jon Rouse Harrison Brewer and Matt Lally sat down with Jon Rouse to talk about his role in the Urban Task Force and its relevance in 2024.

Channeling my John Prescott

David Rudlin encourages us not to underestimate how the UTF changed government policy towards cities.

Things can only get better... but did they?

Matt Lally looks back to look forward, finding a legacy with a very mixed scorecard.

An Exemplar to Advance Future Sustainable Urbanism

Tony Reddy raises important, current questions about the British planning system.

Furthering the Urban Renaissance

Leyla Moy untangles the UTF report and asks how the recommendations can drive community-led renewal.

The City Observatory: Tokyo

In the first instalment of BDPlab’s Good City papers, Eijo Okada and Takayushi Kishii explore how other cities might learn from Tokyo’s public transport system.

The City Observatory: Lima By contrast, Solangel Fernandez and Alessandra Peña explain the impact of an absent public transport system and how plans for new infrastructure will change the situation.

La Bici Brava

Young Urbanists Ben Meador and Julie Plichon reflect on four days of urban, suburban, and rural tribulations in Barcelona and Girona.

Book review: EcoResponsive Environments

40 years since the publication of ‘Responsive Environments’, Harry Knibb reviews a new volume that focuses on issues of environmental degradation and human wellbeing.

Urban Philosophy: Transition

Guest Philosopher ‘Harristotle’ looks to Janus and Sisyphus for help deciphering what lies in wait for the next 25 years of the UTF report.

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Welcome

Welcome to this special edition of Here and Now which celebrates 25 years since the publication of the report Towards an Urban Renaissance by the Urban Task Force. The Task Force was set up by the then Deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott, and the report was published in June 1999.

Soon after the publication of that report Lord Rogers, who had been the chair of the Task Force, proclaimed that “our towns and cities are the engine of our economy, the bedrock of our culture and -for 90 per cent of us- the places we live. Cities can be the most beautiful and joyful manifestations of civilisation”. He went on to say that “urban design and planning can manage the dynamism of towns and cities to tackle social problems and achieve social inclusion”. And, he concluded “after decades of under-investment in vision, skills and delivery mechanisms, the government has called for an Urban Renaissance”.

This was the clarion call for a better quality of life and a recognition of the value of place. As Jan Gehl had separately identified, over and above the architecture of buildings, it is the space between those buildings that determines how people move about, how they interact with each other and, in the final analysis, how happy they are.

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Urbanism took off after that and in fact the Academy of Urbanism was established only a few years later. The Academy continues to spread the word about the significance of Urbanism and to celebrate Great Places. I am pleased that 2024 is proving to be an exceptionally busy year for the Academy, with different events already having taken place in Cambridge, London (including in partnership with BDP and the Danish Embassy), Leeds, and Galway (jointly with the RIAI) - as well as Barcelona for an extremely successful Young Urbanists cycle trip. Looking to the second half of the year, the Academy will continue its programming across the UK and Europe, including in Cork, Glasgow, and Manchester - and not forgetting the Awards which have got under way and will be culminating at the Awards ceremony in November.

Towards an Urban Renaissance signalled a new beginning and I am delighted that the Academy of Urbanism continues to keep that flame burning brightly.

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

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Editorial

There are milestones in life and work that feel monumental and destined. Some may argue that we are experiencing one of those milestones now as we welcome Labour into government almost exactly 25 years after they were ushered in under Tony Blair’s premiership. At that time urban centres faced challenges, they were being hollowed out and losing residents to the suburbs, and pressure was mounting to provide a solution. Nowadays, urban centres and other places are facing challenges, although not this time from the suburbs but from the wider challenges of environmental degradation and social and economic stagnation.

Twenty five years ago the deputy Prime Minister - John Prescott - convened the Urban Task Force, headed by Richard Rogers to address issues of urban decay. Today there may not be a new Urban Task Force, but urban policy (especially planning and housing) his high up the agenda.

In this special issue, complete with unusually long reads we celebrate 25 years from the Urban Task Force’s report Towards an Urban Renaissance

Looking back, we hear from members of the UTF and urbanists active at that time - Martin Crookston provides a view from inside the tent, Ian Gordon similarly provides his reflections but from outside the tent. Matt Lally and Harrison Brewer are in conversation with Jon Rouse, and David Rudlin channels his inner Prescott. In the spotlight Andreas Markides provides a personal anecdote highlighting the importance of this report on his own career.

Moving to the current day, Matt Lally examines legacy of the UTF by looking back to look forward, and Tony Reddy suggests the new Labour Government should advance the principles of the UTF through reforms to the planning system. And looking forward, Leyla Moy reimagines the question in today’s context - will she conclude the same or different recommendations?

From further afield we have the first installments of BDP’s City Observatory papers, exploring Tokyo’s transit-oriented development and Lima’s transportation lifelines.

Then, in review, Ben Meador and Julie Plichon take an active approach in their piece from the AoU’s cycle trip to Barcelona, Harry Knibb reviews a new book ‘Eco Responsive Environments’, and finally guest philosopher ‘Harristotle’ considers transition.

We hope you enjoy this special issue full of unusually long reads. Pour the tea and turn off your phone...

The editorial team

The Academy in Action

The past quarter has seen one of the busiest springs at the AoU, a happy nod to what’s to come for the rest of 2024. May alone held 7 events: from online sessions, to Young Urbanist programming, then the Liveable City in partnership with the Danish Embassy, and all topped off with our second joint conference in Galway with the RIAI.

Beyond May, our Young Urbanists ran another successful international cycle trip, and Leeds hosted the first edition of a new event, The Journey of Place. July kicked off with BDP’s Good City Launch, and closed with an evening in conversation with barrister and author Hashi Mohamed, hosted at JTP.

Last month we were excited to launch the 2024 Urbanism Awards finalists and programme of assessment visits, the first of which will also take place on the day of publishing this issue. And we announced the host city for Congress 2025: Utrecht.

Coming up at the AoU:

• Quality of Life: Remaking the post-industrial city

Friday 4 October 2024, Manchester

Tickets at theaou.org/manchester

• What Next for Place? Unlocking the power of place

Weds 18 - Thurs 19 September 2024, Glasgow

Tickets at theaou.org/what-next-for-place (Members only)

• Learning from Europe + the Urbanism Awards Ceremony

Wednesday 13 November 2024, London

Tickets at theaou.org/awards-ceremony

As ever, a full list of all upcoming events, including assessment visits, and more details on the AoU programme can be found in the Events Directory at theaou.org/events

The Urban Task Force 25 Years On

A View from Inside

Martin Crookston looks back twenty five years, and reflects on his time as a member of the Urban Task Force.

The phone rings…

…in my Llewelyn-Davies Planning office: “it’s Richard Rogers, for you”. The year is 1998 - I was asked to join the Task Force Rogers was setting up at Deputy PM John Prescott’s request. I told my aged dad that I was on a Task Force and he thought I was about to be sent to Port Stanley.

Task Force crazy

New Labour’s arrival in government saw a flurry of activity like this. In the late 1990s, they created 30 of these special purpose / short-life bodies, alongside over 200 more commissions, inquiries and advisory committees. The Urban Task Force (UTF) was probably one of the higher-profile ones: media attention being more likely to be hooked than in other cases by the presence of starchitect Rogers - and indeed of Ruthie ‘River Café’ Rogers nearby.

So it was part of a swathe of such initiativesremember the Creative Industries Task Force (David Puttnam), the Football Task Force (Trevor Brooking), the Social Exclusion Unit (Geoff

Mulgan)? - but it also picked up and reinforced policies from the previous ministry under John Gummer, such as ’Town Centres First’, ‘Quality in Town & Country’ and so on.

What?

The Task Force was not self-appointed. It was an Expert Group, set up by government in response to a cluster of worries about what Peter Hall summarised as ‘essentially’ two quite separate, but related, questions: what to do about urban decay, and what to do about development in the South East.

It was initiated and formally led by John Prescott, who was both Deputy Prime Minister and Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport & Regions. The Minister with day-today responsibility was Richard (Dick) Caborn; he describes it as “part of a bigger picture, which included devolution, and so on. It was a nonexecutive body, independent, part of our general approach to taking power away from the civil service.”

Richard Rogers was joined by thirteen ‘experts’: some eminent (academic-planner-geographer Sir Peter Hall, leading housing developer Alan Cherry, diplomat and biodiversity adviser Sir Crispin Tickell) and some not-so (such as the present writer). The key actor was Jon Rouse - dynamic, focused, seconded from English Partnerships - as Secretary, working closely with Paul Hackett, Caborn’s SPAD (“it was Jon & me”). Michael Hebbert’s commentary on the membership is that it was “…clearly Londoncentric. Most of the authors lived in the capital and enjoyed on a daily basis all the advantages of a compact connected city.”

Who, and How?

Who we were, and how we were pulled together, is a typically British fringe-of-politics I-know-achap tale.

Richard Rogers had been an active and visible Labour supporter since the early 90s, and said that he “got to know Tony Blair, not sure how. I was talking to him mainly about culture, I think, related to arts and culture and architecture. I remember well Blair and Prescott approached me simultaneously… [Blair] said ‘I’ve read your Reith lectures, can you head the Urban Task Force?’ We turned round the question of building more homes, to look at cities. I chose some of the Task Force members: Anne Power and Ricky [Burdett] were chosen by me… One person who I didn’t ask for, who was good, was Crispin Tickell, who had advised Thatcher on the environment.”

Dick Caborn, Prescott’s no.2, related the Task Force initiative to the whole regional and devolution agenda, with Bruce Millan (EU Commissioner)’s Urban Renaissance report as an important starting-point. On approaching Rogers: “we looked around, he had maybe been involved in Millan’s initiative, or he may have commented on it…”.

Similarly the key special advisor (aka ‘SPAD’), Paul Hackett, says that “Rogers was actually one of several architects considered; JP thought of him as a bit of a ‘dandy’, the Italian style and all that.” And on the choice of members: “before Jon Rouse was involved, officials and we suggested names, and presented them to John.”

For Professor Anne Power, the link-up with Rogers went back a decade or so.

RR had become preoccupied with inner city housing following Broadwater Farm riot (1985); Anne met him at a dinner in 1987 when she was working on the Priority Estates Project, and they visited Isle of Dogs estates where she’d been working and could OK it with local management and tenants’ reps. Over 1991-95, she continued to work with him on urban problems from time to time, and “then when the Task Force was going to be set up, I got a call from the government”. She added that she did come to be part of a sort of inner core, who had special one-off side-meetings with Blair, Blunkett, Brown, etc., which included RR, Anne, Jon Rouse, occasionally Tony Burton and Peter Hall.

Much more involved in the actual birthing of the Task Force was David Lunts, of Hulme regeneration in Manchester and then the Urban Villages Group. He had “worked closely with David Taylor, who became the founding Chief Exec of English Partnerships. Despite that Tory appointment, David was also a senior adviser to John Prescott. When JP came into government and was thinking about the Task Force, I think David Taylor said to him ‘put Lunts on’….I knew Richard Rogers a bit but not very well. He was quite suspicious of me at first, because of working for the Prince of Wales, but we actually did get on very well…

“I don’t know why they picked Richard, but he was a Labour politician, he was politically friendly - he wasn’t a peer in those days, I don’t think; but he was certainly a fellow-traveller!

“Then the UTF was set up and Richard said to me ‘I’ve been asked to do this, but I haven’t got anyone to write it’. I said ‘I know this guy who I think’d be really good, Jon Rouse’. Jon was a policy manager at EP then, and they agreed to release him.”

A different and not surprisingly more countrysideoriented perspective is provided by Tony Burton of CPRE. He recalls being part of the initial core, alongside Rogers, Power, and Ricky Burdett, and closely involved in why the Task Force happened and the way it did - as an outcome of political panic in the early days of the New Labour government, caused by headlines day after day on the threat to the Green Belt associated with housing numbers and plans. Sir Peter Hall had to be brought in not just as an eminent planner, but as the TCPA person to ‘balance’ with the CPRE.

He confirmed that I was indeed invited onto the Task Force at his suggestion, because he knew my urban capacity work for Rowntree, CPRE, and other bodies.

The Task Force at work (1998-9, then 19992005)

So, having been thus assembled, the UTF met as a government Task Force over the year from May 1998 to June 1999, some twenty times; chairedaffably though not very forcefully - by Rogers on almost every occasion. It carried out study tours to European cities, to the English regions, and to the USA (“reason for visit?”... “Government study tour”… “uh-uh, boondoggle” went the exchange at Dulles Airport Washington).

There was some interaction with other branches of the government machine - meetings with the Social Exclusion Unit and Cabinet Office, for instance - but not much, and I’ll come back later to the issue of a cross-government agenda, or its absence.

The output was the ‘big yellow book’ (Towards An Urban Renaissance), with its 105 (!) recommendations - the text being primarily written by Rouse, with some input from a small number of other Task Force members.

There was a short after-life, when Rogers would occasionally reconvene the group and issue a series of smaller progress-type reports aimed at influencing evolving policies.

Effects?

Policy did change in distinct ways following the UTF report: most notably in the planning field, where the Planning Policy Guidance (PPG) note PPG3 Housing of March 2000 set down the ‘line’, on development density in particular, together with initiatives to bring more ‘brownfield’ (previously-developed) land back into use.

The 1999 report was followed by the Urban White Paper Our Towns & Cities: the future, which covered a wider frame, adding approaches which drew on the work of the Social Exclusion Unit and the massive State of the Cities research programme led by Professor Michael Parkinson. Loretta Lees’ assessment soon after (2003) was that “Both separately and together they seek to set the course for an ‘urban renaissance’ in

England and the UK.”

Other specific effects included the creation of a well-funded Commission for Architecture & the Built Environment (CABE), which was focussed and influential in its attempts to improve design practice; and a much-less-successful initiative to create Centres of Excellence in the design field, little of which survived for long.

Over the next decade, in development practice, things were different: housing densities got higher, there was a greater national policy focus on cities, and there were more mixeduse schemes alongside just-residential or justcommercial ones. It’s impossible to assign direct linkages, or to prove that any particular change was a ‘Task Force effect’: it was as much a case of the Urban Task Force being both part of, and a partial creator of, the zeitgeist in the world of architecture, development and planning. The Rogers ‘vision’ did get through: Michael Hebbert’s judgment was that: “The lasting importance of the UTF Report is precisely that […] its concept of renaissance subordinates design to the larger project of place-making, led by local government and inspired in equal measure by ecological imperatives, economic ambition and a commitment to social integration.”

