Ana Gallego unpacks the concept of healthy urbanism.
Ebbsfleet: Delivering a Healthy Garden City for the 21st Century
Kevin McGeough offers a UK perspective on acheiving healthy urbanism through New Towns.
Project Climate Playground
For those who missed him at Congress, Cedric Ryckaert dives into the Klimaatspeelplaats story.
Healthy Urban Living: Lessons from Utrecht Congress
AoU Directors reflect on lessons learnt from this year’s Congress, concluding on six pointers for other urban centres.
Biking Brussels to Ghent
Johanna Gewolker and Ben Meador recap another successful Young Urbanist Cycle Trip.
MyPlace
Contributors reflect on the significant places in their lives
ArtPlace
Artworks inspired by the built environment
Member Spotlight
From Belgrade to Barnsley, AoU Photographer-in-Residence
David Kennedy looks back on the journey that made a public policy student into an urbanist.
Book Review
Harry Knibb reviews How to Thrive in the Planning Jungle.
Urban Idiocy
In a rare first, the Urban Idiot finds minimal gripe within the pages of Thomas Sharp’s Town Planning.
Urban Philosophy
Resident philosopher Andreas Markides ponders the myth of Pandora’s Box and likens it to a 21st century predicament.
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What a glorious Congress we have had in Utrecht, in June. Expertly organised by the Steering Committee of Shane Quinn (curator), Christine Smallwood and Connie Dales (AoU Exec) with colleagues from the City of Utrecht, and supported on the day by a small group of YU Volunteers (Caitlin Arbuckle-MacLeod, Ross Irvine, Isabela Martinez, Kathie Pollard and Ashley Van Huis) the whole 3 days were full of learning, new experiences and making friendships. There were close to 150 attendees and their feedback included comments such as ‘Great experience combining tours and talks’, ‘Fab event. Right mix of really interesting speakers and brilliant study tours’ and ‘organisers did an amazing job putting together this programme’.
The host city of Utrecht almost chose itself, not only because of its long history with the Academy (in 2016 it hosted the Academy’s symposium on Places of Connection, was a finalist in the 2020 Urbanism Awards) but also because Utrecht is widely considered an exemplar for living and sustainable development. We are grateful to the city of Utrecht for its warm welcome and support; particular thanks to Kees Verschoor, Erlijn Mulder and their team who did so much ahead of and during Congress to ensure that the whole event ran seamlessly.
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Congress was also the launchpad of the Academy’s 20th year anniversary celebrations. There is a whole range of events planned till the end of the year to celebrate this (dare I say) historic moment. A series of Walking Tours has been organised in different cities, in addition to the 20th anniversary party which is planned for mid-November. I would like to take this opportunity to offer my gratitude to all those who had the vision and energy to launch the Academy and to thank in particular the chairs that came before me (Jas Atwal, Andrew Burrell, Tony Reddy, David Rudlin, Kevin Murray, Steven Bee and of course its founder John Thompson).
The Academy is a precious initiative that has enriched our lives!
Andreas Markides AoU Chair
Editorial team
Harrison Brewer
Connie Dales (AoU Exec)
Harry Knibb
Leyla Moy
David Rudlin
To join the editorial team or contribute an article to the Here & Now Journal, contact journal@theaou.org
Template design
Richard Wolfstrome
For all other enquiries, including sponsorship, contact Connie Dales at cdales@ theaou.org
Editorial
The Summer issue of Here & Now takes a deep dive into the world of healthy urbanism. Building on the conversation started at the Academy of Urbanism’s Congress in Utrecht, Here & Now explores the theory and practice of healthy urbanism with a series of in-depth articles from Congress’ speakers as well as contributors from the field.
Our issue begins with Ana Gallego unpacking the concept of Healthy Urbanism before Kevin McGeough and Cedric Ryckaert show how it can work in the UK and Europe. Shane Quinn and fellow Directors offer some lessons from Congress, while the Architecture of Exchanges cohort look at links between people, place, and planet.
In the spirit of healthy urbanism, the Young Urbanists embarked on another fantastic cycle trip from Brussels to Ghent - Johanna Gewolker and Ben Meador have shared a report brimming with insights and images for you to peruse.
Throwing to the wider community, this issue features two ArtPlace and two MyPlace features, and Photographer-in-Residence David Kennedy takes the mic for this season’s Member Spotlight
Finally, our resident philosopher Andreas Markides re-examines the Pandora myth, the Urban Idiot returns with some reading recommendations, and Harry Knibb reviews How to Thrive in the Planning Jungle.
As always, if you were inspired to respond to what you read or wanted to submit an idea of your own, please get in touch with Here & Now at journal@theaou.org
We hope you enjoy!
Yours,
The editorial team
The Academy in Action
The spring and summer have been jam packed at the AoU, with a programme defined in large part by Congress in Utrecht, the inspiration for this issue of Here & Now, and the Summer of Walking, which has replaced the usual programme of Urbanism Awards visits for this year.
June also saw two ‘firsts’ with the inaugural meeting of the AoU Book Club in Glasgow, and an Evening of Urbanism in Dubai in partnership with the RIBA Gulf chapter. July played host to the 7th annual Young Urbanist Cycle Trip, this time exploring Brussels and Ghent, and of course the AoU Members’ Summer Party up on our rooftop in Farringdon.
As our 20th anniversary year builds momentum, there’s lots to be excited about this autumn, from the return of the online Urbanism Hour series to the Anniversary Party in November.
Coming up at the AoU:
• Making Connections lecture with Spencer de Grey
Tuesday 23 September, Foster + Partners campus
Tickets at theaou.org/fosters-lecture
• The Urbanism Hour: The Social Impacts of Large Scale Regenerations Across London
Friday 26 September, online Tickets at theaou.org/UH-Sept25
• Save the Date: AoU 20th Anniversary Party
Thursday 13 November, London
Tickets to be released
If you have ideas, news, or want to find out more about getting involved, contact Connie Dales at cdales@theaou.org
On Healthy Cities
After attending AoU Congress in Utrecht where she spoke on ‘imagining a healthy future’, researcher Ana Gallego unpacks the concept of healthy urbanism.
The right to health is one of the few universal ideas that admits no opposition. No one would argue against another person’s right to enjoy good health. And yet it’s worth pausing on that word: enjoy. It doesn’t speak only to the absence of disease; it speaks to delight, to well-being, to a fullness that is experienced and shared. Health, understood this way, is not a medical condition; it is a lived quality.
Cities are the stage where that quality either flourishes or withers. Just as physics speaks of heat transfer, there is also a health transfer: a constant flow between the urban environment and the bodies and entities that inhabit and animate it. It is impossible to imagine a healthy society (and, by extension, a happy one) without a city that acts as an infrastructure of care.
Even so, much of the conversation on urban health remains trapped in technical language: data, metrics, indexes, percentages. A language that is valuable for modelling but insufficient to mobilize and cross barriers. What matters now is not only what we measure, but how we interpret and communicate those results, and whom we make them understandable to, whom we include in the conversation. From here a necessary reframing emerges: measurement matters, but measurement is not enough. Urban health is not only a result to be reported; it is an experience produced every day. This means moving from KPIs to conditions of possibility; from outputs to lived consequences; from isolated projects to real coherence between human health and planetary health. Decarbonizing, cooling the city, and restoring biodiversity are not parallel agendas: they are health policy.
