AoU Journal 11: Art and Culture

Here & Now

AoU Journal No. 11 Summer 2018 ISSN 2058-9123 ÂŁ7

Do art and culture really contribute to urbanism?

Art as power and the power of art in urbanism Universities are reshaping our cities The Beam archive Interview: Victoria Pomery, Turner Contemporary

Contents

Front cover image: Victoria Pomery, director of Turner Contemporary © Joel Knight 2018

1 Welcome 2 Editorial 3 The Academy in action

11

8 Smarter urbanisation and

capital values

Nicholas Falk AoU connects

the evolution of capital and

competition, with the digital revolution

14 Rethinking civic assets

(Philly style)

Dr Gareth Potts outlines how

Philadelphia is placing

civic assets at the heart of urbanism

Editorial team Alastair Blyth (Editor) Delano Bart-Stewart Steven Bee Stephen Gallagher Emeka Efe Osaji Frank McDonald David Rudlin Lucy Sykes Timothy White Design template Richard Wolfströme Advertise in this Journal!

If you would like to reach our broad and active audience, speak to Stephen Gallagher on sg@academyofurbanism.org.uk or +44 (0) 20 7251 8777

How to get humans to be humans Tinna Nielsen teaches us a lesson in the power of sharing

17

Town economies and new work John Montgomery AoU asks whether declining economies can be revived

20

Rail and city growth If we are to meet growth demands and be better stewards of the environment, then rail is key, argues Camilla Ween AoU

26

Do art and culture really contribute to urbanism? ...in focus

27

Art as power and the power of urbanism Tim Challans AoU takes us through art’s influence on the cities around us

30 Urban contemporary: art

and culture reinforcing local identity

Steven Bee AoU interviews

Turner Contemporary chief

Victoria Pomery 30

The Beam archive Kate Watson reports on a project to document Beam’s extensive work in the arts

36

Cultural infrastructure: Places & spaces for culture Melissa Meyer from We Made 10 years on, Melissa Meyer from We Made That looks at Liverpool’s year as European Capital of Culture

40 Universities are reshaping

our cities. For Whom?

Simeon Shtebunaev brings to

the fore some missed opportunities 43

Campbeltown Picture House Rejuvenation of historic cultural facilities can be the focal point of a town’s improvement efforts, shows Stefanie Fischer AoU

48

Space for great places!

A gallery of ideas and reflections on great places

52

My place People with places that are significant in their lives

54 Revisiting urbanism

John Worthington reviews

three books that look at

urbanism beyond the built environment 56

Urban idiocy Brilliant but flawed ideas for the city

58 My own view is...

Mark Davy on reorganising

the pyramid model of city development 60

Academicians and Young Urbanists Who we are

The Academy of Urbanism is a politically independent, not-for-profit organisation that brings together both the current and next generation of urban leaders, thinkers and practitioners. Our mission is to recognise, encourage and celebrate great places across the UK, Europe and beyond, and the people and organisations that create and sustain them.

Join the Academy Become an Academician, Young Urbanist, Member or Group Member at academyofurbanism.org.uk/ membership

Academy Team Linda Gledstone Director of Operations Stephen Gallagher Director of Communications Mina Manik Membership Co-ordinator Delano Bart-Stewart Communications Executive Julie Plichon Young Urbanist Co-ordinator Jason Monaghan Accounts

Welcome

If you are a consultant like myself, you spend your life on trains and often sitting in cold draughty waiting rooms between trains. On three occasions recently I have done so in Doncaster and have spent a long time looking at the above photograph. As far as I can tell none of the buildings in the photo exist any more, all obliterated by the development of the Frenchgate Shopping Centre. The building in the centre is Glyn’s Temperance Hotel and to the left is the Doncaster Mutual Cooperative Society with the Grand Theatre in the background. What strikes me about the image is how effortlessly urban it all is. It is an urban set piece as good as any of the great European cities that we visit. The buildings are all full of character, they are dense, join to each other, hug the building line and have active ground floors. There is even some splendid street furniture, a light rapid transit system (tram) and the street looks very much like shared surface.

It always amazes me how much we have forgotten that we used to know about building towns and cities. The curves and architecture in this view make it particularly beautiful, but the principles would have been universal, just the way that everything was built. Suggest the same thing today and you are written off as a hopeless idealist.

It occurred to me looking at this photo that this is why the Academy spends so much time looking at old places; it’s not that want to create a pastiche of the past, it is just that we value places built when the principles of urbanism we properly understood and appreciated.

The Academy has recently come back from China as part of a trip hosted by the Hangzhou International Urbanology Centre. We visited Shanghai where this process is happening on fast-forward, traditional neighbourhoods being swept away by towers and podia, sitting in landscape. We debated when we were there whether we risked imposing Western ideas of urbanism on a very different culture, but actually the historic parts of Shanghai and Hangzhou are not so very different from the places that we value or indeed historic Doncaster. Density, a mix of uses, buildings following a building line fronting a network of connected streets. It is the shiny towers that are as alien to China as they are to Europe. There is a universal quality to urbanism and the case for it needs to be made in both China and Europe. This we hope to do as part of a series of events in China over the coming years.

academyofurbanism.org.uk @theAoU

This is our mission in The Academy of Urbanism Journal to debate and explore urbanism in all of its forms across the world. In this issue our particular focus is on culture, prompted in part by the theme of the recent Place Alliance Big Meet, but also a series of conversations with the cities that were encouraged to bid for European City of Culture. Many of these are associated with the Academy and had been using their bits to rethink the role of culture in their city strategies. They were, I’m afraid, treated very shabbily when it became clear that British cities were not able to bid, but at least most of them have been able to channel the work and conversations that had taken place in a positive way. Culture is now at the heart of the urban debate, it is one of the things that cities do best and it can have a transformative effect as witnessed by Hull’s year as UK City of Culture last year. Done well, cultural programmes can energise and engage the community while also grabbing national headlines and plaudits from the cultural elite. Done badly, as the Urban Idiot points out, they can be a waste of money and an embarrassment. But don’t let him (her?) spoil the party.

Join The Academy of Urbanism on LinkedIn, Facebook and Flickr

David Rudlin AoU Chair

The Academy of Urbanism 70 Cowcross Street London EC1M 6EJ United Kingdom +44 (0) 20 7251 8777

Chair’s introduction 1

Support the Academy Sponsor one or more of our programmes of developing, learning, partnering and disseminating. Please contact Linda Gledstone on +44 (0) 20 7251 8777.

Editorial

Principal Sponsor Grosvenor Sponsors Alan Baxter Arup BAM Property Ltd Barton Willmore Clarendon Properties Limited Cork Chamber of Commerce Cork City Council Cork Conversations Fosters + Partners John Cleary Developments JTP Lewis Hubbard Engineering Mayfields Muir Group O’Callaghan Properties O’Flynn Group Perkins+Will Tony Reddy Architects Tower Holdings Group Scott Tallon Walker Architects Space Syntax U+I Supporters in kind Jas Atwal Associates Kevin Murray Associates Lathams London Festival of Architecture Monocle Place Images Prentis & Co. Space Syntax Steve Bee Urban Counsel URBED

There must be much more to judging a successful place than just by its economy.

Yet as John Montgomery points out the economy of a town or city is important. John asks: “If we can figure how successful towns work, can the lessons be applied to stagnating towns and regions, or even clusters of moribund towns?”

Tinna Nielsen and Nicholas Falk both writing in this issue look further than the local economy. For Tinna Nielsen moral transactions are key to personal relationships and therefore to functioning societies. Nicholas Falk talks of smarter urbanism and the importance of not only natural capital and economic capital but also social capital which as he says we are only just starting to value. This reflects the preoccupation of a number of economists as they develop metrics that go well beyond GDP. For example, the Social Progress Index which came out of a discussion at the 2009 World Economic Forum about whether it was possible to measure social progress.

The index charts the progress of countries against a range of metrics such as basic human needs, wellbeing and opportunity. These are things that we as urbanists also focus on and perhaps it suggests a way that we could look at urban environments.

There are myriad things that people value in their urban environments. Gareth Potts outlines how the city of Philadelphia is placing civic assets such as parks and libraries at the heart of urbanism and he calls on British cities to reimagine how they use their assets.

The In-Focus… section explores the integration of culture and art into urbanism whether driven by policy makers, community initiatives or large landowners in town and cities.

In his book review John Worthington calls on us to champion the new as well as embrace the existing adding that the AoU is uniquely positioned to improve livelihoods for all by integrating spatial and organisational thinking to add value, and by increasing the wealth of the community. Wealth is not just economic wealth!

Alastair Blyth AoU Editor

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The Academy in action!

During the past six months we have engaged more than ever with communities, putting the skills and experience of Academicians to work in Northern Ireland, Sheffield, Leeds, Manchester and outer-London. This type of support is in increasing demand by places and the Academy stands ready to help.

If you have an idea for an event or activity in your area – or know of a place that would benefit from engagement with the Academy – please get in touch with Stephen Gallagher, director of communications, on sg@academyofurbanism.org.uk.

Editor’s introduction | AoU in Action 3

2018 Urbanism Awards Ceremony

THE ACADEMY OF URBANISM BUSINESS PLAN The Academy Board recently agreed a business plan to set out a strategy for the organisation over the next three to five years. This is something that we have been working on for 18 months and came out of the review of the Academy at our 10-year anniversary.

At the heart of the plan is the aim of changing the nature of the Academy’s membership. In the early days the Academy was envisaged as an organisation whose membership would be limited to the leading 100 urbanists in the UK and Ireland. There was always a slight unease that this might be a little elitist and in any case it only worked in an era when sponsorship was plentiful to fund the Academy’s activities. We have since grown to around 550 Academicians and the business plan envisages that this may grow a little further to around 700. In addition to this we have just under 250 Young Urbanists and the plan includes proposals to increase total membership to around 1,500. Most of the growth will come from the new Members category (formerly friends) and from Group Membership.

Group Membership includes rates for organisations of different sizes as well as for councils and voluntary groups.

This was launched a few months ago and there has already been a good take-up. We believe the potential is huge and over time it could become the backbone of the Academy’s finances.

It means that companies, councils and other organisations can get their staff involved in the Academy’s activities, get discounts on events and of course get access to this journal.

If your company is interested please get in touch with Mina Manik, our membership executive, on mm@ academyofurbanism.org.uk.

The other innovation that has been included in the business plan is regional chapters. This is being piloted in Scotland and will involve employing a member of staff in partnership with the Urban Lab at Glasgow School of Art. We have agreed a business plan with Scottish Academicians that will see this post funded within two years from the increase in membership in Scotland.

It is a model that can be replicated elsewhere and there have indeed been early discussions about a Chinese Chapter operating on the same basis.

This is aimed at overcoming the charge that the Academy is too London centric and will hopefully help us expand our reach.

In terms of the core activities of the Academy, the plan envisages these continue to be based around the Awards scheme and Congress. We are exploring partnerships that may allow us to widen the scope of the awards beyond Europe and also to run more events in the nations and regions and elsewhere in the world. We are seeking to expand our programme of events including training and diagnostic visits.

These aim to give Academicians a good learning experience while also

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providing a valuable service to places and generating some income.

The plan also looks at communications and particularly the role of this journal.

We are hoping that within 12 months we will be able to go to a quarterly publication and to fund more of the costs through advertising. We are also planning to develop an app version of the journal to allow it to be read on tablets and smart phones. This will allow us to increase circulation and cover an international readership without being constrained by printing and postage costs.

All of this is intended to make the Academy larger in order to increase our influence, support a larger staff team as well as making us more attractive to sponsors and advertisers.

We have stated the process by turning our membership co-ordinator into a full time post and employing the person in Scotland. We need to be careful not to spend too heavily in advance of the increase in membership but the hope is that we can move towards a position where we can appoint a chief executive, to take some of the pressure off the chair (although it will probably come too late to help me!). Copies of the business plan can be made available from info@academyofurbanism.org.uk if you would like to know more.

David Rudlin AoU Chair

FIVE GO WILD IN AIREBOROUGH At the beginning of April five Academicians undertook an intensive three-day Diagnostic workshop on behalf of Aireborough Neighbourhood Forum on the outskirts of Leeds.

Academy Chair David Rudlin AoU, director of URBED, together with Lia Ghilardi AoU, founder of Noema culture and place mapping, Neil Murphy AoU, director of TOWN, Tom Walker AoU, partner in Gillespies, and Rob Thompson AoU, creative director of rtu. rob thompson urbanism, came together to understand the issues and challenges affecting Aireborough.

The impetus for the visit was to assess the growth of Aireborough in relation to the suggested housing allocations put forward in the draft local plan, but also to use this as an opportunity to think more broadly about what the collection of settlements could look like by the middle of the century. The community was fearful of a constant and never ending ‘development creep’ into the countryside that would do little to produce sustainable development and exacerbate already apparent problems associated with traffic congestion and lack of services. In a departure from the usual 24-hour Diagnostic approach, an additional extra day enabled the group to explore these issues in greater detail. We spent an intensive day in Gillespies’ office in Leeds drawing, researching the area, running numbers and putting together a presentation which was given to the Forum members on Friday evening.

Aireborough includes the towns of Guiseley and Yeadon and sits between the Airedale and Wharfedale valleys in a beautiful landscape setting. A wealth of background information had already been collated by the Forum, led by the energetic Jennifer Kirkby, assisted by David Lumb AoU, Tom Lonsdale and Andy Graham.

The Forum’s starting position was that they were being asked to take too much of Leed’s housing requirement and that there should be no green belt development. We had agreed at the outset that we wouldn’t question the housing numbers but, in the end concluded that the 1,000 homes a decade being allocated to Aireborough was not unreasonable. This was not necessarily what they wanted to hear but we did agree that the proposed allocations would be very damaging and represented a death by a thousand cuts. We therefore undertook a capacity exercise of the existing settlements, looking at opportunities like building on the car park of the retail park and intensifying some low density housing areas. This still fell well short of the homes that they would need to allocate by 2050 so we took a deep breath and suggested that they might take a single ‘confident bite’ out of the greenbelt with an urban extension that would mop up all their housing needs and include a new school. We suggested how this might be promoted by a ‘master developer’ in which the forum were a partner.

Neil Murphy ran the numbers and suggested that this could generate a significant capital receipt for the town.

There was of course scepticism that all this would happen but most of the Forum could see the value. It was a thoroughly enjoyable and challenging exercise. Many thanks to Jennifer and the Forum for their assistance, and to Gillespies for the office space.

DIAGNOSTICS TO HELP LOCAL COMMUNITIES In addition to the visit to Aireborough, the Academy has also been running Diagnostic Visits elsewhere. At the request of Mid and East Antrim Council the Academy visited Carrickfergus in Northern Ireland to assist with ideas for future growth, in particular looking at its heritage assets, waterfront regeneration and economic development. And in Ridge Hill (Manchester), Heston West (London) and Westfield (Sheffield) the Academy was invited by the Local Trust to assist in part of the £150m resident-led Big Local programme, in which three teams of Academicians helped communities explore local assets and address planning and urban design issues.

Carrickfergus Diagonostic Visit

Day one involved initial presentations

by Jennifer and Andy, followed by a site visit hampered somewhat by heavy fog that made long views imagined rather than real. The second day was made up of interviews with local councillors, the local Forum members and Tom, gaining an appreciation of the problems while sketching out solutions. The majority of the team stayed in Leeds on the Thursday evening, setting out plans for the final day while enjoying excellent food at ‘Friends of Ham’ nearby. The final day was spent putting together the presentation.

Editor’s introduction | AoU in Action 5

THE YOUNG URBANISTS AGENDA

MANCHESTER 4X4 This annual series took a typically unique look at cities in a state of flux.

Held on four consecutive Wednesdays in May, they focused on the themes: creation, destruction, resurrection and domination, and sought to answer some fundamental questions: Are we exhilarated by the rate at which cities change, or would we like to put the brakes on and take a more leisurely and considered route into the future? Is the direction of change ultimately positive?

Speaking on the theme of Creation, and with particular relevance to this edition of H&N, artist Lauren Segar spoke passionately for the need to have artists and artistic representation in cities: “A city centre that starts to lose its artists should be quaking in its boots…it’s potentially going to become a very grey place indeed…”

LEADERSHIP IN PLACE: GROSVENOR STUDY VISITS The Academy continues to assist Grosvenor with its mission to equip the whole Grosvenor team with the skills to read, understand and influence the built environment through effective leadership. This year sees the Academy organise learning journeys to Manchester, Copenhagen, Milton Keynes and Bilbao. In Manchester the team were exposed to the policy and practice that is shaping the city and the region, from the Eamonn Boylan, head of the Greater Manchester Combined Authority, to the team leading the 200acre public-private Manchester Life development.

Watch all 12 talks at 4x4manchester.com

IS LONDON OPEN? INCLUSIVITY, ACCESS AND IDENTITY IN THE CAPITAL

Grosvenor study visit to Manchester

Is London really as open as it claims to be? In June the Young Urbanists curated an event to look at this more closely, leading three tours around Farringdon and bringing together a line up of speakers with views, research and experience to bear. However, six years on from the London 2012 Olympics, which was considered by many in the room to be a high point in the capital’s push for inclusive design, this has not proved the beacon of influence it was hoped to be – surely a question for London’s policy-makers.

A full write up will be available soon at academyofurbanism.org.uk/youngurbanists.

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As UN member countries start implementing the New Urban Agenda on a global scale, the Young Urbanists have created their own YU Agenda which tackles key themes centred on a UK context regarding the forces that will shape the next decade and more of urban life, development and management.

In their agenda, created over a series of workshops and focus groups, they have put forward suggestions for more inclusive and sustainable futures under four key themes: housing, transport, funding/devolution, and the digital revolution.

View the Young Urbanists Agenda at: academyofurbanism.org.uk/the-youngurbanists-agenda/

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Editor’s introduction | AoU in Action 7

Smarter urbanisation and capital values In this article Nicholas Falk AoU connects the evolution of ideas on capital and competition, with the digital revolution that is shaping the growth of cities and suggests how we could use multiple criteria to reshape the growth of towns and cities.

Old theories

Capital and stewardship

It is 150 years ago since the publication of Das Capital: a critique of political economy, changed the way economists think about development. Karl Marx explained growth in terms of social classes and their relationship to the means of production. Property ownership explains why some prosper while others live in poverty. Less than a decade earlier, Charles Darwin had published the equally influential Origin of Species by Natural Selection, which explained growth in biological terms through how a myriad of different organisms mutated and competed for survival. This image undoubtedly influenced Marx.

The worst effects of industrialisation such as pollution have been controlled through Clean Air Acts, and Town and Country Planning. Cities such as Birmingham introduced ‘gas and water socialism’ while philanthropists provided parks that were carefully stewarded. The ‘threat of communism’ kept Western nations together for a while. But global trade in manufacturing has transferred capital and jobs from West to East. In a few decades the Digital Revolution transformed the supply chain and what and how we consume, which is well documented in The New Industrial Revolution1. In the UK local authorities ended up with their powers and resources stripped back. We will need a stronger vision to overcome divisions and a general lack of capacity.

As the world grapples with creating environments that favour social and economic growth and wellbeing in the face of demographic surges and the loss of traditional jobs, we need a more dynamic model, which I call Smarter Urbanisation. This starts with what people need to be happier and build better neighbourhoods. Most want ‘fit’ or ‘compact towns’ not ‘fat’ or sprawling mega cities with tower blocks that ‘cost the earth’. The model of a garden, which is as old as the Garden of Eden, could yield simple rules for better or smarter towns that will thrive and endure.

The contradictions are indeed glaring.

The French economist Thomas Piketty revealed in his influential book Capital in the 21st Century that the gains from owning capital, largely houses, far outstrip the growth in wages2. The gains work out about six per cent a year on average since 1870 compared to three per cent for wages, so wage earners can never catch up. Home ownership has become the predominant means of accumulating private capital, or

8 Here & Now | AoU Journal No. 11 8 || Autumn Summer2016 2018

financial wealth, rather than investing in stocks and shares. House prices have consequently become unaffordable for those not on the ladder. Land values have escalated as a result, profiting the few not the many, while the masses worry about meeting their mortgage or rental bills.

Apart from a few exceptions such as Daniel Glazier in The Triumph of the City, economists have been spatially blind. They overlook the factors that cause creative people to move from one place to another and start or grow a business there. While companies, even market leaders, often only last for decades, cities with their extensive infrastructure go on forever. But the location of innovation is shifting. Cities in the past had real advantages over small towns or villages. But while a city may ‘take-off’ by exploiting an asset such as a river, a market, or even a university, the key lies in extraordinary people. A powerful essay contrasts the lives and works of Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin to show ‘the slow emergence from a culture of faith and fear to one of observation and argument, and from a belief in the judgements of divinity to a belief in the verdicts of history and time3.’

