Green & Clean Spitalfields Blanca Pérez González · Spring 2012 · Urban Workshop III · London

Intro

WhyAnalysis

HowStrategy1st part2nd partReferencesStakeholders

WhatThe project

Links and references

Index

London is the most cosmopolitan city in Europe and only New York can really claim to be as world class in terms of its interna-tionalism. The interaction between people of different cultures living in the same space is part of London’s culture. This variety is followed by the costant movement and change of the city, giving a very strong iden-tity of the city.East London is particularly interesting, in terms of growth and social interaction, because of the gentrification process that it has been experiencing in the last ten years. It is a very residential area, that nowadays is turning into the reference point of the arts and fashion in London. In the same area people of multiples natio-nalities resides there and share common spaces with tourists. The public space is as important as the private and the challenge of making a good use of it, or explode all its possibilities is there.

How to make the most of this public space in an area in constant change inhabited by very different people, is the question that gives sense to this project.

Intro

Why

StrengthsArea in regeneration.Touristic interest.Good transport network.There is a wide range of infrastructure support available in Tower Hamlets, much of it of a high quality.The borough’s adjacency to the City, supporting a strong business- services led sector, and creative industries activities.

Take advantage of the climate of London for creating new green areas in the zone.Lack of benches vs. the existing high street life of the area.Create new hot spots around the area for having an pedestrian’s homogeneous flow in the area and not leaving hidden areas, avoiding theft and crime.Several empty plots and abandoned areas.Rehabilitate the potential abandon spa-ces.Increase the bike lanes in the area trying to decrease the veicles traffic.

Opportunities

Zonification in the area because of diffe-rent races. Several empty plots and abandoned areas.Certain sectors - Manufacturing, Whole-sale and Retail and Transport and Com-munications - are in long-term decline.The limitations of the local housing mar-ket, in particular a lack of family homes and affordability, may undermine sustai-nable local economic activity.

Very differentiate areas inside the bo-rough.Crime and theft are very present in the borough.The reputation of the borough has always been the one of a bad area.Tourism and gentrification may lead to the loss of identity of the area.

Threats

Weaknesses

Gentrification: refer to the changes that result when wealthier people acquire or rent property in low income and working class communities. Urban gentrification is associated with migration within a population. In a community undergoing gentrifica-tion, the average income increases and average family size decreases. It is commonly believed that this results in the displacement of the poorer, pre-gentrification residents, who are unable to pay increased rents or house prices and property taxes.

How

Strategy

1. How to use gentrification in a way that everybody wins?

2. How to explode the multicultural character of the neighborhood without loosing its identity?

1st to regenerate the area

This area is mainly a residential neighborhood, with some strategic buil-dings that attract people. As the mar-kets. This kind of spaces make possible a life in the streets that other activities can not generate. They create eeting places where people go and stay there eating, chating,... during all the day, and everything in the street. Because this neighborhood before of being a trendy area it was a residential one it is not prepared for this kind of use. To improve the existing infrastructure of the neighborhood, addapting it to a mi-xed use area, is the aim of this first part.

Ideas: 1. increase the number of benches.

2. increase the number of litter bins.

3. clean the zone.

4. increase the green areas.

Aldgate

Liverpool Street

Whitechapel

Brick Ln

Comm

ercial St

Whitechapel High Str

Middlesex St

Hanbury St

Bethnal Green Rd

Vallence Rd

Old Montague St

SPITALFIELDS

SHOREDITCH

CITY

WHITECHAPEL

BETHNAL GREEN

5min

15min

10min

10min

10min

10min

10min

30min

Benches and bins will allow the neigh-bors to use the street at every hour in the day. It is very surprising that you can not find any bench in Brick Ln, one of the main streets of Spitafields.

Flows

volume

intensity

Cars Pedestrians

+ -

With this analysis we can now which are the most tran-sited streets in the area. This will let us know where the facilities are most required.

“The City of London removed its cast iron litter bins from the street several years ago for security reasons. Until recently it has not been considered safe enough for any litter bins to be placed on the City streets, but some explosive resistant litter bins have now been placed in a limited number of garden locations or open spaces. The bins have been located in areas of high litter generation. The location of these bins is constantly under review and should there be a heightened state of security it may be necessary to remove the bins once again.”v

About litter bins...