However, when the vocabulary of the city (and even more so, of the healthy city) is accessible only to those who design it, the debate narrows and withers. Deep transformations are not sustained by spreadsheets alone, but by tangible consequences operating at different scales. A street that invites you to walk is also one that strengthens lungs and hearts. A group of trees that builds a landscape of aromas reconciling body and environment is, at the same time, one that captures carbon and tempers heat. A shaded plaza is, at once, a stage where strangers become neighbours, and neighbours become a community. These are not side benefits; they are the sensory and relational infrastructure of a caring city.
Still, an imaginative lag persists. We share a common horizon: healthy, resilient cities interlinked with the planet’s health, but we struggle to agree on the paths. Part of the blockage lies in tried-and-tested strategies that feel ‘old hat’, while innovative ones have yet to find space in the collective imagination. That is why small-scale interventions, prototypes, temporary actions, are powerful: they turn abstract aspirations into visible, participatory experiences. They are open laboratories where residents rehearse the future they want to inhabit.
In this frame, health is neither a political battleground nor a privilege segmented by class or culture. It is an intersectional common good, verifiable and shared. A healthy city is, by definition, a just city: it redistributes access to spaces that foster physical, emotional, and social well-being. And in doing so, it expands our collective capacity to sustain dignified lives on a planet that also needs healing.
The clearest takeaway from this year’s AoU Congress, focused on Healthy Cities, was simple: health is not up for debate. Prototype, measure what matters, communicate with sensitivity, care, and repeat. If it’s enjoyed, it works. And if it works, it stays.
“If it’s enjoyed, it works. And if it works, it stays.”
Ana Gallego is an urbanist, researcher, and urban policy advisor who leverages data-driven strategies and urban innovation to help create healthier, more inclusive, climate-resilient cities, with a focus on urban governance and collective well-being.
Pictured: Oudegracht, Utrecht - photo by Isabela Martinez
Ebbsfleet: Delivering a Healthy Garden City for the 21st Century
Kevin McGeough offers a UK perspective on acheiving healthy urbanism through New Towns.
With a further generation of New Towns soon to be announced by the Government, it is vital that future plans evolve from the lessons from approaches taken in delivering previous new towns and garden cities, to inform and shape our future ambitions.
The UK has a proud and successful legacy of new town-scale placemaking; New Lanark, Saltaire, Bath and Edinburgh New Town, are all recognised as UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Together with the Garden City Movement exemplified through Letchworth, and the post-war New Towns such as Milton Keynes, UK Urbanists have had a significant and positive impact on town planning, nationally and internationally.
Past developments were often guided by a fundamental aim: to foster better health outcomes and a higher quality of life for their residents. Ebenezer Howard recognised the strong links between planning, spatial design and public health, promoting garden cities as a way of combining the economic and social benefits of the town, with the environmental and health benefits of the countryside.
In his role as Minister for Health and Housing, Aneurin Bevan announced The New Towns Act in 1946, recognising – prior to founding the NHS, the vital role new towns could play in easing pressure on post-war cities and providing better housing and living conditions. Today, over 2.8 million residents live in the 32 designated new towns shaped by that vision.
Ebbsfleet is one of the largest of the garden communities to be announced by the Government in 2015 and is being facilitated through Ebbsfleet Development Corporation (EDC). EDC is responsible for facilitating the delivery of up to 15,000 new homes and many thousands of new jobs. Ebbsfleet will see the regeneration of 300 hectares of brownfield land in the former chalk quarries of North Kent into a vibrant and healthy new community.
Ebbsfleet is also the largest of the NHS England, Healthy New Town pilot locations in England, serving as a key location for testing innovative approaches to health focused urban planning. Through this programme, EDC has collaborated with NHS England, Kent and Medway Integrated Care Board (ICB), Kent County Council (KCC), national housebuilders and residents to rediscover the vital links between the design of new places and the future health of the people who will live there.
The Ebbsfleet Healthy New Town approach is driven by a commitment to putting residents in control of their own health, fostering opportunities for an active and vibrant lifestyle, and enabling healthier life choices to support improved health outcomes. The programme
takes a three-pronged approach focusing on Hardware (the design for the built environment), Software (services to support healthier lives) and Heartware (opportunities for social connectedness).
In developing the Hardware, EDC have reinterpreted ‘Garden City Principles’, promoting a series of 8 master-planned walkable neighbourhoods, connected by a Fastrack electric bus system. EDC developed ‘Ebbsfleet Healthy Place Principles’, which have evolved nationally into the Building for a Healthy Life standard. EDC in collaboration with NHS and Landscape Institute ran an international Landscape Design Challenge to stimulate ideas of integrating health into landscape. Output from the competition has set the future ambition for a network of seven City Parks which will make up 44% of the developable area, demonstrating the central role of green infrastructure in health-led design.
In partnership with the NHS and Kent and Medway ICB, EDC we are embedding wellbeing into the ‘software’ of Ebbsfleet, not just its physical infrastructure. A new model of local health and social care is being tested, focused on prevention, social prescribing and community wellbeing.
Where EDC is arguably having the greatest success is in supporting the ‘heartware’ of the community. Ebbsfleet is rapidly emerging as a vibrant and thriving place to live. Annual resident surveys reveal satisfaction levels 20% higher than the national average, reflecting a strong sense of community, a genuine ability for residents to influence local decisions, and high participation in neighbourhood events. A Community Board steers the delivery of places to go and things to
do, supporting social cohesion and identity. The Ebbsfleet Garden City Trust has been established as an independent, resident-led stewardship organisation to ensure the long-term legacy of a community shaped and maintained by those who live there.
The foundations of a healthy and sustainable community have been established; time will tell how this healthy approach to urbanism results in improved quality of life for our residents.
Kevin McGeough is Head of Strategy and Placemaking for Ebbsfleet Development Corporation, and acted as the Director of the Healthy New Town Programme for the Garden City.
Imagery: Header illustration - Bradley Murphy Landscape Architects; all imagery courtesy of Ebbsfleet Development Corporation
Project Climate Playground
For those who missed him at Congress, Cedric Ryckaert dives into the Klimaatspeelplaats story
From Grey to Green
Five years ago, the school ground at Sint-Paulus school in Kortrijk looked as grey and drab as so many other playgrounds in Flanders and around the world. Only the railway embankment next to the school was green. Play equipment was brought in according to weather conditions, but it could never work for everyone. I was teaching first grade then, not for long as I’m a lateral entrant with a background in youth work. There, play is incredibly important. It’s the solution to many problems including bullying and teasing. Yet in most schools, play is pushed to the margins.
Green Plans
The plan could have led to a playground filled with sports equipment but we took four years to develop a strong plan. We involved students, parents, teachers and local residents in the planning which was crucial. We visited good examples at home and abroad and conducted our own research on air quality and soil pollution. After visiting Berlin’s green schoolyards, we returned with a clear vision of what our playground should look like. We discovered that, like the buildings, the entire sewage system had been expanded over the years without proper drainage or sizing. This made the decision to tackle the school ground much easier – everything would be addressed at once. Professional support came from landscape architects Studio Basta and Fris in het landschap, whose detailed and bold plans helped convince others and secure grants.
Vision on Play
What we first developed was a strong vision of play – the foundation of a strong school ground. We wanted to give space for every kind of play,
ensure every child could participate, and make play both adventurous and safe. Within this framework, we designed our playground. Now we see that breaks lead to enormously varied play. On our old playground we saw about 5 play types (mainly ball games), but now we notice 20 to 30 different types of play. This naturally leads to less boredom and has resulted in a huge reduction in conflicts. Children play outdoors for about 2 hours a day on our grounds – around 3,000 hours total during their school career. This is huge!
