Edited By Lorens Holm and Alona Martinez Perez

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Preface This document is a report on the inaugural symposium of the Geddes Institute Task Force on Cities & their Regions. The Task Force was founded in April of this year. The Geddes Institute for Urban Research [http://www.dundee.ac.uk/geddesinstitute/] was established by the University of Dundee in 2006 to seek out or to create forums for research into urbanism that bring together disciplines from across the University with an interest in the rural and urban landscape. Past and current projects involve coalitions of architects, fine artists and design, and social scientists; the present project brings on board planners, urban designers, and infrastructure engineers. In keeping with this agenda, the Institute has three directors, drawn from Departments of Town & Regional Planning, and Geography, and the School of Architecture. We have also been charged with extending these links outwith the University, and in particular to other universities, to local authorities and professional bodies. We see ourselves as perpetuating the programmes and agendas of Patrick Geddes, the polymathic biologist and city planner, who taught at the University of Dundee in the early years of the 20th Century.

In addition to this newly formed Task Force, the Geddes Institute has organised interdisciplinary conferences, symposia, workshops, and research projects at the University, during the past three years. Past and current projects include:

Reflections on Creativity – international conference 2006

Exploring the Digital City: space culture politics - international symposium, 2006-07

Managing Metropolitan Regions: Geddes in the Digital Age – international symposium, 2008

City Think Tank (CTT)- brown bag lunch research seminars. Ongoing

Landworkers Exhibition and Symposium. May 2009

Remixing the City: narratives of love and loathing - research grant application. June 2009

There is a common thread in these initiates. There is a conviction that our intellectual culture, our visual and verbal culture, and the culture of everyday life is embedded in the land, inscribed on the surface of the earth. Landworkers deals with land and the social forms of everyday life; Remixing the City deals with the land as the primary archive of our culture; the Task Force with the land and its sustainable development.

The Task Force on Cities & their Regions comprises participants from universities across Scotland, and from Europe, including England, Norway, and Spain. It comprises representatives from industry, the professions and professional bodies, and local authorities in England and Scotland, and from the Scottish Government. The inaugural symposium took place Monday 06 April 2009 at the University of Dundee, hosted by the School of Architecture, attended by 28 members [attendees list appendix 6], and included a programme of national and international speakers [programme appendix 2] who we invited because we felt that through their research work or their experience in city design and planning, they would be able to shed light on problems facing the development of Scotland today, and develop strategies for dealing with them. The symposium was preceded by a questionnaire (31 returns) distributed to all members which asked: What are the issues and questions facing regional cities today? and sought an answer under eight categories [appendix 3 ].

The symposium provided a broad base for discussion, appropriate for a group with such a broad disciplinary base, and such varied areas of expertise and action. The intention of the symposium was to develop research and action strategies for dealing with questions relating to the continued development of the built and unbuilt environment. Its purpose was to agree a position paper – this document - addressing the issues and problems facing Scottish cities, with a view to focusing funded research in urbanism. Although our present focus is Scotland, our resources (the Task Force) and frame of reference is global. Scotland and its magnificent landscape in such close visual and infrastructural proximity to its cities, presents incredible opportunities, but they are by no means unique. The scope of our work will expand outward as we develop – strategically and opportunistically – a portfolio of funded research projects.

Given the length of this Report, we should point out that it is primarily a record of the symposium, with critical commentary in the following sections: Introduction, Summary of presentations Questionnaire Summary, Conclusions, and Way Forward.

To our speakers, who worked hard to realise this document, let this document thank you again, formally, for your generous and hard labour. To our attendees on the day, let it welcome you.

Dr. Lorens Holm, Director Ms. Alona Martinez-Perez Geddes Institute (Architecture) Researcher and Project Manager Geddes Institute (Architecture) and Regional Convenor Urban Design Group Scotland

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Table of Contents Preface

Introduction (Lorens Holm) 2

Cases studies

Urban Planning in Catalunya, by Ariadna Perich Capdeferro 4

Liverpool - designed to be different, by Rob Burns 7The Prince’s Foundation for the Built Environment and Sustainable

Urbanism, by Lita Khazaka 9

Placeplanning: setting the gold standard for the planning and design process, by Rob Cowan 13

Urban Design Policy-Strategies for success in Scotland, by Robert Huxford 16

Learning from other examples: Bilbao, Sheffield, and Belfast, by Alona Martinez-Perez 20

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Summary of presentations (AMP)

Three questionnaires from overseas

Questionnaire selection (LH & AMP)

Questionnaire summary and discussion (LH)

Group workshop (AMP)

Conclusions (LH & AMP)

Way forward (LH)

Acknowledgements (LH & AMP)

Appendixes

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Although we do not think of the contemporary as archaeological, our collective culture is inscribed in the surface of the earth. If this seems to invoke the tribal, the aerial, the chthonic; it is simply, for a moment, to remind us of something more primitive than us, that is always with us even if never acknowledged. Walter Benjamin said we receive the built environment in a state of distraction. Most of what motivates us is not present to us. The surface of the earth is the repository and archive of our collective culture. How we build upon it invests the diffused field with focal points of value, what in social and psychoanalytic theory are called objects. We mean this in the most literal most prosaic way. This collective realm is as real and tangible as tarmac. If we do not know this surface and know what we are doing to it, then we do not know ourselves. We are still in search of a cartography adequate

to the task. This search led Geddes to propose that as a matter of national policy, every city should have a Cities Exhibition as a permanent institution within its civic centre, that explained to its inhabitants about the place they lived and its relation to the its region, its country, the world.

Our culture – by which we mean everything held between us collectively, including our knowledge, identities, and memories - is inscribed in the land by stone walls, and field furrows, disused quarries, streets and lane markers, manhole covers, lamp posts, post boxes, public toilets, bus shelters, bus routes, taxi ranks, newspaper distribution patterns, forgotten watercourses; the hidden networks, tax districts, postcodes, postcode lotteries, National Trust boundaries,… landlines and satellite dishes, advertising bill boards, graffiti, scuff and skid marks, car parks, entries, decoys, detritus, steps, terraces, office blocks, skylines and laylines, views from hills, from bedrooms; light falling across doorsills; shadow on footpaths, streets that channel the prevailing winds and the prevailing views..., ring tones, the continually surprising contiguities of public and private spaces.

Everything we do, from rearranging granny’s geranium boxes to traffic engineering, alters this surface. Every utterance, every folk song, every novel, film, advertisement, lifts this culture off the surface of the earth and puts it in circulation. It is critical how this archive is owned by title, regulated by law, and how changes to it are imagined by policy, shaped by design, and ghost-written by financial practice. This raises questions across a spectrum that includes

everything from how we represent the city to ourselves and thereby capture it for our collective consciousness, to how we regulate it by planning policy and planning law, to different specific strategies for occupying it and building on it.

In choosing to name this group The Task Force on Cities & their Regions, we insist that although there are critical differences between the urban and the rural, we encompass both within our remit. This is the remit of the Geddes Institute. Our scope is the total landscape that has been circumnavigated or bisected by human beings and subjected to their livelihoods and imaginations.

Scotland poses interesting questions. One observation to emerge from the discussion was that the whole of Scotland could be imagined as a single small to mid-sized city peopled by parklands and flows of resources and people, and needs to be planned as such [see the Barcelona example]. That Scotland would become a single conurbation, or at least that its two largest cities would, was predicted by Patrick Geddes in 1912. Glasgow and Edinburgh have been growing together for more than a century, and the word on the street is that developers are quietly buying up areas of Perthshire in anticipation that this urban corridor will grow northeast into the scenic lowlands and foothills. It may be that strategic thinking needs to move beyond cities and regions; something initiated by the recently formed Strategic Development Planning Authorities, and contemplates the six cities and their regions as one network. This is not to deny their similarities and

Introduction

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differences but to plan and design for them comprehensively. All but Stirling are waterfronts. They are unique in that unlike bigger cities or cities in other countries, they are in close proximity to their regions, and these regions are spectacularly beautiful. Nowhere in a Scottish city are you out of sight of mountains, and the predominance of outdoor recreation is immediately apparent to incomers.

As Nick Barley points out in the introduction to Shifts, this proximity to beauty is an impetus for research into forms of development. Scotland is growing and there is a problem about how to organise this development. The picture postcard of the mountains is nothing like the view that greets the commuter along the Glasgow-Edinburgh corridor. If this leftover nowhere sub-urban car-park industro-scrubland is becoming the default condition, there is no reason to believe that the extension of this corridor into Stirling-Perth will be any different, unless the many and varied conditions that shape the way we occupy the land are defined, examined, and changed.

The question of development defines opposite positions in architectural theories of the city, between those that focus on the flattening effects of the market, for which there is only one value, the value of money; and those that seek to resist the market and create meaning by articulating differences. According to Rem Koolhaas, industro-scrubanity is intelligible: it is the market forces made visible on the surface of the earth and if we knew how to read it the way the developer does, it would make sense to

us. Elsewhere he states that urban space is shaped by the flow of capital, a statement impossible to make without the materialist critique of capitalism and psychoanalysis by Deleuze and Guattari, for whom social and urban formations are defined by the flow of energy (psychical and physical and financial). The power of the market is that it is capable of commodifying anything and is impervious to incredulity. Even things that we did not know were objects, can be formed into objects and sold. Now you can buy debt, which used to be regarded as less than nothing. The solution to pollution by exhaust-producing industries is to create a carbon market and sell it. The market has invaded areas usually regarded as resistant to it (including university research). All homes are now second homes. Land is now simply an investment opportunity for investors who have no interest in, let alone love of, the places they are making, than its investment value. The difference between the upland farm and the waterfront mill is its return on investment. Against this monoculture, Aldo Rossi’s project in the

Architecture of the City was to recuperate other forms of value for the city based on differences in topography, climate, history, habit, dreams (a project shared by the Prince’s Trust). When Rossi developed his theory of types, he shifted the agenda from form (he says type is not form) to meaning. For Rossi, the city is haunted by meaning embedded in its built forms and their relationships and functions, which are recovered the only way meaning is ever recovered, by a kind of linguistic exercise he calls analogic thinking, but to which we could add metaphor, metonymy, free association, mistakes. He looks at how meaning coagulates around objects when we assign words to them; and how words become tangible when assigned to objects. He occupies the city by tarrying with the labyrinthine structure of narrative, and asks, not how much it is worth, but what it communicates.

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The Task Force meeting involved a series of presentations with a group of International speakers in Dundee on the 6 of April 2009. The aim was to look at different approaches and examples to urbanism in cities and regions, and general policy. These have developed into a series of cases studies listed below. What we found interesting about all these approaches is their variety in applying successful solutions to specific problems while dealing with cities and regions.

Above that there are 41 Comarques (groups of several Municipis) with political administrations called Consells Comarcals. Finally, there are 4 Provincies (groups of Comarques) with 4 capitals (Girona, Tarragona, Lleida and Barcelona) that will disappear soon in front of the restoration of 7 or 9 Vegueries (an historical subdivision abolished in the past). These new delimitated “regions” become the government functional areas of planning and they give a more accurate answer to the diversity and functionality of the territory as well as more power to promote and develop their inner potentialities.

The Central government actual planning policy is based on 3 main principles: In front of the growing urban sprawl dynamics: compacting. Instead of the functional specializations, the trivialization of the landscape and the degradation of the public space: complexity. And in front of the social segregation and the generation of ghettos according to their economical capacities: cohesion. Catalunya then, is seen as a territory with potentialities and challenges that need 1/a new urbanization model, 2/an integrated urban grid and 3/a definitive push in urban/territorial planning.