The most dynamic change makers, such as James Dyson or Steve Jobs,

are not to be found in large cities any more. Like Cadbury at Bournville, Google are building a new town for their employees near Palo Alto, many of whom currently live in San Francisco.

The starting point is not simply land ownership but communications that enable other places to be reached swiftly. A town on a junction will do better than one on a branch line to nowhere, a dead end. Superconnectivity is what science cities as diverse as Cambridge, Freiburg, Grenoble, Palo Alto and Singapore have in common, despite their obvious differences4. Their environment not only favours innovation, but also provides better places for children to learn and develop, as well as more choices in terms of places to do research or work.

A better shape is more like a snowflake, with six points, and none of them the same. Ebenezer Howard’s original drawing for the Social City showed a polycentric network of towns linked by high quality transit systems, and separated by actively used countryside.

The submission that won the 2014 Wolfson Economics Prize applied this idea to growing cities like Oxford and York. David Rudlin’s new book with Shruti Parikh, Climax Cities, analyses the built form in leading cities throughout the world. What architect Brian Love terms the Connected City5 intensifies areas around stations or stops along a transit line connecting up several major towns to generate enough activity to make better services viable.

Smarter urbanisation

Time and care is then needed to accumulate the economic, social and environmental capital to become selfsustaining. To cultivate more change makers we should learn from the metaphor of a garden. Incubation calls for suitable environments, whether it be soil, water or light. New growth needs saving from weeds through stewardship or careful management!

Deserts can be made to bloom under special circumstances, but it is much easier to plant a market garden in established soil. The prudent gardener starts seedlings off in a greenhouse, away from threats and with plenty of light. New towns on a redundant airfield may never get off the ground.

A host of cities around the world aspire to be Smart Cities from Eindhoven and Manchester to Shanghai and Hyderabad. Organisations selling ICT such as IBM or Google and consultants such as PWC have broadened interest in the concept. Singapore has gone furthest in its vision for ‘a city in a garden’ with electronic road pricing to even out traffic flows. The Future Cities Catapult concludes that “City authorities have at their disposal a raft

of levers and enablers, which on analysis are not being fully utilised”6. The term Smart Cities, like sustainability or resilience, is open to interpretation.

Thus the Indian prime minister Modi has committed the country to supporting a hundred smart cities through smarter infrastructure. China aims to build 1,000 new towns, using the latest ‘smart’ technologies, and is keen to learn from practice elsewhere. But what does a ‘smart city’ really mean?

The definition needs to go beyond technologies. Terms like intelligent or wired, and the creative or learning city, could form part of a new ‘sharing economy’, but the cities that score best on indices may have good intentions, but are still a long way from mobilising the investment needed to tackle social exclusion7. Shakespeare put it best when he wrote “What is a city but its people?”

A true ‘learning city’, which both develops and applies knowledge, does not just make the most of ICT, such as smart phones of data hubs, but also human interaction, as Charles Landry has pointed out8. This might be called real intelligence, not artificial intelligence. This calls for technologies that allow for environmental and social impacts – collective over individual

Shaping the future The ‘natural’ form for smarter urbanisation may no longer be a grid, which was right when infrastructure came in metal pipes. But what shape should growth towns aspire to? In a follow-up study for the National Infrastructure Commission on the Cambridge Milton Keynes Oxford arc Partnering for Prosperity, Tom Holbrook of 5th Studio refers to String Cities, and many different patterns of urban growth. But studies of property values show that people want access to green space, but not so much as to reduce accessibility or connectivity. In turn, the economic value of proximity to transport nodes and views of the countryside generates a pattern of growth over time, which can be seen in aerial pictures of city lights by night. The problem is that when most people choose to use private cars, the roundabouts on the edge clog up, and the centres become grid-locked. Smart technologies like autonomous vehicles do not tackle the roots of congestion.

The Garden City Concept by Ebenezer Howard

Smarter Editor’surbanisation introductionand | AoU capital in Action values 9

Electric Road Pricing toll collection scheme adopted in Singapore to manage traffic

transport, active over passive transport, like bikes and walking, and the ‘Omnibus’ over the autonomous vehicle. A useful review of the literature with 89 references distinguishes between technology factors that favour integration, human factors that favour learning, and institutional factors that favour good governance9.

The term ‘smart’ can also be applied to many sub-systems including transportation, environment, energy education, health care and safety.

What matters most is how well these are joined up, and therefore how projects are designed and financed.

While the concept may have started with electrical systems, it is now time to draw on ecological as well as economic concepts such as balance or equilibrium.

Real cities that work Economic factors are fundamental, and their impact on both the way we live (the social dimension), and on the environment (the physical dimension).

But what would a better future look like? As the greatest value today is attached to brands rather than physical assets, (think of Apple) it is easy to fall for the many tempting visuals, for example libelium.com. But despite the appeals of Capitalism without Capital and the Doughnut Economy10, and companies like Uber, Facebook or Trivago and the ‘weightless economy’, real development takes finance.

Investors in turn require an assured return and the security provided by property.

So as most private wealth is stored in the value of houses, then a postcapitalist society is likely to look very different from the industrial towns that grew up around manufacturing

factories or mills. In particular the relationship between town and country will be very different, as Financial Times writer Peter Marsh suggests.

For example instead of second homes and cars, we could well see a huge growth in hiring services rather than owning products, as already happens with smart phones. ApartHotels in major cities and cohousing schemes in smaller towns are other good examples of the ‘sharing economy’.

1. Peter Marsh, The New Industrial Revolution:

Conclusion

Consumers, Globalization and the End of Mass Production, 2012

To achieve smarter development we need four-dimensional frameworks which relate the three fundamental measures of economic, social and environmental wellbeing or capital in a mutually beneficial way over time.

This may be achieved diagrammatically through a form of triple helix or a pyramid made up of trellises To make better decisions on where to invest, we should take more account of the natural capital that Darwin celebrated and Dieter Helm has brought up to date, the economic capital involved in property that Thomas Piketty has charted, and the social capital that we are only just starting to value. Such growth will be ‘smarter’ because it is more intelligent and better looking than the alternatives. It also should produce better returns on investment over the longer-term A new report for the Greater London Authority Capital Gains may help show the way11.

2. Thomas Piketty, Capital in the 21st Century, Harvard University Press, 2013 3. Adam Gopnik, Angels and Ages, 2009 4. These form case studies in a report for the China Design Centre to support a presentation on Smart New Towns for Hangzhou 5. connectedcities.co.uk 6. Smart Cities Strategies: a global review, Future Cities Catapault, 2017 7. UK Smart Cities Index: assessment of strategy and execution for the UK’s leading Smart Cities, Navigant Research, 2017 8. Charles Landry, The Digitised City: influence and impact, Comedia, 2016 9. Taewoo Nam and Theresa Pardo, Conceptualising Smart City with Dimensions of Technology, People and Institutions, Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Digital Government Research, 2011

Dr Nicholas Falk is executive director of the URBED Trust

10. Kate Raworth, Doughnut Economics: Seven ways to think like a 21st century economist, Random House, 2017

For more information visit smarterurbanisation.org and urbedtrust.com

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11. Nicholas Falk, Capital Gains: a better land assembly model for London, GLA May, 2018

How to get humans to be humans We stand on the brink of what is called the fourth industrial revolution where technological development, artificial intelligence and robotics are fundamentally changing the way we live, work, commute, consume, and relate to each other, our physical and mental health and state of mind. Anthropologist and founder of Move the Elephant for Inclusiveness Tinna Nielsen writes for H&N on how we navigate through this transformation and remain human.

Tinna Nielsen

One of the most frequently asked questions at the World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos, where leaders and change makers from all over the world meet to discuss solutions to improve the state of the world, has the past couple of years been ‘what’s going to happen to humanity in a world that’s changing at a scale and pace unprecedented?’.

What’s going to happen to humanity I am an optimist struggling to keep up my optimism! But something is off. Studies in western societies have shown a drop in empathy of 30-40 per cent among college students. In Asia young people are taking horse tranquillisers to numb their feelings.

An increasing number of people are feeling excluded from their society, city, organisation and community. They feel dis-empowered, a loss of dignity, the shame of not being good enough – they experience loneliness, anxiety and discrimination. As a result we get radicalisation, suicides, polarisation, terrorism, a refugee crisis and blaming and shaming of ‘the others’. We are experiencing a lack of inclusiveness.

These are just a few of the problems we are dealing with in our societies today around the world. What we need is inclusive growth, where no one is left behind and all people can have a good quality of life. Inclusive societies are for the majority and not just the few.

As an anthropologist specialising in how to develop and design inclusive communities, workplaces, and

societies, I work with people who believe they are collaborators and givers, but do not collaborate to reach goals for the greater good of all, and who do not give and share for the greater good of all. I worry that we are moving in the wrong direction when it comes to the human nature and social order where reciprocity is the glue.

Reciprocity is a psychological (unconscious) obligation to give, receive, share; ‘I give you and you give someone else or you give me back’.

It’s a moral exchange. It is the glue in communities and societies.

The way our societies, organisations, and communities are developing we are struggling with reciprocity at the expense of all of us. This is not news, though.

Reciprocity as the glue When I studied anthropology at a university in Denmark we read anthropologist and sociologist Marcel Mauss’s 1924 essay The Gift. It is the first systematic and comparative study of the custom of gift exchange and the first understanding of its function in the social order of communities and societies. He studied customs of gift exchange of North American Indians (the potlatch) and the Melanesians (the kula) and many other tribes, societies, and cultures.

I’ll be honest with you and tell you that I didn’t understand much of this book when I first read it, but now having

worked for 17 years as a practitioner and change agent to achieve more inclusiveness, I get it.

One thing that stands out for me and that Marcel Mauss illustrated in 1924, which is (sadly) still the case, is how much we have lost in modern society with a rational economic system where the exchange of goods, services, and deeds is a mechanical transaction instead of a moral transaction as in a gift economy. These moral transactions bring about and maintain human, personal, relationships between individuals and groups. This is what I mean by reciprocity being the glue.

We need to re-establish and strengthen ‘moral transactions’ because as Mauss concludes: ”The mere pursuit of individual ends is harmful to the ends and peace of the whole, to the rhythm of its work and pleasures, and hence in the end to the individual” How to get the glue back Based on my experience I think we do not get reciprocity without empathy, because without empathy we don’t care, and without caring our interactions will not be driven by morality.

People in general are biased and see reality in the shape of their own homogenous environment, making us blind to inequality. Research confirms this1: we are unable to see economic inequality, largely in part because of our environment and a tendency to

Smarter urbanisationEditor’s | Howintroduction to get humans| to AoU be humans in Action 11

© Free pik

cluster socially with people who are similar to us in terms of income, status or education, for example.

According to this research, it is not that privileged people don’t want to deal with inequality: they are not able to see it. When we extend these research insights to the workplace, it means that those in privileged positions are blind to the lack of equal opportunities in getting hired, making contributions or advancing. We are also blind to inequality because it’s systemic, hidden in our organisational processes and implicit norms.

When we accept this, we see how pointless it is to rely on efforts to change things by communicating the facts of inequality and the business case of inclusion to the privileged. In my many years working as an inclusion and diversity professional, I have seen this approach fail, as have many of my peers in organisations around the world. When it comes to behavioural change and combatting inequality, it’s like pushing water up a hill. What many of us working in this field have come to realise is that a more effective way to make workplaces and cities or communities more inclusive is to make people feel and see inequality.

It is extremely difficult to get people to change their behaviour, even when we have the right intentions, and rationally understand the need to change the status quo. Our rational conscious mind gets it, but that is not the system ‘doing’ our behaviour.

The unconscious mind dominates about 90 per cent of our behaviour and

decision-making, and the behavioural drivers are not rationality but emotions, irrationality and instinctive responses. This is the system we need to influence.

Here are some real-life examples of how to make the unconscious mind feel and see inequality, trigger empathy for other humans, and promote inclusive behaviour. As a change agent this is how I design interventions that can trigger empathy in a context where empathy is not the norm but in high demand: a corporate setting – and any other setting with a gap between the privileged and non-privileged and power at stake.

Trigger empathy, pain and lossaversion bias In one organisation I worked with, the annual employee survey showed an increase in the numbers of employees experiencing unacceptable behaviour – think harassment, bullying, mobbing and discrimination. The leaders and employees knew the numbers, because they saw them every year. They also knew they needed to change.

Instead of giving a PowerPoint presentation illustrating the data and the business case for change, I designed an intervention that would reveal inequality and trigger empathy, pain and loss-aversion bias to motivate the unconscious mind – and therefore trigger a change of behaviour.

We started by collecting 40 examples where people had experienced unacceptable behaviour in the organisation. We anonymised them and

12 Here & Now | AoU Journal No. 11 | Summer 2018

wrote all their stories in first person quotes. We printed them in speech bubbles, and put them up on the walls of the rooms where the exercise was taking place. We asked the leaders to walk around and read the experiences of their colleagues and employees.

I remember well the first couple of times we did this with executives and the top leaders of the supply chain and HR, and it still gives me the shivers.

The silence was palpable. The leaders started talking about their feelings: “I feel disgusted that this is going on in our workplace.” “Can this really be true?” “I feel so sad for these people.”

“Did he really say that to her?” “Did she really say that to him?” We know from research2 that social exclusion hurts physically, even when we’re not directly experiencing it ourselves.

Empathy is also triggered when we are faced with others experiencing this kind of treatment. Our exercise confirmed this.

We also humanised the numbers.

Instead of talking about 15 per cent of employees, we wrote out how many of “your” employees and colleagues (what we call “similar others”) were affected; this helped create a feeling of social bond. And we made a reverse business case, exposing by what percentage the productivity of a team is reduced when one person is treated in this way, as well as how much the person treated like this loses in decisionmaking power. This helps trigger the loss-aversion bias. We are twice as miserable when we lose something as we are happy when we gain the exact same thing. We are very motivated to avoid losing something.

This intervention changed the way these issues were discussed, activated local initiatives and changed individual behaviour. If I were to facilitate this intervention again, I would ask the leaders themselves to calculate how much they are losing by allowing this kind of behaviour and culture to continue. When we are actively engaged in creating the business case, we take more ownership than when it is presented to us passively on PowerPoint slides.

camp in Kenya wrote me letter to tell me that he had won an award for the best project. He had designed a similar intervention with speech bubbles and the voices and stories of people to engage the clan leaders who were in conflict to make peace.

You can design a similar intervention in another domain as long as you apply the evidence based behavioural insights:

In the spirit of anthropologist Margaret Mead: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has”

• • •

• • •

•

•

Visualise the voices of people Create an ‘in-group’ – ‘my herd’ Make the people ‘the messenger’ not you as the change maker Trigger empathy, pain, emotions Humanise the numbers Trigger loss-aversion bias (reversed value proposition) Reduce complexity (tap into existing processes) Include the people in finding the solutions (local bottom up)

This was the moment where I finally realised the true power in sharing and in reciprocity. I hope you will join me in boosting reciprocity and empathy in your sphere of influence.

Tinna C. Nielsen is an anthropologist and founder of Move The Elephant For Inclusiveness; Co-founder, Inclusion Nudges Global Initiative; Young Global Leader and co-chair of the Global Future Council on Behavioural Science, World Economic Forum.

Tinna spoke at our 2017 Congress which took place in Aarhus, Denmark

1. Rael J. Dawtry, Robbie M. Sutton, Chris G. Sibley ,Why Wealthier People Think People Are Wealthier, and Why It Matters, Psycological

Never doubt the power of sharing

Science, Volume 26, Issue 9, July 2015

When I was teaching social entrepreneurs years after, I was sharing with them how I had designed and facilitated this intervention. A young man Daniel who was in his early 20s and living in the Kakuma Refugee

2. Giovanni Novembre, Marco Zanon, and Giorgia Silani, Empathy for social exclusion involves the sensory-discriminative component of pain: a within-subject fMRI study, Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, Volume 10, Issue 2, February 2015

Community Drum Circle © Marvin Lee

How to get humans to be humans 13

Rethinking civic assets (Philly style) Dr Gareth Potts outlines how the city of Philadelphia is placing civic assets such as parks and libraries at the heart of urbanism.

Philadelphia has had civic assets to be proud of dating back to 1683 when its original five squares, four still in use, were designed. 335 years on and Philly, as U.S. folks call it, is at the cuttingedge, internationally, of efforts to place assets at the heart of urbanism.

In 2014 the public library system, the Free Library of Philadelphia, introduced its $60m Building Inspiration: 21st Century Libraries Initiative, with support from the local William Penn Foundation (which gave $25m), the city and state governments and others.

Along with the renovation of the flagship Parkway Central Library, the initiative involves the restoration and reimagining of five neighbourhood libraries across a range of city neighbourhoods.

The five each now feature a teen space, pre-Kindergarten zone, and children’s library—and all now offer a specialism that meets identified community needs, such as targeted programming for new Americans in a community with a high concentration of recent immigrants and a small-business resource center near a commercial corridor.

One of the five is part of the new South Philadelphia Community Health and Literacy Center. The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHoP) had needed land to expand and the city had a co-located library, health centre and recreation centre nearby that, if resources permitted, would all be replaced. In a demolition-and-rebuild deal, the city contributed the land and CHoP the finance.

South Philadelphia Community Health and Literacy Center (front) © Matt Wargo for VSBA Architects & Planners South Philadelphia Community Health and Literacy Center (rear) © VSBA Architects & Planners

14 Here & Now | AoU Journal No. 11 8 || Autumn Summer2016 2018

The new centre features a library branch (with a specialist health and medical literacy section and health and nutrition programming) as well as CHoP pediatric and city primary care facilities on the floors above and a city recreation centre with an expanded

playground, basketball courts, and park. Such ‘co-location’ makes assets more attractive and cross-over use more likely.

Another programme, Reimagining the Civic Commons (Reimagining), begun in March 2015, also aims to rethink civic assets. The projects (see Table 1) will all have been completed or started by late 2018. All involve ‘opening up’ existing assets through good urban design and programming. There are several main goals.

Getting residents more involved in managing and advocating for assets is a key goal. The programme has helped participating community organisations and activists to learn through: sharing knowledge and experiences city-wide; working with national community development experts and visiting other cities. These networks will outlive the initiative’s funding.

Mixing by socio-economic group is another Reimagining goal in a city with areas of segregated poverty and wealth.

This mixing is considered an end itself, and a means to access job and other opportunities. Certainly, the projects lie between differing areas and so, with regular quality programming, may well see mixing.

Environmentalism concerns also figure—ensuring access to greenspace and riversides and encouraging assets that can be reached by cyclists and walkers.

Finally, Reimagining is recognition that, whilst universities and hospitals can serve as great anchors for their neighbourhoods, smaller assets are much more common around cities and, therefore, potential mini-anchors for nearby development.

One worry around investment in civic assets is that it sees residents and businesses priced out. Those involved in The Rail Park project are looking to counter this through efforts to identify nearby land for affordable housing.

The Reimagining initiative shows how greater impact results from partnership. The original idea came from the national Miamibased John S. and James L. Knight Foundation (Knight) which William Penn Foundation then approached about making Philly the pilot site.

The resulting partnership saw both foundations resource the $11m programme pot.

The partnership was also an evolution of William Penn Foundation’s approach in that its earlier assets work (for example, opening-up the Central Delaware Riverfront with new parks, piers and trails) had focused on the Center City area to keep Philadelphia attractive to visitors, employers and mobile young professionals.

Porch and Park at Lovett Memorial Library © Free Library of Philadelphia

Table 1: The Five Commons Asset

Details

The Rail Park

Phased conversion of abandoned rail line into a 3-mile landscaped community space that links 10 neighborhoods to Fairmount Park, the Center City, and several major city cultural institutions.

Bartram’s Mile

Riverside trail and greenway project through Bartram’s (Botanical) Garden. To link, via a bridge for cyclists and walkers, to the Center City. Garden programming for local lower-income residents.

Lovett Library and Park (also a C21 Library)

Library expansion featuring a larger children’s area, computer bar, improved disabled access, teen center, and covered porch, plus the integration of the library grounds into the adjacent park.

The Discover Center at East Fairmount Park

Construction of educational facility offering nature and skill-building outdoor adventures for city youth. Reopening of (long-closed) adjacent 37-acre reservoir and its 13 acres of surrounding land.

Centennial Commons

An under-used corner of West Fairmount Park, near a children’s museum will get: traffic calming on busy streets bordering the area, new landscape architecture and 2 recreation areas.