There is another part of the project, that instead of being focused on the existing facilities of the area, it is going to be fo-cused on proposing new spaces for the neighborhood. This place has a very interesting amount of potential spaces with the same cha-racteristics: small, narrow, empty plots. This spaces could be used for new buil-dings around the area that will increase the interest of people from outside of it to be integrated in the life of the area.

This new buildings are going to have a program that it is addapted to the needs of the area but also offers public space for use of the people external to it.This buildings are going to be viewpoints. Taking advantage of the sha-pe of the potential spaces this buildings are going to be above the existing ones offering a new space for the neighbors.

2nd the new spaces

What do they can offer to the neighbor?this spaces are going to be very sim-ple prefabricated structures that could be built or dismount depending on the needs, they are going to be placed in this empty spaces working with the neighbour trying to erase the abandon image that they have. They are going to be public space with a program linked to the activity of the neighborhood so they are going to help to the development of the area.

This article is in www.laciudadviva.org, it is a very interesting project located in Dalston, very close to my area. Talking about gentrification and public space, this project is a very interesting interven-tion. Inspiring and interesting point of view for my project.

References

Urbanismo colectivo intercultural

por Nuria Alvarez Lombardero(UK) — Domingo, 26 de febrero de 2012

Se acerca la primavera y ya se puede observar el inicio de actividad en el espacio público de Londres. Es en este momento, año tras año, cuan-do la característica multiculturalidad de esta ciudad, escondida en los distintos hogares durante los meses de frio, comienza a hacerse presente, y con ello la continúa negociación espacial de aquellos escasos lugares públicos de esta ciudad en los que el ocio no está relacionado con el consumo. [...] La peculiaridad que hace especial esta plaza sobre otros lugares públicos es su habilidad no solo de haber permitido un dialogo entre diferentes etnias y estratos sociales tanto en su proceso de proyecto y construcción y su posterior uso, sino también de haber evitado el típico proceso de privatización. Antes de entrar en detalles sobre este lugar vea-mos algunas de las peculiaridades del barrio donde se ubica.El barrio de Dalston, al Noroeste de Londres, [...] ha dado cabida durante años a una gran diversidad de emigrantes: primero Judíos, después Caribeños y Turcos y muy recientemente Vietnamitas y Polacos. Esto ha dejado en el barrio una innumerable canti-dad de restaurantes y tiendas de diversas naciona-lidades así como un carácter multicultural

My comments & conclusions

This post says some very interesting things about London. It is very instructive how the author makes a very nice introduction about London and this neigh-borhood. She describes very well the culture of this city and in such a way that is very focused on the pu-blic space and its use, so it is very useful for me. From the first moment she names the public space, public space in London is specially important because of the way its citizens use it. It is in the blood of the people of London to live in the streets and make use of the public space. And is interesting the way they use it because it is not like in other cities, each city has its own identity. In London, they invent whatever excuse for going out to the street and make a flea marker, a fair, a gastronomy market, a trade place, a concert,...whatever. And this is fascinating because even with the weather that they have (that is not the best for this kind of activities in the street) you can find a food market (for example) in every street, every day. Another very important aspect of this city, that it is mentioned in the post, is the multicultural identity of London, and specially of my area, East London. Lon-don is one of the most multicultural cities of the world and you can notice it in its streets. And the peculiar thing of London is that you can find a wide range of cultures living in the same street, by just looking to the kind of shops that you have, for example. You find neighborhoods that could be maybe more chinese or more Vietnamese, but in general you are going to find different shops and very specialized ones, from any part of the world living together door with door. This two aspects, public space and multiculturalism, are the main terms of this post, and so of my project.