Presentation of cases studies

Case Study 1 – ‘Urban Planning in Catalunya’

Presentation Summary(written by Ariadna Perich Capdeferro)

Ms. Ariadna Perich Capdeferro is a Lecturer in the Barcelona School of Architecture (ETSAB) and Architect. She studied architecture and urbanism at the School of Architecture of Barcelona and at Edinburgh College of Art.Contact details: ariadnaperich@coac.net, ariadna.perich@upc.edu, www.etsab.upc.edu/

The presentation intended to generate a framework of understanding of the actual urban and regional planning instruments and policies in Catalunya. It is based on the belief that there is an interesting space for comparison between Scotland and Catalunya beyond their differences. This exercise should provoke a new way of looking at both territorial realities and potentialities.

First of all and to give a general overview, it is necessary to enumerate the Catalan administrative subdivisions, which respond to historical and physical boundaries. We have 946 Municipis (Municipalities). They are the smallest local governmental entity with urban planning competences (*nearly 51% are under 1000 inhabitants which means councils without enough resources to promote/execute their own urban planning).

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Our instruments of planning are based on a hierarchy of plans and maps documents where each of them has to follow the ones above in order to be approved. They go from the large scale of the territory to the small scale of local entities. They can be divided in 3 main areas: 1.European territorial strategies: promoted by the UE. 2.Territorial planning: promoted, executed and approved by the central government. This is an important piece of the territorial policy. The main figures are the General Territorial Plan (all Catalunya), the Partial Territorial Plans (the areas of the 7 Vegueries) and the Territorial and Urban Director Plans (the areas are delimitated depending on the subject, for example the 12 Urban Plans for the Strategic Residential Areas, an urgent law from 2007 that identifies the need for social housing and promotes 93 new settlements around Catalunya to generate 90,097 new flats with 50% of social housing). 3.Urban planning: promoted, executed and approved mainly by local governments with some approvals from the different governmental territory urban commissions.

All of them are being developed under 15 criterions that the government formulated on the basis of the ideological framework of a 1983 law, and observation and evaluation of what has happened in the Catalan territory during the last decade. These points of support are:

1.To help the diversity in the territory and maintain the reference of its biophysical matrix.

2. To protect the natural, agricultural and non urban spaces as a components of order for the territory.

3.Topreserve the landscape as a social value and economical stimulation of the territory.

4.Moderate the use of land.

5.To help the social cohesion of the territory and prevent the spatial segregation in urban areas.

6.To protect and promote the urban heritage that vertebrates the territory.

7.To promote an efficient and integrated residential policy.

8.To promote the coexistence of activities and housing in urban areas and have a rational implementation of industrial and commercial areas.

9.To bring measures of regulation and spatial orientation of second residences.

10.To ensure the compact and continuous character of the settlements.

11.To reinforce the nodal structure of urban growth within the territory.

12.Make mobility a right, not an obligation.

13.To introduce public transport within/between polarized and compact settlements.

14.To have special care of the road system that structures, at the territorial scale, the systems of settlements.

15.To integrate Catalunya in the system of European urban grids and transport with infrastructures according to the territorial matrix.

One of the questions the “Territorial Plan of Catalunya” diagnosed in 1995 was that Catalunya works as a functional unit and the central region of Barcelona becomes the place where the capitals and centralities of the Catalan territory converge. Other problematic issues found were the increasing movement of people from the rural areas towards cities (70% of the population lives in towns of more

than 20,000 inhabitants), the accumulation of them in the Metropolitan Region of Barcelona (two thirds of the population, one of the biggest Metropolitan Regions of Europe), and the high tendency for sprawl in the territory, sometimes in areas without adequate public transport and urban dimension.

Territorial Plan of Catalunya (1995): The structure of the proposal

Location plan of the Strategic Residential Areas (ARES): a measure of urgency

Metropolitan region of Barcelona: Built areas at year 2000, the explosion of the city

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The Plan then, decided to promote a territorial equilibrium in the distribution of population and activities, based on the idea of the grid (polinuclear reticular) or nodal structure with several main centres, medium centres, and others with a certain minimum dimension, all connected as much as possible, as well as concentrating the urban growth, to promote the rational use of the land. The document was not very specific, but it started the territorial discussion and established some urban systems of proposal.

Seven areas of study were defined by the PTGC as “Partial Territorial Plans”. Two of them have been recently approved and the rest, like the Metropolitan Region of Barcelona are on the way. We could understand them as the revision of the General Plan that meant to be done after 10 years (2005). These plans don’t draw lines of qualification or classification, even though their level of definition is extremely accurate and at large scale. They only give determinations and propose: 1.System of open spaces (levels of protection: special, territorial, and preventive); 2.System of infrastructure of mobility and transport (roads, trains, airports, ports, and logistics); 3.System of settlements and development strategies: high growth (double the population), medium growth (<60% of actual), moderate growth (<30% of actual), strategies of improvement and completion (regularization of perimeters) and strategies of maintenance of the dispersed rural character (growth forbidden).

At this point, it is worth mentioning that the plan of the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona has not been revised since 1976, which is a tremendous delay to territorial planning that missed the latest explosion in growth and the current recession. As well, in 1987, the Central government abolished an important organization called “Entitat Metropolitana de Barcelona” (EMB), a socio-economical unity of 27 municipalities with important economic resources and competences in urban planning, regulated by the General Metropolitan Plan (PGM-76) and approved by the Comisión Provincial de Urbanismo of Barcelona on 1976. This organization was an example of regional government with a capacity for execution that has been missing since then. We can not forget that the ones who execute the plans are the local governments, and their interests sometimes seem to be against a bigger scale understanding. That is why, to develop and promote entities like the old EMB, with power to administrate at this middle level of structure, is a more certain way to accomplish the territorial planning guides.

References 1. ÀREA METROPOLITANA DE BARCELONA=Mancomunitat de Municipis+Entitat del Medi Ambient –

EMSHTR+Entitat del Transport, http://www.amb.cat/web/directorio/inici2. web DEPARTAMENT DE POLÍTICA TERRITORIAL I OBRES PÚBLIQUES (Generalitat de Catalunya –

www.gencat.cat), http://www10.gencat.net/ptop/AppJava/cat/3. web INCASÒL (Institut Català del Sòl) – Sectors d’Activitat Econòmica – “Llibre d’estil”, http://www.incasol.info/sae/4. web Sistematització de planejament urbanístic (DPTOP-Direcció General d’Urbanisme-COAC)

http://www.coac.net/Girona/urbanisme/sistematitzacio/5. ANNEX INSTRUMENTAL per a la redacció dels Plans Directors i les Àrees Residencials Estratègiques (Jornet-Llop-

Pastor arquitectes, 30 d’abril de 2009)6. Antonio Font Arellano, Sílvia Mas Artigas, Lorena Maristany Jackson, Josep Ma. Carreras Quilis i Jordi Valls Alseda.

(2005). TRANSFORMACIONS URBANITZADORES 1977-2000- ÀREA METROPOLITANA I REGIÓ URBANA DE BARCELONA. Barcelona: Mancomunitat de Municipis de l’Àrea Metropolitana de Barcelona. 164 p. ISBN: 84-930080-8-7

7. Escola Sert (Col.legi d’Arquitectes de Catalunya) PROGRAMA D’INTENSIFICACIÓ EN LA PRÀCTICA DEL PLANEJAMENT URBANÍSTIC – documentos del curso, http://escolasert.coac.net/campus/

“Annex Instrumental per a la redacció dels Plans Directors i les Àrees Residencials Estratègiques”: a framework for the ARES design approach

Map of the 7 Partial Territorial Plans of Catalunya: a work in progress

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Liverpool was the second city of Empire, and from where almost 5 million Europeans left the continent to seek new lives in the new world. City as entrepot is a defining feature of Liverpool, and has given it its contemporary, ‘edgy’ feel, and has also led to the city’s inscription as a world heritage site.

The regeneration of the city centre over the past decade has been based on a loose strategic framework, coupled with more detailed frameworks for specific sites. These include the Liverpool 1 mixed use scheme in the heart of the city centre, and the waterfront development. The strategic framework, adopted in 2000, has been delivered by the City Council and Liverpool Vision with other public and private sector partners, and has majored in re-connecting the city with the River Mersey.

There have been some false dawns and controversial decisions in the process. The Fourth Grace project, an iconoclastic design by Will Alsop, was cancelled after it won an international design competition for a new museum on the waterfront. This design was replaced not by another building, but by a family of four new buildings, providing museum, residential and leisure uses. These have been delivered by a framework, based on a solid understanding of context and a historical analysis of site and city. Their location, form and relationship are based on a design solution that seeks to represent the site itself, as a pivot and unique location on Liverpool’s waterfront, as well as the less physical feel of place based on movement,

Case Study 2 – ‘Liverpool- designed to be different’

Presentation Summary (written by Rob Burns)

Mr Rob Burns (Urban Design Manager, Liverpool City Council)

Rob has lived in Merseyside for 20 years, and has worked on numerous major projects within the Liverpool city region and in the north west of England during that time. With qualifications in archaeology, architectural history and urban design, Rob is particularly interested in a contextual approach to the evolution of cities, and how new development can add to local distinctiveness, based on understanding their history and sound local analysis.

Rob has previously worked with multi-disciplinary teams in North Africa and the Middle East. Closer to home, he has also worked with English Heritage at regional level in north west and north east England, and has also been involved in national policy on issues such as tall buildings.

Liverpool is a city in transition- from being Britain’s most successful port city in the 19th century and being described as the centre of the creative universe in the 1960’s through political, economic and social melt down in the 1970’s and 1980’s, the city is now experiencing swift regeneration.

Design, and architectural opprobrium, has always been part of the city. The Liver Building, St Georges Hall and Oriel Chambers for example, have all been heavily criticized at the time of completion, yet now are recognized as iconic Liverpool structures. This interest in architecture and design, and mixed reviews, remains part of the city’s defining character.

Liverpool also has a wealth of historic buildings- a mix consisting of dock related structures, warehouses and commercial buildings. Many of these have suffered from decades of redundancy and decay, yet remain important elements in the fabric and collective memory of the city that helps define character. Many of these date from the late 19th century, a time when

The new museum and the canal in the foreground, Liverpool

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activity, animation and change. Panoramic views have in part been replaced by kinetic or glimpsed views. At the same time, the new buildings and the re-designed Pier Head have also been linked by a new canal that will bring more visitors and animation to this key public space.

The Liverpool 1 mixed-use scheme is a major new infrastructure for the city. Whilst it is largely based on retail, it is deliberately not a mall, but works with the existing grain of the city to marry up different street radii and the waterfront. Again, it has a strategic role and has been delivered via a more developed and detailed framework. Some 27 different architects have been involved with individual buildings to bring an evolved and organic feel to the development, with a hierarchy of streets to provide different character areas.

Lessons to be learned from Liverpool are:

Work with what you have- in this case a fantastic river frontage, first class legacy of historic buildings, a simple topography and morphology that allows for areas of distinctive character.

A vision needs to be clearly expressed and communicated.

Look after heritage- but not as an end in itself heritage must work for its living. As a nation, we are deeply conservative and this can be used to our advantage. Heritage is not a constraint, but an opportunity.