The partnership aspect continues into the administration—overseen by the nonprofit Fairmount Park Conservancy (which champions Philadelphia’s park system) and led, on the ground, by local and national non-profits, neighbourhood-based community development corporations (CDCs) and other community associations, BIDS and city agencies.

The Reimagining approach was rolled out last year by Knight and three other national foundations to Chicago, Detroit, Memphis, and Akron—now with numerous metrics to chart progress.

Rethinking civic assets 15

half is for pre-kindergarten education) and is expected to be upheld by the State Supreme Court this year whereupon the city will issue the first bonds.

To support Rebuild, the Knight Foundation announced a $3.28 million grant to the Fairmount Park Conservancy in November 2017 to build the capacity of the city’s several hundred friends groups (for libraries and parks) and advisory councils (for rec. centers) around marketing, budgeting, fund-raising and youth recruitment. Helping assets that have no volunteer group will also be key.

View from Bartram’s Mile Trail © John Bartram Association

Hot on the heels of Reimagining has come mayor Kenney’s Rebuild initiative, a multi-year program, agreed in mid-2017, to invest hundreds of millions of dollars into parks, libraries, playgrounds and recreation centres across Philadelphia. Investments will range from basic repairs to new buildings. The three goals are now considered.

The ‘revitalizing community spaces’ goal is mainly driven by the city’s per capita investment in assets being low compared to many large cities and the fact that 90 per cent of the 400-plus facilities need repair. That said, the initiative also seeks to co-locate other valued public services in assets – which links into the next goal.

For the ‘engaging and empowering communities’ goal, Rebuild wants residents of all ages to: state the types of improvements and programmes that would best serve the community; join one of the neighbourhood friends groups; or simply participate in a programme like a cooking class or movie night. So, again, the initiative is far from ‘just’ a repairs effort.

The ‘promoting economic opportunity’ goal has seen ambitious targets around participation of woman- and minorityowned firms on Rebuild projects and a consultancy firm has been hired to support local businesses wanting such work.

Rebuild also wants to diversify the city’s (mainly white, suburbanbased and unionised) construction

workforce. So, for example, each year, 30 applicants will do a year of work and training on a Rebuild site and take a union entry exam.

A third-party agency will monitor work and workforce targets.

With Rebuild, non-profit ‘project users’ are expected to oversee most day-to-day management. This reduces pressure on city departments and the ‘users’ bring their community engagement and/or fundraising expertise. Of the first 21 project users about half are CDCs. The first 61 assets selected for Rebuild work were chosen through some combination of the following: their neighbourhoods have high needs; neighbourhood conditions suggest investment might have a stabilising or revitalising effect; or because a facility has urgent physical needs. To ensure transparency, selection data has been made public.

Financing for Rebuild will come primarily through a bond issue, which could reach $300m. The city will add $48m in capital funding with another $152m from other sources, including $100m (some of it ‘matched’) from the William Penn Foundation. Repayment of the bonds will come from a new tax.

In January 2017 Philly became the first major US city to levy sugar-sweetened and sugar-substitute drinks. Impacts on the local drinks sector and consumers remain contested but the tax raised almost $79m in the first year (about

16 Here & Now | AoU Journal No. 11 | Summer 2018

To better coordinate asset types locally and city-wide, there will be an Autumn 2018 summit of all friends groups and advisory councils and an ongoing working group on community engagement involving the city’s parks and recreation department, Philadelphia Park Alliance, Free Library and Fairmount Parks Conservancy.

Given greater fiscal powers, there is no reason why major British cities could not reimagine their assets. In the absence of big civic foundations, the Big Lottery Fund could lead a major assets initiative. Within cities, asset friends groups could: share best practices around volunteering and fundraising; collectively advocate for funding; and promote each other’s events and services.

Ongoing closures and funding cuts to UK assets inspire little hope but Philadelphia shows that an appealing alternative is possible.

Dr Gareth Potts, based in Washington D.C., is founder of The New Barn-Raising, an effort to share international best practice around the role of civic assets in good urbanism. thenewbarnraising.com.

Town economies and new work: Can declining town economies be revived?

While in some parts of the UK, the economic fortune of towns is improving as a result of a re-energised process of wealth creation: of adding new to old work, creating new goods and services, products and processes, businesses and jobs, backed by good urban design and investments in culture and tourism; John Montgomery AoU argues that not all towns share in this good fortune, and there are many examples of former industrial towns and coastal towns that are struggling economically.

Notwithstanding the calamitous impact of the sub-prime mortgage crisis1, there has in recent years been a pattern of growth at the regional or sub-regional level, very often based around small cities and university and market towns. In the 1990s Mike Breheny wrote two important reports on what he saw as a decentralisation of economic activity2. His proposition was that industrial development, particularly in high tech industries was spreading out from London into the rural shires. He argued that this pointed to a need for more advanced road and public transport networks, land for small mixed use commercial units, and expansion to housing, out of town retail, and public facilities often away from the established employment areas. Breheny favoured planned but decentralised urban and regional development, matched with better urban transport and lower energy consumption.

To a notable extent we have seen a dispersal of work and the creation of new work in places beyond the city limits, to towns and networks of towns in a region. Firms have located into such areas, new start-ups are a strong feature of the economy and centres for logistics are established. We can see this, today, not only in university cities like Oxford and Cambridge, but also towns like Swindon or Reading or Colchester. Growth creates more growth and this inevitably leads to more people moving to successful economic places, and so the pressure on housing, land values, rents and prices increases. It is no accident

that most of the proposals for new housing development are in the South East of England, Hampshire, Oxfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Sussex, Buckinghamshire, Wiltshire, Berkshire and Lincoln. It seems clear that the building up of central city economies and rural area development should not be seen as opposites but are in fact the result of the same expansion of economic activity.

In response town planners and others have called for a new generation of garden cities to be built to concentrate new development into a handful of locations. They see this as preferable to the ruralisation of industry or green field development. Some effort has been expended casting around for preexisting models of successful combined economic and urban planning. The post-war new towns are the most recent examples of attempts to plan for population dispersal and industrial development, but here experience has been mixed. New towns of the south (Crawley, Stevenage, Harlow, Milton Keynes) have been much more adept at economic development than their northern counterparts, places like Runcorn or Warrington.

Washington has done well to attract Nissan, but it does seem as though, broadly speaking, new towns in the south have been more successful economically than those in the north. Crawley of course has Gatwick airport, Stevenage is the centre of the pharmaceuticals industry in the UK, and Harlow is part of the Cambridge phenomenon. This underlines the basic fact that towns cannot prosper

without localised wealth creation. The answer to economic dynamism is not town planning per se but planning that adapts to economic development.

Let’s go back further. During the 17th and 18th centuries, model villages and towns were built across Britain in attempts to create selfcontained communities, built mainly by industrialists to house their workers. As well as places of work, they were settlements of relatively high-quality housing, provision for community amenities and set within a rural landscape. Early examples of industrialists building housing for their workers include Richard Arkwright (cotton) and Josiah Wedgwood (pottery). More ambitious projects would follow at the initiative of industrial capitalists such as Titus Salt (Saltaire, woolens), George Cadbury (Bournville, chocolate), William and James Lever (Port Sunlight, soap) and Robert Owen (New Lanark, cotton).

Model towns were built across England at places like Trowse in Norfolk (Colman’s mustard), Railway Village in Swindon and New Earswick in North Yorkshire (Joseph Rowntree, cocoa). What seems to be common to all is that the towns themselves were developed as part of greater waves of economic expansion that themselves were derived from the successful introduction of new technologies and industries. Many of them have since declined economically because their economies did not adapt or diversify, and this is an important lesson.

During all this time, pre-existing

Rethinking civic assets Editor’s | Town introduction economies | AoU and in new Action work 17 17

towns and cities continued to grow across Britain, and not only the larger cities of heavy industry. Much of the Midlands were opened up to trade by the canal system and the coming of the railways. Established towns were able to graft new work onto old and became wealthier as a consequence.

Places such as Crewkerne, Reading, Northampton, Huddersfield, Frome, Luton or Kings Langley specialised in activities such as brewing, baking, shoemaking, hat-making, weaving or food production. For example, for most of its history Kings Langley was a small village, subsisting on agricultural produce but also enjoying Royal patronage. This changed with the coming of the industrial revolution and in particular the paper industry. In 1793, construction of a major waterway, the Union Canal, linking the Midlands with London began and the line of the River Gade formed part of the route. The Kings Langley section was opened in 1797 and was followed by the development of the John Dickinson’s Paper Mills along the valley. John Dickinson was a pioneer of the English papermaking industry and inventor of ‘Basildon Bond’. The company already operated mills at Frogmore and Apsley and added a new factory at Kings Langley in 1826. The town’s prosperity was boosted by the coming of the railways and the opening of the Ovaltine Factory amongst others.

During the 19th century, the advent of the railways opened towns up to previously unheard of industries, for example the many coastal towns such

as Seaton or Margate or even Brighton which almost overnight became fashionable tourist destinations.

Tourism in turn suffered from competition from European package holidays from the 1970s.

From this, we can see that some of the answer to town economic development lies in building the infrastructure that allows producers to connect with markets and customers. These days, that means the internet and freight.

But infrastructure investment is a necessary rather than a sufficient condition in economic prosperity for towns, cities and regions, which is why the high-speed rail proposal is a double-edged sword and may well suck more people and investment out of the North. There is more to economic development than roads and rail and cable and the internet, important though these are.

For in truth there are only a handful of means by which city, regional and town economies can grow. One is the application of new technologies to existing production processes and services so as to create new work and new divisions of labour.

More important than this even is the extension of new technologies to create new products and therefore economic sectors. At the present time we are seeing growth in biotechnology in relation to the human body; marine and crop biotechnology; environmental husbandry, including protecting habitats, waste recycling and the repair of polluted places, alternative

Ovaltine Factory postcard

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forms of energy generation, notably solar power; and water management; digital and creative industries, linked to communications technologies and computer convergence. But there is also a movement towards be-spoke objects – contemporary crafts, furniture, fine art and fashion, and interesting new products in drinks, cuisine and food.

Growth can only be secured through enlarged markets, and by increasing the stock of exports. Meanwhile the non-exporting local economy may grow through enlarging the pool of wage-earners, and thereby increasing demand locally, especially for consumer and personal services. In this way, successful town economies will very likely be made up of the following in some combination: • Some economic specialism that is recognised beyond the local regions; • A supply of exports from which income is earned; • Supporting business services such as banking, accounts, legal services; • A more widely diverse economy including inter-trading enterprises, suppliers and delivery businesses; • Local forms of personal consumption, notably hospitality, hotels and cuisine; • Businesses that provide services for locals but also appeal to visitors, notably tourism and dining.

• Local arts production, museums, galleries and theatres.

The long history of British towns tends to confirm that thriving towns developed first as markets for local agricultural produce, located on rivers and later canals offering the means of transporting exports and imports. Towns began to develop specialisms, not all of them agricultural, and especially as the industrial age flourished. As well as castles, churches and assembly rooms, towns in England came to have warehouses and works.

Local institutions supported and were supported by commerce, such that most towns came to have banks, town halls, parks, a high street and some dockyard or depot activity. During the 18th and 19th centuries many such places were almost completely rebuilt with new streets, terraces, squares and crescents. These were places of society and came to reflect local identity3.

They came to support a more varied division of labour and a pool of skilled employees. Recreating or growing such economies today will be easier if we understand how the economies of

Frome, winner of The Great Town at the 2016 Urbanism Awards

towns have expanded over hundreds of years.

Looking to today’s towns, the first priority is to identify and promote local specialisms such as, say, jam and meat products in Carluke, hats in Luton, shoes in Northampton, textiles in Huddersfield and Paisley, carpets in Axminster. Many of these industries declined dramatically at the end of the 20th century, but in some places they are growing again. Meanwhile, there may be opportunities for advanced manufacturing to develop locally, whether by established large employers such as pharmaceuticals companies, by inward investment or by small and medium enterprises.

Advanced communications technologies will of course play a role, but so too will the less glamorous infrastructures like rail and road freight. The economy of logistics and storage is growing.

More bespoke industrial activity might involve re-discovered connections to the land in the form of wine-making, brewing, whisky and gin distilling, food production, local cuisine and furniture; crops and growing things, new small batch food production and other agri-business. Some going back to old specialism and new products, for example in wool or linen. Meanwhile, if towns can retain or attract the footloose self-employed, then chances are local shops and restaurants will also benefit. This may, in turn, attract visitors to a town that is simply becoming more lively and interesting.

In this way, the economic development model looking forward needs to include

exports of goods and services as well as out-commuters, local patterns of consumption, attracting visitors and the application of new technologies to micro and start-up businesses4. This may see a revival of English seaside towns such as Seaton or Sidmouth or Margate, and towns flourishing as centres of art – St Ives, Frome, West Kilbride, or as places that trade in antiques.

There will then, perforce, need to be some ongoing balance of commerce (how a town makes its living), culture (the local way of life and traditions), and built form (buildings, streets and morphology). When we come to add new extensions to our towns and villages and we would do well to remember the characteristic features of places that have survived and grown for 1500 years, their built form and traditions such as village greens or public houses, churches and halls.

We need to do this where the sense of economic opportunity – new work – is already detectable.

If all of this is true, it raises another question. If we can figure how successful towns work, can the lessons be applied to stagnating towns and regions, or even clusters of moribund towns?

John Montgomery AoU is a planner and urbanist and is managing director of Urban Cultures Ltd, a specialist urban development and cultural planning consultancy

Seaton in Devon, which has struggled against decline

1. John Montgomery, Upwave: City Dynamics and the Coming Capitalist Revival, Ashgate, Aldershot 2011.

2. Michael J Breheny and Peter Hall (eds.) 1996.

The people - where will they go? National report of the TCPA Regional Inquiry into Housing Need and Provision in England. Town and Country Planning Association.; Michael J Breheny and Peter Hall (eds.) 1999. The people - where will they work?

National report of the TCPA Regional Inquiry into Housing Need and Provision in England. Town and Country Planning Association.

3. Mark Girouard, The English Town, Yale University Press, Newhaven, 1990.

4. John Montgomery, The New Wealth of Cities, Ashgate, Aldershot, 2007.

economies work 19 Editor’sTown introduction | and AoUnew in Action

Rail and city growth Overarching all thoughts about development is our need to reduce the environmental impact of our lifestyle, and transport is currently a major polluter. Camilla Ween AoU argues that this means we will have to drastically reduce carbon intensive travel options such as air travel and fossil fuel vehicle and that Rail is the most ecologically sound clean-air option for long distance and local commuter high-demand routes, if we are to preserve our environment and meet growth demands in a sustainable way.

Transport and connectivity are an essential aspect of sustainable growth.

The question is ‘What is the right type of rail – high-speed, intercity, local commuter rail or light rail?’ The reality is we need them all. We need to create employment and housing that suppresses car dependency, even if we get electric cars. [We should bear in mind that in the UK, where only a small percentage of our electricity is from renewable sources, the electricity that will be used for electric cars will come with its own carbon footprint.] As Prof Anne Power, professor of social policy at LSE, said in her End of Year Review lecture at the Academy in 2017: “we need to balance the laws of nature with human need” – we need to plan future growth alongside environmentally friendly transport. I agree with her that we need to revitalise old rail links for shorter commuter journeys. However, I disagree with her argument that high-speed rail is too expensive – the problem is the use of the term ‘highspeed’; it does not all need to be ‘high speed’, but it does need to be fast, modern and convenient and provide essential connectivity between cities.

In fact, we need all types of rail; fast long-distance, intercity, intermediate, local commuter rail and trams to build up a nation-wide network that is integrated.

We need to link our primary, secondary and tertiary cities and towns so that knowledge, manufacturing and

Liverpool Lime Street © Ben Abel via Flickr

20 Here & Now | AoU Journal No. 11 | Summer 2018

St Pancras International, finalist of The Great Place at the 2015 Urbanism Awards

commerce can flourish and opportunity exists for all, wherever they live. The cost of rail is significant, but if we acknowledge that the investment is a long-term one with a potential life of 100-150 years, then the annual cost is relatively inexpensive. The £15bn cost of London’s Crossrail, if spread over 150 years, equates to £1.5bn per decade; low, compared to the estimated UK expenditure on highways of about £30bn a year1.

Intercity, high-capacity and fast rail is an essential aspect of supporting business and manufacturing and spreading wealth across the country.

The ‘wealth spread’ is not sufficiently appreciated and detractors of rail investment claim high-speed rail will only encourage longer and longer commutes. Many European countries have, over the last 25 years, been investing in enhancing existing and delivering new rail infrastructure and an extensive network of rail, with easy interchanges, has now been created, allowing for easy movement between cities and countries. As a result, European countries see strong metropolitan regions that are well connected to each other with regional and local rail transport systems. These regions are able to compete on a global level, partly because of the condition of excellent mobility for people and businesses. Much of western Europe is now so well connected that rail is generally favoured over air travel and,

for example, business travellers from Paris to Lyon now rarely choose to fly, as was the case a decade ago. The same can be said for China and the Far East.

The Academy of Urbanism is bringing Train and the City, an exhibition about rail in Europe, designed by KCAP Architects in the Netherlands and Switzerland, to the UK later this year. It illuminates how Europe has embraced rail travel and made rail journeys the mode of choice for business travel and transformed the nature of business, manufacturing and agricultural production, so that they no longer need to co-locate. An example in the Netherlands demonstrates that fresh free-range eggs can be produced some 100km from the factory to which they will be transported by rail and turned into mayonnaise, all within 14 hours.

The UK population is projected to increase by 3.6 million people over the next 10 years, and about 7.5 million in the next 25 years. Estimates are that we need to build 250,000 homes every year for the foreseeable future. The growth will have to be absorbed somewhere.

The current thinking that the most sustainable solution for growth is to create mixed-use high-density urban development, as infrastructure will be more efficient and viable, is logical. We need to find land in our primary and secondary cities, be smart about how we distribute our development and avoid building over the green belt. Here

again, I totally agree with Prof Power; we need to preserve our green spaces to sustain our built environment’s ecological footprint. To support the growth and to avoid car dependency, we need integrated regional transport networks that typically should consist of fast high-capacity heavy rail that interconnects with local rail services, then potentially light rail or bus rapid transit, which finally connects onwards to outlying areas by ‘softer’ solutions such as walking, cycling and Mobility as a Service.

Urban solutions In larger cities, urban rail will play a part and much existing underused or disused rail can be rehabilitated, as was the Overground in London, and trams can be introduced, often exploiting the alignment of old railway lines. All rail needs to interchange conveniently with other services, so city interchange design and the urban realm around intercity rail stations is vitally important, both in terms of local amenity and in terms of the journey experience. Complex and messy station access, such as currently exists at Waterloo station in London, should be a thing of the past. Equally critical to the future is the integration of land use policy and transport planning, so that intensification occurs where transport solutions already exist or can easily be delivered. Modern intercity stations of the future should be like ‘airports’ Editor’s introduction Rail |and AoU city ingrowth Action 21

Helsinki, Finland which uses the Whim, a subscription based mobility app which offers a vareity of transport options © Benjamin Horn via Flickr

(without the stress) and have the potential to be new local centres that cater as much to the local community as to the traveling public i.e. St Pancras in London.

Harvard’s E. O Wilson’s hypothesis that we are hard-wired to want to live close to nature) is testament to the fact that ultimately many want to live in less urban environments; rail and MaaS will help to make that dream possible.

Non-urban development Planning policy has discouraged development that does not have transport infrastructure, which often means that development is thwarted in low-density suburbs, urban fringes and the peri-urban areas, even when land is available. However, perhaps the solution to less urban development can be found in ‘Mobility as a Service’ (MaaS). This is basically a system that allows travellers to call on transport services, as and when required, instead of having public transport serving the area (which in remote locations is, at best, going to be infrequent and expensive). MaaS will use computer platforms to rationalise pick-up and journeys, which can potentially be shared with other passengers.

MaaS vehicles will essentially be an extension of the nearest transport network, but not dedicated to any timetables or routes, as the transport is only provided when it is needed and they might well be autonomous vehicles. Autonomous vehicles will be useful, if they are developed as an extension to the public transport networks, but not as an alternative to the private car. The growth of the Biophilic Cities network (building on

A major problem with cars, in addition to the carbon issues, is the issue of the road space they take up. Maas, or mobility on demand, is efficient and has minimal impact; it generates fewer and shorter trips and potentially will have high vehicle occupancy, thereby reducing the number of vehicles circulating. This will help to unclog local roads and create the opportunity to give up road space for more attractive walking and cycle routes, which will support active travel options. Road space is finite as the era of building more and more roads to accommodate more and more cars is pretty much over.