Rainwater is Useful Water
What changed underground isn’t visible today yet it’s an important part of the school ground. Roof drains have been disconnected from the sewage system. Today, rainwater is buffered and reused for sanitary purposes through a collection capacity of 150,000 litres, including a water playground that children enjoy in summer. What can’t be buffered infiltrates into planted areas, making the school ground a giant sponge for water.
Notably, paving never meets the classroom walls overlooking the playground. There’s always a green edge between the wall and playground so children have a green view when looking outside. Greenery brings calm, enhances concentration, and helps children stay focused during lessons. The green spaces, accounting for at least 60 percent of the play area, are scattered throughout as islands. Sometimes they divide spaces, other times they serve as backgrounds for seating or play equipment, and sometimes they hide tunnels and even a secret cave.
Additional Learning Opportunities
Teachers have gained extra educational
opportunities with the climate playground. We no longer had to go to the park or forest to talk about blooms or autumn colours. The playground provides constant and varied learning opportunities. Even the water cycle is part of it. Projects are regularly set up, even for toddlers and first graders. Children have surveyed what animals live on their playground and attended bird counting weekends. The herb fields enable learning with plant apps, while a rooftop weather station and wildlife cameras in bird boxes allow children to see nature at play. The vegetable garden is also very popular and children are actively involved in growing plants and healthy food.
In a separate area near the softened and waterpermeable teachers’ car park, there’s even a chicken coop and beehives. Sixth graders manage the chickens, using them for engaging maths lessons—weighing feed and creating statistics against egg collection. Children also participate in beekeeping with child-sized suits, learning how important bees are for plant life and food production. The honey is sold as school honey during events.
Green Future
The effect on pupils is striking: children are more respectful of nature and the environment, and school life has improved. We believe what they learn and experience here will stay with them throughout their lives. Organizations worldwide are working toward this goal. If we want our children to care for their environment, they need to learn to know and understand it. Where better to do that than on a green school ground?
Cedric Ryckaert is a teacher at Sint-Paulusschool Kortrijk in Belgium, who first piloted the climate playground and now spreads the word about the scheme and its role in creating healthy cities for young people. The article was originally written by Cedric Ryckaert and Marc Verachtert and has been updated for inclusion in this issue.
Imagery: All photography courtesy of Cedric Ryckaert
Healthy Urban Living: Lessons from Utrecht Congress
Congress Curator Shane Quinn and fellow AoU Directors reflect on lessons learnt from this year’s Congress on ‘Healthy Urban Living’ in Utrecht, concluding on six pointers for other urban centres.
Walk the canal edge in Utrecht and you see the city’s argument made flesh. Cyclists of every age glide past with ease. Parents pause to talk while a boat slips by on water that, not long ago, was covered by tarmac. A few kilometres away, RAUM in Leidsche Rijn, once a temporary experiment in civic programming, now thrives as a permanent cultural venue. The impression is of a city that feels lived-in, confident and quietly assured.
That sense of assurance was the backdrop to the Academy of Urbanism’s 2025 Congress between June 11th and 13th 2025. Delegates arrived in Utrecht anticipating Dutch lessons in infrastructure and planning. They left with something both subtler and more demanding: the recognition that “Healthy Urban Living” is
less about a set of projects and more a posture. It is the way a city tells its story, how it makes decisions and how it shapes daily life.
Since 2019, Utrecht has pursued a city-wide policy of “health in all policies,” now woven into its 2040 vision. Congress showed what this means in practice. Healthy urban living is not about medicine or metrics but the choreography of everyday life. It is about how people move, meet and belong. “Utrecht has reinvented the concept of the city,” observed Esther Agricola, Board Member of the Development Network Utrecht (DNU).
Congress in Utrecht offered six lessons in this civic confidence.
1. Health is Everyday Life
For Utrecht, health is not confined to hospitals or statistics. It is about creating conditions where people naturally choose healthier ways of living.
The Catharijnesingel canal, filled in for a motorway in the 1970s, was restored in stages completed in 2015 and 2020. The ecological benefits are clear, with cleaner water, fresher air and richer biodiversity. But the social benefits are equally striking. People now walk, cycle, and gather along the canal. Goods are moved by barge instead of lorries. Cycling accounts for more than half of short trips across the city. Here, health is built into daily routines.
Dr Mariëlle Beenackers, Assistant Professor at Erasmus MC, Rotterdam, reframed health as being co-produced with people. As Beenackers summarised, “If you want to change something in a neighbourhood, you have to talk to people anyway.” More broadly, this means streets, schools, and squares become preventive infrastructure.
Other speakers at Congress reinforced this. Cedric Ryckaert, a teacher and Project Lead at the Klimaatspeelplats in Kortrijk, Belgium, showed how children can “learn with, from, and for nature” by redesigning school playgrounds to enable daily environmental learning. Eelco Eerenberg, Utrecht’s Deputy Mayor for Spatial Development, Education, and Public Health reminded us that “Good urbanism focuses on places. Great urbanism focuses on people.”
2. From Attrition to Alignment
Partnership in UK and Irish urbanism can feel like trench warfare, with each side defending
its ground. Utrecht’s collaboration shows a different approach. Rooted in the Dutch culture of polderen, it is about aligning around shared purpose.
The Utrecht Development Network (DNU) demonstrates this in action. Municipal leaders, developers, universities, and housing associations work together not to trade demands but to agree outcomes and delivery pipelines. Because the city administration is responsive and trusted, people know that social perspectives are woven into decisions. It means that alignment in Utrecht rests on three elements: clear purpose, predictable frameworks, and relationship capital. The regeneration of Overvecht illustrates this collective mindset, with public, private, and civic actors sharing responsibility for neighbourhood health. At RAUM, collaboration between artists, citizens, and institutions has created a community-led venue that is both local and nationally significant.
Congress speakers showed how this lesson can travel. Kevin McGeough, Head of Strategy and Placemaking at Ebbsfleet Development Corporation, described how NHS partners are integral to England’s first new garden city in a century. Vienna’s circular economy policy demonstrates multiple sectors coming together on regenerative goals. As Agricola reflected: “A collaborative culture is the art of knowing what kind of city you want to be.”
Congress cycle tour through Leidsche Rijn
Workshops at Congress 2025 in Utrecht
3. Small Wins, Long Horizons
Utrecht’s coherence is the result of patient, connected decisions sustained over time.
The city’s urbanism does not rest on the silver bullet or the revolutionary spectacle. Its countless examples of human-scale, connected urbanism are, instead, the definition of patient placemaking that eschews electoral cycles. National frameworks such as VINEX and NOVEX set a long horizon. But, the Utrecht Barcode tool translates shared values into evidence, guiding where housing and infrastructure should go to create neighbourhoods that work for people. Leidsche Rijn is a vivid example, where a community of 30,000 homes has developed over three decades, anchored by transit and social infrastructure.
At Congress, Jan Vapaavouri, Mayor of Helsinki between 2017 and 2021, underlined the point: “The world is full of visions, but they have a short lifespan without clear delivery leadership.” Time without leadership drifts. Leadership without time is a sugar rush. Utrecht demonstrates that cities need both patience and the ability to deliver consistently against a vision.
4. Inclusion by Design
Healthy living must be available to everyone, not just those who can pay for it. Utrecht has worked to make inclusion part of its system.
One-third of new homes are required to be affordable, and are offered first to housing associations before reaching the market. The city has also rebalanced space to favour walking and cycling while recognising that cars still play a role. Affordability challenges remain, but the system is structured to protect and encourage diversity rather than hope for it.