Link regeneration with issues of design quality- we are all competing globally and trying to attract the same investors.

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Design quality based on place-making and context is not a luxury but an imperative and should be used as the major instrument of the regeneration tool-kit.

Work hard to understand the local and contextual. Assessment and analysis are essential mechanisms that can unlock quality and the bespoke rather than the formulaic. Don’t be afraid of using historic precedents as inspiration, or trying to capture spirit of place or narrative.

Assessment must also include the wider city area- how does the city work as an integrated whole? What are the opportunities for enhanced connectivity or for repairing fractured townscapes?

Be flexible- development frameworks and masterplans are great for guidance, but can stifle creativity if applied too rigorously. Others may have better ideas!

If it aint broke, don’t fix it. The do nothing option is always worth considering rather than development for development’s sake.

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Ropewalks, Liverpool

Liverpool

Liverpool, showing seating steps and new route to the Albert Dock

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The Prince’s Foundation for the Built Environment (PFBE) is an educational charity which exists to improve the quality of people’s lives by teaching and practising timeless and ecological ways of planning, designing and building.

PFBE believe that if we can understand and apply time-tested principles, building once more in a sustainable way, we will reap improvements in public health, in livelier and safer streets and in a more affordable lifestyle for families and individuals. PFBE also believe that neighbourhoods exhibiting these sustainable characteristics will accrue higher value over time.

PFBE has four core areas of activity. Our Education Programme teaches skills in successful place-making through seminars and workshops. The Projects & Practice department is engaged on a series of live developments in partnership with the private sector and public agencies. The Chief Executive Team runs strategic initiatives with several major policy partners. The Design Theory & Networks department develops and disseminates new examples of practice by our global network that evidences innovation and tested tools for building successful communities.

Projects & PracticeThe Projects and Practice Department is the consultancy arm of PFBE, a multi-disciplinary team of architects, urban designers and urban planners which operates as a social enterprise by engaging in fee earning urban design and master planning projects.

The department has been involved in projects throughout the UK and abroad, ranging from sustainable urban extensions to Town wide regeneration strategies and following the design principles and vision of The Foundation and its President.

One of the main aims of the Projects & Practice Department is to develop a number of exemplar projects. These will vary in range of scales and settings and should reveal that an attention to timeless and ecological ways of planning, designing and building can improve the quality of people’s lives.

In creating these exemplars, PFBE will demonstrate in practice a set of tools and techniques, including Enquiry by Design and urban codes and pattern books, that build upon traditional urbanism and that can be adopted as templates to inform the education programme of PFBE.

Design Theory & NetworksThe Design Theory & Networks department engages in activities with an extended network of design professionals and Foundation members. It is responsible for advancing and disseminating the organisation’s underlying design theory - originating from HRH’s principles in

Case Study 3 – “The Prince’s Foundation for the Built Environment, and Sustainable Urbanism”

Presentation Summary (written by Lita Khazaka)

Ms. Lita Khazaka is a Senior Urban Designer and Architect working in the Projects Team. She joined the Foundation in 2006. Prior to this she worked in private practice on a variety of architectural and urban design projects. She was commissioned to establish scottisharchitecture.com by the Lighthouse, Glasgow and to facilitate a number of public architectural and built environment workshops in Scotland. She was also a part time studio tutor in Strathclyde University. She graduated with a PgDip and MA in Architecture from Strathclyde University and with a diploma in Architecture and the Building Arts from The Prince of Wale’s Institute of Architecture. http://www.princes-foundation.org/

Poundbury Town Square

Walkable Neigbourhood Diagram

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the built environment - enriched by 10 Senior Fellows who contribute to different fields of expertise.

The department advises on network referrals to charities of whom HRH is Patron, and is developing a broad base of scrutinised network practitioners to carry out PFBE’s mission.

Additionally, the team develops and maintains a Membership Programme of events, contributes to Duchy of Cornwall built environment initiatives, manages a health portfolio of education and practice, runs seminars and think-tanks, as

well as undertaking speaking engagements and other outreach work.

Education

PFBE’s diverse education programme addresses the challenge of planning, designing and building cities, towns and neighbourhoods, evoking timeless principles to meet the immediate call for environmental responsibility.

The Education team offer a series of RIBA-accredited conference and short courses in the built environment, drawing on the experience and knowledge of a host of education partners and specialist speakers. It teaches the fundamentals of town-making based on principles of traditional urbanism, historic context, residential design and design coding. All events are conducted in a highly inclusive, interdisciplinary manner, and frequently involve our eminent Senior Fellows, who are drawn from design practice, development and academia.Policy and Research

PFBE has active working partnerships with many of the leading stakeholders in urban design and architecture.

These include government departments and their agencies – the Department for Communities and Local Government, the Regional Development Agencies, the Secretary of State for Health, English Partnerships and Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment. It is also allied to the Congress for the New Urbanism in the USA and to the emerging Council for European Urbanism. PFBE works in partnership with The Prince’s Regeneration Trust on heritage-based regeneration projects, and much of the work it supports overseas is performed through an international network of practitioners via sister organisation the International Network for Traditional Building, Architecture and Urbanism (INTBAU). A global network of friends, supporters and professional bodies includes the major participants in the traditional architecture and urbanism movement.

All partnerships share the common goal of delivering sustainable urbanism. Each is constituted of specific initiatives which meet strategic goals for the partners while delivering educational benefits and developing best practice.

PFBE design principlesThe Brundtland Commission produced a report called “Our Common Future” in 1987, which defined sustainable development as:

“development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”

PFBE believe in this definition and work towards achieving sustainable development by applying their design principles, as set out below, to their projects.

PFBE design principles can be summarized as follows:

Engender Social Interaction

Design which involves the carefully facilitated, early involvement of the local community in order to generate places which meet people’s needs, desires and aspirations, and also encourage civic pride. The design needs to create a clear distinction between town and country and public and private space, consequently encouraging the appropriate activities within each, with acknowledgment that the design of public areas is as important as the design of private spaces and should be designed as part of a harmonious whole.

Make Places

Design that respects the complex character of a place and takes into consideration its history, geology, transportation links and its natural landscape. Design that employs and connects a variety of enclosure and openness to make people always aware of being in a place.

Poundbury Café and Public House

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Allow Movement Logically & Legibly

Design that promotes blocks of buildings that are fully permeated by an interconnected street network, which encompasses a clear and legible ordering system. This system must recognises a hierarchy between urban spatial and building types and their individual parts in relation to the whole.

Sustain Land Value

Design that creates streets and buildings that will cope with a variety of uses during their lifetime and that constructs a valuable asset in economic, social and environmental terms. A final mechanism that encourages long term investments and land stewardship.

Design Using Natural Harmonics

Design which relates to its surroundings, blending into the local and natural environment, adaptive to climatic conditions and minimizing energy consumption. Design that has languages based on harmonics and relates to human scale.

Build Beautifully

Design which has been created using care and attention, rewarding the maker and users, making it likely to last and be valued by future generations. Timeless design whose decoration enhances the

quality and beauty of a building helping provoke an emotional value along with a personal and a cultural relevance. Use of indigenous materials which have a natural harmony and which are selected with care to ensure they improve with age and weathering.

The walkable neighbourhood diagram (page 9) illustrates two types of urbanism. The top half of the diagram illustrates a built environment that is founded on modernist design principles, and the bottom half of the diagram illustrates a built environment that is founded on sustainable urban design principles. Urbanism based on modernist ideals encourages the separation of uses into mono-functional zones, which are connected by a series of vehicular prioritised routes, rather than human scale spaces and places. These routes are designed to facilitate car use and discourage pedestrians. Accidental meetings between people rarely occur and a sense of community is difficult to cultivate. People feel increasingly isolated, especially those who do not own a car. Sustainable urbanism ensures that places comprise a mix of uses and tenures, and the spaces and streets are designed around the pedestrian and cyclist, so that cycling, walking and meandering are the chosen forms of movement, and that daily needs can be met within a five minute walk.

The vehicle is secondary. Sustainable urbanism employs a permeable street network, and ensures that the existing local identity of a place is reflected in the design and materials of any new form.

Proposed design for a Wynd; PFBE

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Regional scale to neighbourhood scaleSustainable urbanism should be considered at a regional scale as at well as a local level. Regional strategies, which consider networks such as transport, employment, economy, education and health can be developed so that towns and settlements within a region work harmoniously.

Peter Calthorpe summarises this notion in his book, “The Regional City”:

“the regional city must be viewed as a cohesive unit – economically, ecologically, and socially – made up of coherent neighbourhoods and communities, all of which play a vital role in creating a metropolitan region as a whole.”

These coherent towns and settlements within the regional context can then work at a local level, to form a series of places that relate to people.

New tools for planning, building and designThe Foundation has been developing a series of tools to help produce sustainable places. These include the Enquiry by Design Process, in which the masterplan process commences, pattern books and design codes.

The Enquiry by Design (EbD) process is a planning tool that brings together key stakeholders to collaborate on a vision for a new or revived community. This is developed through a series of workshops facilitated by PFBE. The EbD process brings key stakeholders together, to assess a complex range of design requirements for the development site, with every issue tested by being drawn.

Enquiry by Design is an important process in developing sustainable communities; delivering masterplans and initiating the masterplanning process based on enduring design principles, and developing the place-making skills of all participants in the workshop process.

Pattern books and codes are key documents produced by PFBE as part of their masterplanning process. These help to ensure that the visions produced during the EbD workshops are delivered, and that quality is not compromised.

A pattern book is an inventory of urban and architectural forms that identify the characteristics or ‘DNA’ of a place. Pattern

books demonstrate a whole set of urban as well as built fabric patterns that impact on local architectural form. They seek to characterise key components of the urban form ranging from the scale and character of the various street and block typologies down to details of buildings including massing, scale, proportions and character.

Pattern book studies provide a useful framework for subsequent planning and design processes. They reinforce the character of a town or, in the case of green field development, deeply root a project in its regional urban context.

A town code is a design tool that translates the vision embodied in the town plan into practical instructions for building. It effectively sets out the design “language” of a place. An agreed set of rules and guidelines increases the certainty that the vision for the community will be realised, with benefits for all concerned.

The code spans town-wide issues such as street design, landscape structure, building height and land use, through to more architectural elements such as the design of individual buildings, their relationship to the street and the way in which buildings are grouped in blocks.

Sustainable Urbanism, Poundbury Street

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Rob Cowan is a director of the training provider and consultant Urban Design Skills (www.urbandesignskills.com). He is the author of The Dictionary of Urbanism, acclaimed as the definitive reference on planning, urban design and regeneration; and editor of Context, the journal of the Institute of Historic Building Conservation. His other publications include The Connected City, The Cities Design Forgot and Urban Design Guidance. He was the joint author of Re:urbanism and the CLG/CABE design guidance By Design, and the author of the Scottish equivalent (Designing Places), and two design guides for the Scottish Government (Housing Quality and Masterplanning). He devised the community audit method Placecheck and the urban design skills appraisal method Capacitycheck. He is an illustrator and his weekly cartoon appeared in Planning for 20 years.

Contact details: rob@urbandesignskills.com

http://www.urbandesignskills.com

Eighty-four per cent of masterplans are completely useless. Theyfail to provide the long-term guidance that those who commissioned them had hoped for. This is widely recognised, but the remedy is less well understood.