Rail will have to be a cornerstone of our future development plans. The perfect network should be walking and cycling infrastructure, Maas, local rail or buses that interconnect with long distance rail, thus creating a wide web of destination choices. Polycentric cities are more equitable as they allow the country’s wealth and benefits to be shared across the nation; but for this to work, it must include a web of connectivity. This can either be air travel and highways or RAIL!

22 Here & Now | AoU Journal No. 11 | Summer 2018

Camilla Ween AoU is an architect, urban planner, Harvard University Loeb Fellow and is a director of Goldstein Ween Architects.

1. Campaign for Better Transport, 2014

Hypermobility and Neo-Medievalism

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A typical town in the Frankfurt Rhine/Main Region might reinstate its city walls. Private cars would be left at the gates and within the town people and goods would move around on foot, bike and via driver-less pods. We could remove all of the infrastructure connected with the car that would allow us to completely transform the character and vitality of the town.

www.urbed.coop

www.dam-online.de

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t wasn’t so long ago that urban visionaries were imagining the city of the future full of personal flying machines and hover cars. To some a vision of the multi-storey mega city of Blade Runner, to others the endless expanse of Frank Lloyd-Wright’s Broad Acre. Well the jet packs never did arrive, but today people get just as excited about driver-less cars, drone deliveries and hyper loops.

URBED has been speculating on what the future city might look like as part of a collaboration with a group of practices from across Europe as part of an exhibition called Living in the Region at the Deutsches Architekturmuseum in Frankfurt that runs until 14th October.

We concluded that a city built without the private car might resemble those build before the car. In doing so might rediscover the intensity and diversity of those cities, re-injecting all of those ingredients that have been squeezed out by our obsession with private cars. We might indeed invent a new medievalism.

CITIES ARE HUMANITY’S GREATEST INNOVATION Home to more than half the global population, cities are where the world lives, works, plays and learns. They are centres of enterprise, creativity and serendipity – the engines that drive productivity and prosperity.

As our cities continue to grow and evolve, new solutions are required to keep the engine running smoothly. This includes tackling productivity-sapping congestion, unlocking new space for housing, improving the efficiency of public services, and creating inclusive urban environments that allow citizens of all ages and abilities to participate, contribute and flourish. Fortunately, the UK has a wealth of innovative companies who are working to find solutions to these thorny urban challenges and many others. We call this the ‘Advanced Urban Services’ sector.

At the Future Cities Catapult, our mission is to help UK firms develop innovative products and services to meet the changing needs of cities, and to sell them to the world.

In doing so, we will support the emerging Advanced Urban Services sector in becoming an enabler of national productivity and a central plank of the UK economy.

With a new grant, leadership team and a Five Year Strategy in place, Future Cities Catapult is embarking on a new season. through our four programmes – Knowledge,

Industry Collaborations, Demonstrators, and Creating New Markets – we are developing ambitious and impactful new projects that leverage our established strengths as a neutral convenor, helping buyers better articulate their needs to the market, working with suppliers to respond to those needs, engaging academic leaders to translate the latest R&D into application, driving the dissemination of evidence that unlocks investment and adoption, and provoking creative disruption in services and systems overdue for innovative transformation.

In short, we are dismantling the barriers to market success, ensuring that British innovators and entrepreneurs are positioned to enjoy a disproportionately large share of the global market for advanced urban services – a market estimated to value $1 trillion globally by 2023.

To deliver on this bold ambition we are expanding our team, with roles across the business. If you have a thirst for innovation, a good knowledge of how cities work (and where they don’t), and a track record in getting things done, we need you.

Join us and help unlock a fresh wave of innovative commercial solutions that will upgrade ‘humanity’s greatest innovation’ to meet the needs of the C21st.

LEADERSHIP ROLES

OTHER LEADERSHIP ROLES

Programme Director for Business Engagement & Growth

Insights and Design Team Lead

We are seeking an industry influencer in the smart cities arena, with a strong network and experience of supporting growth in businesses to join us as a Programme Director. Part of our Leadership Team, you will realise our commitment to drive economic growth.

You will be responsible for driving our commercial collaborations with large businesses, our development activities for small and medium sized enterprises, and our international work. As Programme Director you will effectively manage and lead your teams to deliver this.

Programme Director – Data & Demonstrators Since the value of an idea lies in its implementation, we are seeking an individual with experience in either of the two main areas of focus for this programme – data science or demonstrating next generation technology in real world situations – to join us as a Programme Director. Part of the Leadership Team, you will have responsibility for driving our urban data and technology demonstration activities, effectively managing and leading your teams to fulfil this.

For the candidate information pack for either of these Programme Director roles, contact our HR team: hr@futurecities.catapult.org.uk

City Standards Team Lead

PROFESSIONAL ROLES Future Cities Catapult relies on a cadre of talented professionals to develop and deliver impactful projects. In particular, we are looking for: Account Managers / Service Designers / Writer and Narrative Designer / City Standards Officer / Service Designer-Researchers / Senior Urbanists / Market analysts.

And there are also Corporate Services roles available in Project Management and Project Administration.

Details of all vacancies can be found at: www.futurecities.catapult.org.uk/careers

AGILE PROJECT RESOURCES Because we work in an agile way, we are always interested in experienced professionals looking to use their skills in flexible contracts – whether on a fixed term or project specific basis. Keep an eye on our website for these opportunities.

We also have an Associate Programme, members of which can either work on a project-by-project basis with the Catapult, or by providing specific expertise as and when required depending on expertise and time.

Approved members are the first to hear when Future Cities Catapult needs to bring in specific skills and experience for any one of its projects; perfect for those with portfolio careers looking to capitalise on their senior experience in a more flexible way.

Register your interest in our Associate Programme by contacting Alison Proud: aproud@futurecities.catapult.org.uk

Do art and culture really contribute to urbanism?

In Focus Nicholas Serota, the then director of the Tate, wrote in his forward to the Tate’s Global Citizenship debate in 2013 that “Art is a fundamental part of the public realm. In their work artists express ideas, attitudes and beliefs.” One could go on to say that it places people and enables them to make particular places meaningful. Arts and other cultural activities provide a medium through which people can develop an understanding of each other.

This In Focus explores the integration of culture and art into urbanism whether driven by policy making strategies, community initiatives or large estate holders in town and cities.

All too often urbanism is boiled down to a set of simple numerical economic indicators; growth, employment, earning power and so on, when what matters to most of us in our daily lives is the quality of the areas we live and work in. It is easier to get hold of economic metrics, it is less easy to establish the value of more abstract notions such as art and culture; for a start what do we mean by it?

Although of course economists are now turning their attention to the less easily measurable to produce, for example, indexes on well-being and social progress.

In his opening piece for this section, Tim Challans AoU (p27) argues that economic forces, including commercial opportunism, dominate urbanism but art is still evident as a catalyst in urban change. Tim reminds us of the recognition of the power of art to change people’s lives and that community art practice continues to be a hidden force in social regeneration. But also asks whether it’s still too early to say what the impact of art and cultural investments are.

Campbeltown, in north west Scotland, clearly hopes not. Investment in cultural heritage is seen as a way of reviving a once prosperous town that has fallen in decline as Stefanie Fischer AoU (p43) relates in her story of renovating Campbeltown’s Picture House. The aim of this and other cultural investment across the town is to draw visitors back to the area. But will Campbeltown benefit in the same way as Liverpool? Melissa Meyer (p36) draws together a discussion on how the cultural infrastructure continues to underpin Liverpool 10 years after its time as European Capital of Culture.

Grand strategies from policy-makers are not the only approach. Kate Watson (p33) looks at how the arts organisation Beam has been working with communities to empower them in the process and practices of placemaking.

Perhaps less empowering are universities, which can occupy significant parts of our towns and cities. Simeon Shtebunaev (p40) challenges whether in shaping our the urban environment through their sometimes extensive developments, they are really leveraging the cultural potential. Something they should be doing given their civic mandate.

26 Here & Now | AoU Journal No. 11 | Summer 2018

Art as power and the power of art in urbanism Tim Challans AoU looks back at the central role the arts and artists played in city making throughout history and what this future role may look like amid the changing nature of society.

Taking an overview of art and urbanism raises all sorts of issues of definition, particularly the meaning of art in this context and the difference between art and culture, although both words are often incorrectly interchanged. Urban settlements grow through a complex mix of economics, commerce, politics, market forces, defence, shelter, survival and culture. Is urbanism an art-form? Architecture certainly is. Before it became a profession in its own right architecture was often the province of an artist or sculptor and the best contemporary architecture continues to have a concern with aesthetics and craft as well as function. The mission of the Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI) is to advance the science and art of town planning for the benefit of the public.

Perhaps I am taking the word ‘art’ too literally but it implies that good urbanism can be the most public form of art, a spatial sculpture as well as a social and economic construct. During the Urbanism Awards visits we see many examples of this in small pockets of contemporary development but it is rare to see this across a whole town or city. Even where the art of urbanism has historically been central to a masterplan, over time there has been pressure to subvert aesthetic concerns for economic reasons, for example, by developing on generous public space or approving an increase in the height of buildings.

The towns and cities that most people choose to visit are those with a visible artistic and architectural heritage. With some exceptions, what they see are largely the grand Gothic or neo-classical buildings and spaces that symbolise the power, wealth and

authority of the Church, civil society, industry, banking, aristocracy or the military. Unless they are dedicated urbanists most people do not see, or choose to see the functional homes and businesses of the urban working class. These are more ephemeral and largely get swept away for the next phase of power urbanism, for example, the creation of the great central London estates in the 17th and 18th centuries, Nash’s remodelling of the West End; Haussmann’s remodelling of Paris, even, in the 20th Century Mussolini’s remodelling of Rome. Power urbanism is inspired by and parallels power art because, until the late 19th century, most of the European art that survived and now fills our museums, art galleries and collections was also commissioned by and for the wealthy and was a reflection of their taste, status, wealth and ownership.

A significant change in the relationship between art and urbanism began in the late 19th century with the rise of the public patron, often industrialists, and the funding and the creation of public galleries, libraries and museums with the intention of educating, uplifting and informing the urban dweller, particularly the middle and working classes. Art changed its status from being a commodity to being a medium for the creation of a more civilised society in the face of some of the unpalatable consequences of industrialisation.

These cultural landmarks have become the Victorian buildings, alongside railway stations and town halls, which we are now proud to conserve. At a more domestic scale the late 19th/early 20th century also saw a linking of art, architecture and industrial design and the ideas of artist designers and socialists such as

Editor’s Introduction | Art as power and the power of art in urbanism 27

South Bank © Garry Knight

New Art Gallery, Walsall

William Morris with a concern for social conditions.

This certainly influenced the development of the garden village or city and the growth of middle class suburbs influenced by the arts and craft movement. A concern for the art of urbanism was at the heart of an important economic and social experiment.

1970s engaging ordinary people in creative activity.

As a largely urban practice, early community arts had a strong artist-led political and agitprop focus which has matured to be more responsive to community needs and a broader range of arts skills. The creation of community arts centres such as The Albany Empire in Deptford created pockets of accessible arts activity in inner cities. Other changes in industrial production and artistic practice-led to the adoption of vacant factory buildings in British cities as artist studios, influenced by communities of artists living in then low rent areas like SoHo and the East Village in New York.

Some artist led developments become permanent but many were the first stage in the gradual gentrification of an area, as has happened in the Lacemarket in Nottingham and many other cities. Community art practice continues to be a hidden force in social regeneration working through participatory projects in poor areas and with disadvantaged communities where art and creativity becomes more than a pastime and helps develop skills, raise self confidence and personal self esteem.

Modernism, as an artistic philosophy, was certainly not confined to the art gallery and emerged in some good, some great and, also, some truly appalling architecture and urban planning. Its leading thinker, Le Corbusier practised as an artist, architect and urbanist but, as we know, what often had critical and peer appeal did not necessarily survive well as public housing or buildings, despite being the chosen aesthetic for a great deal of post war public development.

The rapid growth of photography and cinema allowed urbanism to become the subject of popular art. The industrial landscapes of Bill Brandt and the ‘mean streets’ of film noir have left an indelible image of the city sometimes to the point of romanticising its worst aspects and confusing art and reality. Visits to New York and Los Angeles can feel like travelling through a film set and we are still moved by preserved cobbled streets and other remnants of industrialisation.

The Festival of Britain celebrated art, design, architecture and public building on equal terms.

New town urbanists pioneered the use of public art not to celebrate the great and the good with grand monuments, but to enhance the urban environment and to inspire residents, the best examples being Harlow and Milton Keynes. This has been a consistent feature of most modern and contemporary development particularly with the introduction of the ‘percent for art’ in development briefs, always well intentioned, often successful.

Another impact of the end of traditional industries has been the rise of cultural industries, particularly as advances in technology has enabled the production of high quality and profitable art, design, music, moving and digital imaging from relatively small businesses.

This has created a genuine and important economic sector that has become central to regeneration in many cities. Although a great deal of innovation has been kick started by public funding, the success of the cultural industries is a combination of public and private sector development. The investment in music production and presentation, theatre and the film industry are a product of a symbiotic relationship between public and private investment underpinning a growing industrial sector.

The recognition of the power of art to change peoples’ lives led to the rise of community arts in the 1960s and

Economic forces, including commercial opportunism, dominate urbanism but art is still evident as a catalyst

28 Here & Now | AoU Journal No. 11 | Summer 2018

Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao © mertxe iturrioz via Flickr

in urban change. In London the development of Tate Modern greatly enhanced the potential of a rundown part of the South Bank although perhaps it is now difficult to distinguish the Tate effect from the impact of market forces in London as a whole. However, the regeneration of many post-industrial towns and cities has drawn significantly on art and culture with a proliferation of art galleries, artist studios and cultural ‘quarters’ steering urban regeneration with various degrees of success. In Urbanism Awards visits we have seen this approach in a wide range of places, such as, Bilbao, Lyon, Margate, Folkestone, Bury, Halifax, Ouseburn and Saltaire. In Britain arts investment was greatly enhanced by the availability of Lottery funding. It can boost the tourism and the visitor economy as in Bilbao; generate greater public confidence, participation and investment as we saw during the 2017 Annual Congress in Aarhus or change the social dynamic as in Margate. It is not always a guaranteed success and relying on art as a regeneration catalyst is a risk. For example, the New Art Gallery in Walsall, a fine building with an excellent permanent collection, temporary exhibition programme and strong community links, has not had the economic and social impact that was anticipated, largely because the financial collapse in 2008 impacted on the planned Urban Splash development adjacent to the gallery and because economic regeneration in the area has been slow. Now the impact of government austerity measures on local authorities and pressure on Arts Council funding is leading to cuts in the support of arts and cultural centres; council’s selling assets and art collections and the poor maintenance and management of public art.

may be too early to say. However, in the relatively short term that they have been occurring they have been deemed artistic, social and economic successes. Brexit has put an end to British cities becoming European cities of culture but the UK programme continues.

Where does this leave us? Art will obviously not go away, but its potential to attract investment is likely to diminish as the power of the public sector or the National Lottery to support new major urban institutions or city of culture bids decreases. Of course, this is short sighted as the economic potential of arts investment in terms of tourism, education and social improvement is well documented. As urbanists we understand the need to invest in the core infrastructure of towns and cities, and we should recognise the power of arts investment and place it alongside investment in public transport, housing, jobs, open space and reducing the dependency on cars as essential to creating economically and socially viable and sustainable cities.

Tim Challans AoU trained and worked as an urban planner. He has worked for the Arts Council, led two large local authority culture and learning services and practised as a cultural consultant. He also has a degree in art history and a MA in Visual Culture.

Even so, a notable acknowledgement of the power of art has been the race to become Cities of Culture by many European and British cities. There has yet to be any longitudinal assessment of the impact of these investments, and, to paraphrase Zhou Enlai’s alleged assessment of the impact of the French Revolution, it Art as power and the power of art, in urbanism 29

Urban contemporary : Art and culture reinforcing local identity

The town of Margate on the north Kent coast has been the subject of intensive regeneration activity over the past three decades; attempting to restore the fortunes of a successful Victorian seaside destination. Turner Contemporary has become a conspicuous component of the town’s contemporary image, and an important contribution to the culture and amenity available to its residents and visitors. Victoria Pomery has been its Curator pretty much from the outset. In a conversation with Steven Bee AoU, she explains the origins of the project and tracks its progress.

30 Here & Now | AoU Journal No. 11 | Summer 2018

Steven Bee AoU (SB): Tell me something about your background, and why you felt Turner Contemporary was the appropriate next step for you.

David Chipperfield Architects were appointed through an open tender process and created a remarkable building within the constraints set.

Victoria Pomery (VP): I had experience as a curator at the University of Warwick, at the Angel Row Gallery in Nottingham and at Tate Liverpool. When the new role at Margate was advertised it was an irresistible opportunity to extend my experience and play a leading role in an exciting new project.

SB: Introducing distinctive modern buildings to traditional locations can be challenging. What is the local impression, and if there has been criticism, how have you handled it?

VP: It is fair to say that local reaction to the project and the building were mixed. When I took up my post many at the Margate Civic Society first suggested an art gallery to celebrate Turner’s connection with and love of Margate. Others were calling for more investment in local hospitals and schools, and some would have preferred an ice rink. The town had been in decline for a long time and lots of promises had been made about steps to restore its fortunes. People were understandably anxious. There were critical, and angry, letters to the local newspaper. It took a lot of persuasion but David Chipperfield and his team made the time to listen to people’s ideas and concerns. The new site was more straightforward than the original, but it had to be protected from inundation and ground conditions are difficult. The building they produced is positioned in response to these constraints, to the setting of the adjacent, and similarly sculptural, Droit House (a former customs house rebuilt after WWII) so that it is visible to visitors from the main approaches to the town.

That was 2002. At the time Margate was geographically and economically isolated. As a newcomer to a new post I had to ensure that I was not isolated from the community or the public agencies that were supporting the project. That was a challenging time, but hugely rewarding.

SB: Turner Contemporary got off to a difficult start when the original international competition winning, architectural scheme had to be abandoned. How were the problems overcome, and which agencies and individuals were essential to seeing the project through?

VP: The idea had been first proposed by the Margate Civic Society, in particular John Crofts, who had put huge effort into lobbying potential supporters, such as the Tate, the Regional Arts Board and local politicians. Thanet District Council commissioned the first feasibility study in the 1990s and a further study, ‘Dreaming with Open Eyes’, was commissioned

by Kent County Council (KCC) and concluded that a gallery without its own collection could succeed in Margate. It was the political support from KCC, notably the then Leader, Sir Sandy Bruce Lockhart, and some of the Thanet District Council Members that proved essential. The original scheme (to be built on the outside of the harbour wall) proved too ambitious and costly and was abandoned in 2005. It’s fair to say that there were deep concerns about developing a gallery in Margate among some officers of the council regarding the continuation of the project, but the political commitment remained strong, with a proviso that the original budget of £17.5m was not to be exceeded, and that the floor area did not exceed 3,000m2.

Some are still critical of the gallery’s external experience, but most are persuaded when they experience the remarkable spaces created by Chipperfield within. Although there are no Turners permanently in the gallery – we do not have a collection – the exhibitions aim to draw connections between historical and contemporary art. Education and learning is hugely important and we have a team of three people working with schools, colleges, universities and community groups across East Kent.

Our current exhibition, Journeys with The Waste Land, has been curated by a group of local people.

‘Studio Group’ is encouraging involvement with the gallery and active engagement with artistic activities.

With support from the Paul Hamlyn Foundation we developed a project, Art Inspiring Change, to encourage primary aged children to develop their leadership skills. We are currently working on a similar project in Ramsgate which helps children to develop their communication and team building skills. Outreach and education activities like this demonstrate that Turner Contemporary’s impact extends well beyond the limits of the gallery.

In 2002 I started with a team of two, which gradually increased to six or eight. While the gallery project was evolving we were setting up and running projects and building relationships with local schools, colleges and other organisations. The local community was struggling with high levels of deprivation and there were historically low levels of participation in the arts.

The hiatus in the creation of the new building gave us time to build a reputation for our local activities, and to ensure that we got a building best suited to our needs.

Finance was always going to be a challenge, but a lot of political capital had been invested. With the support of KCC, Arts Council England (ACE), the South East England Development Agency (SEEDA) and some private support, the necessary funding was secured.

Opposite image: Borrowing and Multiplying the Landscape

by Daniel Buren at the Turner Contemporary Gallery in seaside Margate

Urban contemporary 31

SB: ‘Culture-led regeneration’ has become a familiar justification for public and private sector investment in the arts, and everyone seems to be promoting a ‘Creative Quarter’. What are the signs of regeneration in Margate?

excellent beach, harbour and seafront. We have no difficulty in attracting travelling exhibitions and our programme is now planned well into 2020. Turner Contemporary will be hosting the Turner Prize in autumn 2019.