One thing that did happen was that urban designers started to get hired in big numbers: not just by the local and central authorities, but also by the design and development firms who reckoned their work needed to reflect the new conventional wisdom. And of course to squeeze the most geist out of the zeitgeist: some companies and commentators resented these new fads, but for quite a few - Berkeley Homes, for example - it was essentially a higher-density way of doing what they were already good at.

What didn’t happen?

Quite a few specific recommendations in Towards an Urban Renaissance led nowhere. The Treasury, as has been traditional for over half a century now, completely ignored the case for changes to the VAT regime for conversions and new-build (recommendation p.255). On integrated transport policies (recommendations pp.97-98) there was no progress: transport systems remained good where they were good, and poor where they were poor. On the push for more and better design competitions - very important to Rogers and to

Ricky Burdett - the report had extensive text and recommendations (p.78), but nothing happened except a London design guide (2005), and even there the actual process was as flawed as ever.

And the politics?

On the ‘Big Picture’ of the political customers for the new approach, Tony Blair was the missed trick. Even though Rogers knew him, and not John Prescott, before the Urban Task Force was set up. The message, approach and interest never got through; TB left it to JP, and he probably anyway still always felt, with his US-influenced mind-set, that it was all a bit iffy and old-guard Labour. Dick Caborn felt that on the whole urban-regional package “Blair never really bought into it… he was a bit of a centraliser”. And the SPAD Paul Hackett recalls that “the aim was to keep Tony & Alistair [Campbell] away from you. No.10 were not that interested, really, but it was important to avoid Alistair and his ‘The Sun won’t like it’ reactions.”

So there was never a whole-government cities agenda. The report and its supporters in the design and development world never conveyed the case that ‘cities is where Britain will do its growing’. And crucially, they never got the Treasury onside.

Since then: planning, design, inner cities

It’s instructive to look at how some of the Urban Task Force’s issues have played out in the two decades since.

One of the drivers for the initiative was the perception that without policy change, there would be ever-increasing threats to the countryside, more pressure to release greenfield land (whether Green Belt or not), and a continuing trend of ex-urbanisation. These choices keep biting at governments and MPs, particularly Conservative ones who have run into a lot of flak - from their prayer book at the Daily Telegraph and from constituency parties: their core vote tends not to share the developmental priorities of many of their Party’s funders.

Some of it is bogus on both sides: there IS land that could be developed; but there IS also land in cities that won’t be developed if there is a freefor-all on sites outwith the urban areas.

On design and quality of place, the intervening

years - especially when Eric Pickles was in his pomp - have seen gesture-politics deployed with relish. Shrinking CABE saved very little money, but combined with reduced LPA funding to hack away at the potential for improving quality: already poor by North West European standards. At the same time, though, the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) was reasonably sound on the elements of previous design guidance it reproduced: some sort of recognition that, as the Task Force had urged, the government has to give some sort of lead and cannot simply say “it’s up to you”.

As for the inner cities, which were such a focus of attention in the earlier period, planning system reforms have removed any prospect of concerted strategic planning to tackle the decline of innercity neighbourhoods in their metropolitan contexts. And the related assumption that reliance on market forces would resolve such problems has chosen to ignore the reality that “the market does not remedy housing market failure - even in a healthy market it requires public sector intervention and subsidy…”

As the Urban Task Force stressed, it is vital to have an urban policy, not just leave things to sort themselves out. The last decade has shown how they definitely do not.

And Finally

So the overriding sense, two decades on, is that we’ve been here before. We’re having to re-learn lessons, the hard way. It’s such a waste of time and effort. I look back to the 90s and recall the immortal words of the great Yogi Berra: “It’s déjà vu all over again”.

Martin Crookston is an author and strategic planning consultant

Ian Gordon reflects on the UTF from ‘outside the tent’ and considers whether its designoriented approach would have been better coupled with socio-economic considerations for a fuller understanding of city making.

All quiet ... but was something going on?

My friend Martin’s piece beautifully conjures up an episode of village life in a millennial British city (pretty much London it seems) involving several other people I’ve known, at least as colleagues, though with leaders I never met. And just one fellow social scientist, Peter Hall, with whom I was working quite closely on a couple of (Londonfocused) projects during the course of the Urban Task Force’s operation.

But somehow, despite regular conversations about urban change, problems and policy issues – and then participation in ODPM seminars (chaired by Geoff Mulgan) with those working on the subsequent Urban White Paper – I recall learning nothing of significance about where the Task Force was heading (even after it would have crossed the Equator).

What I do (vividly) recall was a conversation, en route to picking up a lunch sandwich from Prêt, within days of the UTF report’s publication when Peter said “I’ve just realised it’s all about property-led regeneration, which I don’t believe in”. Though it was some years before he made it clear, a bit more publicly , that he must have opposed key recommendations about urban compaction from the outset, as a renewal of the urban containment that he had critiqued 25 years before.

New Labour and New Urbanism – but in two versions

The 1998 Urban Task Force report was an integral element in the Blair government’s preparation for a (first ever) urban policy White Paper – after the frustration of 18 years in opposition. But a renewal of Labour wasn’t the only stimulus for this initiative, as developments during those years had produced a bunch of new ideas about challenges to be addressed, in which cities as entities played a key role. But they came in two contrasting versions which saw the city through quite different lenses – and with different kinds of implication.

One was self-consciously linked with design

studies (and their humanistic allies), and responding to long-run shocks to the revered order of great European cities in the face of mass private car use, plus a more immediate one from a marked downturn in architectural design orders. The other, was linked more with a social scientific version of urban studies, drawing particularly on economic, political and sociological perspectives – and with more Anglo-American currency – and responding, with mixed feelings, to a combination of processes associated with globalisation, offering a revaluation of urbanity and heightened roles for those centres which can mobilise their assets in an effectively competitive way. More immediate sources of concern in the latter case relate to issues of power, volatility (with design demand as one symptom), heightened spatial/social inequalities and new waves of immigration.

In each case there were versions of renaissance or renascence in play with iconic examplesnotably Barcelona in the first case, and Baltimore (though arguably London Docklands also) in the second. The design version of renaissance was essentially what UTF was about (and why I was out of touch with it) and Mayor Pasqual Maragall provided the Foreword to its report. There was no socio-economic counterpart to UTF – so the question of Heseltine or Thatcher-authored Forewords didn’t come up. But (I would say that) a very much larger proportion of the resulting Urban White Paper (sort of) reflected that perspective.

Referencing Tory ministers from the previous decade is not just a weak joke, but reflects the fact that there was a great deal of visible English policy activity in this field from the early 1980s linked particularly to financial globalisation as well as to inner city crises. And J.S.Gummer pioneered brownfield first policies. What was new with New Labour was its attempt to pull together panoply of spatially related concerns/initiatives within city-wide perspectives, as constituting a distinct “urban” policy field. This was something with which its “new” young urban professional supporters could now identify. To complement this, however the party was fervently hoping that UTF would reassure the party’s other

recently-gained voters, in captured ‘blue fence’ constituencies outside the capital, that they wouldn’t suffer further invasions of Londoners into their territories.

What was the Task Force supposed to do?

Perhaps oddly, the Urban Task Force does not seem to have been given formal terms of reference by the government, and developed its own mission statement. Indeed it is hard to find any explicit instruction from the government, but the gist of what was said by ministers clearly focused on making the most of reusable brownfield sites in pursuing housing targets, to minimise the greenfield take – and hopefully secure the government’s desire for 60% of development to be on recycled brownfields. Others of us would suspect another (complementary) objective, namely to provide a more cultured patina for the grittier matter of a (first ever) national urban strategy, that others were mostly working on, in quite different ways.

The prospectus that Rogers led his task force towards, however, was incredibly ambitious, with an agenda, in Rogers’ initial memo starting with providing “a comprehensive view of the quality of urban life in Britain” and concluding with the basis to “generate an urban renaissance, relieving social decline, congestion and pollution”. This was well above the aspirational norm for New Labour’s vast array of Task Forces, and judged by an informed reviewer as enough to occupy a couple of full Royal Commissions for a year or two. And Rogers did actually secure a quite elaborate infrastructure of studies, reports, enlarged working groups, sounding board and substantial professional support.

And how well did they do with it?

In the Rogers’ memo these broad level of analysis were complemented firstly by one quite well formulated research question, that I’ll come back to. And then by a list of 17 “issues”, each expressed as theses more suitable for nailing on a church door , rather than inviting discussion or testing. From these articles of faith it was quite a small step to the succinct Mission Statement that headed up the UTF’s final report (barely 15 months later)

“The Urban Task Force will identify causes of urban decline in England and recommend practical

solutions to bring people back into our cities, towns and urban neighbourhoods. It will establish a new vision for urban regeneration founded on the principles of design excellence, social wellbeing and environmental responsibility within a viable economic and legislative framework.”

I think this is really rather great - though for this outsider there is an odd omission in relation to the production side of the economy and income streams. And, I would have thought it involved several orders of complexity, and ambition, beyond what a New Labour government wants to entrust to a (pretty independent) TaskForce.

The problem with starting off from prior beliefs about a series of issues outside the field of interest or expertise of many within the cultural/ design-oriented version of new urbanism and concentrating on their implications for practical action is that some of them can be so misleading as to produce conclusions that are quite wrongheaded.

Two ‘issues’ from the Rogers’ list exemplify this point in very clear ways. The first simply asserts that:

“A basic problem affecting most British towns and cities is that they have lost population over the last decades, especially the middle classes. Those who can afford to have moved out. Those who cannot afford to move have been trapped in. It is the sparseness of population which undermine the quality of life of those living on low incomes...”

In its conflation of situations where: particular urban economies have declined, generating local unemployment and long distance migration; with a much more pervasive pattern of de-densification and outward displacement associated particularly with economic growth, this is a mind-blowingly dumb caricature. But one which is politically convenient in its shortcircuiting of urban and rural worries.

Oddly the one piece of actual research promised in the Rogers’ memo was to:

“investigate the patterns of urban outmigration that has afflicted British towns over the last decades (and) try to understand not only where people go, but also where they want to go (and) the impact on existing urban neighbourhoods”

But there is precious little indication of this being pursued, or of anything learned from all the existing research.

In the middle of the ‘issues’ list is one focussed on the other end of a de-densification process, in growing suburbs and exurbs. At this end too (as in the inner city) there is a rather ‘metropolitan’ New Labourist caricature of endemic social alienation and isolation being created through population dispersal. More reasonably it makes a strong point about the impacts of dispersion on levels of car use and thereby on energy consumption / emissions. This is dramatically illustrated with a contrast between Greater London and the city of Houston, which is said to have one fifth London’s density and six times its energy usage.

That picks up on a more global pattern persuasively graphed by a pair of Australian planners a decade earlier and repeatedly invoked by advocates of urban compaction as a key piece of wisdom in addressing the pressing issue of carbon use, emissions and global warming. Beyond the skewing effect of some very oddball cases in the data-set (Hong Kong, Singapore and Soviet era Moscow) there are two very obvious problems with drawing a conclusion from it about the need to act on urban sprawl. One is that fuel prices (and taxation) make a very big difference –both to energy use (understandably boosted by low prices) and to urban/metropolitan densities – with an independent effect on emissions substantially stronger than that of density (which is much exaggerated when the price factor is ignored). The other is that while fuel prices are readily modifiable, immediately by government fiat – subject only to political constraints – the same is not the case for residential densities, where only 1 or 2% of dwellings get added each year. Where (as in London in the post UTF years) overall population, and hence densities, have grown significantly it is the result of large scale immigration of people with more tolerance of

crowding – not of localised intensification, or of any diminution of outward migration.

Of course, politicians worry about the probable unpopularity of serious carbon taxes – on car or aviation fuel – but it is not the job of independent advisors (nor of responsible consultants, I would say) to encourage diversions from this serious business with clever and attractive schemes for making minor differences more painlessly.

What Difference Did the Task Force Report Actually Make ?

The Urban Task Force led by Richard Rogers provides the clearest monument to the Blair government’s innovative move toward constructing and pursuing an integrated and positive urban policy rather than a remedial and reactive series of responses to specific crises within urban problem areas. From my perspective this reflected a great deal of quality professional work on the design side as well as its starchitect leadership. But in my (outsider) judgement it never really got beyond the designoriented version of new urbanism, to give sufficient attention to how key socio-economic processes and markets functioned to make cities work – unevenly and problematically but in ways that would-be urban steersmen have to grasp. Its most tangible legacy may be the Planing Policy Guidance document (PPG3 of 1999) on prioritising brownfield use in residential development that its sponsors were hoping that it would validate. There are differences of view though as to how far the UTF was actually responsible for that policy, which followed a trend set under John Major’s Conservative government – and thus for its negative effects on output and affordability of houses particularly, within the Greater South East.

Ian Gordon is Emeritus Professor of Human Geography at the London School of Economics

The Urban Task Force 25 Years On

In conversation with Jon Rouse

Matt Lally and Harrison Brewer spoke with Jon Rouse, City Director of Stokeon-Trent, about his role in the Urban Task Force and its relevance twentyfive years on.

Matt: Welcome Jon! First a little introduction - you began your career on a Civil Service Fast Stream, before being appointed into a relatively senior position at the regeneration agency English Partnerships (which is when I first met you). Then in 1998, still at a relatively tender age, you found yourself as Secretary to Lord Rogers’ Urban Task Force […] which is where our story starts. The then Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott is looking to establish a positive vision to address problems of urban renewal. Lord Rogers of Riverside is to be appointed Chair. You’re working at English Partnerships and you’re asked to help establish the UTF. Can you give us some insight into how that came about?