The term ‘masterplan’ is currently applied to anything from a single diagram of a proposed development, on the one hand, to a document describing a full masterplanning process, with its appraisals, principles and implementation plans, on the other. Current guidance on masterplanning, such as the Scottish Government’s Planning Advice Note Masterplanning and CABE’s Creating Successful Masterplans, is written so as to encourage landowners, local authorities, development agencies and developers to

prepare urban design frameworks for a wide range of types of development, and to consider these as masterplans.

This approach has been driven by the understandable desire to encourage organisations involved in development to plan and design their schemes with a little more care than they have in the past.

The time has come to set our sights higher than that. In a recession it is more important than ever to ensure that we create the maximum social, economic and environmental value from development. At a time when action on climate change is urgent, we must make sure that every development makes the best possible use of resources.

We need a means of assessing the quality of collaborative and multi-disciplinary processes that formulate planning and design principles for an area, and that show how those principles can be implemented. We need a definition, criteria and standards by

Case Study 4 – “Placeplanning: setting the gold standard for the planning and design process”

Presentation Summary (written by Rob Cowan)

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which we can measure excellence. We should achieve that by setting a precisely defined gold standard for this type of process, and coining a new term to describe it.

People are welcome to apply the terms ‘masterplan’ and ‘masterplanning’ to whatever documents and processes they like. But we will insist on the highest standards of excellence for any process that aspires to the name of (as we propose to call it) placeplanning.

At the same time we hope that the placeplanning assessment criteria will also be used in cases where it might not be possible to meet the placeplanning standard, but where the use of the criteria by those who commission, prepare or assess masterplans will lead to higher standards than would otherwise be achieved.

This means that the placeplanning method should be of interest to anyone who is concerned with the quality of development, including communities, development agencies, built environment professionals and politicians.

A five-step programmeWe need a five-step programme for developing placeplanning:

Identify criteria against which the quality of successful placeplanning and masterplanning will be assessed.

Establish the assessment method that will lead to the award of placeplanning status and, where that can not be achieved, to higher standards of masterplanning.

Identify examples of masterplans (as existing examples are likely to be called) that successfully meet the placeplanning criteria.

Publicise successful placeplanning processes.

Provide guidance, training and enabling in placeplanning.

DefinitionsWe can adopt the following definitions:

placeplanning The collaborative and multi-disciplinary process of formulating planning and design principles (relating to the environmental, social and economic impact of development, and to three-dimensional physical form) for an area (which could be one plot or site, but usually encompasses several), and showing how those principles can be implemented. Whether a process has achieved the status of placeplanning is assessed according to a set of agreed criteria.

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placeplan A strategic, spatial guidance document that records the placeplanning process.

masterplanning A similar process of formulating planning and design principles, but one that does not meet all the placeplanning criteria sufficiently to be awarded placeplanning status.

masterplan A strategic, spatial guidance document that records the masterplanning process, but is not of high enough standard to be awarded placeplanning status. (The term is also used, and will no doubt continue to be, for a wide range of other things as well, such as layout diagrams for schemes that have not been subject to any meaningful masterplanning process).

Ten essentials of placeplanningThe following principles will be the basis for the criteria by which placeplanning will be assessed:

The placeplanning process leads from initiation to appraisal, through to conceiving a vision, formulating principles, selecting options, and planning for delivery.

The placeplanning process is carefully recorded and well illustrated.

The placeplanning process is fully collaborative. It involves a range of stakeholders, including people who live or work in the area, or who represent it politically, who provide services, who are likely to carry out development there, or who otherwise have an interest in it. Placeplanning embodies a vision that can be shared by government

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A vision for Neilston, the first Scottish Renaissance TownDrawing by Richard Carman for Urban Design Skills and Renfrewshire District Council

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bodies, development agencies, local communities, landowners, developers and financiers.

The placeplanning process is multi-disciplinary, involving a range of specialists working closely together, with effective leadership.

Placeplanning is a creative process, involving skilled and talented designers.

The principles developed through placeplanning will relate to environmental, social and economic matters. In each case the principles will help to minimise the use of scarce resources, reduce carbon emissions and protect endangered species (not just here and now, but regionally and globally, and for future generations), helping to tackle climate change and mitigate its impacts.

The principles should guide the future three-dimensional physical form of development and how it may change through time.

Placeplanning provides guidance for an area or site that is to be changed or developed, rather than for a wider area over which no landowner or agency has control. The analysis must relate to the site’s wider context, though, and the planning and design principles must show how the development will connect to and enhance the wider area.

Placeplanning should be based on a sound appreciation of existing conditions and potential future circumstances, both locally and regionally. Its principles should aim to achieve the qualities of

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successful places that are set out in best practice guidance.

Placeplanning should show how its principles can be implemented, describing the proposed phasing, timing, financing and delivery mechanisms. It is unlikely to be able to do this unless the process is commissioned by an organisation that is in a position actually to carry out the development, or to guide its development closely.

Scotland’s Renaissance Towns Neilston, an East Renfrewshire village 15 miles south-west of Glasgow, has been chosen as Scotland’s first Renaissance Town. Its experience stands as an example of the placeplanning approach. Urban Design Skills’ role is as lead consultant for the Neilston Renaissance Town Charter, working to a consortium led by East Renfrewshire District Council.

Neilston Village Regeneration Group, consisting of community organisations, public and private sector agencies and elected representatives, has responded to a grassroots campaign for a village plan. It was this that led to the designation of Neilston as Scotland’s first pilot Renaissance Town.

Involved in this initiative is a wide coalition of expertise from the Mackintosh School of Architecture’s Urban Lab, Architecture and Design Scotland, the Development Trusts Association Scotland, and the Lighthouse (Scotland’s centre for architecture, design and the city). These organisations have worked with local people to create a new vision of Neilston and to plan for its delivery.

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The Neilston Renaissance Town Charter has been created by the people of the village to illustrate their 20-year vision for the village. That vision has been achieved through a process of community participation, consensus building, skills transfer, capacity building and design awareness training. The process is led by a town team made up of community members, stakeholders, businesses, agencies and civic leaders. Working with facilitators, the town team has developed its ideas through public debate, brainstorming sessions, workshops and a workshop weekend.

The team and the consortium are now planning a series of short-, medium- and long-term projects aimed at creating a sustainable, economically robust, well-planned and well-connected small town. The hope is that this will be the first of several pilot Scottish renaissance towns, and a model for action in villages and small towns throughout Scotland.

It is masterplanning, but not as we know it. Placeplanning starts here.

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pollution, with street severed by the weight of traffic. This has often led to a knock on effect of falling property values and a downward spiral of neglected maintenance and decay.

The design and location of new settlements has changed as people have taken advantage of the increased mobility offered by the motorcar; some settlements now depend on their continued use depends on the continued affordability of vehicle use.

Over the past thirty years:

Most villages within one hour’s drive of a city have ceased to provide balanced economies and instead have become dormitories .

Pedestrianisation schemes have been introduced into many city and town centres

Offices have migrated out of city centres to business parks on the periphery

Retail has changed from small local facilities to major out of town or edge of town retail parks and super-stores. Some town centre shops have closed, and some villages have lost their shops outright.

Front gardens have been adapted for use as hard standing for cars, and for storage of the increased volumes of waste generated through the supermarket retail system.

Few younger children now walk or cycle to school independently owing to parental fear for the safety of their child. Their freedoms to use the public realm on their own have been effectively ended.

Society has changed: families and friends have become increasingly dispersed.

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Case Study 5 – “Urban Design Policy-Strategies for success in Scotland”

Presentation Summary (written by Robert Huxford)

Mr. Robert Huxford is director of the Urban Design Group and co-founder of the Public Realm Information & Advice Network (PRIAN). He is co-editor of the UK Guide on Highway Risk & Liability and author of numerous other publications on urban design, transportation, public realm and urban watercourse restoration.http://www.udg.org.uk/, http://www.publicrealm.info/

Networks of local friends who look after one another have declined, with more of the role shifting onto social services.

Few of these changes were anticipated when the motorcar first was introduced, or in the subsequent decades. It is fair to say that the problems and opportunities brought by the motor vehicle were reacted to rather than anticipated. And even now, over 110 years on, the transition of society from being localised and based largely on walking, to one that makes full use of the independent mobility offered by the motor vehicle is by no means complete.

In the 21st century even greater changes could occur through the expansion of information and communications technology, including mobile phones, social networking sites, email, internet retail and search engines. Unfortunately society’s interest has been little more than a short term fascination for the latest gadgets. There has been little main-stream consideration of the long-term impact on society or the economy, and that which has taken place has tended to be sidelined, the future is, after all, something we can deal with later. But it is not. Something innocuous such as email and electronic cash transfers has undermined the economics of the post office system, and with post office closures goes one of the key components of a community. We need to face the change.

Certainly there has been talk of the importance and opportunity offered by the uncharted territory of globalistion and an era of flourishing knowledge economy. But Scotland has been part of a global

IntroductionScotland faces a century of uncertainty. There are exacting climate change targets to meet, energy prices that look set to rise as reserves of oil decline and there is the challenge of foreseeing the impact changes in society and the economy that will be brought by the spread of information and communication technologies. It is surely the Scottish cities who are in the front line in rising to these challenges. The Scottish kings who established the first Royal Burghs 800 years ago created them to catalyse trade and wealth generation, giving them the role and powers needed to fulfil the role. Today the cities remain the key to ensuring that the economy flourishes.

Changing technology The extent to which new technology can change society is well demonstrated by the arrival of the motorcar over a century ago, the impacts of which are still working through the system. Over the past century:

Main streets changed from being amongst the most desirable of residential locations to being the least: plagued by noise and air

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economy for a good while. One thinks of the 13th century with skilled craftsmen from Flanders invited into the newly established Scottish burghs, or Glasgow’s trading links with the Americas. Scotland led the world and profited greatly. It does not follow that the 21st century global economy will be so advantageous. Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa and South America are all capable

of providing educated workforces at internationally competitive rates. It may be possible for Scotland to export knowledge services into the global economy only if they are of the very highest order. Scottish call centres, IT, design, financial services, and media may all be vulnerable.

British cities long since ceased to be places of manufacture, and now their other roles as centres for financial services, trade and retail can be undertaken anywhere. The search-engines and electronic market places that the internet provides are ideal means through which to conduct these activities.

Domestic retail is increasingly being captured by internet based traders. Surveys in 2008 suggested that 17 percent of retail purchases were now on-line – up 38 percent on the previous year. And a recent IMRG CapgeminiUK report has predicted that that between 30 per cent and 50 per cent of all retail will be online in the next five years. It is pertinent to ask whether traditional town centre retail has a long-term future, or for that matter out of town retail, which could be just, or even more vulnerable. One extreme would see out of town stores becoming distribution depots for goods bought over the internet. It seems most likely that that the place-based retail that survives provide a combination of convenience and leisure. It does mean that traditional retail areas will need to smarten up their act and this may not be easy if they have already lost half their turnover.