International perspectives at Congress came especially from the north. Copenhagen’s andelsbolig co-operatives, about a third of the city’s housing, show how housing ownership forms can secure affordability. In Helsinki, housing policy is tied to cultural and education strategies, treating diversity as a strength to plan for.
As McGeough reminded us, “Leadership has to come from the people involved.” Inclusion is not a side effect but a choice embedded in policy and governance.
5. Tools + Tech, Humans First
Innovation is vital, but innovation should serve people.
Utrecht’s Barcode tool reflects this balance. Its value lies not in being “smart” but in focusing on neighbourhoods that are centred around people. It translates shared priorities into predictable decisions about housing, mobility, and amenities. Congress speakers echoed the theme. Karin Huber-Heim, the City of Vienna Endowed Professor of the Circular Economy argued for a regenerative lens: cities should design systems that repair as they grow. Matthew Burnett, Founder of Make Room and Ana Gallego, Lead Urban Researcher at the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia, showed how digital platforms can help deliver housing and public spaces faster and more fairly, but only if guided by human-centred design.
Even in Utrecht, innovation is grounded in culture. RAUM is a civic laboratory, using festivals
L-R: Ana Gallego, Matthew Burnett, Richard Nordier
Wisselspoor, Utrecht
and co-design to root change in relationships. As Donica Buisman of RAUM put it, “Relationships and connections are what make places.”
6. Dress Like Yourself
Perhaps the most striking lesson from Utrecht is its civic confidence. It does not aspire to be anywhere else. It dresses in its own clothes.
That confidence shapes everything the city does. “Healthy Urban Living” is no carbon copy of another city’s approach, nor are the actions the city has taken mere replication from elsewhere. Utrecht is focused on using its assets to meet the everyday needs of its people in ways that encourage healthy choices: this policy approach is wholly about Utrecht’s vision of itself. Cars are not banned, but walking and cycling are made more attractive, safer, and joyful. The healthier option becomes the natural default.
Carolyn Steel, author of ‘Sitopia: How Food Can Save The World’, offered food as another lens for places and their identity. “If you value food, it is the single most powerful thing we can do to improve our places.” Her point is that food is culture, belonging, and identity. It can reshape our cities as effectively as any masterplan.
Confidence like that displayed by Utrecht shapes personal identity and our connection to place, too. At Congress, Donica Buisman invited delegates to close their eyes and picture their favourite public space, a reminder that places live through relationships rather than branding strategies.
In the closing session of Congress, Kathie Pollard, a Young Urbanist, used disarming simplicity to summarise the lesson we really need to take
away from Utrecht: have “Dutch courage.” For urbanists and placemakers, that must mean developing practice that encourages the places in which we’re working to be themselves.
The Courage to Begin
Congress in Utrecht showed that healthy urban living is about more than individual projects. It is about posture and civic confidence.
For urbanists and placemakers outside Utrecht, the challenge is not to copy what the city is doing but to ask whether our own cities can act with the same clarity and imagination. The lesson is courage: courage to align, to build patiently, to embed inclusion, to innovate responsibly, and to carry ourselves with confidence.
Healthy urban living is not a Dutch trick. It is a way of life that any city, if brave enough, can choose.
Shane Quinn is Congress Curator and a Board Director at the AoU. He is based in Northern Ireland where he is Development Director at Belfast Buildings Trust.
Andreas Markides is the current Chair of the AoU and Chairman of Markides Associates.
Heather Claridge is a Board Director at the AoU and Strategic Spatial Planning Group Manager for Glasgow City Region.
Siddiqa Islam is a Board Director at the AoU and a director of major built environment projects, with a background in local authority
Architecture of Exchanges: Revealing the Regenerative Links between People, Places and Planet
Together Dr May East, Heather Claridge, Chris Stewart, Sarah Shaw, Ben Wilson, Gina Colley, Alan Hendry, and Prof Brian Evans urge us to design cities as if relationships were the infrastructure – because they are.
Urban planning has historically centred the ablebodied, working-age man as the ‘neutral’ urban user. This framing – implicit in zoning codes, transport systems, and public space design – has produced cities better suited to men than to women, girls, older people, people of all abilities, and diverse gender and ethnic identities. Though entrenched, this bias is not immutable.
Concepts such as gender-sensitive placemaking, feminist urbanism, and the gendered city are not passing trends but vital critiques of the lingering command-and-control legacy of postwar reconstruction and regulatory approaches to the built environment. Yet, addressing this historic imbalance requires more than replacing
one dominant perspective with another. Feminist planning widens the circle of care while challenging the myth of neutrality. It recognizes that human well-being is inseparable from planetary health, seeking interventions that enable everyone to thrive. Health, seen through this lens, is not merely the absence of illness but the vitality that arises from thriving relationships – between people, communities, places, and the ecosystems that sustain us.
Dialogue as Design Practice Between Women and Men
Against this backdrop, the Architecture of Exchanges cohort set out to explore how deep dialogue and collective design can support
greener, more inclusive, healthier, and more poetic places to live.
Between March and May 2025, five structured workshops were held in Glasgow – self-declared as the UK’s first ‘Feminist City’. Each brought together panels of women and men from the public, private, and not-for-profit sectors, alongside UN representatives, contributing extensive expertise in the interdisciplinary nature of design.
Facilitation alternated between a woman and a man, with each workshop focusing on a specific theme: sense of place, active travel, green spaces, or safety. The dialogues, rooted in Glasgow’s bio-cultural-spatial uniqueness, rejected universal ‘solutions’ in favour of context-sensitive approaches, recognising that regenerative trends emerge differently in each place.
Four Gender-Sensitive Design Principles towards Healthier Cities
What emerged was not a fixed blueprint but a living, evolving framework shaped by deep listening, storytelling, and the humility of unlearning.
1. Safety as Prerequisite, Not Privilege
Safety is not only a technological fix or policing issue but a relational and spatial condition. Design measures such as well-lit paths, clear sightlines, and welcoming public spaces encourage presence over surveillance. Cultivating safety through belonging is foundational to health: without it, women and girls in particular restrict movement, withdraw from public life, and face isolation. Safety, when designed in, enables physical activity, social connection, and mental wellbeing – making it as much a public health intervention as an urban one.
2. Community-Centred and Playful Urbanism
We design for what we prioritise. Urban design must place joy, care, and intergenerational connection at its centre. Invisible care labour –disproportionately carried by women – should be redistributed and recognised as central to improving the quality of urban space. Joy itself becomes a legitimate planning metric, with parks, streets, and front yards reimagined as places of laughter, music, and communal rituals for all ages, reducing loneliness and strengthening wellbeing. This principle rests on community protagonism empowering people to develop design thinking skills, shape their places and embed care into the everyday fabric of the city.
3. Mobility Designed Around Life Rhythms
Traditional transport systems privilege the commuter journey – home to work and back – while neglecting the complex, timesensitive journeys of women, caregivers, elders and youth. Mobility must reflect varied daily rhythms, supported by safe, seamless, and affordable public transport at all hours. Walking and wheeling networks should promote active lifestyles, while benches, fountains, and trees encourage rest and reflection – designing for both movement and stillness.
4. Nature as Rightsholder and Co-Designer
Nature should be an active partner in urban design, not just a backdrop. Cities can nurture this partnership by integrating permeable soils, street trees, rain gardens, and fruit-bearing verges, creating spaces where nature thrives. Greenspaces support pollinators, play, and cultural activities while improving air quality, wellbeing, and longevity. Reconnecting with the natural world fosters a sense of reverence and offers profound benefits for both physical and mental health. Designing with nature strengthens planetary and human health alike, allowing urban and ecological systems to co-evolve over tiem.