VP: The original business plan for the gallery projected visitor numbers of 150-200,000 per annum. Last year the total was 371,000 and since opening in April 2011, we’ve had more than 2.6m visits. Much has changed in Margate and the gallery has been the catalyst for the regeneration of the town, and a range of new businesses. For example a large building in Cliftonville (contiguous with Margate) has been converted to studios and now accommodates 40-50 artists. There are four other studio spaces also now operating. New shops cafes and hotels have opened since we have been here and the ‘creative quarter’ is expanding into the wider area.

SB: What would you say are the most important lessons you have learned from your time at the Turner on how best to nurture these links? How has your past experience helped? What aspects of your role are generic and what are specific to Margate?

It’s definitely the case that artists have been attracted from London by lower property prices and space.

Property prices are beginning to rise, but that is also due to the much improved rail connection to London and other investment in the wider area

It’s been character-building for me and the team. We had difficulties early on, but the relationship with KCC has steadily strengthened; senior officers are now much more supportive, and the county council has shown real ambition. It is gratifying to see people who previously had no involvement with the arts appreciating what we can add to their quality of life.

If I had to choose one example it would be the local schoolgirl who joined one of our projects several years ago who is now studying Fine Art at Newcastle University. Her horizons have been widened in a way that would not have been possible without the presence of Turner Contemporary. I’d like to think that JMW Turner would be proud of what we are achieving in his name.

Regeneration remains fragile, but our original 85 per cent public funding, mainly from KCC and ACE is now down to 65 per cent - the rest coming from earned income and other fundraising. SEEDA was an important early supporter. To date, the Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) has been less involved but is now supporting our ‘Culture Coasting’ initiative to develop cultural tourism across the south east.

SB: How important is the location, and how easy is it to attract exhibitions to Margate?

VP: Our visitors comment on the mix of attractions in Margate. The historic Dreamland amusement park, now with new private investment is a further attraction, and of course we are right next to Margate’s

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VP: Local ambition, leadership and a really strong vision have been essential to the realisation of Turner Contemporary. Continuity of political support and of the team here – I have been here now for 15 years – have helped to build local trust, manage expectations and establish strong relationships with other organisations in the town and with local people.

Steven Bee AoU is a director of The Academy of Urbanism

The Beam archive In 2017, arts organisation Beam invited curator and researcher Kerry Harker to undertake a creative exploration of their archive, which charts the development and work history of the organisation and its projects documenting a 30-year conversation about place and the arts. Kate Watson, Beam’s principal consultant, explains what the organisation learnt in the process about changing histories and the status of public art as a practice, the developing discourses surrounding it, and the evolution of the roles of stakeholders in what has now come to be known as ‘placemaking’.

Beam has been actively engaging with the arts in place since their founding as Public Arts, in Wakefield in 1986. Beam work with artists and communities to enhance places through the development of creative arts projects. Over the years, this has been delivered through a multiple agency approach involving artists and arts organisations, local and national government and regional development agencies, public funding bodies, and the built environment and cultural sectors.

connects with nationally significant moments in the history of public art initiatives in the UK.

The arts and artists in placemaking

Projects documented in the archive include the work of major contemporary artists, designers and architects working internationally, among them Jan-Erik Andersson, Tess Jaray, Morag Myerscough & Luke Morgan, Richard Woods, David Mach and Michael Pinsky.

Beam’s archive offers entry points into the exploration of the role and value of artists working in the public realm and demonstrates the organisation’s fundamental commitment to advancing the central role of artists in the narratives and practices of placemaking.

Beam’s initiatives traverse concepts of ‘public art’, ‘culture-led regeneration’, and ‘placemaking.’ The archive documents individual projects promoting various approaches to art in the public realm, illuminating and evaluating attempts to craft local identity, and to engage and empower communities in the processes and practices of placemaking. Beam has throughout its history to date employed a working methodology which simultaneously embraces the hyper-local while seeking to connect its work to broader narratives and contemporary developments within discourses on placemaking and the arts nationally.

The Beam archive acts, in effect, as a microcosm of the major developments within this area of practice, touching on notions of artistic, curatorial and commissioning processes; the challenges of defining public space and its governance; finance and funding; the creation of identities in relation to place; the accelerated growth and role of new technologies in these practices; and shifting approaches to placemaking, from top-down narratives of master planning driven by government and private development, towards concepts of community engagement and modes of participatory governance, among others. With a particular richness in relation to these histories in the Yorkshire region, the archive also

A Maze for Yorkshire © Richard Woods

Urban contemporary | The Beam archive 33

Beam’s archive records an innovative approach that embeds artists in the early stages of placemaking initiatives, whilst simultaneously directly addressing and engaging communities, inviting people to participate as active citizens in debate on the future of the places where they live. Furthermore, Beam’s archive documents the organisation’s numerous initiatives, through training, discursive events, summer schools and other schemes, to enhance the skills and confidence of local communities, including young people, in equipping them to approach these debates.

Such projects include People Making Places, 20029, a wide-ranging programme of people-oriented awareness-raising about placemaking, funded by CABE, Arts Council England, Yorkshire Forward and the ERDF, and the Partnership Skills Programme, funded through Yorkshire Forward from 2005-9, which supported citizens to influence vision and development in a dozen Yorkshire towns.

The Green promotional materials

The Green – Yorkshire Festival of Places The Green, initiated by Beam in 2003 as part of their People Making Places programme, emphasises ideas around the participation of local communities in placemaking initiatives, signalled by the promotional photography which focuses on people rather than the art object, and copywriting which utilises the second person to directly address local residents, as in the strapline ‘growing in a town near you’.

The Green employed a temporary landscape installation-as-sculptural-object designed by artist Walter Jack and landscape architects Whitelaw Turkington to spark debate and conversation, and was funded primarily by Yorkshire Forward with additional support from the five Yorkshire towns it toured to – Bridlington, Huddersfield, Halifax, Doncaster and Wakefield – all then enjoying ‘urban renaissance’ status with the RDA, Yorkshire Forward. Creating in effect a new village green for the 21st century where townsfolk could come together. The project aimed to provide a way for people to look at their towns and communities afresh and to think about their wishes and dreams for the future, while simultaneously 34 Here & Now | AoU Journal No. 11 | Summer 2018

raising the level of debate on issues relating to the built environment. Here, the artist becomes a facilitator, and the artwork is transformed into a platform or prompt on and through which to generate and stage collective debate.

The turfed sculpture provided not only a physical and intergenerational platform for conversation, but also a stage on which to air grievances and articulate differences of opinion. Albeit on a temporary basis, The Green encapsulated the potential of public art to facilitate transformation, here rendered meaningful by the involvement of local communities.

Tess Jaray Cathedral Precinct sketch

Wakefield Cathedral Precinct development

by Tess Jaray In 1989 Tess Jaray, an already successful artist known nationally for her work in painting and printmaking, as well as in the public realm, was commissioned by Public Arts and Wakefield Council to propose a scheme for the enhancement of its Cathedral Precinct.

In the late 1980s as now, Wakefield Cathedral stood at the centre of the city, but was not at that time successfully integrated into the fabric of the modern retail core which had developed around it. Jaray’s scheme, completed in 1992, incorporates hard landscaping in the form of brick paving laid in geometric patterns, street furniture and planting.

Described by the journal The Planner in 1992, as ‘a new public space of distinction and quality’, it has matured remarkably well, and represents an early example of innovative partnership working between an artist and local government departments.

Jaray’s handmade proposal document dated 1989, sets out the artist’s vision for the Wakefield site – to open up areas between the cathedral and adjacent shopping

streets and to unify the entire precinct thereby creating the sense of ‘city centre’.

inviting guest speakers and delegates to explore the role of Artists and the Arts in Placemaking.

The overall effect of Jaray’s choreography is a scheme of remarkable coherence and deceptive simplicity which not only thinks through the daily activities and requirements of the end users with great sensitivity, but which exists on a human scale, pre-empting debates on human interaction in the urban sphere brought to the fore by Danish architect Jan Gehl AoU in his 2012 film of that name. The 10th anniversary calendar which Public Arts published in 1996, quotes her aspirations for the Cathedral Precinct design thus: ‘I hope the final design would fit so perfectly with its surroundings that people would say, ‘what a beautiful city’, not ‘what a beautiful design’

What’s next?

Beam is seeking to extract further examples from the archive which illuminate the challenges and opportunities relating to art in the public realm – from best practice in community engagement, to the roles of key stakeholders, the role of artists as place makers; the impact and appropriateness of funding streams, and the longevity of approaches and methodologies whose legacies can now be reassessed 10, 20 or even 30 years later.

What works in the long term? How can sustainability be built into placemaking initiatives, and particularly the role of culture within these, when the funding landscape for public art is a constantly shifting terrain of agencies, bodies and strategies vulnerable to the changing agendas of national government?

Beam’s projects over the years cover the arrival and subsequent dissolution of initiatives such as the Regional Development Agencies and CABE (Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment), and shifting attitudes to supporting public art within the work of Arts Council England.

What learning can we take from these histories that might positively impact upon future policy formation?

And what next for the role of artists in placemaking?

Beam is currently exploring opportunities to collaborate with higher education partners to undertake further mining of the archive and consider how it can be made more accessible to be used as a wider resource.

Swing It! by Morag Myerscough © Bob Collier

Current Beam’s unique approach, honed over 30 years, is alive in their thinking today, as the organisation continues to undertake ambitious programming and contribute on a national scale.

Beam is also interested in hearing from organisations that may hold similar archives so that learning about how archives can be revealed and utilised for the benefit of the sector can be shared.

Beam co-ordinate the national Arts and Place consortium that emerged from the Farrell Review of Architecture and the Built Environment 2014, now adopted as a working group of the Place Alliance.

This text draws from Kerry Harker’s presentation at ‘The Sense of Place’ conference at the University of Bedford in November 2017. Kerry’s research into the Beam archive has been supported by Arts Council England as part of Beam’s project: Arts and Place – Legacy, New Practice and Partnerships Grants for the Arts award.

The group is comprised of a range of cultural professionals and artists, supported by Beam, in collaboration with Farrells architects. The group champions the role of artists and the arts in great placemaking by: Promoting the benefits of the arts in place; Working to influence policy and practice; Showcasing good practice; and Encouraging discussion and debate.

For more information visit beam.uk.net. To get in touch about the Beam archive email contact@beam.uk.net.

Further details about the Arts and Place group, the manifesto and how to get involved can be found at artsandplace.org.

The Arts and Place working group developed a Manifesto for the Arts In Place outlining 10 points to support the integration of the arts and artists in placemaking and has subsequently held a number of regional conversations.

In April 2018 the group teamed up with the Place Alliance to co-curate the national Big Meet 8 event

The Beam archive 35

Cultural infrastructure: Places & spaces for culture Prompted by the 10-year anniversary of Liverpool’s European Capital of Culture (ECoC), the Unlimited Edition, a journal of the architecture and urbanism practice ‘We Made That’, takes a look at the subject of cultural infrastructure in the city and how this landscape has changed over the past decade.

In this piece, Melissa Meyer from We Made That draws together the discussion from participants: Mike Stubbs (MS), director/CEO, FACT; Paul Sullivan (PS), director, Static Gallery; and Sally Tallant (ST), director, Liverpool Biennial.

Crucially the term cultural infrastructure – the spaces and facilities for culture – tries to capture both sides of cultural activity in a given place such as the ‘back of house’ activities of rehearsal, production and creation, as well as the ‘front of house’ activities of display, performance and consumption.

1. How do you see the current provision of infrastructure for culture in Liverpool?

ST: In terms of the wider cultural ecology, I think we have a really good spread of spaces that support artists at different levels in their careers and practices.

For example, in the visual arts, we have a number of artist studio groups including The Royal Standard, Crown Studios and various others – and they’re really important because they continue to feed into the creative ecology within the city.

Then going up a little bit, we have some smaller spaces like Cactus Gallery and various other small spaces which I think are really important to maintain a healthy infrastructure – we are trying to encourage more grassroots galleries like these to pop up. In the next layer up, we have practice- or media-specific institutions, an ecology of institutions all of whom have a different remit. It’s really healthy – we have Open Eye Gallery which deals specifically with lens-based media and photography, then we have FACT whose remit is to engage with new technologies, and also have a cinema so they do quite a lot of media and film-based practices there. Then we have the Bluecoat which 36 Here & Now | AoU Journal No. 11 | Summer 2018

is a community-arts centre model and works across artforms – they have a really good performance space and studios, including dance studios. And then we come to the museums! Liverpool has the second largest number of museums after London, including the Tate of the North.

And then of course we have the Biennial. We deliver an ambitious year-round programme where we bring international artists and practices in conversation to other organisations in the city and we do a lot of talent development on the ground as well.

MS: Liverpool is undeniably in a much better place than before the European Capital of Culture accolade.

It has become a city where it’s more acceptable to do art, to be an artist, and make a living as a creative.

Liverpool City Council has a made a concerted effort to continue to invest in the arts and culture where other cities have not. This has enabled an ongoing confidence in art and culture as being a core part of the strategy to develop and improve everyone’s quality of life. It’s about the people as much as it is about the physical resources. That said, Liverpool has great venues and resources which, through collaborative working, fortunately get shared well. Over the last 10 years, Liverpool Arts Regeneration Consortium (LARC) and Creative Organisations of Liverpool (COoL) have brought together the larger and smaller arts organisations from across the region to work collaboratively on projects and really make the most of opportunities.

PS: For STATIC which mainly operates outside of public funding – having designed the structure of its business and architecture to develop a variety of income streams from commissions, to space hires, studio rentals, event sales, food sales and art/music

sales (the latter two via associated concerns KIMCHI (KIMCHI HUMAN and PRODUCT RECORDS) – the landscape is pretty much consistent. The STATIC space acts a 1:1 scale physical space and organisational entity that allows us to continually operate and examine issues and subjects that interest us. The structure was designed to allow autonomy.

and Wolstenholme Square inevitably became victim to property developers. However that said, the Ten Streets project in the North Docks has accommodated some of those interesting displaced groups, the best example of which is Kazimier. Now situated at the Invisible Wind Factory, they’ve really risen to the challenge of occupying a larger, more ambitious space with their new focus on production. I see the role of the emergent artists and groups to occupy these types of spaces, and artists/creatives are generally pretty good at that and really without this activity the larger venues will suffer for lack of talent.

2. Are there particular forms of cultural infrastructure that are thriving or under threat?

PS: STATIC along with many other venues in the city has been the recipient of a city council Noise Abatement Notice (2011) which has put on hold the use of the venue for any event with Loud Amplified Noise. STATIC was able to reconfigure its activities and income streams but other venues are either still under threat or have ceased to exist.

ST: The ecosystem laid out in the visual arts is also echoed in theatre, and in music. We have a really strong music scene in the city, including lots of great independent music producers who are doing some quite experimental and interesting stuff, from Andrew Ellis up to the Philharmonic. We’re very strong in visual arts – if I compare what we’re doing to say Manchester or Leeds, I think we have quite a lot of artists in the city and I think there’s a strong ecology and infrastructure that can support their development and bring an international dialogue to the table.

The local and national debate around noise in the city is still urgent, particularly in cities like Liverpool where the proliferation of large-scale private housing and retail development coupled with a strong resident and commercial lobby has successfully brought local politicians and council enforcement departments onside. In many cases, the interests of new residents and businesses, many attracted by the ‘cultural vibe’ of the city, has taken precedent over the interests of the long-established venues, many of which programme live music as just one of their activities, but one activity that is crucial to its financial stability.

I think the artform that lacks infrastructure in the city is dance. There’s MDI (Merseyside Dance Initiative) and there’s LIC (Liverpool Improvisation Collective) at the Bluecoat, but I don’t see much contemporary dance coming through the city. When I do present dance, people do come, but you need to build audiences, you can’t just expect them to come regardless – you have to build their appetite and their interest.

MS: As parts of the city were regenerated, some of the smaller, grungier spaces such as Mello Mello

Invisible Wind Factory © Alex Spiers

Cultural infrastructure: Places & spaces for culture 37

Everyman Theatre © Chilanga Cement

3. What is the best way(s) to ‘build in’ spaces for culture in the city?

ST: It’s possible but it’s complicated. We have an organisation and we meet every two weeks called LARC (Liverpool Arts and Regeneration Consortium).

It’s made up of the chief executives of a number of bigger organisations and we have the smaller organisations represented in the group, and we try to lobby at a strategic level and work closely with the Liverpool City Council’s culture team to think about how we can better embed a cultural strategy at the heart of the city’s thinking and planning for the future.

This all sounds marvellous and there’s definitely a goodwill around the table – not only from the organisations but also from the city and the wider city region, including our mayor Joe Anderson and our city region mayor Steve Rotheram.

all have for people to grow in the city and to show to our various platforms that it’s not necessary to leave to be successful?, because I think that’s a mistake.

So yes there are lots of things that can be done, but the number of stakeholders involved in making those things happen is complicated.

MS: The best way is with people. With time, communities can make things happen. FACT itself came about from decades of development through Video Positive Festival and Moviola, a deep engagement programme and a lot of passion from the founders and surrounding audiences. And now, we’re celebrating 15 years of the purpose-built FACT building on Friday 13 April and you’re all invited.

I think that the role of arts and culture has been understood and is welcome, because at this moment in late capitalism there’s a real need to re-invent what these post-industrial, post-manufacturing and postport cities can do into the future. We have to think about what kind of jobs and employment people will have into the future and what the world of the creative industries will be. The population of Liverpool has declined since the 1930s from around 800,000 to under 500,000. It’s growing now, but there’s still a need for more people to move to the city.

PS: It depends on what you mean by culture. In the context of the 2008 City of Culture title, in the bidding process the debate around what culture actually is in the city was largely closed down. Instead of looking in detail at what this could mean, how to engage with it or how to enable new projects, the successful bid reinforced the idea that the understanding, production and dissemination of culture could only be carried out by the existing funded ‘arts organisations’. Although there was small-scale funding for smaller ‘community’ based projects, the majority of the funding went to the already established arts organisations and the newly formed Capital of Culture company.

Liverpool does have a desire to make itself a city where artists can live and thrive and not just where artwork is presented, but where artists can develop. We’ve had all kinds of fantasy conversations – can we give housing to artists?, can we create opportunities that give them long-term residencies?, can we support the desire we

In this scenario, cultural product is carefully controlled, selected and marketed for the benefit of the city’s key agenda of developing commercial tourism.

This essentially means that culture is ring-fenced for those who can receive funding in order to disperse it, and also ring-fenced geographically ensuring that the

38 Here & Now | AoU Journal No. 11 | Summer 2018

majority of funding is prioritised to the city centre.

Therefore, it is of course possible to ‘hardwire’ culture into a place, but again, it depends on what that culture is, or what that cultural product is.

across the region. There is a lot to do but we can also see initiatives such as Heart of Glass in St Helens, which previously might not have had the confidence to push past conservatism and prove the value of culture to everyone.

4. How has the legacy of Liverpool’s ‘Capital of Culture’ title impacted spaces for culture?

ST: I’d say that there’s quite a lot of large-scale cultural infrastructure in the city centre- that’s where the museums are, that’s where people travel to - and I think a lot of those organisations already feel that they serve not only all of the city region but also a more broad Northern region and national remit in some cases. We’ve just been through a transition where we’ve moved to a metro-region mayoral model. What that actually means on the ground is that various local authorities that used to operate autonomously now have to collaborate and share various pots of money.

This means that when money is spent, the desire is to see that delivered across the wider city region.

There are opportunities now to think about how we can have a more dispersed approach to where work is placed. The reason that it’s been more centralised is very simple, and it is because Liverpool City Council continued to fund culture where the other local authorities didn’t put the same level of funding. So it’s often related quite straightforwardly to where the money comes from. And this is taxpayer’s money, so if I’m taking money from Liverpool City Council but doing all my activity on the Wirral, quite rightly people would expect to see the Wirral putting their cash on the table as well.

MS: One of the legacies of the Capital of Culture accolade has been the development of cultural spaces in all sorts of places. For the more formal arts venues, that has meant continued investment to keep them open and in some cases re-developed such as the Liverpool Philharmonic and Everyman Playhouse.

FACT has used its own resources and fundraised to create an emphasis on residency opportunities and improved space for production such as FACTLab in partnership with Liverpool John Moores University.