The growth and development of ICT also raises the question as to the very reason for existence of cities: for once the economic

role is gone or at least greatly diminished, what is there left? A legacy of buildings: of homes, of civic offices, art galleries, libraries, theatres, pubs, café’s and restaurants, a cultural memory? A tradition? No one has formally proposed the abandonment of existing towns and cities, but has not this been the trend during the post war period as green field development has taken place and commuting distances have increased? It would be quite possible to envisage a settlement pattern of knowledge workers in expanding villages located in Scotland’s most desirable landscapes, served by fleets of white vans providing goods purchased over the internet. However this pattern of lifestyle is highly dependent on car use and low fuel costs and brings with it substantially increased carbon dioxide emissions. There are legally binding targets to cut carbon dioxide emissions in 2050 by 80 percent and an interim target in 2020. Future increases in fuel costs seem inevitable as global demand for oil increases and reserves begin to decline. Car-based lifestyles and developments will be under-threat, and may become unviable. A future for Scotland based on a dispersed car-dependent society, and a knowledge economy seems a high risk strategy, and yet it is a path down which we are unwittingly travelling, driven on by short-term market forces.

The first call that this paper makes is therefore for a realistic awareness of the substantial impact of Information and Communication Systems on cities, lifestyles and development: that the potential will be anticipated and exploited and any problems foreseen and avoided.

Poverty of expectation… citizens, land-owners, leaders – there is a systemic failure in aspiration and expectation. Scotland needs to lay the foundations for a dazzling future. It should not settle for poor quality maintenance either in the public or the private realm. Neither should it settle for the poor quality design

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The second call is to improve the condition of radial routes and city and town centres, to ensure they perform the role they were designed for: as centres for the local community that show the city off at its very best. This is vital to attract tourists, new business and inward investment.

Roughly ten percent of the population live on main routes. They are where secondary shopping centres are to be found, along

with hospitals, schools, community centres and kirks. They have a major influence in forming the impression we have of the towns and cities we visit. While some of the roads that were laid out in the 1920s were planned with vehicle use in mind, some as boulevards, with generous widths and integral landscaping, the majority of radial routes date back to the first half of the 19th century and earlier. They were never created with heavy flows of fast-moving traffic in mind. They have tended to be neglected, and not only are they failing to function in their intended role, their appearance is damaging the status and prestige of towns and cities and of Scotland itself.

Many towns in Europe and a few in the UK are realising that techniques are available to enable cars and people to coexist. European street design practice now includes shared use junctions, shared use streets, and in particular there is introduction of central medians, which channelize the traffic and encourage drivers to drive more carefully and more slowly; and also enable pedestrians to cross in safety at any point along the road, having to deal with but one stream of traffic at a time.

There have been claims that restricting traffic to 20mph leads to increase fuel consumption by 10 percent and a commensurate increase in carbon dioxide emissions. These claims

are fallacious, based on comparisons of fuel consumption at constant speed. The progress of a car along a main street is not one of constant speed, but a repeated, wasteful cycle of waiting at traffic lights, accelerating to 30 mph or more, and then braking to meet the queue of traffic waiting at the next junction. With this pattern of driving, capping vehicle speeds to 20mphs will reduce fuel consumption and carbon dioxide emissions by over 10 percent.

Impact on journey time is another argument made against lower speed levels. If it were possible to drive at the speed limit for the entire journey from suburb to centre, the difference between 30mph and 20mph is a minute per mile, even for the longest journey the difference would be amount to no more than 3-6 minutes. In fact that actual impact in journey times would be marginal. It is not the maximum speed permitted on the route that dictates journey times, but the amount of time spent waiting at junctions. There is the possibility that the network would operate more efficiently owing to the more fluid operation of junctions. Actual average speeds in urban areas are generally below 20mph, for example

17.3 mph in Glasgow according to Trafficmaster data.

Electronic based systems for managing traffic are currently on trial in London. It seems likely that electronic traffic calming, variable speed limits, adaptive routing of traffic, absolute enforcement of lorry bans and so on, could be accomplished using these new systems, and without the need to clutter streets with humps, lines or signs.

Steadier traffic flows, lower noise levels, and reduced severance will transform the environment along main routes, bringing the regeneration of retail and residential use.

Councils should ensure landlords who stand to gain through the uplift in value of property and in rentals play their part by keeping their property in good repair. Councils have powers to deal with neglected property which should be used rigorously. There is no excuse for neglect and no

One of the main routes into Edinburgh. What does this say about the city, its sense of pride and its destiny? We should aim to phase out the use of roller shutters by 2011, unless there is a genuine crime problem. Road clutter, poorly maintained buildings, and the impact of traffic need to be tackled too. onto the streets?

Glasgow a world class city, and in this instance a near world-class floorscape barring one defect. Waste management undermines the quality of experience of all of the cities in Scotland. There are practical and unobtrusive underground storage systems in widespread use in European cities. We should aim to phase out these shameful types of collection systems by 2015

Princes Street, by reputation a prestigious and popular street, let down by the quality of the public realm

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reasonable objection to repairs: cutting maintenance leads to damage that costs more to put right in the longer term. And in the time that passes the good name of an area will suffer.

Other changes are needed ranging from tackling parades of shops with roller shutters, to seizing opportunities such as using the latest public lighting technologies to create a stunning night scene. There are two nagging problems that need to be tackled. Firstly the present system of waste management results in the permanent presence of bins on the street, much to the detriment of the street scene. The underground cassette systems used extensively in Europe should be introduced into Scottish towns, and the old system phased out. Secondly is the problem of utilities. The space under streets is filled with a web of pipes and cables, and the introduction of district heating systems will add further to the complexity. The need to periodically repair or renew underground services not only disrupts traffic flows, but militates against the use of high quality surfaces that go with improving the look of a town, and leads to the early failure of conventional road surfaces. In more progressive European towns the problem is addressed by grouping the utilities in a single combined utilities duct. This approach should be deployed in Scotland, and order brought to the subterranean street.

In short, there is the technology and knowledge to turn potholed, polluted main routes, flanked with decaying buildings into is a chain of vibrant local centres that provides an attractive route into town for pedestrians, cyclists, commuters and tourists

alike, and that reflects well on the city. This is an important foundation for the Scottish city in the 21st century.

It goes without saying that the centre of the city must present a high quality, well maintained and safe environment. Over the past 20 years there has been much good work done, but challenges still remain. Traffic is of great importance, but in the city centre it is place that should be given priority. City centres should not look like trunk roads.

Need for Leadership – City Governance Modern media thrives on short-term controversy, and this can be hugely damaging to long-term leadership. Local newspapers and radio could make a huge difference to Scotland’s future by taking a lead in developing both aspirations and expectations, fostering an image of the city as progressive and dynamic, and encouraging citizens to share in meeting the challenges. They have a key role to play in encouraging civic leaders to act entrepreneurially, and to take the risks that arise with any innovative course of action.

It is down to civic leaders to manage the balance between movement and place in city centres and radial routes. The publication of Designing Streets gives local authorities an opportunity to demonstrate bold leadership. It is not something that can be left to free-market forces.

Leaders should think carefully about the future of retail in the face of on-line shopping and move immediately to support existing town and city centres before they are damaged beyond repair. A five year delay

may mean that action comes far too late. They should also beware being beguiled by the promise of job creation from further large retail facilities. Retail jobs are created by increasing people’s disposable income, not by building new shops. This leads on to a task of ensuring the economy is soundly based and a remembrance of the role intended by the Scottish Kings for the Royal burghs: as the power-house of the Scottish economy.

The task requires immediacy of action and true leadership. It has become standard practice in recent decades to run in to cycles of assessments, strategies, plans, masterplans, action plans, programmes and so forth: amounting together to thousands of pages, and yet collectively failing to articulate a vision for the city that people can genuinely remember or believe, or that necessarily leads to action. Sir Patrick Geddes himself warned about “dreaming dreams and getting nothing done”, rather, he advocated learning by doing. Let us follow this advice and set to the task.

20th century waste management equipment complements the sophisticated classical facade. Is this any better than the days of the medieval toun when

refuse and sewage was thrown out

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Case Study 6 – “Learning from other examples: Bilbao, Sheffield, and Belfast”

Presentation Summary (written by Alona Martinez-Perez)

This presentation is structured in three parts:

1 What is place-making?

2 Cases Studies-Learning from other examples: Bilbao Sheffield Belfast

3 Conclusions

1 What is place-making?

Objectives of Urban Design (By Design, Urban design in the planning system: towards better practice CABE DETR)

“Character: A place with its own identity Continuity and enclosure: A place where public and private spaces are clearly distinguished Quality of the public realm: A place with attractive and successful outdoor areas Ease of movement: A place that is easy to get to and move through Legibility: A place that has a clear image and is easy to understand Adaptability: A place that can change easily Diversity: A place with variety and choice”

Place-making(By Design, Urban design in the planning system: towards better practice CABE DETR)

“Successful urban design requires a full understanding of the conditions under which decisions are made and development is delivered. Many factors determine or influence the outcome of the design process

llllhttp://www.dundee.ac.uk/geddesinstitute/ http://www.architecture.dundee.ac.uk/

and the sort of places we make. Success, nowadays, rarely happens by chance. It depends on:

1. A clear framework provided by development plans and supplementary guidance delivered consistently, including thorough development control;

2. A sensitive response to the local context;

3. Judgements of what is feasible in terms of economic and market conditions;

4. An imaginative and appropriate design approach by those who design development and the people who manage the planning process.

The principles of urban design can be incorporated in the planning process for successful place-making. Place-making therefore is an essential component on regenerating cities”.

2 City Studies – Learning from other examples, Bilbao, Sheffield & Belfast

Why is regeneration required?“The idea of Weak Market Cities was born at the second UK Government conference on Urban Renaissance, hosted in Manchester in 2002. City leaders from Europe and the US debated the changing fortunes and prospects of former industrial cities. The pressures for growth and sprawl were counterbalanced with inner urban depopulation and decay. Cities now host the majority and fastest growing share of the world’s population, and they are on a treadmill of physical pressure, social, disorder and economic insecurity”.

Alona Martinez Perez is a Spanish architect and urban designer. She qualified as an architect at Sheffield University, and received her masters and postgraduate diploma in urbanism at Edinburgh College of Art. Over the past few years she has worked in practice in the North of England and Scotland. Her work has been shortlisted in competitions, and she has lectured on urban design and architecture both in the UK and Spain, and spoken at International Conferences. She has published articles in journals on urban design issues, and has been visiting tutor at the ETSAB (School of Architecture Barcelona). She is a design studio tutor at the School of Architecture, University of Dundee, where she is Research Director for the Task Force Project for the Geddes Institute. She is the regional Convenor for the Urban Design Group in Scotland.

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These cases studies have been chosen to highlight cities that have been successful in overcoming specific problems. These cities have incorporated place-making and good urban design for their regeneration. This will help to establish common lessons that might be more widely applicable. The cities are Bilbao (Spain), Sheffield (England, UK) and Belfast (Northern Ireland, UK).

These cities have four major common characteristics:

Major industrial and manufacturing history. Severe loss of these industries and related jobs. A crisis of leadership. Issues regarding economic viability, and inward investment.

City Study 1 – Bilbao

FactsLocation: Northern Spain (Basque Country).

Population (2005): 350,000 inhabitants (city) 900,000 (Metropolitan Area, Greater Bilbao).

Languages: Spanish, Basque.

Economy: Most important city in the Basque Country, sixth largest metropolitan area in Spain, and largest agglomeration on Spain’s Atlantic Coast. Port activities, including steel and shipbuilding industries in the past.

Density: 8,733 inhabitants per square kilometer

Catalyst for change1980’s – visible outcomes of urban decline due to a steep rise in unemployment because of the collapse of large industrial companies (steel and shipbuilding), intense physical decay, and social problems.