“Joy itself becomes a legitimate planning metric [...] reducing loneliness and strengthening wellbeing.”
Experiment in Practice: Choreography at ArchiFringe
The dialogue culminated at the 2025 ArchiFringe Festival, in a session titled ‘Architecture of Exchanges: Feminist Urbanism as Choreography’. Part of Scotland’s grassroots festival of ideas, ArchiFringe brings together architects, designers and communities to explore how the built environment is shaped by its social, political and cultural contexts, In this spirit, the session combined structured discussion with embodied movement. Furniture was constantly rearranged: intimate clusters, open circles, concentric rings – while women and men alternated as speakers and listeners, exploring what it means to design with women rather than for them. These choreographed movements created moments of attentiveness and vulnerability, offering a glimpse of a city designed through relationship rather than prescription.
Toward Healthier, Gender-Sensitive Cities
The Architecture of Exchanges series does not end with fixed deliverables but with an invitation to reimagine cities as living, regenerative systems shaped by care, collaboration and interdependence. Grounded in Glasgow’s uniqueness, it shows that healthy urban futures do not depend on grand investments or tokenistic gestures, but on sustained practices of listening, sharing and co-creating. Central to bringing together women and men to advance the vision of the feminist city is the need to redistribute power, balance representation, and transform planning systems toward cities that work for all.
Pictured: First page - Parc des Brigittines, Brussels; previous page - Deep listening, shared vulnerability, and unexpected moments of connection unfolded between women and men at ArchiFringe—reminding us that cities, like conversations, grow through trust; this page - The Architecture of Exchanges cohort in one of the curated sessions exercising co-evolving mutualism (missing Prof Brian Evans)
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Here & Now Journal
We’d love to hear ideas and opinions from, see art and photography by, or curate with more of the AoU community in future issues of the quarterly Here & Now Journal.
Join the Editorial Team and help source, refine, and curate articles as part of a friendly, passionate team who meet regularly online to plan the next issue.
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Share a creative, reflective artwork through MyPlace and ArtPlace.Through photography, illustrations, and other media, these are an opportunity for the artists within the AoU community to depict the urban experience.
Review a book that speaks to urbanism - whether through a political, practical, or creative lens. Give your perspective on the key lessons from a book, and whether we should all be reading it!
Biking Brussels to Ghent
A postcard from the 2025 Young Urbanist Cycle Trip
This past July, a group of 15 urbanists took to two wheels for an immersive and picturesque cycling trip through the Brussels city region and Flanders to experience the design, implementation, and connectivity of high-quality cycle infrastructure first-hand. Brussels and Ghent - the two cities at the centre of the annual Young Urbanist Cycle Trip - provided an intimate look into the progressive ways Belgian cities are promoting a mode shift towards the trusty and reliable bicycle (and all of its variants!).
Starting Off in Brussels
Following the 7th edition of the YU Cycle Trip, Johanna Gewolker and Ben Meador recap the tour, sharing insights from Belgium’s approach to both cycle and public realm infrastructure, and considering what could be learned from it back home in the UK.
Over a long weekend, the trip began in Brussels - where we first met on Friday morning with the regional Brussels Mobility team overseeing the management and development of the region’s transport network. Maarten Verschaffelt, Théo Pureur, and Kristof De Mesmaeker taught us about the Good Move programme - the coordinated effort of 19 local councils at a regional level to deliver pedestrianisation, cycle lanes, ‘School Streets’, and the region’s circulation plan. Our very own Julie Plichon then
presented to us and the Brussels Mobility team on critical lessons learned about Automatic Number Plate Recognition systems for Low Traffic Neighbourhoods at the London Borough of Lambeth.
On Friday evening, we indulged in a leisurely and scenic cycle from the centre of Brussels to the city’s transect from urban to rural in the western half of the city’s southwestern municipality of Anderlecht. Here we were gifted with a lovely tour of La Ferme du Chaudron - a ground-up space for sustainable food production and community support - before enjoying a peaceful dinner comprising an intricate selection of food grown and cultivated at the space. Designed by Wim Menten and the team at 51N4E, the space opened two years ago and sits on the city’s edge, providing an exceptional example of environmental and social sustainability.
On Saturday morning, we loaded up our pannier bags and embarked on our main journey from the centre of Brussels to the city of Ghent to the north. On the way out of the city, we stopped by five different city squares to test out some innovative designs for public space.
A Journey Along Belgium’s High-Functioning Regional Cycle Network
Moving northwest from the French-speaking capital of Belgium to the Flemish-speaking region of Flanders that surrounds it, the group followed a fietssnelweg - one of many of Belgium’s extensive, connected cycle routes - for 60km between Brussels and Ghent. This cycle highway is largely traffic-free or low-traffic and runs along the railway lines connecting the two cities. Portions of the specific route we rode on are still under construction and will eventually add new cycle paths, as well as joining up existing segments. The scheme falls under a plan to deliver 2,700km of cycle highways connecting all cities in Flanders.1 2
Navigating this route was not only seamless, as it was mostly flat, linear, well-signed, and had limited interface with major road - but sociable too. The long stretches of traffic-free path meant it was possible to ride side-by-side and have long conversations, compared to the typical snatches of chit chat you might get cycling on a highlytrafficked road in a group, or on a narrow path that only makes single file possible for two-way cycling.
After presentations at their offices, Brussels Mobility took us on a personal tour of their circulation plan, which included demonstrations of how they’ve reconfigured space for cars into School Streets.
A leisurely cycle from the centre of Brussels to Anderlecht for a tour and dinner at La Ferme du Chaudron.
La Ferme du Chaudron is an exemplar sustainable, communitycentred food production and cultivation.
Cycling back to the centre of Brussels after an incredible meal at La Ferme du Chaudron
It’s easy to imagine that the expansion and reliability of this cycle highway network will encourage people, including families and less confident cyclists, to make more local trips as well as medium and long-distance intercity or village trips by cycle, in what is ultimately still a relatively car-dependent country.3 This approach to connectivity between Belgium’s many interspersed towns, villages, and cities - often barely separated by more than just a couple of kilometres - may provide a real alternative to more resource-intensive modes (like trains and buses) as well as cars to address the country’s unique, dispersed development nature.
The public health benefits of cycling are also the first point in the federal government’s Be Cyclist plan, a cycling action plan featuring a raft of behaviour change and infrastructure measures for 2021-2024.4 5 This plan further consolidates the role of the railways, including national rail company SNCB and public infrastructure management company Infrabel. Interestingly, this part of the plan not only focuses on delivering more cycle highways along rail routes, but on awareness raising within the two organisations and relationship building between them and regional governments. This highlights that strategic cycling infrastructure delivery requires clear and consistent coordination structures to overcome the complexity posed by multiple landowners and capable delivery bodies.
Back in England, plans to build a similar c.500km long-distance cycling route (let alone a whole network) along the HS2 route were scrapped, despite having a significantly higher cost-benefit ratio than the high speed line itself. While early feasibility studies were conducted, no funding was dedicated to the cycle route specifically, with the focus now redirected towards contributions to upgrading cycle networks near the HS2 line instead.6 7
Retrofitting cycle infrastructure to HS2 later will be costlier, but at least Belgium’s progress offers an example of how this can be achieved. In 2024, Belgium’s federal and regional Ministers for Mobility built on the Be Cyclist plan by signing a charter with SNCB and Infrabel to accelerate the delivery of long-distance cycling routes along operational and disused rail lines, which includes details on further coordination and establishing formal agreements for delivering cycle infrastructure on railway-owned land to ease
We didn’t hesitate to use one of the public squares exactly as it was intended.