Jon: Richard [Rogers] and some of the people who became part of the Task Force, such as David Lunts and Anne Power, were very close to some of the incoming Labour ministers and so it was not difficult for them to persuade John Prescott that it would be a good idea to do something in urban renewal. John Prescott’s interest was increasing house building on brownfield sites so that became the original mission of the Task Force. Richard was a key supporter of the Labour Party at the time and a trusted senior individual within the party. Richard agreed to lead the taskforce but within a short period of time, he came back to them wanting to change what the focus is - Richard wanted to concentrate on how you create liveability in towns and cities, which will in itself unlock value and lead to more housing being built on brownfield land.

I think it’s worth mentioning

because there was tension between what Richard wanted to do with the Task Force, which John Prescott was perfectly happy with, and the civil servants, who never totally got their head around that expanded remit. The Treasury never truly did. The Task Force, led by Richard, turned it into something which was way bigger than was originally intended.

Matt: And here we are 25 years later, and once again, there’s a focus on housebuilding numbers with 1.5 million over a five year period as the target. Is there always a tension between quantitative targets and the intangible qualitative benefits of good urbanism?

Jon: Yes absolutely. It was quite interesting at the time because Richard’s perception of what quality looked like and what that meant in terms of urban living and so on was very much based on a continental European model. He didn’t, in my experience, really understand or know a huge amount about the English urban tradition outside of London and places like Bath, and therefore the reality of where we were starting from in particular places in the towns and cities in the North. His basis for what made good urban design was very much based on places like Georgian London, Barcelona, Amsterdam and Siena, rather than reflecting on places impacted by 20 years of de-industrialisation.

Harrison: What was the mood like when you were starting the UTF back then? Politically, socially, did you feel like you were working against the current of convention or were you part of a wider movement

where people were rallying against the state of urban environments?

Jon: I think we were able to create a pretty big tent and the reason we were able to do that was because we focused on urban design more than we focused on architecture. When I think about the composition of the UTF working groups, there wasn’t a major absence of particular people. The reason we were able to do that is because we focused on the fundamentals of urban form and design, where there was no disagreement - of grid and block layouts, protected private space and activated public space, the way buildings hit the ground. The disagreement was actually about style, so provided we kept away from that, which we did quite successfully, we were able to create a pretty big following which was one of the successes of the Task Force and one of the reasons why the report’s main conclusions endured.

Matt: The report was then published with a fair few recommendations… how did the government respond to it?

Jon: I made two mistakes during my time with the UTF, although I do believe other people could have corrected them who had more experience than I did. One was too many recommendations - with the power of hindsight, it should have been half the number. The second, and the biggest mistake we made, was putting a target timescale on the recommendations which gave the report a limited shelf-life within government.

Matt: So you’re saying to give a clearer sense of the priorities

and sort of galvanise people into short term action, whilst also appreciating that many of these things require change to be reset over the longer term?

Jon: Yeah, and also you’ve got to appreciate that in government there’s a natural tension. You’ve got to give the government enough specificity that they can’t just put it on your report on a shelf. But if you put too much specificity in, you box the Government into a corner. We just tipped a bit too far, I think in one direction, which meant that significant parts of the report didn’t get implemented and didn’t have the cultural influence that we wanted them to.

Matt: I have a quote here that the UTF recommended “that the design of buildings and public spaces be hardwired into the public institutions responsible for delivering sustainable communities.” That hard wiring didn’t exist at the time. There wasn’t a broadly based understanding of what design excellence was, its importance and how it could be achieved. So what are your thoughts on the degree to which that hard wiring happened?

Jon: It’s true. At the time there wasn’t a strong national [design] consciousness. I think that sort of cultural shift starts with recognising the importance of towns and cities and the importance of urbanism and what it gets you, and what that means economically and socially. In this, I think the Task Force was significantly influential. If you look at chapter one and the way we broke it down into design related to economics, society, governance, etc, you’ve got to say that 25

years on, that design quality in at least some of our major cities is felt more readily.

The key issue, and this is the interesting part, is that [the increased design focus] only really benefited our major towns and cities, not the smaller ones, and particularly not in areas of high deprivation. So, it hasn’t impacted anything like as significantly on Stokeon-Trent or Middlesbrough or Blackpool. And so what that tells us is that you can’t dislocate the different sections of the report. The fact that the [design-oriented] front end of the report was much more readily absorbed, accepted, and if you like culturally assimilated, is really positive… but sadly the back end of the report [focusing on mechanisms needed to address deprivation and regeneration] wasn’t taken as seriously and wasn’t delivered to the same degree. I think that [the perception of the relationship between

deprivation, regeneration, and growth] has always acted as a brake on the extent to which a change in cultural norms can impact reality, mainly because these interventions are rarely commercially viable, an issue which has arguably not been properly addressed in my view by any government since. If I can put it this way, you can show Cinderella a beautiful dress but if there is no fairy godmother, she isn’t going to the ball.

Matt: Do you think it is due to a design focus not being part of organisational DNA and the way that investment is channeled into those places?

Jon: No, I think it is in the DNA of those organisations. I don’t think it’s the fact that a Bradford or a Stoke or a Middlesbrough doesn’t know what needs to be done. It’s the fact that the prevailing land values make it impossible to deliver commercially, and the

limitations in terms of public capital investment make it impossible to deliver the regeneration at all or certainly to the quality that we would all aspire to. There’s other things tied into that like the stewardship of heritage and heritage-based regeneration. We all know we need to do this and know the importance of those heritage assets in terms of the urban form. But if you ain’t got the money and you haven’t got the leverage, then it doesn’t matter that you know what to do because you haven’t got the means to do it.

And you know, 25 years on, if I’ve got one sort of profound regret it’s that all of those really, really important things in the back chapters didn’t get fully understood and implemented. I think the real irony of this is that the person who really got this actually preceded the Task Force and was a friend of Richard’s, which is interesting, and that was Michael Heseltine. Michael was one of Richard’s confidants, when we were doing the Task Force and I remember having lunch with him and Richard at the River Cafe. He knew that what he’d done in the 80s and early 90s through the Urban Development Corporations had required huge government muscle and large amounts of public money to be put into direct remediation of contaminated sites, with land assembly powers and accelerated planning. That’s how he got traction in terms of London Docklands and Liverpool Waterfront. The sadness is I don’t think that at any point since the Task Force’s report was published, we’ve had that similar level of muscular government to make regeneration and growth a

reality for those other places.

Matt: Environmental consciousness has grown in the last 25 years but whereas one could point to lots of positive things that have happened in policy and legislation related to Net Zero, Biodiversity Net Gain and so forth, would you say that delivery at the pace and scale of change needed hasn’t occurred in the way the Task Force was advocating?

Jon: Yes, I would. And I would say that the Task Force was ahead of its time in this area. There was a very good reason for that, which is that this was something Richard was absolutely passionate about. He had already produced ‘Cities for a Small Planet’ and a follow-up publication with Anne Power. We also had Sir Crispin Tickell on the Task Force who had huge gravitas in this area. So all of our recommendations are seen through that lens [of environmental responsibility] - in terms of explaining the role and importance of density and an urban form in terms of constraining the impact on the environment, our proposals around public transport and active travel – and indeed the recommendations around the re-franchising of buses in Chapter 3 or 4 – are only just happening now!

Matt: Right, but not everyone agreed at the time with the direction of travel and some of the specific recommendations related to this subject area. Sir Peter Hall emerged as being highly critical of what he saw as an over-focus on brownfield development and was stridently of the view that to better meet housing needs, there should be greater levels of strategic

greenfield development.

Jon: There was a tension throughout the whole course of the Task Force’s work, between the TCPA and the CPRE. That was part of the sort of shuttle diplomacy that we had to undertake because Richard had a huge respect for Peter Hall. And you know, while Richard was obviously a fierce advocate of intensifying cities and reusing what he saw as a waste of capacity and resource, and favoured building critical mass, Richard was also never against urban extensions and new towns. What he said was if we’re going to do them, then make sure they’re properly connected in terms of public transport and all those same urban design principles apply equally.

So the tension wasn’t really between Richard and Peter. The battle was between the CPRE and the TCPA - and we’ll probably see some of this unfold again in the next few years, particularly with the current government’s drive for housing growth and the emphasis on the use of socalled greyfield sites.

Matt: So, how do we achieve the scale, quality and pace of change needed and how do we as individuals become effective change agents to achieve the bold moves that are needed?

Jon: This doesn’t necessarily have to be a single person. Sometimes it can be a group, but in all the places that I know where they’ve made really significant change and achieved great things, it always comes down in the end to sustained quality of leadership. A boldness and the willingness to break the rules sometimes. Whether that’s

Richard Leese and Howard Bernstein in Manchester; Peter Smith and Donna Hall in Wigan, or Tom Riordan in Leeds. The extraordinary work that Sir Peter Hendy did working with both Ken Livingstone and Boris Johnson with Transport for London is another really good example of just outstanding and personal leadership driving change forward.

Richard got that and understood the importance of the role of mayors. He saw what Pasqual Maragall had done in Barcelona and Michael Bloomberg in New York. One of the things I know Richard would be dead chuffed with, if he was still with us, is the new Government’s commitment to mayors and devolutionwhether the individuals are good, bad or indifferent. I’m not saying it works everywhere, but I certainly think for our larger metropolitan areas having that dedicated leadership is important.

Harrison: I feel one key characteristic of a change agent is the ability to speak lots of languages and translate concepts with ease. I’m talking less about French and Spanish and more about translating place and design into the vernacular of our political, legal and financial institutions. It’s understanding social and emotional intelligence, talking

with humility, and being able to adjust the tone and language of what you are saying to suit the audience you’re speaking to. It’s something that has cropped up a lot in this conversation around bringing people together to draft the UTF report.

Jon: Absolutely right. I totally agree with that and I like the way you put humility into that as well, because I think that is a critical ingredient. It’s about knowing the limits of your own knowledge and your own agency and views. Another example of this would be Sir Bob Kerslake and the work he did in Sheffield with a real humility - by drawing in other people such as Joanna Roney as his Housing Director and later bringing in people like Urban Splash to Park Hill. It’s recognising that you are a change agent, an influencer, but also that you can’t do it all yourself. You’re only as good as your team. And that means you need to attract people that can help you to achieve those ambitions and objectives. These types of leader are quite rare, but when you see them in action, and what they can achieve, it’s really, really impressive.

Matt: OK we’re coming to a close of our reflective piece, but before we draw things to a wrap, let’s look to the future

– to the next 25 years, which almost brings us to 2050 when our legal commitments are to have been achieved for the UK to bring all greenhouse gas emissions to net zero. And we need to have made much greater inroads into addressing the socio-economic disparities that you mentioned earlier, and really addressing those root causes of deprivation that still persist, which is why the Task Force got off the ground in the first place. So it’s a really difficult one but if there were to be the UTF 2.0 what would be your big asks?

Jon: The immediate thing we’ve got to do is look at how the task of regenerating our towns and cities, the continuous task of regeneration aligns with the new Labour government’s missions. And of course there is alignment and so it’s critically important that urban leaders make the case to the new government that it’s our town and cities where you invest strongly, and that there is a level playing field as we strive for urban renewal.

The second thing I would say is that there are ingredients that were missing 25 years ago because we didn’t have perfect foresight, but really need to be a big part of the plan now. There is a massive opportunity around decentralised energy, which

works so much better in urban areas - district heating networks and battery storage, connecting energy-from-waste plants, with materials recovery. Turning to digital infrastructure, I think we [in Stoke] are still the only city in the country that has got a single full municipally owned gigabit network. So now the key is also about the sustainable infrastructure that will create smart, sustainable cities.

Matt: Excellent. Thanks for talking with us and sharing such valuable insight about the UTF! Any final remarks?

Jon: Perhaps one last story about the Task Force? It was Christmas Day 1998, and I’m at my in-laws, just finished lunch

and still wearing my Christmas hat out of a cracker. I got a phone call and I picked up the phone and it was Richard. He didn’t stop to draw breath. He just dived straight in and said that he’d got some amendments to make on the interim report that we were working on. And so I said hang on I’ll get a pen. Without me being able to get a word in edge-way he just dictated page by page all these changes that he wanted to make to the report. After about 25 minutes I said “Richard I’ve got all that, but I don’t mean to be funny, but have you realised it’s Christmas Day?” And he said “it isn’t, is it?!” Richard was of Jewish descent and it turned out that at Christmas he always went to this place

in the Mexican jungle. He had completely lost track of what day it was.

Harrison: What was he doing in the jungle? Just relaxing and reviewing the report?

Jon: Yes, that’s just what he did, retreats to the Mexican jungle to think great thoughts about how you design great cities.

Harrison Brewer is an AoU Young Urbanist, sits on the Here & Now Editorial Team, and a Planner at Arup.

Matt Lally is an AoU Academician and Board Director and a Director in the Integrated City Planning team at Arup.

3rd page: Changing life patterns illustration from UTF Report

Previous page, all from UTF report, L-R: Brighton Lanes (David Noble); Edinburgh Greenway (City of Edinburgh Council); Kensington, London (Geoffrey Taunton)

Lead photo of Siena by Bjorn Agerbeek on Unsplash

The Urban Task Force 25 Years On

Channeling my John Prescott

The Urban Task force didn’t say anything that others hadn’t been saying for most of the 1990s but as David Rudlin describes, it changed government policy towards cities and that can’t be underestimated.

My brief was to be John Prescott. He was the famously combative Secretary of State for the Environment who commissioned the Urban Task Force Report 25 years ago. Richard Rogers and John Rouse were planning for a big presentation to Prescott setting out the draft findings for his approval.

The right honourable member for Hull, had a reputation for not having a hugely long attention span so the team wanted to get it right and they asked me and a few others to be the audience for a runthrough and to ask the sort of questions that we thought John Prescott might ask.

I was in my 30s and was slightly in awe of Task Force, containing as it did Anne Power who had shaped my thinking on community action, Peter Hall who had written many of my text books as a student and Martin Crookston who was the sort of urban designer I desperately wanted to be. Then of course there was Richard

Rogers who was a celebrity and had been a hero since the time I had spent as a student hanging out on the plaza outside the Pompidou Centre in Paris.

A couple of years earlier I had come to the attention of Richard (or Lord Rogers of Riverside to give him his full title). He had been speaking at an Urban Villages conference in Manchester. I wasn’t there, but afterwards a couple of friends rang me to say that Richard had held up a copy of a report I had written for Friends of the Earth and told everyone present that they must read it. He got in touch soon after and I became one of the many people he would ring about things urban. I remember one call from his poolside in Tuscany asking whether he should be worried about something he had heard happening in East Manchester.