Outburst of violent labour conflict, and political violence in the Basque Country.

Population loss not only in the city of Bilbao, but also in the regional areas (10-20%). This lead to a growing trend of suburbanisation and dispersal.

Sub-standard housing stock and negative image of the city.

Serious environmental degradation: pollution of water, river ecologically dead and 340 hectares of obsolete wasteland.

Brownfield sites left with disused infrastructure, derelict buildings and soil contamination.

Bilbao’s regeneration process was complex and multi-faceted involving a wide range of actors and interests.

The recognition of the urgency of the immediate situation of Bilbao provoked debates about the best strategy and actions for recovery.

Interaction of political actors from all levels of government, and cross cutting political consensus on the need for action drove a strong regeneration strategy.

This involved specific tools and programmes and the formation of agencies to deliver them.

Place making solutions for the regeneration of Bilbao.All tiers of government – central, regional, provincial and city-recognised that action had to be taken to reverse the negative impacts of decline in Bilbao. Only strategies unifying of all tiers of government would be effective.

In 1991 ‘The Strategic Plan for the Revitalisation of Metropolitan Bilbao’. A dedicated agency, ‘Bilbao Metropoli 30’ was founded as a facilitator for the regeneration

Public Art in the regenerated old Docks area, Bilbao

New Riverfront Promenade Area, Bilbao

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and to promote the objectives set out in the plan. The document identified four fields of action:

Formation of a knowledge based high-tech sector.

Inner city urban renewal (especially in the Old Quarter).

Environmental intervention: river cleaning, recycling.

Strengthening cultural identity through culture led regeneration.

A territorial plan for Bilbao was created in 1989 and extended to the Metropolitan area in 1994. The main point was to establish Bilbao as a key node on the European Atlantic axis, implying a more ambitious and self-confident approach. The plan identified four so-called areas for regeneration, and also created a plan for the new-forward image of the city.

Major Infrastructure Projects: New Airport Terminal (Calatrava), new tube system (Foster), new tram across the city’s waterfront and bus terminal (Grimshaw) and a new port facility. All the new transport facilities were interlinked.

Environmental clean up of the river/

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waterfront area and improvements to allow regeneration of the ’ opportunity areas’. Four new pedestrian bridges.

Creation of an agency ‘Bilbao River 2000’ with the authority to deliver the major regeneration of the ‘opportunity areas’ in Bilbao, and the Metropolitan areas across the river and the Brownfield waste land.

Vision: Improvements to the image of the city by using well known architects on major projects and creation of iconic buildings (Guggenheim Museum) to create a culture identity of the city.

With the profit from the interventions major improvements on the city centre deprived areas was carried out.

Place-making at the heart of the regeneration of the waterfront and all the industrial areas.

Creation of new train stations in each new area. Re-routing of the existing railway line to open up the river waterfront and cover up of the railway line underground to create new areas for public realm and improve connections between districts.”

Urban Developments Agencies for delivery.The agency for regeneration is Bilbao Ria 2000. Its main aim is to manage large-scale revitalisation of abandoned land formerly occupied by harbours and industry or by obsolete transport infrastructure.

Financing and Structure of Bilbao Ria 2000.

Its aim is ‘producing new opportunities from old problems,’ and its objectives

are to recover, communicate, transform facilitate and improve.

The agency is a public limited company in which local and regional institutions and the Central government each have a 50% share. The mayor of Bilbao chairs the company, while its deputy chair is the Secretary of State for Infrastructures and Planning of the Ministry of Development.

The partners allocate land to the company to be redeveloped. The company is an NPO (Non Profit Organisation) and any financial gains are re-invested in the areas themselves or other town planning activities.

City Study 2 – Sheffield

FactsLocation: Northern England UK (South Yorkshire).

Population (2001): 513,234 inhabitants (city) 1,285,600 (Metropolitan Area comprising Sheffield, Rotherham, Doncaster and Barnsley).

Languages: English.

Economy: Steel making industry, important centre in the industrial revolution, coal mining in the metropolitan area.

Density: 1,395 inhabitants per square kilometre.

Catalyst for change.Mid 1980’s: privatisation of key national industries steel and coal and closure leads to high unemployment, violent strikes and economic decline.

In 1988 the Sheffield development corporation was formed to take in and of

References Ploger, Jorg, (2007)’Bilbao City Report’ Case Report 43 Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion LSE.15 años reinventando la metropolis (2006) Bilbao Ria 2000Leira, Eduardo (1994). ‘Bilbao a new linear city along the river’, Casabella, 622, pp 20-33, 68-69Ramirez, Juan Antonio (1997). ‘La explosion congelada Bilbao-Babel’, Arquitectura Viva, 55, pp 48-55Mozas, Javier (1997). ‘Collage metropolitano’, Arquitectura Viva, 55, pp 24-31Munford, Lewis (1979), The city in history, 2nd ed. Buenos Aires, Editorial Infinito.Ramirez, Juan Antonio (1997). ‘La explosion congelada Bilbao-Babel’, Arquitectura Viva, 55, pp 48-55Rajchman, Jhon (Dec/Jan 1999- 2000). ‘Bilbao a new linear city along the river’, Casabella, 673/674, pp 164-165Roman, Antonio (1997). ‘Pasos del Nervión ’, Arquitectura Viva, 55, pp 66-69.http:// www.bilbaoria2000.org/

New Tram Line, Bilbao

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the city’s industrial heartland. Also in 1986 the creation of the Sheffield Economic Regeneration Committee promotes city-led regeneration projects like the tram.

In 1997 the city council’s new chief executive Bob Kerlaske had a role as a unifying force in the city, and he was critical to galvanising recovery action and funding local actors involved in the regeneration process2.

Place making solutions for the regeneration of Sheffield.Lobbying initiatives to drive urban policy development: the core cities network which is a lobbying group of the eight major English Cities facing serious economic restructuring and regeneration needs.

This new core cities network allowed renewal of housing, growth strategies, new funding mechanisms, and new city regeneration companies such as Creative Sheffield

The establishment of a central government-mandated urban regeneration company in 2001, Sheffield One, which produced a masterplan covering seven areas of its city centre.

Place-making key projects for regeneration were:

Heart of the city project, public realm projects like Peace Gardens and Millennium Galleries.

New retail quarter re-vamping retail in the city centre.

Sheffield Gateway Station: improving the look and access to the main station.

City hall and Barkers Pool, refurbishing the old City Hall to create a cultural and conference with a mixed use area. Castlegate, mixed used development in the city’s historic gatway.

New campus for Sheffield Hallam University.

Creating user-friendly public transport (new tram).

New neighbourhood strategies to improve the city’s neighbourhoods.

Urban Developments Agencies for delivery.Sheffield One, the agency created for delivery was independent from the Council and this was a crucial factor in its success, insulating it from political pressures that might have limited its progress.

Backed by Private and Public funding, the company adopted four objectives:

Building the city centre’s economic role.

Creating a centre recognised as a place for learning, culture, retail leisure and living.

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Making the centre more accessible.

Bringing high quality spaces to all parts of the city centre.

City Study 3 – Belfast

FactsLocation: Northern Ireland UK.

Population (2005): 269,000 inhabitants (city) 645,000

(Metropolitan Area).

Languages: English.

Economy: Belfast is the capital of Northern Ireland and in population, functions and economy, it is the region’s most important city. Industrialisation of linen production in the 19th Century, shipbuilding industry and engineering in the 20th century.

Catalyst for change.Mid 1980’s: urban crisis due to deindustrialisation, violent conflict, and high unemployment.

Suburbanisation and sprawl: between 1951 and 1991 the city of Belfast lost 205,000 inhabitants, while the adjacent suburban counties grew by 237,000. (Jorg 2007 p16).

1980’s: physical regeneration: Belfast Urban Area Plan, ‘Making Belfast Work Programme’.

1989: creation of Laganside Corporation, an Urban Development Corporation to implement regeneration of waterfront.

2003-04: ‘Belfast: State of the City Initiative and Masterplan.

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References Winkler, Astrid, (2007) ‘Sheffield City Report’ Case Report 45 Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion LSE.http://www.creativesheffield.co.uk http://www.sheffield.gov.uk/planning-and-city-development

Public Realm, Sheffield Station Gateway

Sheffield Winter Gardens

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Place making solutions for the regeneration of Belfast.The peace process was a key catalyst for change in Belfast, activating a whole range of recovery projects and initiatives. But it is also important to highlight all the work carried out in the 1980s and early 1990s.

Improvements to quality of public housing carried out by the Northern Ireland Housing Executive.

Major infrastructure improvements in roads, railways, energy supplies, energy supplies and telecommunications.

Major regeneration of the Port of Belfast by the Belfast Harbour Commissioners.

Large scale of the Lagan riverside.

On-going regeneration of the city centre.

These developments create new forms of partnership and break down barriers through the

creation of ‘neutral’ zones in the city centre.

The Belfast Urban Area Plan adopted in 1990 (developed by the Department of Environment) laid out the major lines for future policy makers, identifying three major tasks for recovery actions in Belfast:

Strengthen the city’s role as a regional centre for Northern Ireland.

Create a physical environment and framework for social and economic activity which will enhance the quality of urban living.

Facilitate an efficient, economic and orderly pattern of development.

Urban Developments Agencies for delivery.The Laganside Corporation, and Urban Development Corporation (UDC) was set up as a private-public partnership with major British Government funding in 1989 to manage and implement the redevelopment of the derelict area and to rename it Laganside.

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However the UDC was not given additional powers over planning, public housing or building control, all of which remained under control of the central government.

Government and EU money were used to attract private sector investment.

3 Conclusions.To conclude, the principles of urban design can be incorporated in the planning process for successful place-making. Place-making is an essential component of regenerating these three cities. These are the common characteristics of place making in the regeneration of Bilbao, Sheffield and Bilbao that could be applied to other cities:

The places created in these examples embody the principles of good urban design.

Major transport and infrastructure improvements have been created to improve connectivity between the city and all its districts, and to increase the use of public transport.

Environmental measures were incorporated to improve the development of the river, and to improve the environmental quality of the industrial and Brownfield sites to allow regeneration.

In these examples of on-going regeneration of city centres, re-use of brownfield areas, and incorporation of mix use, have brought life back to these city centres and re-established them as places in the public realm. This has enhanced urban living.

Creation of urban agencies for delivering regeneration and place making and clear leadership and consensus between local, regional and central government in the decision and funding process is an essential element for success.

A clear framework provided by development plans has to be delivered consistently through the development process.

These examples deliver places that create social, environmental and economic value.

The image of all the cities has shifted from places with industrial decay and unemployment, to vibrant new destinations to visit and live.

Belfast’s Waterfront Regeneration

References Ploger, Jorg, (2007) ‘Belfast City Report’ Case Report 44 Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion LSE.Belfast City Council, ‘Becoming a better place, A vision for a new Belfast, 2015’

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Geddes said ‘act local think global’. There are two requisites for effective action: we must have our feet firmly grounded, we must know where we are; and we must bring to bear on our site specific actions, the insights and lessons of elsewhere. It is important to learn from the work of outsiders. Our speakers have added their insight to the questions facing Scotland today.