We took a short detour to have a quick lunch at the Atomium on our way out of Brussels.
integration.8 The move signals Belgium’s longterm commitment to embedding sustainable and healthy urbanism alongside major infrastructure.
Arrival in Ghent
After several hours of cycling, we crossed over the Scheldt river at Wetteren along an incredible pedestrian and cycle bridge - metaphorically crossing over into the built extents of the city of Ghent. Met with ominous storm clouds, we quickly made our way along the eastern banks of the Scheldt via the Scheldetragel before abruptly transitioning to the densely-populated outer edges of the formal city boundary and eventually arriving at a former monastery-turned-hotelwhere we would be calling home for the next two nights.
Following our cycle on Saturday, we were met with significant amounts of rain the following day. With plenty of free time already built in to our schedule for the day, we first perused the Ghent City Museum, where we maybe - possibly - spent quite a bit of time enthralled with the gigantic room-sized aerial map of the city.
After walking around and enjoying food and drink along Ghent’s scenic canalfronts, we were led on a wonderful tour of Ghent at night by the Academy of Urbanism’s own Heather Claridge, where we were able to witness the city’s wellthought-out lighting programme and how it considers the varying lighting needs of residents and visitors at night.
For each cycle trip, Monday always brings with it an undercurrent of looming dread caused by the realisation that the trip will end just as quickly as it began. However, with itinerary items still on our list, we made the most of our time in Ghent as we met with Bart Peeters - the city’s lighting designer - and former Director of Mobility Peter Vansevenant at the city’s administrative offices, where we learned about Ghent’s progressive and leading outlook on resident and visitor wellbeing through a comprehensive perspective on oftoverlooked aspects of the built environment.
Reflections and Looking to 2026
Much like the UK - the push to encourage people to ditch their cars for more sustainable modes is one of constant strife in Belgium. Yet, the country (and Flanders region in particular) has done a significant amount of successful work in the past several decades to ensure people are increasingly
We definitely didn’t happen upon and end up crashing a community event at a local village pub…
Crossing the Schelde
We were absolutely fascinated by the gigantic aerial photo of Ghent!
given the choice to use whatever mode suits them best through a collection of direct, safe, attractive, comfortable, and coherent routes suitable for all types of people.
In all, Brussels, Ghent, and the region of Flanders give plenty to ponder about on the topics of healthy and sustainable urban living, particularly with respect to environments that carefully cater to a wide range of cyclist types. One in particular, however, relates to the myriad types of cyclists we encountered on our journeys within and between the two cities. From average commuters, to children cycling to school - or from racing types to those looking for a leisurely weekend bike ride between two beautiful, rural villages - the variety of ‘users’ we saw on our journey between Brussels and Ghent serve as a testament to the equitable and adequately-planned cycle infrastructure implemented in the region and have given us crucial lessons to take back to the UK in hopes of making it a better, healthier, and more sustainable place.
Johanna Gewolker delivers mobility infrastructure and public realm projects at Camden Council and is the lead transport planner for the regeneration of Euston and HS2. She has a background in strategic planning and sustainability strategy.
Ben Meador is a transport planner, urban designer, and urbanist at Arup. He’s particularly interested in the way people move through and the design and function of good spaces between buildings. He moved from Dallas four years ago and now calls London home.
1 fietssnelwegen.be/en/bicycle-highways
2 The Bulletin, 2024. Belgium explores potential for more bike paths along railway lines
3 The Brussels Times, 2025. Belgium ‘completely addicted’ to cars: Is a green transition still possible?
⁴ Georges Gilkinet, 2021. Le Gouvernement fédéral lance BE CYCLIST Le 1er Plan d’action fédéral pour la promotion du vélo
5 European Cycling Federation, 2021. Belgium adopts its first federal action plan for cycling promotion
6 The Guardian, 2019. Scrapped HS2 Bike path ‘five times better value than HS2 itself’
7 Laura Laker, 2019. Is the HS2 cycleway a Kafkaesque impossibility?
8 Georges Gilkinet, 2024. Autorités fédérale, régionales et sociétés ferroviaires avancent de concert pour développer les cycloroutes le long des rails
Cycling through Ghent after the rain stopped
Walking through Ghent at night to experience its nighttime lighting strategy
Bart Peeters presents to us on the City of Ghent’s Light Plan
MyPlace
People with places that are significant in their lives
Maggie’s Centre, Aberdeen
Dame Laura Lee Chief Executive
I was born and brought up in Peterhead, a remote wee town on the Northeast coast of Scotland, but I was working as a clinical nurse specialist in Edinburgh when I met Maggie Keswick-Jencks. I was giving chemotherapy to Maggie so, of course, I got to know her well. I was moved by her story of the unsympathetic attitude of the staff at the hospital where her terminal cancer was diagnosed and I shared her vision of a cancer support centre housed in a non-clinical and uplifting environment where anybody affected by cancer could visit to access practical information, or psychological and emotional support to help them build a life beyond a cancer diagnosis.
The first Maggie’s Centre opened at Edinburgh’s Western General Hospital in 1996, just a year after Maggie’s death. I gave up nursing in order to help realise Maggie and Charles Jencks’ dream of a global
network of cancer care centres. We now have 24 centres in the UK and abroad with more planned.
In 2009 I was made an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects. In 2016 I was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from Queen Margaret University. Then in 2019 I was made a Dame in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list for my services to people with cancer. If anyone had told me back in Peterhead that I would end up a Dame, I’d have laughed and said “Awa’ wi’ ye.”
The Chocolate Factory, Harrogate
Chris Murray Skills Lead
This is not my place, although it is a joy to ensure it is other peoples’ place of safety and belonging. Here we develop the skills of people with learning disabilities, helping them to grow in confidence, make friends and move into employment.
After leaving university I settled for managing a duvet and pillow shop on Oxford Street. This didn’t quite fit and I somehow ending up working at London Underground. After standing on too many drafty platforms, clock watching, I realised it was probably best to go home to Leeds and start again.
This restart involved training to be a Careers Adviser. Sitting in little rooms for five years talking about nursery nursing and plumbing may not be everyone’s idea of fun, but it did eventually lead me to a job at the Leeds University Medical School. Here I managed various technology and careers guidance-based projects. I was already questioning the purpose and impact of my jobs when I was offered a Programme Manager role at Capita. I soon realised, that for me, there was no real joy in those types of project plans. It was time to stop, think and start again - again!
I began working at Mencap as a Job Coach, supporting people with learning disabilities into employment. This place attracted me one day to apply and here I am!
Not my place. Their place. Our place.
ArtPlace
Artworks inspired by the built environment
La Bombilla from Barrio Julio Blanco
Sumita Singha OBE RIBA Architect
This painting shows the barrios of Caracas, Venezuela. I had suffered a stroke while working there. It was scary flying back, not knowing what was wrong until I was diagnosed in London. I had a clotting disorder that had resulted in five miscarriages but I had dismissed the possibility of a stroke. Before I left, I had signed the contract to write my first book, Architecture For Rapid Change and Scarce Resources, and yet here I was, bed-bound and unable to write.
As I recovered slowly in one of the coldest winters, I decided to paint, remembering how as a child in India, I had used painting as a means of recovering from serious illnesses such as smallpox and jaundice. So, when the book was finally finished in 2012, this painting was used for its cover.