At the other end of the spectrum, we have new spaces like The Royal Standard Gallery & Studios and Cactus Gallery popping up and growing stronger and stronger, transforming the surroundings of an old abandoned brewery into a vibrant place where artists can develop and exhibit their work.

ST: In my opinion it’s regrettable that we will be the last British city to host the European CoC. 10 years on from when Liverpool was CoC, the city has radically changed and I think it’s clear that the impacts were multiple.

On one level, it was the confidence that came with that that gave the city a boost. Then you have the possibility of infrastructural development and change and I think that the actual fabric of the city has been changed since that time.

The city region has also received a city devolution deal from central government, which meant a certain amount of money was given to spend on cultural activity and infrastructure. Some of that is for trains, roads and housing, but some of the money is for culture and culture is cited in the devolution deal. We’re moving to a time quite rapidly, and it’s quite noticeable now, where in nearly everything we do we need to talk not just about how it benefits Liverpool but the wider city region too. That’s definitely at the heart of how we’re all thinking about how we can work, either in partnership or in identifying what you might call ‘cold spots’ for cultural activity, and thinking about how we can help or lend our resources and expertise to enable those areas to develop their own cultural offer or work in partnership with them to extend our own.

Furthermore, the city has to work together in a way that perhaps it hasn’t done very efficiently before.

Suddenly you are under enormous pressure to deliver a coherent, ambitious and ‘world-class’ programme and if organisations don’t figure out how to work together, it would be a massive strain because there would be a competitiveness. So I think that the city learnt how to work strategically together across its different strands. LARC, for example, is a direct result of 2008 - we realised that we had to do it ourselves if it was going to be something we wanted and owned.

There is also an understanding that we have to work hand-in-hand with all of the other parties including the city, and the LEP, and the developers and the others in order for us to make the wider city region argument.

We learnt that from the ECoC process.

For more information visit wemadethat.co.uk

5. How wide-reaching and accessible is culture in Liverpool?

MS: Many arts organisations (especially those based in the city centre) recognise the need to work across the Liverpool City Region and build partnerships in areas of greater social deprivation. And with the new Liverpool Learning Partnership initiative, there is a cohesive effort to address some of these issues through local schools and arts organisations from

Cultural infrastructure: Places & spaces for culture 39

Universities are reshaping our cities. For whom?

As universities invest large sums of money on new buildings and campuses are such developments really taking into account the cultural needs of communities. Simeon Shtebunaev looks at how universities can shape urban regeneration.

Across Britain universities are driving the urban regeneration debate in large sections of their respective cities. From the North West Cambridge development to the £1bn campus masterplan by the University of Manchester, higher education institutions are enjoying a golden decade of influx of students and income.

The spatial expansions of universities are married with active outreach programmes that have embedded themselves in the cultural life of our cities. They are hosts to festivals, exhibitions, community programmes.

They have become benefactors to the cultural needs of citizens. Their students fuel the economy and their research attracts highly skilled enterprises.

Two main rationales drive this spatial and cultural expansion. These two rationales are often at odds with one another. The ‘economic’ one driven by recruitment and estates departments adopting a capitalist logic of growth. When the rationale of capital takes precedent universities’ spatial and urban developments are often driven by a deterministic approach to delivering photogenic buildings to serve as the next attraction in the never-ending competition to attract prospective students. As a consequence, large areas of cities effectively adopt the mono-culture of the campus, generating tensions with existing residents and communities, uplifting land values and displacing longterm businesses. The harder to define ‘social’ rationale driven by academics and outreach departments looks to the cultural and urban aspects of development as an opportunity for experimentation and community participation. When the cultural and social rationale prevails, universities find the economic power and expertise to start innovative processes of regeneration and empower local residents. In a society where culture is subverted by capital the former rationale is usually the dominant one. The latter is often subjugated to fuel new opportunities to be capitalised upon.

40 Here & Now | AoU Journal No. 11 | Summer 2018

Above: Castlegate Festival speculative proposal Below: Castlegate Masterplan speculative proposal © ‘Revealing the Castle’ Live project, SSoA, 2016

University-led urban regeneration

led by Prof. Vanessa Toulmin. Since 2012 a number of university departments including landscape, architecture, archaeology and journalism have developed a Castlegate Steering Group with the aim to run research projects and student modules, focusing on the quarter. In an area of little external investments and past lack of focus by the local authority, the continuous engagement of the university staff and students has delivered voluntary expertise and helped kick-start a series of successful projects. The landscape departments’ involvement with the Sheffield City Council had secured funding for the ‘Gray to Green’ project, redeveloping a disused part of the ring road into a park. The archaeology department’s involvement has managed to secure expertise and funding to pursue archaeological digs aiming to reveal the remains of Sheffield Castle. Friends’ Groups have formed, supported by the university’s staff to promote the conservation of the Castle and the Old Town Hall.

The renewed interest in the area has established a vehicle for delivery of project – Castlegate Partnership, which now works closely with the Sheffield City Council.

Years of austerity have left UK local authorities as one of the main casualties of reduced discretionary funding as the National Audit Office reported in March 2018. Since 2010-11, planning and development budgets of councils across the UK have reduced by more than a half. On the other hand, since the introduction of higher fees, higher education providers’ income and student population has been steadily rising. Universities’ expansion has been a logical consequence of a desire to sustain that growth. In many cases local authorities have looked favourably as investment in urban realm regeneration has signalled a political message of progress. As a result of this symbiosis, in 2017 for the first time capital expenditure by UK universities topped £3bn. Within this narrative universities often adopt the competition mentality of big businesses and large scale developers.

Growth is the desired outcome to which physical and cultural institutions serve as tools in attracting future customers and securing assets.

But are universities critically examined like other big developers who hold monopoly interests and do they have the same interests as those of resident communities? In a comprehensive study by UCL Urban Lab, Clare Melhuish emphasises the potential of universities to act as more than mere developers and to embrace their public image of trustworthiness for the benefit of their more vulnerable neighbouring communities. Whilst the study recognises successful initiatives across universities in the USA, it presents distinct structural and managerial problems in cases where universities in the UK attempt to engage meaningfully with community participation in urban development projects.

The Sheffield School of Architecture has been a major stakeholder, maintaining continuous engagement with the area through master’s course and Live Projects programme. Carolyn Butterworth, a senior teacher at the university and director of Sheffield’s Urban Room ‘Live Works’, has been the voice of the school within the area. Butterworth has run her master’s studio ‘In Residence’ focusing on the area in the years between 2014 and 2017. Student-led academic projects have succeeded in establishing an intimate relationship with local citizens through techniques such as ‘creative surveys’ and interviews. The continuous development of ideas and speculative projects for the area have spawned publications, narratives and visuals that have helped capture the imagination of the public, politicians and investors. The Live Project of 2016 ‘Revealing the Castle’ developed by masters students has been influential in persuading the Sheffield City Council to re-focus investment in the area.

Sheffield’s Castlegate – an alternative approach?

The area of Castlegate in Sheffield is a live case study that touches on many of the issues that Melhuish discusses. Castlegate is different, however, as it is not part of any university-led masterplan, but rather is being shaped by the departments and academics operating in the area. The quarter lies to the north of the city centre at the confluence of the rivers Don and Sheaf and it is the historic heart of the city. As the name suggest, it is the location of the ruins of the Sheffield Castle and the first Town Hall. The area’s prime focus until the turn on the millennium had been large-plate retail uses, being the home of the Sheffield indoor markets and outlets such as BHS, Co-op and Primark. In the past decades, however, the shift of retail to Meadowhall Shopping Centre and the Moor area of Sheffield had left the area struggling economically.

Lack of focus in the council’s plans and the financial downturn of the 2010s had pushed the area in a state of turmoil. The demolition of the well-known Castle Markets in 2013 has re-focused public attention.

In the past two years the 2017 ‘Castlegate Pier’ Live Project has been developed in conjunction with the Sheffield Council’s Working Group. The project proposes a meanwhile art project aimed at animating the area, allowing access to observe archaeological digs and stimulating further projects by artists. The Castlegate Pier develops the ideas of a previous Live Projects and the group has secured £75k from AHRA ‘Immersive Experiences;’ programme to further develop an augmented reality experience to visualise and communicate the potential futures of the area.

Using the vehicle of ‘Live Works’ a planning application has been submitted and approved. Crowdfunding sources are explored for the delivery of the project.

If realised, the Castlegate Pier can demonstrate the power of academics to influence urban development and discourse which is not subjugated to commercial and capital interests.

The University of Sheffield had taken an interest in the area through its ‘Engaged University’ initiative

Universities are reshaping our cities 41

The Great Pier, speculative proposal © ‘Revealing the Castle’ Live project, SSoA, 2016

In the case of Castlegate, the academics’ and students’ expertise and knowledge have sped the process of urban regeneration in an overlooked area and kickstarted urban projects on a shoestring budget. It must be emphasised, however, that the innovative approach taken by university academics has only been able to flourish due to the lack of financial power and appetite by public and private bodies in the area. A danger persists that the current values in establishing Castlegate as a quarter of cultural interest can be appropriated by the council and landowners in the area for capital gains. The systematic engagement with local stakeholders and citizens could easily be disregarded if a large scale developer takes a strong financial interest.

Such threats can already be observed by the changing nature of businesses in the area. Market traders, second hand shops and low-value retailers are being pushed out of the area, changing its urban culture and demographics. Low-income customers and long-term users of the area are the citizens most in danger of being written out of future narratives if the academics’ voice is lost.

The authentic city In her book the Naked City, Prof. Sharon Zukin explores the notion of ‘authenticity’ in the urban realm. Critiquing Jane Jacobs’s focus on preserving the physical features of the city, Zukin explores New York through the lenses of cultural multiplicity and social relations between citizens. Authenticity of an area is produced by the processes and interactions that embedded communities engage in. A crisis is therefore experienced in contemporary cities where a corporate or institutional rhetoric of growth clashes with the social origins of urban villages. ‘Authenticity’ according to Zukin becomes the social right of citizens to stay in place and access any part of the city they live in. In cases of university-led urban regeneration, it is the authenticity of a city that is at stake.

The next UK City of Culture in 2021 – Coventry – needs to engage with this debate. In the city of three spires, high rise student residential blocks are transforming the skyline and demographics are rapidly changing.

In the past year alone, more than 10 university residential blocks have been approved through the planning process in a city of just more than 300,000 citizens. Universities have invested heavily in urban realm improvements and hold significant economic and cultural power, however, they need to further recognise the authenticity of local residents and engage with them in a participatory and proactive manner. By empowering local residents, looking at other case studies such as Sheffield and engaging its academics in the process of regeneration, the city’s universities can ensure that the City of Culture project can be more than purely an economic and public relations exercise.

Simeon Shtebunaev is a Young Urbanist and architectural and planning assistant at BDP 1. Dr Clare Melhuish and UCL Urban Laboratory’s University-led urban

Declining retail uses in the area

regeneration case studies are published on the urban lab website.

2. Naked City: The Death and Life of Authentic Urban Places , Oxford University Press,2010

42 Here & Now | AoU Journal No. 11 | Summer 2018

Campbeltown Picture House Stefanie Fischer AoU explores how the recently completed project to conserve and develop Campbeltown Picture House, viewed alongside other initiatives in Campbeltown, serves as an example of cultural and heritage led regeneration of a town that had slipped into decline, economically and in terms of the state of its historic environment, including over 140 listed buildings.

When Campbeltown Picture House was built in 1913, occupying a prominent position overlooking Campbeltown harbour, Campbeltown was a thriving maritime town. It was once one of the richest towns per capita in Scotland, and its sheltered port played a key role in growing the whisky, fishing and tourism industries.

Campbeltown Picture House, designed by Albert V Gardner of Glasgow in 1913 is an important and rare example of an early purpose-built cinema.

It was included in the statutory list in 2008 as a Category A building in recognition of its high architectural and historical significance and is flanked on one side by another Category A building by Glasgow architect J J Burnet and by the 19th century Category B listed Royal Avenue Mansions on the other side.

The Notes contained in the Statutory List state: “Stylistically the building is highly distinctive with a strong street presence overlooking Campbeltown Harbour. The exterior treatment is Glasgow School Art Nouveau and it uses a combination of concentric ovals in plan form and multiple verticals to the principal elevation.”

“Its interior is of equal significance. It retains elements of a 1930s ‘atmospheric’ refurbishment undertaken by Gardner (the original architect).”

The Campbeltown Picture House has always had a strong connection with the Campbeltown Community.

In 1913 over 40 local people got together to fund its development. It was then run by three generations of the Armour family, some of whom still live in the town, before being taken on by Campbeltown Community Business Ltd (CCB Ltd), one of the first Community Businesses in Scotland. It has been run as a charitable company ever since.

Scotland’s 20th century industrial decline contributed to the damage to Campbeltown’s economy, and in common with the urban fabric and historic environment within the town centre, Campbeltown Picture House had fallen into disrepair.

CCB Ltd launched the Centenary Project to conserve the Picture House and to upgrade it to meet the expectations of a modern cinema operator and cinema-going audience, so as to provide it with a sustainable future.

The vision is for Picture House, following completion of the Centenary Project in late 2017, to be more than a cinema, providing a cultural, leisure, social and community hub for Campbeltown and Kintyre, and to continue a tradition of cine variety, making use of the original variety stage for small scale comedy acts and amplified music performance.

The completed development has provided a new accessible entrance and foyer in the gap between the historic cinema building and adjoining Annexe, which Universities are shaping our cities | Campbeltown Picture House 43

is also listed as a Category A building. This houses the single sales point for tickets, food and drink and the café/bar, with views over the harbour. To the rear are a multi-use space, and a second screen which allows greater programming diversity and helps to attract younger audience members.

Significant public funds were invested in Campbeltown Picture House including funding from Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF), Historic Scotland, Creative Scotland, Argyll & Bute Council, Highland and Island Enterprises (HIE), The Architectural Heritage Fund and Coastal Communities Fund, in recognition of its significance.

The Robertson Trust, which provides funding awards to charitable organisation in Scotland, also contributed to the funding package.

A first Conservation Area Regeneration Scheme (CARS) funded by Historic Scotland secured in 2007 and Townscape Heritage Initiative (THI) funded

by HLF and running from 2009-2015, were rolled up into one large regeneration project in 2009 and delivered in tandem. A second CARS (2015-2020) was secured before the THI finished. Both the CARS and THI provided funding to grant aid repairs to historic buildings, primarily concentrating on Main Street and surrounding streets.

The restoration of the Town Hall, a dominant building in Main Street, was completed in 2016 and provides meeting rooms and a large function hall, managed by South Kintyre Development Trust, as well as making a contribution to townscape improvements.

The impact of the project on urban and economic regeneration needs to be viewed within the context of other projects in Campbeltown which have resulted in new market conditions, and improved townscape and facilities.

The impetus for regeneration was the high level of deprivation in a remote area, a decreasing population, rising unemployment, a lack of inward investment and a lack of repairs and maintenance, resulting in deteriorating buildings.

Regeneration projects include: HLF’s Townscape Heritage Initiative Scheme and Historic Scotland’s Conservation Area Regeneration Scheme, both heritage-led regeneration schemes run

by Argyll & Bute Council which have led to a significant upgrades of the townscape, attracting new businesses to locate there, and visitors to linger.

44 Here & Now | AoU Journal No. 11 | Summer 2018

Above: Town Hall following refurbishment © Raymond Hosie Below: Elevation to Hall Street © Keith Hunter Photography

Around the harbour, Argyll & Bute Council’s CHORD Programme initiated improvement of the marina, increasing the number of berths to 51, and providing new showers and changing facilities in Old Quay.

Significant investment is being made in extending facilities in the harbour to accommodate larger freightliners, delivering steel for the wind turbines and shipping out finished turbine manufactured at ‘Wind Towers’ on the former Machrihanish Airbase, outside of Campbeltown. The improvements support other industries and have made the return of the ferry between Ardrossan (near Glasgow) and Campbeltown possible, as well as an increase in the visits of cruise ships like Hebridean Princess.

The potential for development of the former Machrihanish Airbase, designated by Scottish Government as a Renewable Hub, and supported by HIE and Argyll & Bute Council, will further support the regeneration of Campbeltown.

Investment in the Royal Hotel, located on the waterfront, and forming part of the context to Campbeltown Picture House and adjoining listed buildings, which together with the Ugadale Hotel in nearby Machrihanish, is linked to a new golf course at Machrihanish, creating three links golf courses in South Kintyre.

Other visitor attractions include Springbank and Glen Scotia Distilleries, providing Campbeltown once more with a distinct whisky brand, which can be enjoyed in the award winning Whisky Bar at the Ardshiel Hotel, as well as in the bar at the Royal Hotel.

The Campbeltown Picture House and other local attractions help to retain visitors in Campbeltown, and reverse the tendency for visitors to travel in and out of Campbeltown Airport solely for the purpose of playing golf. The cultural and leisure offering includes the: • Annual Film Festival, initiated by the Centenary Project; • Mull of Kintyre Half Marathon and MOKRUN 10k; • Mull of Kintyre Music Festival; • Kintyre Songwriters Festival; • Kintyre Way relay along the 90 mile distance peak at Tarbert at the north end the Kintyre Peninsula and Southend, at the south end, passing through Campbeltown; • Campbeltown Malts Festival; • Gin Festival; • Summertime visits by Waverley Paddle Steamer.

The enhanced cultural and leisure offer together with an improved urban environment and the opening of a new grammar school will help to retain existing residents and attract new residents to relocate in Campbeltown to work in emerging and evolving industries.

The Centenary Project viewed together with other initiatives in Campbeltown is illustrative of the cumulative impact of public-private investment, in a linked, programme of townscape improvements and economic regeneration supported and sustained by the development of transport infrastructure and leisure and cultural facilities.

Above: View of Campbeltown Picture House looking along Hall Street Bottom Left: Interior of Screen 1

The role of Argyll and Bute Council in securing and managing the CARS and THI was key. Due to the success of the Campbeltown scheme the council has secured funding for similar projects in Rothesay, Inveraray and Dunoon. The council has invested match funding and officer time in all these projects and has developed a reputation for deliverability.

Bottom Right: Interior of Screen 2 © Keith Hunter Photography

Campbeltown Picture House 45

Historic Scotland are classing Argyll and Bute Council as one of the best proactive councils in heritage led regeneration. Standalone projects ranging from Rothesay Pavilion and St Peters seminary are also being supported by the council.

60 Main Street prior to refurbishment

60 Main Street following

Campbeltown Picture House opened to the public on 22 December 2017 and its success in delivering CCB Ltd’s vision for the project is evidenced by comments on its Facebook page. It makes a positive contribution to cultural, social, community and leisure activities in Campbeltown and Kintyre and to the regeneration of the town centre.

“What a great attraction for the local community and any visitors to the area! Two of us took four kids ranging in age between 2 and (almost!) 8 and it could not have been a more pleasant experience. Clean and comfortable, friendly, relaxed staff, a great range of food and choice of films. Well done, all involved! We shall be back!”

“I was last in the Picture House over 25 years ago and it was dark, dingy and a pretty sorry sight. Just been back to see a film in Screen 2 and I have to say, the Picture House is the new jewel in Campbeltown’s crown. I don’t live here anymore but when I next visit I’ll be back.”

THI grant for refurbishment

“Went along today with my six year old son, it was my first visit since it had reopened and I wasn’t disappointed. … Brought back a lot of happy memories of going when I was a youngster, will definitely be back.”

Stefanie Fischer AoU is a principal at Burrell Foley Fischer LLP Architects

Glasgow Ardrossan

Campbeltown

Isle of Gigha

Ferry

Isle of Arran

Machrihanish Dunes Wind Tower Machrihanish Golf Club The Ugadale Hotel

Top: Campbeltown Picture House, prior to the Centenary Project © Martin Hadlington Bottom: Campbeltown Picture House, following completion of the Centenary Project in December 2017 © Keith Hunter Photography

46 Here & Now | AoU Journal No. 11 | Summer 2018

Mull of Kintyre

Campbeltown Airport Machrihanish Airbase

Campbeltown

Ferry to Ardrossan

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Space for great places!

Fuli City Jun Huang AoU

The great places here are an opportunity to share what we love and know about the urban environment.

As you can see they range from small to large, inside and outside, and singularly identifiable to abstract ideas of what a great place is.

Please send us your great places so that we can share them in the next edition. Be imaginative and creative – we want to make these places live on our pages. Send us an image, a drawing, a poem, a…you decide.

Send contributions to dbs@academyofurbanism.org.uk

Perception is often not reality. There’s been a myth that high-rise residential is evil and responsible for all the issues that cannot be understood or tackled, and it destroys the community that otherwise could live forever. Those who claim this often just quote the same images or stories that they have never really experienced, investigated and appreciated. There’s no denial that many failed, but many succeeded too.