Mr. Rob Burns Urban Design Manager at Liverpool City Council reviewed the recent history of Liverpool Regeneration. From becoming a World Heritage City he showed how contemporary architecture and urbanism can fit into an existing historic city and this can be a catalyst for change. Liverpool since then has become the European City of Culture in 2008, and projects like Liverpool 1, Ropewalks and the Waterfront, and the public Arts strategies across the city show us how we can learn to be adventurous and successful in a world heritage setting. However these plans are still on going and in order to succeed we have to be able to have long terms strategies and produce like Liverpool an architecture today that can be tomorrow’s heritage and that draws from a deep understanding of the city’s history and heritage with a contemporary response.

Ms. Ariadna Perich-Capdeferro, lecturer at the ETSAB (Barcelona School of Architecture), reviewed urban planning policy in Catalonia. Two thirds of the Catalan population are centred in Barcelona, which was completely redesigned

for the XXV Olympiad; now the Catalan government is looking at ways of improving its cities and regions by creating new regional centres outside Barcelona. Rather than policies that encourage people to live and work in Barcelona, there is a shift to create new housing and settlements in other parts of Catalonia. Unlike most policy and planning documents, the Catalonia documents are plan and map based. The main axes for development in Catalonia are the following:

1. Sustainable urban development Rational use of the land Respect for the environment Social housing policy: instruments for building more social housing.

2. Urban planning competences for the councils

3. Simplification of the procedures: with efficiency and agility in the acquisition of urban land.

She concluded her presentation with a quote by Wim Wenders

“That’s what I want from a city, that it excites me. Every kind of urban planning, by definition, tends to some kind of homogeneity. The city contradicts that. The city defines itself through oppositions, it wants to explode.”

Mr Rob Cowan described the work he has carried out with his practice Urban Design Skills in Neilston, Scotland, one of the new Renaissance Towns. He emphasized the

importance of placeplanning in Neilston and the importance of using methods such as Placecheck and Capacitycheck to assess places. Cowan’s work has been fundamental in Scotland. He is the author of Designing Places, the new PAN in master planning, and he trains planners and other professionals on urban design issues. He is the author of the Dictionary of Urbanism which is essential reading for urban designers.

Mr Robert Huxford, Director of the Urban Design Group in the UK said that the car dominates the city’s public realm. Radial routes should be the best our cities can offer, not the worst. He explained that we should incorporate the car into design instead of fighting against it.

Ms Lita Khazaka (Senior Urban Designer at the Prince’s Foundation, London) explained the tools the Prince’s Trust uses for planning and design: Enquiry by Design, design coding and pattern books. The principles of traditional architecture have been tested and shown to work, so we should change them with caution. It is about evolving what we have to suit the conditions of today. Lita showed examples like Poundbury in Dorchester, where these principles apply. Poundbury is put forward as an exemplar of sustainable urbanism, because of its simple and successful placemaking.

Ms. Alona Martinez-Perez (Geddes Institute, School of Architecture Dundee) explained what we understand by placemaking in regenerating cities by focusing on the examples of successful placemaking in Bilbao, Sheffield, and Belfast. It was clear that joined-up thinking and clear leadership is essential in facilitating placemaking. Also, it is important for delivery to create regeneration agencies, to focus on the integration of land use and infrastructure, and not leave the important decisions to one party in the development process.

Summary of presentations (AMP)

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This section summarises and discusses the 31 questionnaires returned to us in advance of the symposium. We have included 3 in full because we felt that their overseas origin lent them the essential perspective of the outsider: Mr.Juan A. Alayo, Development Planning Director BILBAO Ría 2000; Ms. Ariadna Perich Capdeferro, Lecturer at ETSAB and Architect in private practice; and Professor Christian Hermansen, Head of Urban Design, Oslo School of Architecture and Design.

QUESTIONNAIRE 1 A VIEW FROM BILBAO – Mr.Juan A. Alayo,Development Planning Director, BILBAO Ría 2000; http://www.bilbaoria2000.org/

Juan Alvaro Alayo studied Architecture and Urbanism at the School of Architecture University of Navarra, Pamplona, and at the Bartlett, University College, London.

The company BILBAO Ría 2000 was created on 19 November 1992 with the intention of recovering former industrial space around the city. It is a non-profit making entity, the product of a cooperative commitment on the part of all public authorities to the common task of transforming the metropolitan region of Bilbao. BILBAO Ría 2000 coordinates and executes projects in relation to town planning, transportation and the environment. These are carried out with a global approach focusing on the urban directives drawn up by the planning authorities. BILBAO Ría 2000 has won numerous awards including: Special Venice Biennial Jury Award for Riverside

Regeneration “Industrial Margins – Urban Margins”: “brilliant articulation of progress and upgrading of the riverside” and “proper definition and fulfilment of the objectives of each phase of the project, resulting in high-quality upgrading of former industrial areas”. The V EUROPEAN URBAN AND REGIONAL PLANNING AWARDS, presented by the European Council of Urban Planners. Prize for the OAVS Operation (Abandoibarra, Ametzola, and southern Bilbao rail routing) in the Local Urban Regeneration Section, for the “exceptional strategy of this complex transformation” and for “the method of execution, an example for many other European transformation projects”.

What are the issues and questions facing regional cities today?

1. Sustainable Development & Energy The need to develop workable measures (mixture of municipal regulations and valid business models) to implement energy saving measures to the existing building stock.

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The need to consider cities in a systemic way (inputs, outputs and flows) and identify potential efficiencies.

Clear policies for new developments encompassing the issues above.

To consider the urban model in terms of compactness, mix of uses and implications in mobility generated and social integration or segregation.

2. The Economy & Economic Competitiveness

The role of universities in attracting young people and the relation between universities and other economic (and public) agents in creating employment opportunities for students to stay.

An attractive and inviting urban environment with good leisure and cultural provision.

3. Social JusticeFrom an urban design/planning angle, the creation of an integrated urban system, avoiding segregated pockets or neighbourhoods where social deprivation can easily develop.

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Three questionnaires from overseas

Public Realm by the river in Bilbao La Vieja, Bilbao

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Public Realm by the river in Bilbao La Vieja, Bilbao

4. Environmental Quality, including resource and waste managementAs per point 1 above, considering cities as ecosystems in their totality with the potential for synergies between different activities.

5. DesignThe size of the city (containing sprawl), the degree of compactness, the appropriate mix of land uses and densities, the adequate treatment of the street as the central stage of city life (rather than a desolate space or a parking lot).

6. Transport and Infrastructure NetworksCaution with the Public Transport trap. PT is a complementary mode of transport but cannot have too many hopes pinned on it, it’s not “The Solution”. Walking and cycling most likely account for more journeys than PT and should be nurtured. The private vehicle has its place but needs strict management.

7. Policy and LegislationThe policy framework has to reflect urban

principles (density, mix of uses, etc). My particular view is that accessibility could become an all-encompassing principle whereby developments in an urban context should ensure minimum levels of accessibility to its residents or users (i.e. for any new dwelling the need to have within X hundred metres a minimum mix of other land uses and activities).

8. Integration of city planning, local ecology, and livelihoodCovered in the various topics above.

9. OtherHow does one define quality of life in a city? I guess that as a mix of the issues above, and may be more. But each city needs to ask itself this question – Why would anyone want to live here? How can this city improve?.

QUESTIONNAIRE 2 A VIEW FROM BARCELONA – Ms. Ariadna Perich

Capdeferro, Lecturer ETSAB (School of Architecture, Barcelona)

Ariadna Perich Capdeferro studied Architecture and Urbanism at the School of Architecture of Barcelona (ETSAB-UPC). She has finished two post-graduate programmes, one from the Design Department in the ETSAB called “Teoria i Pràctica del Projecte d’Arquitectura” where she developed a Master

Thesis about Antoni Gaudí and the second at the “Sert” school from the Catalan College of Architects called “Intensificació en la Pràctica del Planejament Urbanístic” related to planning practice in Catalonia.

During her studies she participated in several workshops throughout Europe, one of which was the “International Laboratory of Urban Design” (ILA&UD) in Venice, founded by Giancarlo De Carlo and Peter Smithson. She followed the Erasmus programme at Edinburgh College of Art in 2000-01, working on design projects based on “The Union Canal”. This experience lead to her graduation project called “The secret garden”, which was a museum for the Union Canal at the Edinburgh basin that become the “gatehouse” of the linear park that she understood that was the canal space for the city. The project won the “Honour Award 2005” from the School of Architecture in Barcelona and later the “Dragados Award” for final project, and has been published in the magazine “Visions”.

During her time in Scotland in 2000, she worked for the award winning practice Oliver Chapman Architects.

She has been a design studio tutor at the School of Architecture, Barcelona, since 2005, currently works as an architect in Barcelona, and is involved in various architectural publications.

What are the issues and questions facing regional cities today?

1. Sustainable Development & EnergyThe instruments of the urban planning are the ones who have to integrate in their policies the concept of sustainability. That means: 1. Relate the growing necessities of any town or village with the

Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao

Barcelona

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natural resources, landscape, archaeological, historical and cultural values, to guarantee a better quality of life.

2. Promote the concentration to make reliable any operation,

3. Configurate models of land occupation that avoid de dispersion within the territory and contemplate the rehabilitation of the existing tissues as a sustainable inner development and growing. Finally,

4. To encourage the social cohesion and agreement.

2. The Economy & Economic CompetitivenessEspecially in periods of good economy and optimism, it’s important to have a close and delicate control of the quality of the developments, in terms of design and

execution. What we have now, in times of recession, is a big amount of housing projects that were fast built with the consequent poor design and material quality. Totally a miss opportunity to do it, and do it well.

3. Social JusticeAny urban planning proposal has to generate a social balance, incorporating social housing in private developments, preventing the formation of ghettos or marginal neighbourhoods. As well as provide the new urban area with mixture of uses and public facilities if is necessary. The quality of the design will be and important issue in order to achieve such purposes.

5. DesignA quality design is the key to achieve all the new requirements of sustainability and economy. The actual crisis should represent a moment for re-think (without hurries…) which and how is the model of sustainable urban development that we have to apply to our cities and which are the more according building typologies. In that case, is a good moment to investigate more (depending which country of course) and maybe start changing the inertia of a bad practice. Dialog between all the agents is necessary as well as the public participation.

6. Transport and Infrastructure NetworksThe mobility has to be diversified and not obligated. Promote the public transport. When the critic mass is enough, to encourage certain infrastructures should be essential, if not the economical and demographical growing of some territories becomes blocked. We can no longer rely on private cars. If we built more compact, together with a good mobility plan the city increases their urban quality.

7. Policy and LegislationPolicy sometimes is the detonator of a new conscious, and of course, when government legislates some issues, it means subventions and economical impulse on them. For example, a policy in Catalunya called “Llei de millora de barris, areas urbanes I viles que requereixen una atenció especial” (policy to renovate neighbourhoods, urban areas and towns with the need of special attention) from 26 May 2004, was the

first policy to introduce the gender like a urban parameter, in attention to promote the gender balance in the use of public space and public buildings. These rule, has reactivated a lot of investigations relating woman and cities, using their experience to make better designs, with more dialog, diversity and less discrimination.

Of course, policies and legislations have to become actions, and involve the citizens on them.

8. Integration of city planning, local ecology, and livelihoodPublic participation! People have to be involved in city planning. Transversal relations between technicians, politics and citizens. Openness and transparency versus isolation and opacity.

QUESTIONNAIRE 3 A VIEW FROM OSLO – Professor Christian Hermansen,Head of Urban Design, Oslo School of Architecture and Design.