Pigeon Carly Roby & Misha Sofil Students
This illustrated pigeon is part of a series commissioned by the London Museum to decorate their hoarding in the lead up to the opening of the museum’s new site in Farringdon. The blank 3D pigeon is the museum’s logo. Our “City of London” pigeon showcases the city skyline on its body, and the city boundary dragon on its wings.
We are both students at Central Saint Martin’s and met on the Graphic Communication Design course. The London Museum commissioned us after we were partnered with them for a group project. They set our class a brief asking us to capture the general Farringdon area with moving image, and since both our practices focus on illustration, we executed that project with a lot of joint hand-drawn animation. The museum loved our styles so much so that they reached out to us with the pigeon project.
For me, Misha, a lot of my inspiration comes from how people interact with spaces. My style at the moment takes a lot from the visual language of street art and graffiti since I believe they are right at the intersection of spatial interaction and accessible art.
For me, Carly, I love working collaboratively and seeing what multiple streams of thought can produce. Our pigeon is one of a much larger collection and seeing how different artists from different boroughs approached the same brief in completely unique ways is a heartwarming reminder of how much diversity thrives in design.
Member spotlight From Belgrade to Barnsley David Kennedy
AoU Photographer-inResidence David Kennedy looks back on the journey that made a public policy student into an urbanist.
I stood on a street in Belgrade looking at the bomb damage done to a barracks by a cruise missile during the NATO bombing a few months earlier, knowing that the next day I would be meeting democratic Serbians and trying to help them think through their plans to remake their country … that was just one experience that shaped me as an urbanist.
I studied public policy as an undergraduate and postgrad. My studies and plans then were in social policy and driven by wanting a career “making a difference” in public service.
My two big theses at that time were about fuel poverty amongst the elderly (who knew that might be so relevant 40 years on?) and the public service orientation of local government. So what made me an urbanist? Why is placemaking my passion?
I don’t think there is a single defining moment at which I started to think of myself as an urbanist. I really did so through learning on the job and through doing urbanist things in my work. As a professional without a niche I learnt that my role was to help others come
Working in Barnsley I joined a team with great ambitions in a community with strong leadership and a recognition that for the place to survive it needed to change radically. Within a year I was leading Rethinking Barnsley, part of the fantastic Yorkshire Forward urban renaissance programme.
Barnsley was an ex-coal mining town in danger of only ever being that. The challenge to everyone was to develop a new overarching vision and design a plan to make that reality. Remaking Barnsley saw the town as The 21st Century Market Town and it is a joy to me to go back and see the change every few years. Of course others are now building on that earlier work.
It would be impossible to name check all the urbanists who came to Barnsley and worked with me and my team. Alan Simpson, John Thompson and Will Alsop were particularly important but if you’re reading this and you were there too, I am not deliberately missing you out. I and others could not have done what we did without you.
Being able to see what incredible political leadership, outstanding public engagement combined with regional support and some of the best urbanists could achieve will always be the highlight of my career.
The importance of place cannot be understated. Places shape lives and are shaped by them. Place is a prime determinant of many social concerns and wellbeing.
Reflecting on that experience, my drift from pure social policy to placemaking is maybe not really that strange. Maybe more professions should be encouraged to understand urbanism. Could there be more interplay between urbanists and housing or health professionals?
We all know that learning, leadership and public engagement are essential to any plans.
There also needs to be impetus and challenge. Good urbanism is not artificially cosy. There’s a dynamic creativity that can be fostered through community engagement - properly facilitatedand this a key role for professional urbanists.
Getting plans implemented requires ongoing consistency and planned resilience. There’s no magic method for that especially in these divided times, but plans built on community trust and engagement are much more likely to get there.
In Serbia, the lesson from that experience that helped me and shaped my perspective was the strength and optimism of those present, their openness to change and their realism about the problems they faced. They knew that despite obvious adversity and challenges, creating better places in Serbia was vital to their country’s future.
David Kennedy is a photographer and urbanist and is about to start a 2 year MA in Documentary Photography.
If anyone would like to like to discuss photography with David his email address is mail@placeimages.co.uk
How to Thrive in the Planning Jungle Book review
How to Thrive in the Planning Jungle is a surprisingly cheerful small book with deep insight. I didn’t think I needed 100 tips to help me understand planning, but as it transpired, I did.
Not only does the book provide advice, but it skilfully weaves wider concepts into the advice provided. It made me think outside of my project, outside of my job, and outside of real estate more generally. For example:
“A skilled chess player knows which pawns to protect and which they can lose without jeopardising the strategy. The same is true in town planning”
Moreover, I enjoyed the language used. Possibly this
is a reflection of Pandolfi’s Italian heritage, or not, but references to deeper concepts helped to make points sticky and memorable. There are many quotable sections and sentences, choosing a favourite is difficult. However, here are a couple I particularly enjoyed:
• “Good architects design solutions, not buildings”
• “Patience is not just a virtue; it is a strategic asset”
• “If you have brought good food to a picnic, why would you leave it in your bag … being generous with information which can benefit the other party can be a powerful tactic” And of course...
• “Keep reading”
Practically, the tips are split between three parts with corresponding chapters and topics. Part 1 of the book ‘Strategy’ is split into three chapters, each chapter subsplit into 10 to 12 topics. Similarly, Part 2 of the book ‘Interpersonal Skills’ is divided into three chapters again with multiple sub-topics. Finally, Part 3 ‘Techniques’ is covered off also in three chapters, with sub-topics. Worth noting that each topic is roughly the length of a page and highly digestible. The contents have been well considered and are comprehensive.
If I was being highly critical, I would like to see two or three case studies with images to bring the concepts to life. Although, perhaps, this is the academic in me, and not pinning advice to reference material allows the reader’s imagination to flourish.
Above all else, I came away with the concept that a project isn’t ‘just’ a project. It is an interwoven web of wider components, interests, personalities and skills. All of which are brought together at one point in time. It has made me realise, more fully than I already did, the value of thinking broadly and deeply about real estate, about the importance of knowing what to do but also how to act, and to value spending time with interesting people and to grow your network.
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.
How to Thrive in the Planning Jungle: 100 Tips for Consultants, Real Estate Developers and Architects is authored by Lorenzo Pandolfi and is available to buy exclusively through Amazon.
Urban Idiocy: The Pelican book of Town Planning
Brilliant ideas that ruined our cities
Let’s be frank, the history of planning is full of idiots. There are modernists who called street cafes a ‘fungus that clogs our streets’, those that redesigned London as ten mega structures, the architects that created streets in the sky, the engineers who transformed our town centres into grade-separated warrens and the planners that turned neighbourhoods inside out to separate cars and pedestrians (you all know who you are). All have featured in this column, and have done untold damage to our towns and cities… with the best of intentions.
I was all ready to write this column in a similar vein about Thomas Sharp who, in his day, was the most celebrated planner in the UK. However, on rereading his landmark book Town Planning published in 1940 it’s hard to find very much idiocy at all!
Thomas Sharp was born in 1901 and spent his 20s working in public and private planning jobs. He ended up as a regional planning assistant for the South West Lancashire Regional Advisory Group but resigned in disgust when a report he had put his heart and soul into was published under the byline of the County Surveyor. He found himself unemployable, and moved back to his parents’ house in County Durham,
employing his enforced leisure to start writing. His first book Town and Countryside was published in 1932 and his second English Panorama in 1936, by which time he was in the University of Durham’s Architecture Department.