I was asked to attend to give evidence to the Urban Task Force based on work we had been doing on the Sustainable Urban Neighbourhood for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.

It so happened that the agenda item before me was their discussion of a site visit they had made to Hulme in Manchester. One of the other members of the Task Force was Dave Lunts who had been chair of the housing committee in Manchester. We had not always seen eye to eye, but as the conversation became ever more critical of Hulme we found ourselves making common cause.

Later the Task Force commissioned my company URBED to do market research on attitudes to urban living. We ran a series of focus groups with MORI in London, Bristol and Manchester asking people about their attitudes to living in urban areas. The fact that the question needed to be asked really does illustrate how different attitudes to cities were at a time when it was assumed that most people wanted to live in suburbs.

Our report - ‘But would you live there?’ - was published and suggested that the early

‘pioneers’ of urban living were relatively small in number and were attracted by the grit and risk of urban living. However, we found out there was a much larger group who were really attracted to urban living but wanted the risk to be mitigated. In the years since there has been a huge increase in urban living as we predicted and it’s hard to imagine that anyone doubted the scale of the demand.

I think this is true of a lot of the Urban Task Force Report. Today it is not particularly radical and can come across as a statement of the blindingly obvious. However, to understand its impact we need to put ourselves back into the world of the 1990s. For most of the 20th century cities in the UK had been haemorrhaging population and while the situation had stabilised by the 90s, most of our cities were pretty run-down and neglected.

People, like myself, had been campaigning for an urban renaissance, but the idea remained controversial. To many people urban housing

meant tower blocks and organisations like the TCPA were campaigning against ‘town cramming’. Urban policy was seen as forcing people against their will to live in cities when all the data showed that most people wanted to live in suburbs (which is the reason we were asked to do the focus groups).

Even the new Labour Government in 1997 weren’t convinced at first. The Housing Minister Nick Raynsford worried about ‘cramming our people into cities’. As with the current government, the early indications were that they would prioritise greenfield development as they removed the 60% brownfield target that the Conservatives had introduced.

This all changed in February 1998 in a statement by John Prescott to the House of Commons he announced the reinstated the 60% brownfield target and abandoned the ‘predict and provide’ approach to housing targets while announced the formation of the Urban Task Force. Then,

once the report was completed early the following year, there quickly followed an Urban White Paper, the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE), a Sustainable Communities Plan and the Northern Way Strategy.

The impact of all this is difficult to overstate. The Task force was part of a complete transformation of urban policy which was captured in the phrase the Urban Renaissance. Today we take it for granted that our regional cities are thriving, but this wasn’t inevitable and is due in large part to the changes in policy that took place 25 years ago. The Urban Task Force Report didn’t say anything that others had not been saying throughout the 1990s. But what it did was put these ideas at the heart of government policy which is why it changed the country forever.

David Rudlin is Director of Urban Design at BDP. He is also an Academician and former Chair of the AoU.

The Urban Task Force 25 Years On

Towards an Urban Renaissance: A personal anecdote

Highway Engineer Andreas Markides provides a personal anecdote highlighting the importance of the Towards an Urban Renaissance report on his own career.

The Urban Task Force, headed by Lord Rogers, was established by DETR to stimulate debate about our urban environment. Their report Towards an Urban Renaissance was published in June 1999. At that time I was still a relatively young Highway Engineer at Colin Buchanan and Partners.

I don’t know why or how but one day I was leafing through the report when I realised that there was something significant about it. I therefore started digging more into this word ‘urbanism’ and at some point I decided to contact the Commission; at the back of the report there was a list of all the authors of the report and I therefore wrote to all of them, asking if I may be able to meet them.

I was surprised to receive replies from three of the report’s authors and I went on to arrange separate meetings with all three of them. One of those meetings, which was with

Alan Cherry of Countryside Properties, was pivotal to my subsequent career as I went on to form a strong friendship with Alan. The result was that I started to do a lot of Transport Planning work on different Countryside projects across the country; that work continued even after Alan’s untimely death as by then I had formed a working relationship with Alan’s sons Richard and Graham Cherry who had taken over the business.

This relationship was good news for Colin Buchanan and Partners as it generated a lot of work for the business. However, it was also professionally transformational for myself as, through my association with Alan and the work that I was doing with Countryside, I had started to appreciate that there was a lot more to Highway Engineering than merely applying the relevant British Standards. Suddenly I was confronted with this one word PLACE and the significance that

it has on people’s health and wellbeing; put simply, I realised that the places which we build contribute to making people happy and happy people then go on to create civilisations (as opposed to unhappy / angry people who tend to destroy places).

That was the start of my Education! Soon afterwards I had another good fortune in that I met John Thompson who introduced me to the Academy of Urbanism. The Academy has been a good school to me and one which has made me a better professional.

However, it has also given rise to a big problem for me as I no longer know what I am! My passport says Highway Engineer but am I really that?

Andreas Markides is Chairman of Markides Associates and current Chair of the AoU.

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The Urban Task Force 25 Years On

Things can only get better… but did they?

Matt Lally takes a reflective look at the UTF, its aims and outcomes. As he ‘looks back to look forward’, Matt finds a legacy with a very mixed scorecard.

Only a year after the Blair government came to power, ushered in on an optimistic tide, the Urban Task Force was set up in 1998 and in the following year published its landmark report. Fast forward 25 years, as we once again reflect on political sea changes with a new government coming to power, it is an opportune time to be asking to what extent the recommendations have been

• Design excellence

implemented. And does this look back help inform the way we look forward?

First reflections on how well the recommendations were being implemented came in 2005 when, with a third successive Labour Government in place, Richard Rogers was asked to ‘get the band back together’ once again to review progress. We don’t do this kind of post-

hoc evaluation of policy making often enough; the report makes an interesting read that in many ways is still relevant. The UTF recommendations were reviewed in relation to design excellence, social wellbeing, environmental responsibility and delivery mechanisms. Let’s take each of these in turn to briefly reflect on where we’ve arrived at a quarter of a century later.

The UTF recommended “that the design of buildings and public spaces be hardwired into the public institutions responsible for delivering sustainable communities.” How well wired are we now? Well, what we don’t lack is design guidance and indeed policy teeth to implement this. With the NPPF emphatically stating that “Development that is not well designed should be refused” and what constitutes good design spelt out in the National Design Guide, the National Model Design Code and a plethora of design guidance documents at national, regional or local levels there really can be no excuse for not knowing what constitutes design excellence and how this can be achieved. But of course guidance is one thing, the reality of delivering high quality outcomes at different scales is quite another. I think it’s fair to say that elegant new and retrofitted buildings and landscaped spaces seem much more common than they did in the 1990’s, particularly in areas of relative economic buoyancy. Although the findings of the 2021 Housing Design Audit for England that “new housing design is overwhelmingly ‘mediocre’ or ‘poor’” demonstrate how far we have yet to go. The need for corporate design champions and investment in design skills is as important as ever. And all too often design ambition still falls at the altar of cost (rather than value) engineering. Across the UK we have seen the creation of elegant public spaces, attractive sustainable drainage solutions, sensitive parking designs, new low-energy forms of urban living, ingenious hybrid building typologies and so on, all providing examples of well-designed place-making. In places we are closing the gap with the quality of urban environments found in Amsterdam, Copenhagen or Freiburg, but it’s inconsistent and patchy.

• Social wellbeing

The pandemic threw into sharp relief the importance of local communities to our individual and collective physical and mental wellbeing in ways that could never have been foreseen by the UTF. Technology-enabled shifts to home-working also continue to have profound implications for the relative roles and activity patterns of town and neighbourhood centres. Whilst sweeping generalisations are unhelpful, many would cite an erosion in the quality of the ‘public realm’ (seen across health, education, policing and neighbourhood management) that is the opposite of the UTF vision. Although mixed tenure projects are now commonplace, affordable housing delivery (particularly social rented) has been woeful. North-south disparities have widened and social inequities become more pronounced. Arguably always over-ambitious, the UTF desire to “transform all social housing estates into mixed tenure communities by 2012” was not achieved, though there are outstanding success stories that came out of the New Deal for Communities and other programmes. In many places austerity pulled the plug on large regeneration exercises and instead we have seen funds distributed via smaller Towns Fund projects around the country. On the plus side, Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) considerations have continued to gain prominence, helped by the creation of The Social Value Act.

• Environmental responsibility

In the context of ever more acute climate change concerns, and evidential data underpinning this, the 2008 Climate Act commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and the strengthening of this in 2019 to bring all greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050 has formed a key part of the policy backdrop. Decarbonisation of the built environment has been given ever greater emphasis, particularly for new developments. However, sadly the Code for Sustainable Homes came and went, and we have never got to grips with the enormity of the retrofit challenge. The oft-quoted “80% of the buildings that will exist in 2050 already exist” highlights how far we have to go.

The UTF recommendations to take a brownfield-first approach proved to be the most controversial, prompting a rather public difference of view being aired between the titan of town planning, the Late Great Sir Peter Hall and his fellow Task Force members. As a footnote contained in the 2005 UTF Review report summarises, Sir Peter argued passionately “there is no overriding

need to save greenfield land” (a “land fetish” as he put it1) and furthered “I am therefore concerned that the proposals on brownfield and densities, however well-intentioned, would – if implemented –deepen the well-documented housing crisis that faces us and our government.” Whereas some of Sir Peter’s somewhat anti-urban views on the British people favouring “the suburban lifestyle” seem now somewhat outmoded, the call for strategic greenfield land release (particularly when grey in reality) are as prescient as ever.

• Delivery, fiscal and legal frameworks

These recommendations focused on how “city governments and mayors should be empowered to raise taxes and funds.” Although this has not gone as far as the UTF lobbied for, there has been substantial progress with the devolution agenda – in the creation of city deals, more muscular combined authorities and some very effective mayors. There have also been continuing innovations in different forms of public-private partnership, and an increase in private institutional investment vehicles such as pension funds in urban regeneration activities, particularly in Build To Rent. However, increased financialisation of the property market has exacerbated housing unaffordability and heightened generational social injustices and all this has played out amidst a context of public-sector belt-tightening, insipid economic growth rates, stalling productivity levels, and a financial crisis amongst many local authorities.

As we look back to look forward, it’s a very mixed scorecard. All of us involved in shaping places, towns and cities knows how long it can take from project ideation to implementation, occupation and maturity. Twenty five years is a good amount of time to reflect. In 1999 as his Purple Highness was

shaking his thing and D:Ream were still filling the dancefloors, the Great and the Good of the Built Environment looked towards an urban renaissance. In various parts of the country, the AoU Award-winners are testament to this having been achieved. But progress is needed on a much more

consistent, equitable and farreaching basis.

Matt Lally is an AoU Academician and Board Director and a Director in the Integrated City Planning team at Arup.

1 The Land Fetish: Densities and London Planning (Peter Hall, 2006) https://eprints.lse.ac.uk/63372/1/ Kochan_London_bigger_better.pdf

Photo on previous page: Living on the edge in Stockton, Warwickshire (Martin Bond Environmental Images) from Towards an Urban Renaissance report

The Urban Task Force 25 Years On

An Exemplar to Advance Future Sustainable Urbanism

Tony Reddy agrees with much of the Urban Task Force’s recommendations and raises important, current questions about the British planning system.

The publication Towards an Urban Renaissance, the report of the Urban Task Force in 1999, was a significant event in the evolution of the British planning system. Of particular significance was the recommendation of the Task Force for the reintroduction of urban masterplanning as a core urban design discipline.

In the intervening period urban design and masterplanning have become more widely accepted within the built environment professions and the property industry. It would now be almost unthinkable for a significant new development to proceed without an urban design strategy and a masterplan.

That is a remarkable shift in a relatively short period of time. However, it introduces important questions about the British planning system.

Once British planners, architects and urbanists were once

global leaders in urban design philosophy in the early part of the twentieth century, however, the postwar period saw a significant policy change with the adoption of a laissez faire, discretionary planning system influenced heavily by evolving emerging Anglo American planning theory. This theory was specifically based on the widespread accommodation of the motor car.

The Urban Task force members were chosen for their expertise in the key elements which are necessary for an urban renaissance, including social exclusion, sustainable development, urban design, and urban regeneration. They recommended solutions to urban decline to bring people back into our cities, towns and urban neighbourhoods. The Task Force report established a new vision for urban regeneration founded on the principles of design excellence, social well-being and environmental responsibility

within a viable economic and legislative framework.

The Report of the UTF led to an increase in the proportion of masterplan documents combining three-dimensional representations of how a place can change, backed up by solid social and economic analysis and a clear set of design principles in general terms there has been a significant increase in the production of improved plans aimed at creating successful places predominantly by private sector professionals.

The Report led to the establishment of CABE and the production best practice guidance on the ingredients of a successful place. This guidance has improved the general understanding of the purpose of urban design and masterplanning by informing clients and designers on all the stages of creating and adopting a masterplan - preparation, design and implementation. This guidance was developed

as a practical tool to be used on real projects on a day-today basis, from the detail of procurement requirements through to the rigours of community consultation.

Overall, the implementation of the recommendations of the Task Force has led to a more co-ordinated action based on the principles of design excellence, economic strength, environmental responsibility, good governance and social well-being.

It has also helped identify practical solutions to turn our cities, towns and urban neighbourhoods into places where people actively want to live, work and play.

The report contained over 100 recommendations for change. They covered design, transport, management, regeneration, skills, planning and investment. Inevitably, the Task force also published a number of supporting reports covering skills, fiscal issues, planning guidance and planning obligations.

The strength of the Task Force’s work was in its diverse membership, reflecting the breadth of the urban agenda. It was testament to the sense of common cause among its members that it was able to produce a clear and unambiguous set of recommendations which had been agreed by all its members.

The Task Force attempted to address the fact that ownership of our towns and cities had been lost throughout the twentieth century, allowing them to become spoilt by poor design, economic dispersal and

social polarisation. The Task Force also identified three main drivers forces for change for the coming century:

• The technical revolution - centred on information technology and exchange.

• The ecological threat - based on greater understanding of the implications of our rapid consumption of natural resources and the importance of sustainable development.