Por otro lado, Dalston es actualmente una de las áreas de Londres que más está sufriendo el pro-ceso de gentrificación relacionado con los últimos cambios producidos en Londres por la industria creativa y los Juegos Olímpicos. [...] La privatiza-ción y estandarización progresiva de estos otros barrios, que poco a poco se van llenando de res-taurantes en cadena, clubs y gimnasios privados, y la “turistizacion” de los mercadillos populares, han ayudado a esta transformación de Dalston en el barrio por antonomasia del sector creativo de la ciudad, [...] Además Dalston atrae por su conexión con el resto de la ciudad al convertir su estación de tren ligero en una de las paradas de la línea creada para comunicar el área de los juegos olímpicos con el centro y que conectara a partir de este año toda el área Este. [...]Sin embargo, aunque pudiera parecer que este proceso de gentrificación fuera a hacer peligrar la identidad del barrio, no ha sido el caso. El Ayunta-miento de Londres, conocedor de esta situación y de las tensiones existentes entre distintas culturas y clases sociales del barrio de Dalston, decidió en 2003 apoyar un proyecto del distrito para regenerar un parking de coches y convertirlo en el principal espacio público del barrio. [...]

Seguidamente la HCD decide ampliar el alcance de la propuesta proponiendo a la cooperativa reformar una fábrica cercana para albergar una Casa de Cul-tura para el barrio, el proyecto aumenta de escala y con ello el número de interesados. Los primeros en ver las posibilidades de beneficios para todas las artes que se pudieran implicar (win-win), tanto del sector privado como del público, [...]

The author in her post comments on the impact of a public initiative in the neighborhood of Dalston, the way that this area fought against the process of gen-trification that it was suffering by a very simple strate-gy, making activities of free use in the public space.

East London is experimenting right now a process of change, specially looking towards the Olympic Games but this is not the only reason. This change is based on rebuilding the life of this area by making it more attractive. As this post says, East London was a place mainly inhabited by immigrants that after the war went there to have a place to live, this part of London has always be seen as an abandon and dangerous area. So the initiative is to regenerate this area and elimina-te this reputation of the area. They are achieving this objective successfully, mainly thanks to the area of Shorderich and Spitalfields, the strategy was to make them the new places of reference of London’s art and fashion, and they got this. But, there is a tricky aspect of making this kind of new trendy areas, what hap-pens with the neighborhood life? The privatization of the area makes this place an impossible site to afford for the existing neighbors. Also, with the standardization and the “turistizacion”, they make the neighborhood loose its identity. And in this are its identity is specially important because of the amount of different cultures that you have here, it is a shame to loose all the richness that you have here only for making it commercial. The process of gentrification is, everytime, a difficult risk to take. For my project I think that is interesting to search for new solutions of making the neighborhood attractive by movements that born from the neighborhood itself, as the one that it is described in this post.

Esta asociación será la que a partir de ese momen-to discutirían todas las decisiones a tomar en el desarrollo del proyecto de regeneración. Es en esta asociación desde donde se comienza el trabajo con la comunidad local existente a través de encuestas y consultas públicas que llevarían al planeamiento de la plaza. [...]

La actividad que todo este proceso colaborativo de proyecto y construcción que aúnan diferentes partes participativas es continuado posteriormente con el uso de este nuevo espacio público. Bordea-da por la nueva Casa de Cultura y el Club de Jazz Vortex, que forman el marco de este nuevo teatro al aire libre a modo de foyer, la plaza ofrece una infraestructura al uso de todo tipo de público, ya sean vecinos, propietarios privados, asociaciones u organismos oficiales. La posibilidad de alquilar proyectores, elementos móviles, mobiliario urbano o de sonido a través de la HCD hace que iniciativas de todo tipo mantengan la plaza siempre activa con eventos, actuaciones, performances y actividades sociales, que van desde festivales de música re-lacionados con el club de Jazz, jardines de juegos gigantes, proyecciones de películas o clases de bailes colectivas. Todas estas actividades apoyan a los negocios privados que rodean la plaza al mismo tiempo que ayudan a la interacción y negociación entre etnias y estratos sociales. [...]