This massive residential development started 15 years ago on a factory site just within Beijing’s third Ring Road,

48 Here & Now | AoU Journal No. 8 11 || Autumn Summer2016 2018

not far from the CBD. Totalling 1.5m sq m, it is comfortable, safe, convenient and diverse, attracting residents from all over China and abroad who quickly form a vibrant new community. Yes the blocks are somewhat arrayed in order to maximise natural ventilation and sunlight into each unit, which is vital for passive design and living quality under the local climate. However, the high quality public realm creates a very strong sense of enclosure and community, enabling people to live, enjoy and mingle happily.

Brooklyn Bridge Park Patricia Brown AoU

Brooklyn Bridge Park, 85-acres of sustainable waterfront park, forged from a working port into an exemplary public space for people from all walks of life. This has been achieved by its design, incorporating different environments and facilities: from bio-diversity to basketball, children’s playgrounds to yoga, fishing to farmer’s markets, places to kayak, to picnic and barbecue, to watch the world go by.

Weston Library David Milner

The recently renovated Weston library helps to bridge the Oxford town versus gown divide and provides a new inviting entrance that encourages locals, students and tourists to venture inside.

Also thrown into the mix is an elegant solution to the previous traffic light junction that allows pedestrians and cyclists an easier route across from the neighbouring colleges and pubs.

Editor’s introduction | AoU inGallery Action 49

Superkilen Tiago Oliveira AoU

I took this photo in Superkilen, a public space/linear park in Copenhagen.

Superkilen is one of those places that you either love or hate. I love it. It is different from anything you would have ever seen. The colours are bright and uplifting. The fact that it is a bit gritty nowadays means that the surreal becomes real. The social and ethnic mix is celebrated and on display through the chosen iconography. I have other photos more illustrative of the space, but nothing beats the cheeky look of the lad towards the two cyclists passing by that I fortuitously caught in this shot.

Sunset Junction Tristan More

Surprisingly, Los Angeles is the most densely populated US city. In 2016 Angelenos voted in an ordinance to tax themselves nearly a billion dollars more each year to pay for a massive expansion of public transport. At Sunset Junction in Silverlake, you’ll find an active street life, dedicated bike lanes, and soon bus lanes and bike shares. With 10 years to prepare for an Olympics where nearly all venues are already built, LA seems likely to continue defying expectations.

50 Here & Now | AoU Journal No. 8 11 || Autumn Summer2016 2018

Floating Harbour Delano Bart-Stewart Overlooking the busy waterway, the Floating Harbour is a must to take in the essence of Bristol, especially on a hot day! The Harbourside Market is a hit for tourists and locals alike, with street food vendors, local artists and live music. This bustling waterfront is the heart of the docks and The Harbour Festival, celebrating both the community and the city’s maritime heritage.

Carrer de JuliĂĄn Besteiro, 1 Mina Manik

Nestled within the suburban district of Barcelona, I captured this shot of a block of apartments. What particularly caught my eye was the pattern of coloured panels and the contrast with the metal wire. Most of us on city breaks usually stay close to the centre but through my stay in the suburbs I experienced a different aspect to Barcelona. Including seeing how housing and schools are planned into the built environment. There was a particular focus on communal activities with many playgrounds and basketball courts.

Gallery 51

My place

People with places that are significant in their lives The MY PLACE exhibitions, the latest of which was held at the Lighthouse in Glasgow recently, bring together young people and adults to share the places that matter to them.

On the left are the winners of the schools’ competitions in the UK and Pakistan: on the right, someone who will be familiar to everyone, and someone who will be familiar to most Academicians!

If you would like to take part in the next show, simply email your photo and a text of up to 250 words to johnbrucemullin@hotmail.com

My Tent Lauren McKay Peebles High School, Scotland A place that is important to me is inside my family tent. We have gone camping in it on holiday since I was very young and I will always treasure memories created in the tent.

I love how tents are like portable houses. You can travel around anywhere and see unfamiliar surroundings, but once inside the tent, you find it remains mostly unchanged.

It somehow manages to retain a homely, safe, feeling – which is familiar and comforting.

Whenever I am camping with my family it’s always a holiday, so naturally I have come to associate being in a tent with less stress or anxiety due to people, school or whatever else pushes your buttons.

There are some down sides to going camping in a tent, which make coming home all the more inviting. You may have had rubbish neighbours or perhaps it rained a lot.

However, these things aside, I still love the idea of being able to pitch a mini portable house somewhere for about a week, and be able to go and explore places nearby, or just to sit and vegetate on the grass for a while, and be free to do absolutely nothing.

52 Here & Now | AoU Journal No. 8 11 || Autumn Summer2016 2018

Badshahi Masjid, Lahore Abdur Rehman American Lyceum School, Pakistan Badshahi Mosque is a Mughal era monument in Lahore, the capital of Punjab. It is located on the outskirts of the old walled city. The Mosque is widely considered one of the most attractive places to visit by tourists from around the world.

The mosque was built by Emperor Aurangzeb in 1671. It is an important example of Mughal architecture, with an exterior decorated with carved red sandstone and marble inlay. Lahore had always been considered a strategic centre, as it protected the empire (India) from potential invaders from the west. The city was made an imperial capital by the Emperor Akbar, who established the adjacent Lahore Fort.

The reason this place is so special for me is that my grandparents lived nearby and we used to pray here every night. This created a special attachment for this place in my heart. However, after the death of my grandparents we moved to the south of the city, and now after a long time I have visited the site particularly for this project, which has made my old memories flash back. I would like to come back here again more often, now.

Badshahi Masjid is not the only place which brings back memories, for when I came back here I got to see a lot of places that hold a lot of sentimental attachment for my parents and myself, including Minar-e-Pakistan, and the Lahore Fort. After revisiting them, it makes me so happy to see that after all the time that has passed, not a single thing has changed. I hope it remains the same in future as well.

Portcullis House Rt. Hon. Sir Vince Cable Leader, Liberal Democrats My dad was a die-hard right wing tory who believed passionately in the British Empire. My best friend was a communist, and through arguing with both of them about their blinkered ideologies I found myself somewhere in the middle, and that’s where I have been ever since.

And today you find me looking out over the atrium of Portcullis House. The building divides opinion, but I do like modern architecture and I think that the atrium, unlike any other part of the Houses of Parliament, except perhaps the members’ tea room, encourages socialising and informal contact with people outside your own circle. My office here isn’t quite as grand as when I was in government, of course. The House smelled of beeswax and old

books, had wonderful paintings on the walls, and looked out directly onto Westminster Abbey. Portcullis House has less character, but I do relish the opportunity that this building gives me to meet with not only politicians but journalists, academics, businessmen, and the public to talk about things that really matter.

But as a gauche lower sixth former at a provincial grammar school, I didn’t have the confidence to speak out in public about my politics or anything else until my history teacher persuaded me to take part in the school play. Playing Macbeth enabled me to overcome my shyness, and so I have Mr Jewell to thank for my career in politics, as well as my tory dad and my communist boyhood friend.

© Simon Bleasdale

London Wetland Centre Fred London AoU Architect

The Observatory of the London Wetland Centre brings together three things that are very important to me; architecture, working with friends, and the natural world.

The project started in the early 90’s.

Planning meetings at Slimbridge, headquarters of the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust, took place in a room overlooking the main lake and it was hard to concentrate with the spectacular display of swans and geese, glinting in the sunlight as they flew past and swooped down to the water. But this experience was the inspiration for the huge glass wall of our observatory building at the London Wetlands Centre. At the detailed design stage a cost consultant pointed out that it would save money if it were to have less glass and more brickwork. We gently explained that brickwork tends to be harder to see through….

I visit the LWC often. Once I took a school friend and his family, and he commented: “I could die happy if I’d done this,” and I’m very conscious of what a privilege it was to have worked on this fascinating and worthwhile project As someone increasingly despairing of the way Homo Sapiens (so-called) has knowingly been sowing the seeds of its destruction by giving short term gains higher priority than the preservation of the planet on which we depend, I so much hope that the importance of the London Wetlands Centre, and all other genuinely nature-enhancing projects, will be recognised and acted upon; by everyone from grass-roots supporters to top-of-the-tree decision-makers.

My place 53

Revisiting urbanism Book review

Urbanism is most definitely not the preserve of the built environment professions. In a review of three books John Worthington AoU argues for the Academy’s unique role in bringing together disparate voices to integrate spatial and organisational thinking.

Urbanism is more a process than a product: it reflects continuous, organic and incremental development, adapting and improving the city through both spatial and organisational innovation. In 2005 when John Thompson established The Academy of Urbanism (AoU) he made a brave move, placing urbanism outside the siloed domain of the built environment professions.

Since the founding of the AoU the Urbanism Awards and publications have helped to further an awareness of good urbanism. Over the last decade there has been a growing awareness of the importance of understanding places in their city and regional context and a recognition that urban places can be within as well as between buildings.

Lessons have been assimilated, but have we been bold enough in our questioning of what makes places sing?

Rutger Bregman: Utopia for Realists (Bloomsbury Paperbacks 2018) Bergman – historian, author and advocate for universal basic income – through well selected case studies and relevant data provides a platform to question existing institutional approaches which are hindering our ability to change and improve. Utopia, he argues, has two extremes; the “utopia” of paradise and the “dystopia” of a regulated, state controlled future.

He questions the current “utopia of consumption” where we are working harder and are more stressed, despite being richer.

Bergman concludes that every utopian system, the vision that plans are based on, is grounded in the injustice of the present. Improving what we have and being ready for the future will require not only spatial innovation but also the willingness to think laterally, change the way we operate and rethink governance, ownership, and business models.

Play Days in Gillett Square © Gillett Square

David Rudlin in the Agenda for the Future of Urbanism challenges us to graduate from looking at the exceptional to recognise that most places across the UK are mediocre or poor. He proposes that “the effect of publicising the success of great places is not sufficient. We have to understand how all places can improve.” Can we be more questioning and pro-active? Society is at a point of potentially seismic change. 2008 was a moment for restructuring the financial service economy by rethinking the balance between short-term profit and long-term investment, a balance still unresolved. Brexit has created uncertainty. Trust in politicians is low, whilst civil society is gaining a voice.

How might the AoU respond?

Two books published recently and a third forged from experience of the rise of the Information Economy, each present a valuable catalyst for rethinking our role.

54 Here & Now | AoU Journal No. 11 | Summer 2018

Gillett Square in the final three for the 2012 Place Awards was commended as one of Londons’ great new public places. Revisiting the square in 2017 the agenda was about spatial change with the underlying issues of ownership, governance, homelessness and addiction, present but not actively confronted.

Bergman in his quest for a means to achieve greater empathy and equality in the welfare system, sights Broadway where the current cost for 13 homeless (police, courts and social services) was redistributed to each as an annual allowance. When applied as a pilot it was found that in the first year all had taken steps to solvency and after a year and a half seven of the 13 had a place they could call home. Providing space for a refuge, combined with the social innovation of a basic income to empower the individual and instil a sense of purpose is a realistic vision for Gillett Square with the potential of returns for all.

Shoshana Zuboff and James Maxmin: The Support Economy (Allen Lane 2003) Shoshana Zuboff, emeritus professor at Harvard Business School, was seen by many to be the prophet of the Information Age. With her fellow author, adviser to a number of global companies in the US and UK, they present an analysis of the impact of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) on the collapse of Managerial Capitalism, and the rise of individuality.

ICT is shrinking physical space and expanding the geographical spread of relationships. The Support Economy provides insights that go beyond the technical implications of new technology to posit an integrated proposition of how new business structures and emerging models for the design, use and ownership of space and place are changing individual perceptions and expectations.

The individuality spawned by Managerial Capitalism created a younger generation concerned to: create their own character and determine how they express themselves, with social media as the conduit for connection and representation. The authors identify the new need as a: claim to sanctuary; a quest for connection and a demand for a recognisable voice. A new DIY practice of consumption is emerging of: self-care; self-schooling; selfmarketing and self-publishing, with the selfie as focus. The goal of the market economy to achieve customer satisfaction measured by tangible characteristics of the physical product are now focussed on the intangible qualities of experience and expression.

The consumer is self-authoring the market, each individual supported by a curator or advocate acting as the conduit to a federated network of support. In the Support Economy efficiency is taken for granted with: advocacy; relationships; integrity; empathy; authenticity; trust; dialogue and collaboration being most valued.

Richard Sennett: Building and Dwelling: Ethics for the City (Allen Lane 2018) Sennett from the perspective of a global urbanite reflects on the dramatic changes that have impacted his practice as commentator, author, academic and urbanist over the last 25 years. Building and Dwelling explores the short comings of the writings of Mumford, Jacobs and Lynch in adapting to changing lifestyles and networked cities. It provides a context to embrace the paradox of conflicting interests and celebrate complexity. He views the city as an open, self-regulating system where innovation occurs at the borders. We are given a framework for re-thinking urbanity and celebrating place.

For much of my career I have been fascinated by distributed lifestyles in networked cities. The author presents two French words used to describe just such an urban condition. Ville: the overall city, passed through and defined by its built form (Building) and Cite: a particular place to linger, exchange and reflect (Dwelling).

Within the framework of building and dwelling centralised control and regulation are minimised. The Ville becomes an open, self-regulating, inclusive and adaptable system of systems (Cite). Governance is by shared values, delivered by etiquette and manners, reflecting tolerance and ambiguity a “richness rather than a clarity of meaning” (Venturi). The shared values of urbanism become the ethical connection between the urbanist, a way of practice and urbanite, a way of thinking open to all who enjoy urban living.

The AoU, today is a home to both active urbanists and perceptive urbanites.

It’s inclusive and open collaboration between a wide range of interests provides a framework to embrace the existing and champion the new.

Uniquely the AoU can champion integrated spatial and organisational thinking to add value, by increasing the wealth of the community, and improve livelihoods for all.

John Worthington AoU

Office with cubicle workspaces © Pxhere

Book review 55

Urban idiocy

Brilliant ideas that ruined our cities Part eight: public art Don’t get me wrong, no one is a greater art lover than the Idiot (well at least I know what I like). But public art is something different, it makes more claims. It is not just a case of giving people pleasure or making them think but it is about building communities, changing perceptions, making people healthy and regenerating urban areas, or so its proponents claim. The best public art, it is true, can do all of these things but it does so as a by-product of being successful as art. Public art that sets out to do these things generally fails. The urban idiocy involved in public art is believing that bad art is acceptable if it is proceeded by the word ‘public’.

Early in the Idiot’s career I had the experience of helping to organise a competition for a council to commission a peace sculpture for one of the main squares of the town. It was the 1980s and peace sculptures were all the rage – something to go alongside the cenotaph and to complement the council’s nuclear-free zone. The set-up was already fraught with difficulties, but nevertheless it was a high-profile site so we received a good range of entries, many from artists unknown to the Idiot. The best entry by some distance was a powerful piece of three abstract figures who were clearly in agony. It was a charged and emotional piece that conjured up all of those images of civilians fleeing from a bombing campaign, blood running from their scalps, a look of dull horror on their faces. The problem, as the selection jury debated, was what would the local paper think and would the good people of the city see it as an outrageous waste of money? So the jury, which included some politicians and planning officers (but no artists) who desperately wanted to do the right thing, ended up commissioning the lamest entry of an incipient seated women with a beatific smile on her face feeding pigeons (they were probably supposed to be doves). No one complained. I suspect that they didn’t actually notice that it had been installed, except that is for the person who nicked the pigeons (sorry doves) and sold them for scrap.

The problem is that art needs to take risks. It can do this in a gallery because if you hate it you can just walk away.

But in the street or a public square it becomes part of the public realm and is experienced by thousands of people who wouldn’t be seen dead in an art gallery. The general public, as these people are called, also have acute antennae for bullshit and particularly for wasting public money on said bullshit. Even a relatively modest public art budget can seem outrageous to a public who also knows what they like and don’t see why some creative type should get paid good money for something that their three-year-old could have dreamt up! All of this has a dumbing effect on public art – it makes people careful and careful art is almost always bad art.

Artist Rachael Whiteread has been quoted as saying “I’m not a great fan of what I call ‘plop art’, where you plop a piece of work down where it doesn’t bear any relationship to anything else”. The problem as the Guardian’s art correspondent Jonathan Jones argues is essentially irreconcilable. On the one hand you have an intellectual arts elite who are trying to comment on contemporary society and on the other you have the majority of the public who have no idea what they are talking about. Either you dumb down the art and risk the pigeon problem, or you create an erudite comment on the conditions of society (look up Geoff Wood’s dead tree sculpture in Kirkby) and people are confused and offended.

For the last two years the Spectator in association with the Architecture Foundation has run a competition called ‘What’s that thing’ – a public art version of Building Design magazine’s Carbuncle Cup. They similarly bemoan the tendency of councils to make preposterous claims for public art, quoting Hastings Council as saying that their public art programme will “reduce death rates from circulatory disease… and cancer in people under 75” – the over 75s clearly not being so appreciative of art. However their 2017 winner ‘Origin’ by the artists Solas Creative highlights another problem.

This is a six-meter high raindrop that is supposedly ‘hovering’ on a hillside overlooking Belfast – by hovering

56 Here & Now | AoU Journal No. 11 | Summer 2018

Dashi Namdakov’s ‘She Guardian, winner of the 2016 What’s that Thing? Award for bad public art

(which, by the way, is not what raindrops do) we mean stuck on top of a stubby five-metre-high pole. It is clearly awful, described by the Spectator as “Clumsy, aggressive and cheap-looking despite costing £100,000” and I suspect that everyone involved is disappointed, including the artist. The problem is that these pieces are chosen on the basis of drawings and maquettes that give no sense of their impact, they are designed by artists often working alone and with no sense of how to scale-up their ideas and commissioned by people for all the wrong reasons.

There are of course exceptions. In the 13 years of the Academy’s Urbanism Awards we have recognised only one artwork – Another Place by Anthony Gormley, that was shortlisted in 2009.

As the Academy’s book Urbanism says in the opening paragraph of its write-up of the scheme: “Another Place is not a project that could have come out of a consultation exercise, or the workings of a partnership. Art doesn’t work like that. No regeneration strategy would ever have come up with the idea of installing 100 cast iron figures along a stretch of industrial beach. If it had, the powers that be, planning authority, the bird lobby, the ecologists, the coast

guards, the wind surfers and the indeed the local community would have said no, indeed did say no”. Another Place worked because it was never intended to be a permanent piece. It had been displayed in Scandinavia, Germany and Belgium and after Crosby it was supposed to go to New York. It was therefore only going to be temporary as part of the Liverpool Biennial so the objectors were placated. However the piece was so obviously perfect for its location and managed to pull off the trick of being both a serious piece of art and something that local people loved, that it had to stay.

There is perhaps a message here, one that is also illustrated by the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square. This as you will recall is the plinth that was going to accommodate an equestrian figure of Willian IV but the funds were never raised and the plinth remained empty for 150 years. Paralysed by the pressure of selecting a permanent piece for such a prominent location it was agreed that a new piece would be commissioned every year. Highlights have included the statue of Alison Lapper Pregnant

by Marc Quinn, which looks like a Greek bust but is actually a statue of

a disabled artist born without arms and with stunted legs. Or Katharina Fristsch’s Blue Cock (male chicken), or David Shrigley’s Thumbs-Up with an elongated thumb, or that Antony Gormley again who allowed 2,400 members of the public to stand on the plinth and do what ever they wanted for an hour each. Sure there have been some duds but even those have been fun to talk about and be outraged by.

In contrast to this most public art is dire. It seeks not to offend or question and it is selected by people in planning departments and regeneration agencies desperate to create another Angel of the North but who are hampered by the inability to recognise great art even if it bit them. Good art is good for us, it is even good for society, but art is not a panacea for society’s ills and calling it public art makes the whole thing more difficult. As Jonathan Jones writes: “Public sculpture is the Brexit of the arts; a savagely antagonistic, remorseless debate between irreconcilable camps”. No wonder it produces such idiocy!

The Urban Idiot Another Place by Antony Gormley

Editor’s introduction | AoU Urban in Action idiocy 57

My own view is...

Smart art for smart cities

by Mark Davy AoU

As founder of Futurecity I have spent the past 20 years working in a variety of cultural consultant roles across some of the largest property developments in London and for most of the major property developers and great estates.

Throughout London’s rollercoaster ride of boom, bust and boom again I have been a professional outsider in the property sector and have watched as in one direction the idea of what it means to live, work and play in the city changes at breath-taking speed, whilst the consultant teams and the systems that serve the property sector remain pretty much the same. I have seen the rise of the knowledge and creative sectors in London as we begin to believe we are a world class cultural city and huge changes in the way we use our city, through live, work and play.