• The social transformationflowing from increased life expectancy and new lifestyle choices.

The Task Force conclusion was that a vision was needed to drive the urban renaissance. This vision was that cities should be well designed, more compact and connected, and support a range of diverse uses - allowing people to live, work and enjoy themselves at close quarters within a sustainable urban environment which is well integrated with public transport and adaptable to change.

It concluded that “Urban neighbourhoods must become places where people of all ages and circumstances want to live. We have to increase investment in our urban areas, using public finance ….and incentives to steer the market towards opportunities for lasting regeneration.” In addition, it advocated that “we must all take responsibility for the process of change, combining strengthened democratic local leadership with an increased commitment to public participation.”

This message is even more true in today’s challenging environment.

The Task Force recognised that its recommendations required a rethinking of “the role, responsibilities and structure of local government in our urban areas.” It also advocated that “Our cities and towns need strong leadership and democratic structures which are meaningful and accessible to citizens. Local authorities must be empowered to lead the urban renaissance,”

According to Richard Rogers, UTF Chairman, achieving an urban renaissance was “about creating the quality of life and vitality that makes urban living desirable”. To stem a long period of decline and decay, pessimism and underinvestment he indicated that “we must bring about a change in urban attitudes so that towns and cities once again become attractive places in which to live, work and socialise.”

The Task Force committed to a year’s intensive effort, gathered evidence from many organisations and places. In particular it considered the experience of Germany, the Netherlands, Spain and the United States - concluding that the quality of our urban design and strategic planning is “probably 20 years behind places like Amsterdam and Barcelona.”

As Pasqual Maragall, former Mayor of Barcelona, said in his foreword to the final report “It is also by relating in a clever and efficient manner the well-being of cities to that of countryside, or more properly, it is by understanding human space as a network of centres of different size and density, that we will approach the goal

of finding fitting solutions to real problems. It is critical to understand that improving public space is relevant to solving social and economic problems.”

A key factor of Pasqual Maragall’s message regarding the recognition of Barcelona’s success in winning the prestigious Harvard University Prize for the quality of is urban design and the RIBA Gold medal was that this success was based on “the base of the solid complicity between City Hall and the city at large when it came to engaging in the bigger works.”

The Task Force advocated that sustainable regeneration has to be design-led and to be placed within its economic and social context and made many worthy recommendations based on their extensive research and travel. This has led to an improvement in the quality of many urban regeneration schemes.

However an area which the Task Force has not managed to influence in the intervening period and which distinguishes British towns and cities from their European counterparts is:

• The decentralised power of local authorities led by a Mayor with authority

• The central role of city planners, architects and urbanists in creating a threedimensional city plan and vision

Current Urban Design and Planning Challenges

In relation to the areas outside its urban cores the British planning system remains broken and dysfunctional: communities and neighbourhood representative bodies are concerned; developers, architects and planners are frustrated; and politicians are under pressure due to the issues arising from almost every significant development proposal, in particular for new housing and infrastructure developments.

Much new urban development in the UK does not live up to the expectations of national policy. Suburban house building is often especially problematic, particularly when delivered by large housebuilders. With the exception of notable exemplars such as Cambridge and Norwich, developers’ standardised business models and the imperative of delivering quantity over quality, resulting in poorly connected and bland developments predominate in our British suburbs.

The current problems with the British planning system need to be addressed to meet the needs of all its citizens. The need for change is particularly urgent given an anticipated need time providing homes for almost 4 million additional households over a 25-year period. The current housing crisis and infrastructure delivery difficulties will be exacerbated if the systemic problems of the planning system are not addressed.

The source of many planning problems results from the fact that the English planning

system, as enacted in the Town and Country Planning Act 1947. The legislation was the result of a political understanding pact between politicians to ensure that Labour’s New Towns proposals were not repealed, while the Conservatives ensured a discretionary laissez faire system for the private sector.

The significant difference between the English and European approaches is reflected in the fact that few appear to be satisfied with the current English system, whereas citizens in most European cities have pride in their city plans. Many local communities in England feel that they must be constantly vigilant to protect themselves from future planned development, and developers are equally concerned about the risks and uncertainties of the current system. As a result, local councilors are under pressure from conflicting interest groups.

Understanding the form of cities and towns

Almost every Danish child can explain that the city plan of Copenhagen is similar in form to a hand, with development and infrastructure expanding from the centre along each of the fingers. This is because the city plan, which has evolved since 1947, is based on a clear concept of development and growth occurring along transport lines separated by green-belt landscapes. The same is true with most European city plans. On the other hand, few English or British children or adults could describe the concept plan form of any of our cities and towns because they consist

of the voluminous text and complex coloured maps in our development plans.

Conflict over policy concepts such as 15-minute neighbourhoods and low emission zones demonstrates the contested visions involved. Such disagreement isn’t helped by disjointed policy, such as one-off funding allocations and inconsistent infrastructure decision making – like the scrapping of HS2. Delivering the long-term change needed to revitalise town and city centres requires a more strategic approach. The Urban Task Force’s Urban Renaissance agenda, advocating a holistic way to regenerate places, was a source of inspiration when it was published and should be a reference to the new incoming Labour government.

Recent positive examples of a planning led process

Improving design quality is crucial to making the UK’s towns and cities successful places where people want to live and spend time. The redevelopment of Liverpool’s city centre through the successful ‘Liverpool One’ public-private partnership, the regeneration projects at Nine Elms and Battersea – combining mixed uses and a connected street and public realm network – demonstrate the long-term impact of holistic strategies focused on design.

These projects were based on an integrated scheme for a new neighborhood where the public realm – the streets, squares and transport network – and the building masses, heights and uses, were all determined in advance.

As international experience, from Boston to Barcelona, Hamburg to Helsinki, Madrid to Malmo and Stockholm to Stuttgart has shown, successful urban growth regeneration is best implemented either by a dedicated multi-disciplinary team of planners, architects,

Fig. 2: Finger Plan of Copenhagen, Denmark

Fig. 3: Nordhavn, Copenhagen

Figs. 4 & 5: Hammarby Sjöstad, Stockholm, Sweden

engineers and urbanists working for or within a local authority. Such success requires the creation of a vision and an urban framework plan that is responsive to the evolving needs of the city or town, as well as engagement in partnership, winning the trust of the local populace to unravel and resolve the complexities of delivering a sustainable future plan.

New Concerns and a New Vision

The National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) policy initiative was intended to advance sustained, longterm, and regionally-balanced progress on the social, economic, and environmental fronts.

Fig. 2 Fig.

Fig.

Sustainable urbanism needs to be at the centre of the agenda for economic prosperity. If we are to experience the fruits of widely-shared and equitable prosperity, we must become a more fully urbanised society. This does not mean extreme or tall buildings, but buildings of mid-rise, mixed-use density that promote the wealthcreating potential of cities. The densification of derelict, former industrial areas our cities and towns is an important element of this process. Such development policy can support both regeneration and development in city centres and towns, clustered development close to the city centres, and also a better evolution of outlying towns and villages.

Nordic countries – which have produced some of the best examples of sustainable urbanism and where elected officials, entrepreneurs, and citizens collaborate to create wealth and innovation – can inspire us.

A New British Planning System

In Britain, the production of Development Plans in written and map form is at variance with the methodologies used in most other EU countries. These Development Plans are generally large, complex documents which are difficult to understand. By contrast, in most European countries, in particular, in Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Netherlands, Germany, Spain and Portugal, the Development Plans for cities and towns are presented in the form of models and threedimensional (3-D) ComputerGenerated Images (CGIs).

One of the most impressive features of planning practice in European cities and towns is the sense of ownership of the city or town vision. This ownership is embraced by all parties across the political spectrum; it is their plan, and they are proud to

explain it to visitors. The most important lessons to be learned from bestpractice exemplars of European urbanism Whether the agent is a city planning department, as in Aarhus, Copenhagen, Freiberg, Gothenberg, Helsinki, Malaga or Stockholm, or a dedicated public agency as in Hamburg, Leipzig, Dublin Docklands, the Dutch Vinex development, the key to success is a well-staffed, well-led planning office with dedicated personnel who have the professional competence to prepare urban masterplans and engage in complex arrangements for implementation with both the private sector and community groups. The preparation of 3-D models is essential to this process. Models can describe all the city’s elements in considerable detail, including street layouts, buildings and open spaces, and the height and

Fig. 6

Fig. 7

Fig. 8

massing of individual building blocks.

Although the ‘urban renaissance’ agenda received criticism for facilitating inner city gentrification and occasionally contributing to social exclusion, it was highly influential particularly in raising the profile of urban design. The design quality of the built environment has since become a key component of planning policy across the UK.

Conclusion

British policy makers, architects, engineers, urbanists, and planners are capable of delivering on initiatives

aimed at promoting quality in urban design and of ensuring that future urban renewal schemes and extensions to villages, towns and cities are well designed, integrated and sustainable.

What is needed now is for the incoming Labour government Government to advance the principles espoused in the Urban Task Force Report and to introduce reforms to the British planning system to bring it into line with EU and international best practice, combining policies, powers and resources to achieve an integrated approach in meeting the needs of urban communities. By moving away from existing

outdated planning practices and the discretionary planning system through adoption of EU best practice, citizens, local representatives, architects, planners, builders and developers can be brought together in a common understanding of, and commitment to, a shared planned future for our cities and towns that addresses the challenges facing twenty-first century Britain.

Tony Reddy is the Chairman of Reddy Architecture + Urbanism. He is an Academician and former Chair of the AoU.

Fig. 11

Fig. 10

Figs. 6 & 7: City Model -Copenhagen

Figs. 8 & 9: Oslo Docklands 3D City Model

Figs. 10 & 11: City Model - Gothenburg

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Furthering the Urban Renaissance The Urban Task Force 25 Years On

Leyla Moy takes a future-focused look back at the Urban Task Force Report and untangles three of the report’s sections, asking how the recommendations can be owned by the communities that they take place in and drive a community-led renewal of cities across the country.

Part 1 / The Sustainable City →

The original Sustainable City section traces the historic basis for urban growth, emphasising the city’s core role as a meeting place. The section goes on to highlight a vision of compact urban centres connected by robust, integrated transport links.

Popular imaginings of ideal urban spaces today do not stray far from the principles of walkability, compactness, and connectedness outlined in the UTF Report. Yet, much of what is delivered fails to live up to expectations – be it due to the tipped balance between profit-making and placemaking or otherwise. In many cases, the vision of sustainable urbanism is relatively free of images of the citizen or the resident - more often than not, urban users are consumers using services than participants of urbanism.

If even the most broadly-drawn and evidenced design guidance lacks the pre-eminent power to transform British cities, perhaps the road to the sustainable city requires more.

Approaches that elevate community stewardship through participatory design processes to a similar level as national or area-wide design guidance could tip the balance, allowing for an urban renaissance led by and accessible to citizens to be realised and sustained, buoyed by local knowledge. It is intriguing to consider that many of the recommendations contained within the report are top-down programmes, reinforced by the support of urban expertise. There is a dearth of a real devolutionary transfer of power within the report - perhaps emphasised by the focus on expert-led recommendations.

The wave of resistance to the 15-minute city concept reflects the perception – albeit in a politically charged context – that overarching concepts are being applied indiscriminately. A reframing of such concepts as solidifying local connectedness rather than limiting growth is helpful here, as is an emphasis on benefits for individual context.

Definitionally, an emphasis on participation and stewardship precludes the blanket application of universal principles. Perhaps approaches which centre local visions will aid in bridging the gap between a multitude of local context and shared visions for the sustainable city.

Part 2 / Making Towns and Cities Work →

Building on the drivers of change that foretell flight from cities, the second section goes on to question how best to ‘make cities work’ – that is, to improve urban management, safeguard against deterioration due to underinvestment, target resources towards regeneration and invest in skills within the built environment.

The premise of regeneration invites the everpresent question of What (and who) is the city for? and the section necessarily rests on an established consensus about the harbingers of urban decline.

The UTF Report highlights broad dissatisfaction expressed in surveys of urban areas around crime, urban management issues (litter and rubbish) and anti-social behaviour (vandalism and ‘hooliganism’). The broad and imprecise label of ‘anti-social behaviour’ has been interrogated in the years since, and an urban management strategy that emphasises responses to violent crime rather than stifling more nebulous undesirable behaviours may prove more resilient.

The preference for quiet, strictly divided cities wherein uses never clash and loitering can be problematised with an undertone of danger is also not as universal as broad urban visioning would suggest.

The discourse around urban gentrification continues to reveal the inherent contestation around regeneration, who it serves, and what urban improvement entails. When the benefits of regeneration arrive, does the heart of the place – its inhabitants – remain to reap them? The question of how to ensure the benefits of urban improvement are evenly or justly bestowed remains inextricably linked to market forces.

Approaches like Majora Carter’s self-gentrification or community-led regeneration perhaps strike a balance between gentrification, the external force, and something more akin to self-led urban revival. Interventionism, as opposed to topdown, investor-led regeneration, may provide locally-specific responses to urban issues at the neighbourhood scale. Yet this leaves the profession still beholden to the market, enacting often unjust processes of change.

While the UTF Report section centres on ways to

retain and attract urban professionals, the goal of investing in skills can also be considered as more broad-based education aimed at distributing the tools to engage with planning and visioning. Participatory planning which involves children in the development of their urban surroundings has the potential, cumulatively, to translate to a younger generation better equipped than us to articulate desires and strive for a city that reflects them.

Part 3 / Making the Most of Our Urban Assets

Driven by the established desire to retain the Green Belt and avoid encroachment into the countryside, the third section centres around the parcelling out of previously developed land and buildings to absorb mounting housing needs.

While the incentive structure to ensure building on brownfield remains preferable has been solidified in planning documents since the document’s conception, the broader question of how to maximise existing urban assets remains salient.

The recent Urban Design Group report on good town form challenges the traditional process of site selection as a starting point for development in less urban areas. Primarily, it highlights that the locations typically put forward by landowners and selected due to their lack of contestation are often dispersed, with knock-on effects for the eventual urban formation of these areas. Perspectives like this highlight the insufficiency of allowing urban form to follow land availability.