In this example London’s City Hall designed a project in 2003 that helped to the regeneration of the neigh-borhood but not interfering in its life. The project was to turn a parking lot of the area into the main public space of the neighborhood. The answer to this pro-posal was highly positive and this example shows us how we can face social problems by making a good use of the public space. In this project is very impor-tant the variety of activities that it has, and the easy access that the users have to them. Also the disposal of the space for the use of the citizens not only with private initiatives, it is important to maintain active the public space. And this is achieved with a good relationship between all the stakeholders. The impor-tance of the stakeholders here is crucial, from the city hall, to the neighbors, the users or the architects.

With this example I have understood some things of London and the public space that are going to be very important for my project. In this city I think that the way of getting to people for do this kind of urban projects is making them be involved in the project, but in a very direct way. Maybe for getting to the stakehol-ders for my project I will make a food market where people could come, eat and talk about ideas of the project. Or maybe with a music festival or a public debate in a street. I think that opening a blog or a facebook profile it is very useful for this kind of public projects, for hearing peoples ideas and dialogue with the users. But in the case of London’s culture I think that an activity that makes people get involve in it phy-sically is more effective. You can get more to people if you hace them face to face, experiencing what you are proposing.

Stakeholders

1. Authorities

Tower Hamlets Council

Development CommitteeCouncillor Helal Uddin Abbas (Spitalfields and Banglatown)Councillor Craig Aston (Limehouse)Councillor Marc Francis (Bow East)Councillor Shiria Khatun (East India and Lansbury)Councillor Helal Uddin (Bromley by Bow)Councillor Kosru Uddin (Mile End East)

General Purposes CommitteeCouncillor Mizan Chaudhury (Bethnal Green South)Councillor Sirajul Islam (Bethnal Green South)Councillor Shiria Khatun (East India and Lansbury)Councillor Maium Miah (Millwall)

Strategic Development CommitteeCouncillor Helal Uddin Abbas (Spitalfields and Banglatown)Councillor Khales Uddin Ahmed (Bromley by Bow)Councillor Judith Anne Gardiner (St. Dunstan’s and Stepney Green)Councillor Carlo Gibbs (Bethnal Green North)Councillor Emma Jones (St. Katharine’s and Wapping)Councillor Bill Turner (Mile End and Globe Town)

Cabinet Member for RegenerationCouncillor Rofique Uddin Ahmed (Mile End and Globe Town)

Cabinet Member for EnvironmentCouncillor Shahed Ali (Whitechapel)

Cabinet Member for Health and WellbeingCouncillor Abdul Asad (Whitechapel)

Cabinet Member for HousingCouncillor Rabina Khan (Shadwell)

Cabinet Member for CultureCouncillor Rania Khan (Bromley by Bow)

Development & Renewal - Scrutiny LeadCouncillor Helal Uddin (Bromley by Bow)

Who is going to be affected by this project. And to whom I have to take into account to carry on the strategy. The main interested parts in the development of this project.

1. Authorities

Building control service. Deal with the construction of new buildings, change of use, alteration or conversion of existing buildings.

Derelict properties and public safety. The empty property team aims to trace, then encourage the owners of empty properties to bring them back into use. If there are any public health issues they liaise with environ-mental health to ensure the appropriate action is taken. This organization could help me to find the empty properties and their owners for my project.

Planning permission. If you’re planning to carry out work to your property or change the way it is used you may need planning permission.

2. Business

Commercial property. The council has a portfolio of 200 shops located in the Tower Hamlets borough. As the project is going to affect to the business of the area is important to get in contact with them for its development.

3. Associations

Tenants’ and Residents’ AssociationsA Tenants’ and Residents’ Association (also know as a TRA) is a group formed by local residents who join together to work for com-mon aims. This is the fastest way to get to the biggest amount of residents of the area, for maintain them informed of the project that I am going to develop and for hearing their opinion.

4. Others

Private owners and landowners.

Users of the borough. Tourists, residents, citizens, people that uses the area of different ways, going to school, working…

What

The project

40cm 10cm

60cm

100cmremovable urban furniture

http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/estuary/multiling.htmwww.laciudadviva.orgwww.timeout.com www.designforlondon.gov.ukwww.gilletsquare.org.ukhttp://www.towerhamlets.gov.uk/http://www.bonewells.co.uk/00,news,10245,254,00.htm

“The Death and Life of Great American Cities”, Jane Jacobs

References and links