However, it’s not hard not to reach the conclusion that a new approach to developing our cities is needed. Cities are now ‘factories for ideas’ generating new capital, IP, ideas and creativity.

The signs of change are all around us; mediocre-consumerism replaced by a bottom-up revolution of young, idealistic and nomadic urbanists are bringing a ‘cultural-preneurial’ zeal to our urban centres. Their interests and priorities are fluid, organic and influenced by a community of interests, whether it is health and wellbeing, a good live-work balance, the rise of personal entrepreneurship, concern over the destruction of our planet or the rejection of mainstream politics.

How do we design for the new inhabitants of our city? Successful urban places, in spite of all their individual particularities, have a common ‘taste’; a similar atmosphere.

At Futurecity we would describe this as ‘seductive urbanism’, meaning urban space as playful, lucid, varied, beautiful, pleasurable, rewarding and surprising. The late Sir Peter Hall

talked of ‘the City as Pleasure Principle’ and referred to 18th century Vienna, 19th century Paris and New York in the 20th century, as cities that offered a symphonic experience - formal, creative, adventurous, breath-taking and spectacular even.

In the 20th century planners and architects adopted a more utilitarian approach, building successively the Industrial City, the Information City and the Investment City. Now is the time of the Cultural City as an urban theatre for authentic experiences, a ‘gallery without walls’. Futurecity believe that culture is catalyst and key to unlocking the promise of our former industrial landscapes, helping to catalyse a community led vision for our tired housing estates and even reimagining the purpose of our postindustrial, edge-city, M25-nudging outer London boroughs.

But in order to deliver a new approach, a new cultural/urban language is required and a challenge issued to the traditional top down approach of Funder, Developer, Masterplanner/ Architect. We need to adapt to a rapidly changing, organic and fluid urban ecosystem. I want to imagine that when 20th century architect Alvar Aalto spoke of building art as being “a synthesis of life in materialised form... not a splintered way of thinking, but all in harmony together”, he was seeking an innovative and radical model of design, combining art, architecture, creative engineering, science, master craftsmanship, community participation, co-creation and collaboration.

A new seat at the table is needed. Urban design has favoured the architect and planner at the expense of the cultural narrative; modern development is numbers-driven relying on the over view of the quantity surveyors, ‘why pay for a curve when it can be

58 58 Here Here&&Now Now | | AoU AoUJournal JournalNo. No.118 || Summer Autumn 2018 2016

achieved by straight lines’. By default, creative ideas, which cannot set out a measurable economic rationale, are not likely to be included in the conceptual stages of new developments. A ‘pyramid model’ exists, with developer, agent and architect at its apex offering ‘a single point vision’ and control of the entire process. Lower down (in declining levels of importance) are consultants offering specialist advice on transport, engineering, highways, power and energy, communityconsultation, the environment, marketing and PR and the arts.

The model needs to be turned upside down; collecting and funnelling research and investigation, mapping and auditing, testing and seeding ideas, looking for real content, experimenting with co-creation, setting out cultural partnerships and developing more inclusive community participation.

This is a ‘software not hardware’ approach, providing a manual and toolkit, a project bible and guiding narrative for site-specific, urbandevelopment.

Not by accident has ‘placemaking’ suddenly become shorthand for culture. The market now sees the cultural change in our cities and it does what it always does if it sees economic benefit – it invests and influences.

As culture (with a small ‘c’) becomes an ever-more important catalyst for ideas, a differentiator for cities across the world and as provider of creative expression for our communities; developers and architects are seeing the arts as providing the last gasp of originality in a global catalogue of pick and mix design styles.

Make no mistake, ‘culture led’ placemaking is going to be ever more relevant as our crowded urban city centres creep outwards to suburban and edge-city neighbourhoods. Places, which for decades have been described

as suburbia, are now regarded as urban. But the big question is how to make it happen? Building huge new developments like Barking Riverside or rethinking existing communities such as Thamesmead, requires a new mindset, the ‘design it and they will come approach’ won’t work.

The modern urban experience has become transient, everyone is on the move. Shorter contracts, less certainty in the employment market, a generation who doesn’t see work as single all-consuming commitment. The evidence is that creative businesses want to cluster together in authentic places, non-creative businesses want to be in creative places and everyone else wants somewhere to go and something to do.

London’s strength is in it its capacity for regeneration and as our urban centre becomes more crowded and land expensive and scarce, there is a move to the outer boroughs. But how to get the purchasers, renters, retailers, cultural-providers, university partners and network of businesses and individuals to head out to a ‘Super Urban’ location. It’s unlikely to be local government or big government funding the necessary urban experience and the museums, galleries, markets, shops, parks libraries and other accruements necessary to experience urban life.

Heading in the opposite direction is a slow decline of public investment in the arts, from sponsorship, and lottery funding to a stretched region-facing Arts Council.

placemaking. The projects developed

by Futurecity over the past 10 years show that a new approach is possible.

We have helped developers and their teams to take seriously the idea of new creative districts and neighbourhoods and in the process, we have brought new funding to the arts and brought large scale, exciting cultural projects to developers, delivered inside their operating structure.

Can we countenance the idea of the developer as a ‘cultural brand and producer of culture’? Whilst a healthy cynicism is advisable, this is not about superficial change or local authority driven Section 106 directives.

Developers are already investing in ambitious arts programmes, space for theatres and museums, in artist and maker studios, in production and rehearsal space, public art, bespoke arts and crafts, community spaces and in cultural partnerships and in many cases, this includes community participation.

Series of benches by designers Studio Swine © Polly Braden, courtesy of The Crown Estate and Oxford Properties

But this is not philanthropy, but reflects the new market and the power of the cultural consumer.

Mark Davy AoU Mark founded Futurecity in 2007 as a culture and placemaking consultancy and as a platform for the culture-driven development of our urban centres.

He recently co-founded Future\Pace, a curatorial partnership with Pace London. Visit futurecity.co.uk and futurepace.com

The market is waking up to the power of culture and the benefits it can bring and if the market cannot find the organisations that can supply what it needs, then the private sector is likely to use the same providers that have been present at the table for the past 30 years. This means that If the cultural sector is to successfully engage with the developers, architects and other urban professionals responsible for the planning and design of our city, then they are going to have to shake off the public funding vocabulary and grant mentality that has been the experience of successive generations of arts professionals.

Slipstream by Richard Wilson © David Levene

However, I am optimistic for change; developers are changing and the larger brownfield developers such as Argent at Kings Cross, Quintain at Wembley Park and Knight Dragon at Greenwich Peninsula and London estates such as Crown Estates and Grosvenor Estates see the long-term value of

My own view is.... 59

Academicians

DIRECTORS From top left to right Andrew Burrell Prof Kevin Murray Henk Bouwman Janet Sutherland John Thompson (Honorary President) David Rudlin (Chair) Steven Bee Dr Deb Upadhyaya Tony Reddy Biljana Savic Tim Stonor Alistair Barr

ACADEMICIANS Asier Abaunzo Arthur Acheson Prof Robert Adam Marcus Adams Lisa Addiscott Maria Adebowale Schwarte Pam Alexander OBE Kyle Alexander OBE Malcolm Allan Alan Baxter MBE Joanna Allen Ben Allgood Kathryn Anderson Nigel Anderson Ewan Anderson Charles Anderson Ian Angus Debbie Aplin Judith Armitt George Arvanitis Jamie Ashmore Jas Atwal Thom Aussems Jeff Austin Jeanette Baartman Dr Samer Bagaeen Jamie Baker Prof Chris Balch

Yolande Barnes Prof Lawrence Barth Prof Hugh Barton John Baulch Marga Bauza Will Bax Simon Bayliss Ian Beaumont Andrew Beharrell Robert Bennett Neil Bennett Duncan Berntsen John Best John Betty David Bishop Deirdre Black Philip Black Adam Blacker Alastair Blyth Christian Bocci Martin Boddy Hans van Bommel Nicholas Boys Smith Rosemary Bradley Andy von Bradsky Angela Brady OBE Chris Brett Eddie Bridgeman Mark Brierley Jane Briginshaw Patricia Brown Robin Buckle Craige Burden Mark Burgess Sarah Burgess Jonathan Burroughs Richard Burton Peter Butter Karen Cadell Bruce Calton Kelvin Campbell Fiona Campbell Charles Campion Steve Canadine Ian Cansfield Esther Caplin Fredrik Carlsson Matthew Carmona Peter Carr Sam Cassels Simon Andrew Catton

Philip Cave Prof Nikola Cekic Tim Challans Joanna Chambers Dominic Chapman Alain Chiaradia Nick Childs Dominic Church Shane Clarke Dr Claudia Murray Clare Coats Dr Jim Coleman Robert Coles Sarah Collicott Simon Collier Paul Collins Martin Colreavy Max Comfort Brian Condon Karen Cooksley Prof Rachel Cooper OBE Ian Corner Cara Courage Will Cousins Rob Cowan David Cowans Michael Cowdy Timothy Crawshaw Toby Crayden Adam Crozier Paul Cureton Linda Curr Peter Cusdin Jennie Daly Jane Dann Prof Wulf Daseking Alex Davey Philip Davies Eric Dawson Ian Deans Brian Deegan Ioanni Delsante Toby Denham Guy Denton Nick Dermott Clare Devine Andrew Dixon Prof John Drever Eugene Dreyer Craig Driver Tony Duggan

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Alex Dutton John Dyke Nigel Dyke Richard Eastham David Edwards Stephanie Edwards Elad Eisenstein Joanna Eley Luke Engleback Gavin Erasmus Karen Escott Roger Estop Martyn Evans Prof Brian Evans Roger Evans Wyn Evans Dr Nicholas Falk Kerri Farnsworth Max Farrell Ian Fenn George Ferguson MBE Jaimie Ferguson Kathryn Firth Stephanie Fischer Andrew Fisher Sue Flack David Flannery Bernie Foulkes Jane Fowles Simon Foxell Edward Frampton Alan Francis Peter Frankum Daisy Froud Sandra Fryer Mark Furlonger Catherine Gallagher Carole Garfield Tim Garratt John Geeson Jan Gehl Peter Geraghty Lia Ghilardi Andy Gibbins Ian Gilzean Menelaos Gkartzios Stephen Gleave Dick Gleeson Pippa Goldfinger Guy Goodman Keith Gowenlock Michele Grant Marcus Grant Mark Greaves David Green Ali Grehan James Gross Richard Guise Paul Hackett Stephen Haines Leo Hammond Tim Hancock Stephen Handley Philip Harcourt Geoff Haslam Roger Hawkins John Haxworth James de Havilland Michael Hayes CBE

Peter Heath Tina Heathcote David Height Russell Henderson Simon Henley James Hennessey Roger Hepher Colin Hill Paul Hildreth Steve Hilton Stephen Hinsley Eric Holding Peter Hollis Stephen Hollowood Glenn Howells Jun Huang Lewis Hubbard Simon Hubbard Anthony Hudson Nigel Hughes Kay Hughes Michael Hurlow John Hyland Tony Ingram Philip Jackson Julian Jackson David Jackson Timothy Jemison Cllr John Moreland Cathy Johnston Howard Jones Gregory Jones Peter Jones Eleri Jones Rory Joyce Claudia Juhre Gesine Junker Rikke Juul Gram Martina Juvara Dr Kari Kankaala Dr Kayvan Karimi Philip Kassanis Daniel Kaye Steve Kemp Jonathan Kendall David Kennedy Angus Kennedy OBE Justin Kenworthy Anne Kerr Ros Kerslake OBE Anne Kiernan Graham King Martyn Kingsford OBE Harry Knibb Angela Koch Chris Lamb Charles Landry Christer Larsson Richard Latcham Derek Latham Diarmaid Lawlor Michael Leahy Emilie Leclercq Prof Steffen Lehmann John Letherland Ning Liu Fred London John Lord Mark Lucas

Aylin Ludwig David Lumb Nikolas Lyzba Kirsty Macari Carol MacBain Robin Machell David Mahony Keiji Makino Geoffrey Makstutis Lee Mallett Andreas Markides Paul Martin Christopher Martin Agustina Martire Andrew Matthews Bob May Steve McAdam John McAslan Declan McCafferty John McCall Frank McDonald Kevin McGeough Martin McKay Craig McLaren Craig McWilliam Alessandro Melis Nikola Miller Joel Mills Dr Negin Minaei Shane Mitchell Lucy Montague Dr John Montgomery Rob Moore Paul Morsley Richard Motley Ronnie Muir John Muir John Mullin Neil Murphy Peter Murray Prof Gordon Murray Deborah Murray Allan Murray Dr Lucy Natarajan Stephen Neal Jon Neale Katy Neaves Marko Neskovic Francis Newton Victor Nicholls Torben Brandi Nielsen Dr Olli Niemi Ross Nimmo Malcolm Noble Hugo Nowell Richard Nunes Stephen O’Malley Craig O’Brien Calbhac O’Carroll Dr Dellé Odeleye Simon Ogden Killian O’Higgins Tiago Oliveira Stephen O’Malley John Orrell Emeka Osaji Trevor Osborne Paul Ostergaard Emmet O’Sullivan

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Alan Simson Anna Sinnott Ann Skippers Malcolm Smith Jef Smith Roger Smith Dave Smith Austin Smyth Carol Somper Carole Souter MBE Sophia de Sousa Adrian Spawforth Ben Spencer Catherine Stevenson Peter Stewart Alan Stewart Susan Stirling Rosslyn Stuart Peter Studdert Seiji Takamatsu Ian Tant Jonathan Tarbatt Nick Taylor Sandy Taylor Ed Taylor David Taylor Rebecca Taylor Nicholas Temple Ivan Tennant Alison Tero Prof Mark Tewdwr- Jones Gary Thomason John Thompson Rob Thompson Matt Thompson Alan Thompson Dale Thomson Julia Thrift Niall Tipping Damian Tissier Andrea Titterington Eime Tobari Ian Tod Paul Tostevin Robert Townshend Rob Tranmer Stephen Tucker Neil Tully Jeffrey Tumlin Jonathan Turner Stuart Turner Roger Tustain Nick Tyler CBE Julia Unwin Richard Upton Giulia Vallone Atam Verdi Jonathan Vining Dr Husam al Waer Tom Walker Julia Wallace Russell Wallis Ann Wallis Alan Wann Nathan Ward Andy Ward Ralph Ward Elanor Warwick David Waterhouse Prof Georgia Butina Watson Stuart Watson Camilla Ween Oliver Weindling Dr Michael Wells Allison Westray Chapman Pam Wharfe Peter Wheelhouse Victoria Whenray Lindsey Whitelaw Stephen Willacy Peter Williams

Martin Williams Patricia Willoughby Richard Wolfstrome Nick Woolley Gary Worsfold John Worthington Tony Wyatt Wei Yang Dr Ying Ying Tian Bob Young Gary Young Rob Young Paul Zara Parsa Zarian Jack Zheng Qu

Louise Dredge Isabelle Dupraz Paul Ede Ben Eley Alexander Evans Nadia Everard Alexander Farr Tobias Fett Alisha Fisher Diana Fjodorova Martin Fleischmann Andrea Forsberg Hannah Fox Anna Freiesleben Matthew Gamboa Joel Gandhi Rebecca Gibson Ross Gilbert Nicholas Goddard James Goodsell Katsushi Goto Emily Greenaway Amanda Gregor Julie Guilhem Anastassia Gusseinova Zarreen Hadadi Danny Harris Rosie Haslem Ines Hassen Luwen He Francesca Heathcote Sapey Laura Heinritz Patrick Hennessey Simon Hicks Alan Higgins Sarah Hill Marie Hintz Dominik Hoehn Sinead Holmes Lidija Mirella Honegger Leanne Hoogwaerts Hasanul Hoque Louise Houston Saskia Huizinga Henry Hunter Julia Hurley Emma Hutton Loukia Iliopoulou Ross Irvine Omar Islam Fred Jerrome Jennifer Johnson Alice Johnson Foteini Kanellopoulou Georgios Kapraras David Kemp Charlotte Kemp Maxine Kennedy Robert Kerr Isobel Knapp Anna Kravec Melissa Lacide Tatum Lao Alexander Lauschke Will Lawton Yeonhwa Lee Alex Lee-Bull Mark Leitner-Murphy Niamh Lenihan Michela Leoni Philip Liu Mar Lluch Salvador Iacovos Loizou Stephen Lovejoy Tierney Lovell Laetitia Lucy Alina Ludviga Madeleine Lundholm Ava Lynam Richard MacCowan Belinda Mackay Wendy Maden

YOUNG URBANISTS Esra Abdelrahman Khalifa Abubakar Alexandros Achniotis Sidra Ahmed Eva Aitsam Amer Alwarea Patrick Andison Jennifer Angus Ben Angus Akrem el Athram Kinda Ayoub Nouha Ayoub Simon Banfield Sangeetha Banner Jacqueline Barrett Laura Bartle Chris Bate Jordan Benson Sarah Birt Fanny Blanc Mark Bori Mark Boyd Michael Bredin Ciaran Brown Laura Burnett Matthew Carreau Cath Carver Jasmine Ceccarelli Drewry Nairita Chakraborty Victor Chamberlain Roland Chanin-Morris Simon Chinn Chow Chun Chi Cecil Heather Claridge Francis Clay Ian Collier Alison Collins Saul Collyns Lindsay Conn Nicola Contarin John Cooney Daniel Cooper Jonathan Couturier Robert Cox Rebecca Cox Charles Critchell Lilly Dai Dan Daley Hugh D’Alton Poppea Daniel Hanaa Dasan Sean Davey Annika Davies Aaron Davis Vito De Bellis Felix de Gray Patricia Martin del Guayo Constance Desenfant Cathe Desiree Nadal Odysseas Diakakis Aya Dibsi Amy Dickens Ina Dimireva

Giacomo Magnani Ahmed Mahgoub Claire Malaika Tunnacliffe Theo Malzieu Nick Mann Peter Mansbridge Ryan Manton William Marr-Heenan John Mason Greg Maya Kathryn McCain Carl McConnell Chloe McFarlane Duncan McNaughton Shawn Meyers Aleksandra Milentijevic Darcy Millar David Milner Jose Monroy Lily Moodey Graeme Moore Lucy Moore Tristan More Antonia Morgan Jelly Moring Olga Mun Katerina Nagnopol Ioanna Nicolaou Louisa Nie Pauline Niesseron Jim Nightingale Bobby Nisha Szymon Nogalski Nicole Norman Marketa Nosalova Alex O’Hare Eleana Orr Floriane Ortega Killian O’Sullivan Laura Parker-Tong Sejal Patel Victoria Payne Claudia Penaranda- Fuentes Francesca Perry Tom Pinder Victoria Pinoncely Emma Pitt Kerstin Plain Julie Plichon Tessel Pool Alice Preston-Jones Bright Pryde-Saha Kseniia Pundyk Longning Qi Mura Quigley Cristina Racsko Emma Rainoldi Dinar Ramadhani Ronald Riviere Reuben Ross Megan Rourke Jonah Rudlin Rebekah Russell Renelle Sarjeant Anna Saskia Leggett Alice Saunders Charlotte Savage Ross Schaffer Alexei Schwab Shane Scollard Alec Scragg Eleftherios Sergios Amanda Sheppard Safeer Shersad Shreya Shetty Simeon Shtebunaev Matthew Sims Claudia Sinatra Rebecca Sladen Roxana Slavcheva Emilia Smeds

Andy Smith Henry Smith Tom Smith Alan Smithies Rihards Sobols Bethania Soriano Emma Spierin Matthew Spurway Mark Stewart Catherine Street Rebecca Sumerling Lucy Sykes Charlotte Tate Tracey Taylor Jerome Thibault Natalie Thomas Gideon Thomas Gavin Thomson Kieran Toms John Townsend Jasmine Tredget Yoana Tulumbadzhieva Joanna Turner Gozde Uyar Mariangela Veronesi Emilie Walker Lucy Wallwork Michelle Wang George Weeks Dr Frederik Weissenborn Robert Wellburn Roger White Tim White Jennifer Wiles Niall Williams Derek Wilson Evelyn Wong Nicola Wood Mengqian Wu Timothy Wu Mirjam Wurtz Jieling Xiao Haibo Xu Lea Zeitoun Yigong Zhang Maria Zouroudi

HONORARY ACADEMICIANS Prof Wulf Daseking Jan Gehl George Ferguson CBE Christer Larsson Manuel Salgado John Worthington MBE

IN-RESIDENCE David Rudlin AoU Artist Frank McDonald AoU Writer Ian McMillan Poet

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