Conclusion

The UTF Report provided the script for an urban renaissance and twenty five years on has continued to influence the design and regeneration of urbanism in the UK. Looking forward, the report acts as a foundation to integrate some of the developments around community-led regeneration that have taken root since the report’s publication. As Young Urbanists, we believe in challenging and interrogating ‘accepted truths’ in urbanism. There is room to include more stakeholders, organisers, and activists in urban renewal - we believe that the key to embedding the ‘urban renaissance’ is growing it from the ground up as well as the top down.

Leyla Moy is a Young Urbanist and a Graduate Planner at UPP. She also sits on the Here & Now editorial board.

Lead photo of Brussels by Maria Lupan on Unsplash

The City Observatory Papers:

1

Tokyo:

The 100 year old TOD

A partnership between BDPlab and the AoU

Tokyo: The 100 year old TOD

Tokyo is a city based almost entirely on public transport. The Head of Urbanism in NK-Urban Tokyo Studio, Eiji Okada1 talks with planning expert Mr. Takayuki Kishii2 about how this came to be and what other cities might learn from the Tokyo model.

How is it that Tokyo, the world’s largest city, with a population of 38 million, has very little traffic congestion?

While similar cities like Beijing and Jakarta are clogged with cars, Tokyo is a city based on public transport. It is a city where 80% trips are by rail, an order of magnitude higher than most compatible cities. In London, for example, the target for all sustainable transport modes (public transport and active travel) is 80% but the current rate is just 60%.

Both cities have comprehensive public transport systems and London now has congestion charging. The difference is that Tokyo has practiced Transit Oriented Development (TOD) for more than a century, long before the term was coined. In doing so it has created a low-carbon, compact, walkable, public transport-based urban structure that most other cities would envy. This is the story of how it was done.

Trains before cars

Japan’s first railway, built in 1872 using British technology, ran between Shin-bashi and Yokohama. It opened just four years after the collapse of the feudal system (the Edo Period), an era that marked the emergence of modern Japan. As the government took power from the landlords (Samurai) one of the first things they did was to build railways.

As the three maps in Fig 1 illustrate, by the 1930s a comprehensive network of lines had been built to serve Tokyo. The same was true of many western cities, but the difference in Tokyo is that this network still exists. Unlike the US and Europe, Japan never scaled back its railways in order to invest in roads. Apart from a brief period of road building leading up to the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, Japan’s cities and indeed its whole economy has been built around railways.

As Mr. Takayuki Kishii explains, there is a clear link between this reliance on rail and the urban form of Tokyo. During the early modern period, Tokyo was a dense city, much of which was destroyed in the Great Kanto Earthquake and the fire that followed in 1923. If the destruction had happened a decade or so later, and certainly if it had taken place in the US, it would have been an opportunity to rebuild a city based on roads. But in Tokyo it provided the opportunity to complete the rail system.

This included the missing rail link between Ueno and Kanda Stations, which had defeated the rail planners because before the earthquake the land along the route was so clogged with shops and other buildings that land assembly was impossible. The link allowed the Yamate Loop Line to begin operation as a circular route in 1925. As Mr. Kishii says, “While the disaster was heartbreaking, it ironically contributed to the development of the rail network.”

The network continued to grow until the 1950’s. It is now based upon main lines formerly operated by JNR (Japan National Railways) including the Yamate Loop, Sobu-Chuo and Keihin-Tohoku lines. These main lines are then fed by a network of private suburban lines that radiate from the terminus stations on the Yamate Loop such as Shinjuku, Ikebukuro and Shibuya.

1. Eiji Okada is a chief planner, Tokyo Head Office, Nippon Koei Urban Space, Co., Ltd.

2. Mr. Takayuki Kishii is President of The Institute of Behavioural Sciences, former Professor of Civil Engineering at Nihon University and former President of the City Planning Institute of Japan.

Within the Loop

The Yamate Loop is the equivalent of London’s Circle Line. The area outside the loop is served by railways while the area within the loop used to be served by trams. At their peak in 1955 there were 40 tram lines and 213km of track. All but one line was closed in 1971. They were replaced by an underground network with nine lines operated by the Tokyo Metro Company plus another four lines operated by the Tokyo Metropolitan Bureau of Transportation.

Together these create an underground network of just over 300km. This may only be the seventh largest underground system in the world, but within the Yamate Loop the density of stops is unprecedented. As Mr. Kishii tells us, when Janet Sadiq Khan, then director of the New York Transportation Bureau, came to Tokyo in 2019, she said “I used to think that the New York underground was the best in the world, but the Tokyo underground is much more convenient!”

One of the innovative features of system is the way that the suburban lines and underground system are linked via an ‘interac-

tive direct service system’. Trains are able to run between the two systems despite them being operated by different companies thus avoiding the capacity constraints caused by trains turning back at terminus stations; It also extends the reach of Tokyo’s underground network to almost 1,000km which would make it the largest in the world.

‘Passengers are created by trains’

Private suburban lines

Most of the Japanese rail network was nationalised under the Railway Nationalisation Act of 1906. However this excluded private suburban lines. Mr. Kishii takes up the story: “One of the key players was Mr. Ichizo Kobayashi who set up the Hankyu Corporation and developed the business model for private suburban lines in the Osaka, Kobe area. His motto was ‘passengers are created by trains’ and his idea was to develop residential schemes along his railway line for commuters and their families. He also built commercial facilities such as department

Shinbashi Station

Ueno Station

Tokyo Station Fig 2: Tokyo Underground

stores at terminal stations within the city and leisure facilities such as amusement parks and theatres at the suburban end of the line, thus creating a two-way, sevenday-a-week rider-ship. The model was hugely successful and was copied by the other private railway companies established in Tokyo in the 1910s and 1920s (who became known as the ‘Major Eight’).”

Garden Cities

One of these companies, a predecessor of Tokyu Corporation, was founded by the businessman Eiichi Shibusawa. He was influenced by Ebenezer Howard’s Garden City model and in 1918 he established Den-en-toshi Co (Garden City Co) with the aim of developing suburban residential areas around new stations. One of the first was Den-en-Chofu started in 1923 and built around a new station on the line between Meguro and Kamata operated by one of Shibusawa’s companies. The plan of the new settlement resembles the TOD diagram in Peter Calthorpe’s book The Next American Metropolis even though this would not be published for another 70 years. The Tokyu Corporation is seen as the originator of the garden city in Japan.

The Financial Model

Once it had recovered from the war, Japan entered a period of rapid economic growth. Between 1955 and 1973 GDP grew by an average of 9.25% a year and the population of Tokyo (together with its three neighbouring prefectures Kanagawa, Chiba, and Saitama) doubled to 24 million. Population growth of nearly 300,000 a year led to severe housing shortages creating a strong market for new settlements along railway lines.

One of the most successful of these settlements was the ‘Tama Garden City’ developed by Tokyu from 1953. Built in a hilly area along the Tokyu Denentoshi Line in the Kanagawa prefecture, the low-rise neighbourhood with abundant greenery now extends to 5,000 hectares with a population of 620,000.

Key to its success was the ‘Land Readjustment Process’ as Mr. Kishii explains: “Tokyu would buy land along the lines from

The new settlement closely resembles the TOD diagram in Peter

Calthorpe’s

book The Next American Metropolis

Fig 3: Proposed plan of Den-en-Chofu compared to TOD diagram in Peter Calthorpe’s book The Next American Metropolis (below) (Source: Website of Tokyu Corporation )

Fig 4: Economic growth and population growth in Tokyo

owners willing to sell. This land was swapped for the land needed for the line and also for development around stations. Outside the station Tokyu would build a transit square together with supermarkets and facilities for residents. They would establish feeder bus services into the station and parcelled up land for housing development by themselves and others. In total Land Readjustments were undertaken in 58 districts”

Many of the private railway companies followed Tokyu’s model allowing them to capture the land value uplift generated by the railway line. This value has been used to develop new settlements, but is also an important income stream for the railway. As Mr. Kishii explains: “This was vital in allowing private railway companies to overcome Covid-19 because they weren’t solely reliant on fare revenue but could also generate profits from real estate and service businesses. This is even true of JR East, one of the privatised arms of Japanese National Railways that has become profitable through the development and management of commercial facil-

ities next to its stations. Is there any other city where so many private railway companies continue to operate in good health?”

The same Land Readjustment mechanism has been used by the state on public sector new towns including schemes by the Japan Housing Development Corporation and prefectural

governments. The largest of these are Tama NT (population 220,000), Chiba NT (120,000), and Kohoku NT (220,000) See Fig 7. In these cases an agreement was reached with a railway company so that, as the population, and therefore passenger demand, increased railway service was provided allowing growth to accelerate.

Development Entities

Development Methodology

Railway (Year of full opening)

Urban Renaissance Agency Tokyo Metropolitan Gov’t Tokyo Metropolitan Housing Corporation

Land Readjustment Association

New Residential Urban Development Project Land readjustment project (in front of the main station, along the main road)

Keio Erbium Sagami Original Line (1974) Thallium Tama Line (1975) Tama City Monorail (2000)

Chiba Prefecture and Urban Renaissance Agency (Jointly operated)

Urban Renaissance Agency

New Residential Urban Development Project Land readjustment project (application of a system that allows the right holder to choose the destination of the land transfer)

Hokuso Line Phase 1 (1979)

Hokuso Line Phase 2(1984) [by Urban Renaissance Agency. Later transferred to a new company, “Chiba New Town Railway”. ]

Yokohama Municipal Underground Blue Line (1993) Yokohama Municipal Underground Green Line (2008)

Fig 5: The area of Tama Garden City

Area 5,000ha, population 620,000) (Source: Website of Tokyu Corporation)

Tama New Town Chiba New Town Kohoku New Town Placement

Fig 6: The main public sector new towns around Tokyo

Habit Forming

These railway developments established strong commuting patterns in Tokyo with households living in railway suburbs and commuting to the city centre by train/ underground every morning. As the city expanded, people moved outwards in search of affordable housing so that commuting times increased, and the costs of transport started to become a major burden. So, in order to secure the best people, companies started to cover the cost of commuting by public transport. This system is so entrenched that it is now part of the tax system much as the company car is in the UK. The tradition of commuting has become as engrained in Japanese society as car use has in the west.

A Walkable City Centre

The convenience of Tokyo’s rail network is only the start. The TOD model only works when the area around the station is walkable. Almost all of Tokyo’s office employment is within 10 minutes’ walk of a station and most of it is within a 5 minutes’. The walkability of the area around many stations has been improved by widening sidewalks, staircases and lifts.

For example, Dai-Maru-Yu, Tokyo’s largest business district covering 120 hectares to the west of Tokyo Station, has seven underground lines and five stations. Apart from the wide walkways above ground, there is an 18km network of underground walkways connecting the stations to most of the buildings.

This tradition of commuting has become engrained in Japanese society

Mr. Kishii, who is also chairman of the Area Management Association for Dai-Maru-Yu District, says, “It used to be a ghost town on weekends, but in 1988 local building owners set up a council to draw up guidelines and the area was transformed into a pleasant strolling town with cafés and food trucks along the cozy street – Naka-dori. The area also hosts music festivals and illuminations at Christmas, and in the future we would like to try to further update the district using technology and data.”

Value of Station Areas

The spaces around stations have become important as places where people travelling to work and school gather every morning and evening. They have become walkable community hubs and magnets for shops and services. Mr. Kishii explains: “The Japanese government has consistently placed emphasis on public transport in urban planning. The Tokyo Metropolitan Government’s land use zoning system sets maximum Floor Area Ratio (FAR) limits based on national standards linked to public transport ensuring that high-density commercial areas are located in areas with good access to public transport.”

Commercial FAR ranges from 2.0 to 13.0 depending on the connectivity of the location. To designate a FAR of 10.0 or higher the area must be ‘surrounded by a network of four or more broad roads and have extremely good public facilities, and multiple railway networks.’ Figure 6 shows the area around Shin-bashi Station is collectively designated as the FAR limit of 10.0, and the area contiguous to it is from 7.0 to 8.0. This is the main reason why land near stations is so valuable.

Fig. 7: Maximum floor area ratio limit in the area around Shimbashi Station

(Source: website of Minato Ward office)

Fig. 8 Shinagawa Station East project, which became a model for high-density TOD in front of the station. The scheme was able to increase its FAR by 2.1 by building a pedestrian deck network, public green spaces, and an underground vehicular network (next page).

Station squares

The transit squares are vital to this system. They provide the link between the neighbourhood and the station while facilitating the movement of large numbers of people and the transfer between different transport modes.

As Mr. Kishii tells me, the first was built in front of Tokyo Station and they now exist outside all main stations and many of the smaller stations, particularly the terminus stations on the Yamate Loop. Initially, the railway operators were responsible for the squares but since 1946 the responsibility for squares has been partially shared by the local government. Design criteria have been established along with formulae for calculating the area.

Urban Redevelopment Projects

There are still many stations, even in the heart of Tokyo, where the surrounding land is not well used. This might be because of the lack of a station square, narrow streets or complicated land plots and property rights.

In these areas an Urban Redevelopment Project mechanism has been established to enable the creation of a transit square. Through this mechanism, different land and rights holders

can be rationalised. The system allows them to remain in the area if they wish, although the form of their assets may change into shared ownership of floors.

Urban Redevelopment Projects for station squares were originally applied around suburban stations. But more recently a number of Urban Regeneration Projects have been promoted around under-exploited urban stations. Sometimes this is done through local ‘rights-holders associations’ that are authorised by

New Urban TODs

The same process has been applied to the development of new TODs in the city centre aimed at transforming low density areas around stations into high density office districts. This started in the late 1980s when an initiative was developed for Japanese National Railways to sell its former depots and other lands to reduce its deficit. The Government created the ‘District Planning System with FAR Incentives’ to facilitate this. This allowed developers to increase their FAR in exchange for contribution to infrastructure and a good urban environment.