Then, in the early years of the war he curated an exhibition on town planning for the British Institute of Adult Education. The idea was to enthuse a public who were facing the blitz about the potential for rebuilding once the war was over. The exhibition was turned into a book Town Planning, commissioned by Penguin under their Pelican imprint as part of a series covering the major issues of the day. It was targeted at a general rather than a professional readership with a remit to ‘inform rather than entertain’. It was wildly successful selling 250,000 copies, making it probably the most widely read planning book ever.
It made Sharp’s reputation and he went on to produce plans for Oxford, Exeter, Salisbury, and Chichester. These were not just consultancy reports, they were also published and sold as books. The Idiot has a copy of the Exeter Phoenix, published by the Architectural Press and it’s a beautiful thing, full of watercolour renderings of the plans for the post war reconstruction of the city.
However Sharp ended up a disappointed man. He was annoyed not to be appointed as the first chair of planning at the Durham University planning course he founded, the first undergraduate planning degree in the country. His Wikipedia entry also suggests that the planning consultancy he founded in Oxford struggled to find work because of his uncompromising attitude!
Where is the idiocy I hear you ask? There is a hint on the cover of my copy of Town Planning which features the madcap plan of London by the MARS Group (the one that redesigned London as ten mega structures). This is completely at odds with the contents of the book. But these were turbulent times,
people had grown to hate the dirty overcrowded cities of the industrial revolution and the popularity of Sharp’s book spoke of a public appetite for something more modern, healthy, equitable and efficient most of all something radically different to what had gone before.
What he actually says in the book is difficult to disagree with. He didn’t much care for garden cities seeing them as blurring the distinction between town and country (in a bad way). He preferred a clear demarcation between towns that were compact and walkable and the countryside that was pristine and undeveloped. He was therefore very much in favour of green belts and thought that the ideal town would have a population of about 100,000 people and would be 2 miles across.
He was very keen on the traditional English town and village which is what his earlier book English Panorama had
been about. He loved the historic towns where he worked and fought to preserve them from the march of modernity. This love of historic places didn’t however stretch to Victorian neighbourhoods. As Will Wiles writes in the RIBA Review his Oxford Plan proposed demolishing the Jericho neighbourhood to make way for a road scheme, and described the pleasant Victorian suburb next to Magdalen, where Wiles lived, as ‘vile beyond hope of redemption’.
But he was against modernism (sort of), he disliked the ‘aerial roads … topless towers and all the rest of the rather nightmarish properties of Corbusierean fantasy’. But he also thought that modernity was both necessary and desirable. His work was about reconciling the traditional and the modern ‘recognising the natural desire of the citizen to preserve some symbols of his individual existence’. He saw the growth of car use as inevitable and wanted to create models
for urban development that accommodated the car without losing the essential character or traditional towns. These ideas would later be reinvented as the Townscape movement in the 1970s.
Notwithstanding his love of old places, his plans proposed the demolition of large parts of the historic towns where he worked, even in Oxford which was never bombed. He preserved the historic cores but swept away the surrounding neighbourhoods to create wide, tree lined streets enclosed by tasteful, modernist buildings. It was modernism in the English tradition, with stone rather than concrete, streets rather than Corbusier’s green swath and a domestic scale rather than towers on piloti. It was the model on which the reconstruction of English towns was based in the 1950s before the ‘proper’ modernists gained the ascendancy in the 1960s. By then it was clear that even Sharp’s destructive interventions were no match for
rising levels of car ownership.
Rereading his books there is little with which we urbanists would disagree. He was all in favour of ‘human comfort, peace and community’ and argued for compact, characterful urban places which stood apart from the countryside rather than merging with it as the garden city advocated. As has often been the case in this column the problem comes with the interpretation and implementation of his ideas by others.
The MARS plan for London on the cover of Sharp’s book illustrates how people can use the same words (compactness,
community, efficiency) and mean something very different. Sharp’s legacy was that he managed to enthuse the public, politicians and the professions about the idea of radical urban change, widespread demolition and the power of architecture to embody ideas of a better society. He was the gateway drug to the hardcore modernists that followed, People took his words, often out of context, ran with them and came up with something very different to what he had in mind.
It is also important to understand the context in which he was writing. At a time when the modernists were advocating the complete replacement of
the traditional city with new utopian models. Sharp was urging caution and arguing for the retention of the best of the past. His plans were moderate and unambitious compared to those of CIAM or Corbusier and maybe he can be credited with toning down some of their extremes. But still, the parlous state of our cities, the ring roads and the zoning, the destruction and the fragmentation that happened in the post war years can at least in part be traced back to Sharp, which is why he belongs in this column.
Pandora’s Box Urban philosophy
Our resident philosopher Andreas Markides ponders the poisoned chalice of access to boundless information and likens the predicament to the myth of Pandora.
Whilst pondering recently on our drive towards Healthy Urban Living, I stopped for a moment to consider how we have got to this precarious and rather lamentable position. How have we allowed ourselves to completely subvert hugely significant issues such as nature, sustainable living, people’s mental health and so on?
There are many reasons for that which have been analysed by people much more qualified than myself. Suffice for me to say that, in addition to all the technical, scientific and economic reasons for our current state, there is an analogy that I wish to make with a well-known myth.
In Greek mythology, Pandora was the first woman (equivalent to Eve in the Judeo-Christian tradition) which Zeus had created from clay. In fact, in the original account of the myth, the container was actually a large storage jar, similar to those used to store olive oil, wine or grain - the clay jar was probably an indirect reference to Pandora’s own creation from clay.
The name is a synthesis of 2 Greek words:
• pan, meaning ‘all’ and
• doron meaning ‘gift’
Hence Pandora means ‘the one who has all the gifts’. This is because once Pandora was created, all the Olympian gods came along and each one of them gave her a different gift, including beauty, charm, intelligence as well as curiosity; it is this last gift which would be her undoing.
The myth itself was first
related by Hesiod in the 8th century BC. It refers to a box given to Pandora as a gift by mischievous Zeus whose instructions stated that the box must never be opened. Initially Pandora had followed Zeus’ instructions but her curiosity got the better of her and one day she lifted the lid and opened the box, giving rise to disastrous consequences; the box contained all the evils of the world which were subsequently released.
I have recently listened to an interview by Stephen Fry during which he gave a very startling interpretation of Pandora’s box. He compared it to the Internet which, once opened, has given rise to many evils such as trolling, hacking, and pornographic abuse. In this sense the box symbolises knowledge and all the consequences that come with it. Just as Pandora’s curiosity led her to open the box, our own desire for knowledge can sometimes lead us to discover things that we might wish we hadn’t.
According to the myth Pandora was inconsolable for what she had done but, as she sat by the gift box crying, she heard a small sound from inside the box. She lifted the lid one more time and at the bottom of the box there was the most beautiful bird tweeting away. It was Zeus’ ultimate gift to Pandora and to the world. Pandora opened the lid wide and the little bird flew away joyfully into the skies. The name of that bird? Hope!
Like Pandora we used to have everything - wonderful nature, intelligence, in many respects a good life.
And like Pandora, our curiosity (as well as greed) has got the better of us. Are we doomed? Will we never again be able to build healthier communities and happier people? I personally cling to that tiny little tapping from inside Pandora’s box, made by a small but beautiful bird called Hope!
Andreas Markides is the current Chair of the AoU and Chairman of Markides Associates
Urban Model of the United Kingdom & Ireland Large urban modelling allows analysis of spatial inequalities providing insights that influence national and regional policy on issues including mobility, land value, health and carbon.