A good example is the Shinagawa Station East Development, completed in 2003 that is a model for high-density TOD development around a station (see previous page). The scheme was able to increase its FAR by 2.1 by making a pedestrian deck network connecting all the building to the station, creating a common green space in the middle and by providing underground vehicular network to reduce surface traffic. Further schemes were developed as part

There are still many stations, even in the heart of Tokyo, where the surrounding land is not well used

government and who work with developers and the railway operators. This process is incentivised by the Floor Area Ratio (FAR) rules. From a developer’s perspective, the development of large profitable office and residential buildings with great views is the top priority. With land suitable for large-scale development increasingly scarce, land consolidation, FAR incentives and good connectivity to railway stations are essential factors for development.

of national strategy to increase Tokyo’s international competitiveness. These allowed developers to trade FAR uplifts for investment in transport infrastructure.

An example is the Toranomon Hills Station Tower project completed in 2023. This stood on the Tokyo Metro Hibiya Line but had no station. It was promoted by a land- owners’ association led by a developer, who built a new underground station and underground transit square at

Fig 9: The Transit Square in front of the East Exit of Shinagawa Station

their own expense, trading these improvements for an increased FAR. The extra floor area allowed the scheme to compete with Marunouchi and other business area in Tokyo. It also has a pedestrian deck system linking the 4 towers and an extensive underground network of walkways to improve walkability. The area was subsequently upgraded to become a part of city centre.

Conclusion

The Tokyo system brings together central and local government along with the railway operators, private developers and public development entities to integrate transport infrastructure and development. It is a system based on cooperation with profits being shared and benefits given back to society. It has been made possible by the government’s consistent commitment to public transport. Tokyo has thus opted

for a society where people do not have to waste more than an hour each way commuting and the city is largely free of the congestion and associated air pollution that plagues other mega cities.

As Mr. Kishii says. “In the Tokyo Metropolitan Area, the government created a vision and system that considers land use and transportation systems at the same time, and then realises it through the interdependence of private railway operators, private developers, and public development

entities. Tokyo has been practicing TOD for more than 100 years, rather than creating a city that fills the suburbs with large parking lots as happens in Europe and the United States.

For the Tokyo Metropolitan Area, TOD is a matter of course, and with TOD+M (TOD management), which is one step ahead, it will continue to evolve toward a low-carbon, compact, and walkable urban structure premised o n the use of public transportation.

Fig 10. Pedestrian deck at the east exit of Shinagawa Station. Covered by a huge canopy, each office can be accessed comfortably even on rainy days or hot summer days. There are no ups and downs.

Fig 11. Toranomon Hills Station Tower Project promoted by a landowners’ association led by a developer, who built a new underground station and an underground transit square

The City Observatory Papers:

Lima: Transportation Lifelines 2

A partnership between BDPlab and the AoU

Lima: Transportation Lifelines

Lima is the largest city in the world without an integrated public transport system Solangel Fernandez who has been working with Alessandra Peña from BDP’s Lima office, explains how this has impacted the city and how plans for new infrastructure will change the situation.

The daily commute into BDP’s Lima office can be a daunting task. Staff travelling less than 10km intro the office face a journey of up to an hour and a half when traffic is heavy, as it generally is. Peru’s capital Lima forms a continuous urban area with it’s main port Callao and together the cities are home to more than 10 million people. This is the most densely populated part of Peru where severe traffic congestion, frequent delays and air pollution mean that moving around is a long, arduous and uncomfortable experience. Rapid population growth in recent decades, much of it in informal settlements, has not been matched by improvements in the city’s obsolete transportation infrastructure. This has led to an impossible situation in which the roads are clogged with traffic, commuting by bus can take hours and the air is highly polluted. As a result, inhabitants spend a large part of their time, earnings and health to move around the city.

Lima - Callao is reputedly the largest city in the world without an integrated public transport system. This article explores the daily transportation challenges experienced by its citizens and the way that this is set to be transformed with the completion of a series of transportation projects.

The city has big plans to establish a comprehensive, interconnected multi-modal system that has the potential to revolutionize urban mobility and enhance the quality of life for its inhabitants. Crucial to the vision is the understanding that its not just about the efficient movement of people, but an opportunity to create and consolidate lifelines of wellness, accessible for all inhabitants.

Solangel Fernández is urban planner and governance specialist. She was the director of urban planning at the municipalities of San Isidro and San Borja. She was recently Minister of Housing, Construction and Sanitation of Peru in the Transitional Government of President Sagasti.

San Cristobal Hill, Rimac District in 1930 and today, showing the unconstrained and informal growth of the city.

10 Million people without integrated transport

The citizen observatory organization Lima Como Vamos carries out regular surveys of the concerns of the city’s residents. In the latest survey from 2023 the top concern is insecurity as it has been for some time. This is followed by public cleanliness, corruption, environmental pollution and the quality of transport. The previous year soon after COVID, transport had been at number two on the list, but people have become increasingly concerned about air pollution, the contamination in their neighbourhoods and their overall health. Many of these environmental and health concerns of course also relate to transport. Research done as part of the Urban Mobility Plan for Lima and Callao, currently being developed by the Urban Transport Authority, reveals that residents travel on average 11 kilometres for their daily commutes, a journey that typically takes an hour. 23% of journeys are made on foot, 36% rely on buses and a mere 6% use rapid public transit systems. There is just one metro line at present running for 28km with a 5km extension recently opened. Most people rely on buses, minibuses and moto-taxis, which operate within an intricate system that includes 492 entangled routes operated by 365 different companies. According to the Movemos Association, 48% of Lima residents miss spending quality time with their families due to traffic congestion, 26% reduce their rest times and 19% reduce their work hours.

1940 1972 2000 2024

People with disabilities are among the worst affected. Most individuals rely on walking and public transportation but face physical barriers like inadequate ramps, steps, and obstacles that restrict their mobility. The National Accessibility Plan reports that 6.7% of individuals in Lima have disabilities and that targets to increase the employment of people with disability in the public and private sectors are being thwarted because citizens with disabilities are unable to travel to work.

This is an example of how one of the main consequences of a poor transport system is the stark inequalities it creates. Bad public transport disproportionately affects residents of poorer areas, who endure longer travel

times, inefficient journeys, more sickness and frequent delays . The poor quality of public transport forces more people into cars making the congestion even worse and adding to air pollution and making buses, caught up in the traffic, even less efficient creating a vicious circle by forcing more people to use their cars or unsafe and illegal ways of transportation. The one bright point is the way in which growing discontent with the delay on implementing traditional transport solutions has led local authorities to promote the use of bicycles and other alternative transport methods. Despite the urgent need of making a difference, the topic of transport is controversial and contradictory within political leaders.

One of the consequences of a poor transport is the stark inequalities it creates

The 492 entangled bus routes operated by 365 different companies are one of the main victims of congestion.

The plans for a new system.

The situation is not hopeless even for a city like Lima with its rapid and disorderly growth. Other Latin American cities have shown how change can occur in three or four administrations if they have a clear vision of the city and implement the plans effectively. This is what Lima is seeking to do.

In the first step, the Urban Mobility Plan for Lima and Callao has outlined significant investment in urban transit systems. This includes the expansion of the country’s port and airport, the extension of Metro Line 1, and the development of Metro Lines 2, 3, and 4. There are also plans for dedicated public transport corridors, cycling infrastructure, cable cars for hillside communities, and traffic calming measures.

The plans also include strategies for the development of public spaces along transport corridors, the re-appropriation of streets for pedestrian priority and

the promotion of traffic calming solutions in residential areas. The package of measures has the potential to create a modern, efficient and integrated multi-modal transport system that minimizes commuter wait times, prevents delays and ensures reliability and comfort. Time for implementation is at essence and while waiting for

Other Latin American cities have shown how change can occur in three or four administrations

larger changes to happen, some local governments have been moving forward. During 2014 -2018, the Municipality of San Isidro, trialled through a tactical urbanism approach (see opposite), short term projects to initiate the transformation of public spaces through design, painting, and road signage. Setting a practical example of how change could be implemented promptly.

How will this affect city growth?

The development of the new metro lines creates an opportunity to rethink the growth of the city. The second step is therefore to adopt Transportation Oriented Development (TOD) as a design philosophy to encourage the two cities to grow in a way that both supports the public transport system and makes public services and spaces easily accessible to everyone. The development of the new metro system creates an opportunity to promote density and to concentrate services around stations as catalysts for urban regeneration. This will enhance connectivity and integrate various modes of transportation like walking, cycling, scootering, and public transit. In essence, TOD promotes a sustainable, inclusive city with an integrated mobility system that ensures safe and efficient transport access across the city, including hard-to-reach areas. For Lima and Callao, this means better

The planned train lines network for Lima and Callao.

The first line took 25 years to be finished, the second line is being implemented today.

In advance of the completion of the new metro lines a number of street improvements have been undertaken, some permanent and some though tactical urbanism:

Top: Rivera Narrete Avenue Middle: Libertadores Street

Bottom: A pop-up performance in a parkling space on Begonias Street

connecting steep hillside communities by integrating modes like formalized motorcycle taxis and cable cars, significantly cutting down travel times and expanding the reach of safe public transport.

Implementation

The linking of transport infrastructure and city planning is being implemented through two metropolitan development plans, one for Lima PLANMET 2040 and one for Callao (PDM 2040). The cities may operate as one conurbation but they are separate municipalities and their plans have not always aligned. However the aim now is to is to integrate the major infrastructure and transport projects with the coordinated growth of the two cities.

The guiding principles are the concentration higher density affordable housing and commercial activity along transport corridors and in designated urban centres, most of which are focused on existing or proposed metro stops or stations. The plan seeks to reuse vacant land and underused buildings in these areas using two tools:

Smart financial instruments:

These have been introduced to accelerate the pace of urban development and promote sustainable and integral solutions. They were introduced through the Sustainable Urban Development Law in 2021. One of the instruments enables developers to increase the density and height of their schemes in return for financial contributions to the municipality, which has the role of reinvesting the resources in the development of public infrastructure. This allows the captured land value from richer areas to be redistributed to vulnerable parts of the city.

Public Operators of Land: Frustrated with having to wait for the private sector bring sites forward, legislation has been brought

forward to create the equivalent of development corporations. The largest of these operates at the national level but there are also municipal development corporations in each of the cities. These bodies collaborate with development banks and other international agencies to buy land, undertake development and support private developers.

How this will impact the growth of the City

Currently Lima and Callao are in a vicious cycle where inaction is exacerbating its precarious living conditions, pollution-related diseases, rising temperatures, and environmental degradation.

encompassing infrastructure upgrades, policy adjustments, and the adoption of sustainable and inclusive mobility solutions. The urgency of this task is undeniable, with citizens feeling disheartened and hopeless, experiencing a deteriorating quality of life due to the current situation.

Community buy-in

This is not to say that less car-centric city model has been without resistance, particularly the re-appropriation of road space for pedestrians. This highlights the need for constant community engagement that will enable the development of great quality urban projects.

This allows the captured land value from richer areas to be redistributed to vulnerable parts of the city.

The city is sprawling and informal, characterised by stark inequality, where a privileged few reside in gated communities while the majority struggle to meet their basic needs. If current trend had continued there was a danger that it will have been pushed towards collapse.

Against this backdrop, decisive action is imperative. It is vital that the development of the metro lines becomes a catalyst of change, transforming a saturated and unpleasant transportation system that delivers lifelines of opportunities for citizens of Lima and Callao. This demands a multifaceted, leadership-driven approach

One very important factor for success is that the of the citizens of Lima and Callao are highly entrepreneurial. Informal settlements after all make up almost 70% of the city. Giving the proper stimulus the new local centres soon fill with businesses and public spaces are soon activated. The citizens of Lima and Callao will make the most of the opportunities provided in the new planning approach, which should be not just environmentally friendly but also economically viable.

Conclusion

The potential for transformational change in Lima and Callao remains undiminished. Effective urban governance with strong leadership and collaboration among diverse stakeholders, hold the key to developing and implementing sustainable urban practices.

This paper forms is part of the City Observatory initiative, which scrutinizes global urban challenges and identifies opportunities for sustainable advancement. The aim is to promote dialogue and action towards shaping cities that prioritize the well-being and aspirations of their inhabitants.

the Financial District. This article has been possible thanks to the collaboration within BDP, Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru and ATU, the Transport Authority for Lima and Callao.

The Good City

BDP believes that cities are good for us, at least they can and should be. They have the potential to be good for economic growth, for our quality of life and wellbeing, for arts and culture and for the environment. However too often, around the world, cities fail to live up to this potential.

The Good City is an initiative launched together with BDP’s parent company Nippon Koei to help cities across the world become better. It brings together our designers, urbanists, engineers, environmental scientists, and technologists to provide a package of services targeted at cities and municipal authorities.

As Part of this the City Observatory is a research programme and think tank in association with the Academy of Urbanism that draws on expertise from across the world to better understand the issues facing cities.

La Bici Brava

Returning from Catalunya after four days of urban, suburban, and rural tribulations, Young Urbanist cycle trip organisers Ben Meador and Julie Plichon reflect on Barcelona and Girona.

Barcelona is without doubt an urbanism exemplar. A city with a heart for equality and equity from its origin as a modern city, its spirit is embodied by Ildefons Cerda’s 1850s masterplan intended to free the city from the filth within its mediaeval walls, whilst giving equal quality of life and opportunity through its iconic grid. In line with Catalan tradition, municipal socialism expresses itself through investment in public spaces and schools to reduce social and health inequalities.

In the second densest city in

Europe after Paris, open spaces are scarce in Barcelona. Much has changed since Cerda’s masterplan - its spirit has been affected by a push for densification and a loss of open spaces. Cerda’s original masterplan involved much lesser densities, a higher proportion of public and semi public open spaces, as well as a hierarchy of streets which was never implemented.

The Superblock

In the years 2000s - Salvador Rueda’s Ecologia Urbana studio

reconsidered the original intention of street hierarchy by taking a scientific spatial approach to identify ‘basic’ streets, ‘local’ streets and ‘green streets’ - put more simply, distributor roads and local streets which should be closed to through traffic. The basic principle was to merge several blocks together to create ‘Superblocks’ with traffic diverted around the blocks. From this groundbreaking analysis, a city wide plan for Superblocks started emerging to repurpose and regenerate streets as public spaces and embracing a slower environment in the city - one that is no longer dictated by speed and growth, but driven by quality of life.

After the Gracia, Hostafrans and Les Corts projects between 2006 and 2014, the first Superblock using Tactical Urbanism was implemented in Poblenou in 2016 - a communication fiasco at the time, with implementation taking place just after the summer holidays and taking residents and motorists by surprise. Through an intensive participation process, neighbourhoods and businesses became active in

Fig. 1: Residential density relative to green spaces per inhabitant in Barcelona (prior to Superblock implementation)

the transformation of their neighbourhood. This took the form of street events organised by planners, ensuring a strong presence on the streets - as well as the creation of a community forum. Planners monitored the number of social events on the streets, which multiplied six times over in number after implementation - indicating that the removal of traffic supports more sociable streets as well as community cohesion.

After Poblenou followed San Antoni in 2020 and Consell de Cents’ green axis where construction started in 2022.

A Reconfiguration of Social Services

During our visit, we were lucky to meet Tonet Font, a professor of architecture at Barcelona Polytechnic University, who uncovered how the municipality’s integrated approach led to the redesign of public and social services.

A key challenge in Spain is the ageing population - Barcelona metropolitan area directly employs 4,000 workers who provide cleaning, care and social

services to people’s homes. Prior to the first Superblock’s ‘slower life’ approach, those workers would operate across the metropolitan area by ‘trip chaining’ which meant they would often require motor vehicles visiting multiple addresses on an ad-hoc basis.

With motor vehicle access being reduced by Superblocks, some concerns arose in parallel about those receiving those servicesparticularly elderly and disabled people. The solution was to shorten the distances travelled by social, cleaning and care workers by allocating them to a specific area, following the Superblocks plan. An office for those workers was provided as a base in each of those areas, allowing them to rest between shifts, and service users received fridge magnets with the photograph and details of their local workers. Not only did this ‘proximity of service’ approach meant more motivated workers who developed a relationship with their area and the persons they visit, increasing retention rate, but it also improved the service experience for users by reestablishing familiarity.

The Superblocks enabled a reflection beyond the physical to rethink service provision to ultimately improve quality of life. The superblocks approach is integral: it does not just redistribute space for wellbeing, health, amenity, and social life, the concept co-evolved with what restricting motor vehicles meant for the delivery of services.

In spite of this success, challenging car-normativity comes with great challenges.

Fig. 2: Superblock figure based on Poblenou Superblock

Figs. 3 & 4: Portions of the Poblenou Superblock remain temporary and tactical in nature (right), whilst others are becoming permanent facets of Barcelona’s urban fabric (left)

Challenges

Politicisation

On top of the ever-increasing attractiveness of using the Superblocks as a political wedge issue, a recent court case and a political decision in late 2023 from a Barcelona judge ruled that the Green Axis - a string of pedestrianised streets running east to west through the middle of Barcelona’s Eixample district along the Carrer del Consell de Cent - was in breach of law. According to the ruling, the city must reverse the changes made to a section of public street in the area and revert it to its original condition. The municipality of Barcelona is appealing the judgement, yet the claimant - the business and tourism lobbying group ‘Barcelona Oberta’ (Open Barcelona) - has no interest in seeing the costly scheme reversed. With this ruling, precedence may be set to challenge similar recent, permanent fixtures in other areas of Barcelona - meaning that many of Barcelona’s existing and planned public space reprioritisation programmes may never fully be

Gentrification

The Superblock programme’s focus on better mobility, air quality, and public spaces has not come without some unexpected externalities. Along the Green Axis, there has been a marked, measurable longterm increase in ground floor rents post-implementation of the reprioritisation measures in the area. It is thought that this may partially be attributed to gentrification of the area, which - like most of Barcelona outside of the main tourist destinations - caters to local businesses, shops, and services. To combat this, land use regulations have now been put in place to protect local shops and disincentive commerce that caters solely to higher earners and tourists from pushing out local businesses. In such an effort, no new high-end restaurants or bars are allowed along the Carrer del Consell de Cent’s Green Axis.

Political Tide

In May 2023, Ada ColauBarcelona’s mayor since February 2015 - lost in the

local elections and marked a potential turning point for the Superblock programme. Led by a new mayor, it is evident that the new administration has not prioritised the further implementation of additional planned Superblock measures - a huge missed opportunity to build on the success of the first three schemes. However, even despite recent political changes, the Superblocks have proved to be quite popular with Barcelona residents. For example, the success of the original Poblenou Superblock has spurred three additional Superblock projects in the area, proposed by its resident forum. While at risk due to the current political climate within the city, the appetite for additional interventions in the area proves that Superblocks are attractive to residents once the true benefits of the schemes are given time to flourish.

With transformative projects like Barcelona’s Superblocks, it has proven critical for city and community leaders to communicate both the short and long-term potential for such schemes. For example, a vehicle

Fig. 5 : A Barcelona resident takes a lunchtime stroll in pedestrianised square along the Consell de Cent Green Axis

Fig. 6: Consell de Cent area residents and visitors enjoy a permanent space made possible by the Superblock programme

traffic study on the Sant Antoni superblock found that the number of vehicles increased by 20% after a year before then reducing by 40% after two years.

Communicating such longterm impacts, however, is half the battle. According to Xavier Matilla - Chief Architect for Barcelona between 20192023 - a comprehensive communication strategy was paramount to effectively selling the benefits of the Superblocks. Rather than simply relying on people to find their way to a website or gather short pieces of information from a flyer, events were put on within Superblocks as they emerged that aimed to engage residents directly. This was important to combat ‘fake news’ around topics like the impact of the schemes on Barcelona’s renowned architecture and long-term increases in vehicle traffic in areas outside of the Superblocks.

While the long-term benefits of Superblock schemes are now

better understood, some dayto-day aspects - like a lack of traffic enforcement - impact the overall effectiveness of the projects. With the new, more risk-adverse administration in place, there is little political appetite for traffic enforcement in the Superblocks. In the Consell de Cent scheme, it was evident that cars, taxis and servicing vehicles passing straight through the pedestrianised square felt little consequence in deviating from the established vehicle routes within the area.

Learning from Barcelona / Conclusion

These issues are not unique to Barcelona, however, and can be seen in the UK’s own interventions and attempts at reprioritising public space. For example, Low-Traffic Neighbourhoods (LTNs) - similar in function but smaller in scale to Barcelona’s Superblocks - have become entrenched in controversy. Although the idea of an LTN is not new and has historically gone by many

different names (modal / traffic filters, etc.), its contemporary iteration has become a target for misinformation and political strife. In the same way many of the transformative Superblock projects have hit a political roadblock, public space reprioritisation schemes in the UK and their long-term benefits are now in danger of reactionary targets of rogue actors looking to score easy political points.

Barcelona shows that even with the best plans for urbanism and the proven outcomes that point to such interventions’ success - the most reformative and beneficial projects can come to a halt based on misconceptions, absence of political will or buy in, and the ever-increasing focus on culture wars rather than foundational, transformative policy.

Benton Meador is a Graduate Transport Planner at RPS and Young Urbanist.

Julie Plichon is Head of Design and Engineering at Sustrans and a Young Urbanist.

Figs. 7 & 8: Residents and visitors in Sant Antoni enjoy temporary placemaking measures - the type of which may be at risk due to a change in political climate within Barcelona

EcoResponsive Environments: A framework for settlement design Book review

Published almost 40 years ago, the original Responsive Environments was published to much acclaim. At the time, the book was launched as a response to a growing rejection of post war town centre reconstruction alongside inner city clearances for roads and housing estates. This new volume titled EcoResponsive Environments once again is a response, but in this instance, to the growing issues of environmental degradation and human wellbeing. As such, a new frame of reference is distilled, designed to “create places that are better not only for the people who use them but also the health of the natural systems on which they rely”.

The book is a highly practical, well researched and excellently illustrated manual for those involved in a wide array of urban renewal activities. The attention paid to graphics, images and case study material is worth a special mention and supports the reader throughout the book.

Initially scene setting in nature we are told about the great acceleration – since approximately the 1950s the planetary scale process of change, driven by human

actions which in turn mark our new Anthropocene age.

EcoResponsive Design is then defined as sitting within a social

foundation and an ecological ceiling. The parallels to Kate Raworth’s Doughnut Economics is clear and provides a useful link to one of the most current

and thoughtful approaches being slowly adopted into policy thinking on an international scale.

EcoResponsive Environments takes the reader through their new framework, initially focussing on large scale and narrowing down. The settlement scale is first examined at an international level, with the importance of ecosystem services outlined.

Moving on, the next chapter drops down a level to link in public space. In this chapter the public space network alongside travel modes are discussed. In some instances there are upward of six images or photos on a page to help prove a point – supporting comprehension. The well-respected Space Syntax theory features, alongside discussions on walkability and the importance of landmarks and city legibility.

Next, the plot system inclusive of street patterns, density demand, value, common facilities and other key topics support a fine grain and varied approach to urban design which reflects current thinking around complexity and human interest.

The building level is then integrated into the plot system. Within another well illustrated chapter different typologies are outlined from various global cities – Tokyo (Japan), Rotterdam (Netherlands), Blopur (India). The reader is walked through a series of technical steps to manage climate, environmental, social and legibility constraints.

The penultimate chapter then tunes the framework for atmosphere. This means taking earlier chapters

design decisions and layering materiality considerations to support wellbeing in public spaces.

The book concludes by bringing together the preceding chapters into the EcoResponsive Design framework a ‘new way of practising’. The need to think through multiple scales and break out of silos is well made. Finally, concluding that the practicality of the approach has been proven out through international design competitions, however, given the challenges we face are highly dynamic, the book finishes with a call to action that “we must never stop using eco-responsive ideas to develop new responses. The design parameters proposed are intended as a springboard for creativity”.

Harry Knibb is an Academician and Board Director at the AoU. He is a Development Director at Oxford Properties and sits on the Here & Now editorial board.

EcoResponsive Environments is authored by Ian Bentley, Soham De, Sue McGlynn and Prachi Rampuria and is available for £26.39 from Routledge.

Two Faced Reflection: Transition Urban philosophy

Guest philosopher Harrison Brewer takes a glance backward and forward in this philosophical fascination. Asking the Ancient Romans how they understood time, change, and reflection, he calls upon two Ancient celebrities to help decipher what lies in wait for the next 25 years of the Urban Taskforce Report.

Milestones are moments of reflection, a time to take stock of what’s happened and plan for what’s to come. Twenty-five years after the publication of the Urban Taskforce Report, the world is equally familiar and foreign. Technological revolutions have changed how we communicate with one another and with ourselves through the advent of ICT, mobile phones, augmented or virtual reality, social media, and the attention economy. Global financial crises, a rise in nationalism and populism, a worldwide pandemic, growing social and economic inequality, and a steady march towards ecological tipping points have changed the playing field in ways we both did and did not predict.

And yet, the present may not feel so alien to the time when the report was published. A newly elected Labour government replaces a legacy of Conservative leadership. Planning, development, and urban policy have taken centre-stage in a new urban renaissance. Once again, we are talking about the importance of place and as a result, at least

amongst built environment professionals, an air of hope, renewal, and support is beginning to crystallise.

The articles within this issue have given a fascinating insight into the inner workings of the Urban Taskforce. As with any project, its owners have misgivings over how some recommendations have played out in the long term but for each frustration, the report helped to change the form and nature of our cities for the better. Reflection is always tinged with good and bad, positive and negative. Most importantly, it’s frozen - we reflect from a specific place in time and space with our hopes and desires fuelling how we perceive the past.

The Ancients were very familiar with the idea of beginnings and endings. The Ancient Romans even deified transition through the god Janus, a (literally) two-

faced deity who resides at the ‘threshold of earth and the extremity of heaven’. The Latin name translates into ‘door’ or ‘threshold’ symbolising Janus as the embodiment of boundaries, transition, and the fleeting moment of moving between the past and present. To the Ancient Romans, beginnings and endings symbolised motion, the passage of time, and the line between mortality and immortality. Transition was not feared and through Janus, it was even deified.

Twenty-five years on, we might feel as if we are crossing a threshold. Martin Crookston’s fascinating insight into the working of the Urban Taskforce highlights that the report reflected the zeitgeist in urban design and policy at the time - the wave of New Urbanism and New Labour created real change in how development was delivered - it became denser, more mixed-use, and

design played a larger role in how homes and communities were built across the country. However, Martin’s look backward ends with an overriding sense of ‘being here before’. We are still deep in the housing crisis, facing new manifestations of the same problems of access, affordability, economic development, and inequality in our towns and cities. We know more than we did then about the nature and scale of the climate emergency and yet, we are transitioning at a frustratingly slow pace.

This struggle is reminiscent of a story that the Romans would have been familiar with - that of Sisyphus, an ancient king sentenced to roll a boulder up a hill only for it to roll back down again. Sisyphus’ eternal punishment has been seen as an allegory for human progress, the pursuit of happiness, and the absurdity of existence. Albert Camus famously concluded ‘one must think Sisyphus happy’, believing that the struggle itself is where satisfaction from life comes, despite the absurdity of doing a pointless task. Sisyphus, much like Janus, has many interpretations and associations but represents a similar concept - that of change, constancy, and how humans respond to the ever-swinging pendulum of time.

The Urban Taskforce Report is most definitely not a Sisyphean task but the difficulty of implementing change in a complex, multi-faceted system can feel absurd. Returning to the god Janus, at this point of change and motion, we need to look forward as well as look backward. We understand the

principles and the policies for change but I think what we are missing is action from both ends of the political spectrum - generating both bottom-up and top-down change. Looking forward, the next chapter of urban renaissance needs to tell an old story in a new way. Perhaps the question we need to ask going forward is not ‘what’ or ‘why’ but ‘how’ we are implementing change. Enabling rather than dictating, involving rather than telling, creating rather than awaiting.

As Sisyphus needed to evolve from a king tortured with an eternal punishment into Camus’ grimly grinning testament to ‘the struggle’, professionals such as ourselves need to reorient our practice towards that ‘how’ as much as that ‘why’. The twofaced Janus would approve, understanding the need for two perspectives, the continuous beginnings and endings that constitute his entire being - perpetual motion. Harrison Brewer is an AoU Young Urbanist, sits on the Here & Now Editorial Team, and a Planner at Arup.

Imagery: Lead - Franz Von Stuck’s Sisyphus; previous page - Janus, Marble, Roman, 1st c. CE; this page - Barrett Ward on Unsplash;

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.