Christian Hermansen Cordua studied architecture in Santiago, Chile, followed by a one year post-graduate programme in Urban Studies with a Ford Foundation Fellowship. He joined the faculty at the School of Architecture, Catholic University of Chile, Santiago, and went on to do post- graduate studies at Washington University, U.S.A. 1973 – 1974 on a Fulbright Fellowship. From 1974 – 76 he worked with Environmental Design

Barcelona

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Associates, U.S.A. He moved to London in 1976 where he taught at Kingston School of Architecture and did research at the Bartlett, University College London. He moved to Scotland in 1980 where he taught at Strathclyde University until 1984.

In that year he started work with both the Mackintosh School of Architecture Glasgow School of Art from 1984 to 2002 where he was Director of Post Graduate Studies, and for Elder and Cannon Architects. The work with Elder and Cannon won numerous awards such as The Royal Scottish Academy Gold Medal for Architecture, RIBA Awards, GIA Awards, Civic Trust Awards, The Regeneration Scotland Prize, Europa Nostra Award, Eternit Prize for British Architecture, etc. In 2002 he moved to Oslo, Norway to work on the translation of Ildefonso Cerda’s Teoría General de la Urbanización (1867) and in 2004 became Professor of Architecture and Head of the Department of Architecture, a position he held until 2009. In addition to the activities described above he lectured in America, Europe and Asia, has been Visiting Professor at The Central European University, Department of History and Philosophy of Art and Architecture, Prague; Washington University School of Architecture, St. Louis, USA; and Universidad del Desarrollo, Santiago, Chile. He has published several books and contributed to journals, books and exhibitions in Europe and America. He is currently part of two EU funded research projects: the ENHSA Latin America Project, and e – archidoct.

What are the issues and questions facing regional cities today?

1. Sustainable Development & EnergyThe whole discourse on sustainability has taken the wrong turn. It is based on the assumption that the prime objective of sustainability is to preserve our current levels of consumption undisturbed. As the recent economic crash has demonstrated, to operate under the expectations of ever increasing abundance is illusory. Sustainability should start from the acceptance of scarcity.

2. The Economy & Economic CompetitivenessThe old mechanisms that enabled our way of life have been broken by the recent economic crash, especially the unlimited access to cheap credit for households, businesses, banks, and governments, which sustained economic growth and abundance in the last decades, has come to and end and should not be revived as a basis for a sustainable economic system.

In this context, the current attempts at re-starting revolving debt consumerism are an exercise in futility. We’ve reached the limit of being able to sustain additional debt at any level without causing further damage and distortions.

4. Environmental Quality, including resource and waste managementIn spite of globalisation, the competitive advantage of the world’s most successful city-regions seems to be growing, not shrinking. People are crowding into a discrete number of mega-regions, systems

of multiple cities and their surrounding suburban rings. The world’s 40 largest mega-regions, which are home to some 18 percent of the world’s population, produce two-thirds of global economic output and nearly 9 in 10 new patented innovations.

Along with the rise of mega-regions, a second phenomenon is also reshaping the economic geography of the world. The ability of different cities and regions to attract highly educated people, or human capital, is crucial to economic success. Nobel laureate Robert Lucas argues that the economic effects of knowledge that result from talent-clustering are the main cause of economic growth. Well-educated professionals and creative workers who live together in dense ecosystems, interacting directly, generate ideas and turn them into products and services faster than talented people in other places can.

5. DesignIf we accept that the main challenge of a successful economy is to promote dense urban clusters capable of attracting highly educated people, providing a high quality living environment is an important part of the equation.

7. Policy and LegislationIf the analysis described above holds, it would follow that Scotland would have to concentrate its resources in developing what is at present it’s most successful urban ‘knowledge cluster’, rather than dispersing scarce resources throughout the country.

This applies to the investments required by the issues raised in questions 5, 6, and 8.

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We have included an anonymous selection of questionnaire responses, organised by category, and then summarised. Responses were selected either because they represented a unique point of view or because they represented a convergence or consensus of opinion. In the latter case, we sought to indicate the frequency of converging opinions.

1. Sustainable Development & EnergyThe current energy situation (oil, gas, electricity, water, food) is predominantly trans-national. In current models, supply is perceived as limitless, despite collective knowledge of resource limitations. The pressures on particular resources have consequences with differentiated urban impact depending on context: water to southern Spain; oil to the industrial north; gas to Eastern Europe. School of Architecture, University of Edinburgh/Practicing Architect, UK

Addressing the climate change agenda is now a top priority for cities across the world, including Scotland. Policy responses such as Eco-towns in England and the Scottish Sustainable Communities Initiative are good first steps but more needs to be done. Town and Regional Planning, University of Dundee

Transport is at the heart of the sustainable development debate. Professor of Civil Engineering, University of Aberdeen

It’s easier to address environmental sustainability through box ticking and policy rather than tackle social sustainability, which involves dealing with a range of policy issues (transportation, housing, etc). London City Council

The whole discourse on sustainability has taken the wrong turn. It is based on the assumption that the prime objective of sustainability is to preserve our current levels of consumption. Professor of Urban Design, Oslo

[Development led by commercial interests] has become the norm, and this position is becoming increasingly more difficult to retract from, given the entrenchment of commercial positions. Scottish Government

Seen as too complex, too expensive, too risky in terms of finance v results. Patronised by platitudes and short-term fixes, seen as someone else’s problem. Design Manager, City Council, England

Reinvigorate local ownership of public space as a cultural domain. Director, Local Authority funded Arts Organisation

2. The Economy & Economic Competitiveness

Irreversible decline of town centres resulting from injudicious approval given to out of town retail development. Urban Design Group

Out of town shopping developments have severely affected the success of most High Streets. This in turn affects how successful a neighbourhood can be in providing its residents with their daily needs. Foundation for Built Environment, UK

Increasing centralisation toward centres of economic activity (London and Edinburgh) to the detriment of other towns and cities. City Council, Design Advisor/Planner Architect UK

Scotland must develop a high quality, low carbon economic brand by developing sustainable communities. The development plan process will be the key to this rather than laissez faire development. Conservation Body, Scotland

Economic development vs. design quality. Local authorities have so many policies emphasising design quality but… it all goes out of the window when faced with a high profile scheme from a vociferous developer that will create a number of jobs. London City Council

The current attempts at re-starting revolving debt consumerism are an exercise in futility. Professor of Urban Design, Oslo

Economy fixed in market-driven and monetarist cyclical movement. Design Manager, City Council, England

We should be looking at ways of managing contraction – thinking about the agendas that can reinforce people’s attachment to a place and not damaging that which is

Questionnaire selection (LH & AMP)

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precious in an attempt to deliver short-term economic gain. Weighing up the love against the cash. Director, Local Authority funded Arts Organisation

How [do] cities and regions in Scotland need to adapt to such changes [i.e., changes in capitalist modes of production] to remain economically competitive, promote innovation and to generate jobs. How might the planning system intervene…? What might be the role of universities…? Town and Regional Planning, University of Dundee

3. Social JusticeThe city and town should be accessible to the entire society and not just a few. This can be achieved in our towns and cities by mixing tenures in a traditional urban framework, providing a range of public open spaces, and community buildings. Foundation for Built Environment, UK

Do current models and methods of urbanism really ever promote diversity or accept slowness as a way of being in a forward-looking city?University of Edinburgh

Making the ‘polluter pays’ principle stick. Professor of Civil Engineering, University of Dundee

Sustainability is – in economic terms – linked to specialist, traditional trade development. School of Architecture, University of Edinburgh

Social segregation is not lessening. The affluent move away from areas where there are people with problematic lifestyles, the poor cannot.

Concentration on wealth creation and monetary value has… created ghettos in urban contexts. The new agenda of control and surveillance in the hands of government and financial institutions… threatens to subsume basic rights of free movement. Design Manager, City Council, England

Putting ‘communities in control’, but the reality doesn’t seem to match the rhetoric. Town and Regional Planning, University of Dundee

4. Environmental Quality, including resource and waste management

The high value of developable land over recent years has led many local authorities, and others, to maximise income by permitting/encouraging over-development. Land has become too expensive just to be ‘land’. (Although the valuable work undertaken by the Scottish Banks to destroy the world economy may provide an opportunity to re-assess the true value of land as a resource for communities and not merely a source of profit to a few.) Director, UK Housing Association

How can British cities turn the twin issues of climate change and growing populations to their advantage? The Lighthouse

To throw away is not tenable anymore; the

Earth is the planet which we all occupy, we need to develop a different attitude to environmental quality, an understanding of Earth time is critical. City Design Leader, Scotland

Why have ‘eco towns’ failed to capture the public attention? Professor of Civil Engineering, University of Aberdeen

In spite of globalisation, the competitive advantage of the world’s most successful city-regions seems to be growing, not shrinking. People are crowding into a discrete number of mega-regions….Nobel laureate Robert Lucas argues that the economic effects of knowledge that result from talent-clustering are the main cause of economic growth. Well-educated professionals and creative workers who live together in dense ecosystems… generate ideas… faster than talented people in other places. Professor of Urbanism, Oslo

Make recycling bins into meeting points. Director, Local Authority funded Arts Organisation

Promote… shared streets rather than segregate pedestrian/vehicles. Anonymous architect

‘cradle to cradle’ approach to all areas of production and resource management Heriot-Watt University, ‘by leaves we live’ + ‘sympathy, synthesis, synergy’: …the human ecology of cities, … what we value most about our built and unbuilt environment… Architect, Glasgow

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5. DesignThe role of the architect and architectural design is to contribute creative solutions as to what it is to dwell well, and to investigate iterations of this which contribute to dwelling well together in cities and urban situations. School of Architecture, University of Edinburgh

The EPSRC SOLUTIONS project has been modelling options such as compact cities (with strong emphasis on public transport) and a highways expansion option promoting the development of new settlements or the linking of established outer settlements. Professor of Civil Engineering, University of Aberdeen

It is difficult to legislate for design. Design involves complex processes that are not readily understood by non-designers.School of Architecture, University of Edinburgh

The design issues facing regional cities today traverse rethinking the presence/absence of infrastructures; inclusions/exclusions of the ‘public’ realm – what do we now understand as ‘the right to the city’? School of Architecture, University of Edinburgh

Basic lack of understanding of place-making at senior… level, too much emphasis on economic development and acceptance of poor design in the name of regeneration. Design Manager, City Council, England

Lack of understanding of Scottish vernacular either in buildings or street layout. Risk of copying Poundbury/Essex design guide rather than setting out with similar objectives and coming up with a strongly Scottish solution. Urban Design Group

Low density sprawl [is] promoted. Architect, Edinburgh

6. Transport and Infrastructure NetworksTravel must be kept to a minimum. Where it is necessary to promote development, potential travel should be factored into planning applications and presented as part of the carbon ‘cost’ of a project. Conservation Body, Scotland

There cannot be transportation projects; movement issues are and should be intrinsically linked to PLACE MAKING. Design City Leader

Too much emphasis is placed on fast economic practices. Slow economy projects need to be considered alongside fast economy projects. Transport Scotland; for example, are far too detached from design in any form other than technical and cost engineering. School of Architecture, University of Edinburgh

‘Default setting’ of car use for transport. Scottish Government

How to address the ‘by-pass’ issue? Every town/city appears to want a ‘by-pass’ if they don’t have one already, as they perceive traffic congestion to be a blight and a nuisance without fully grasping the opportunities that traffic and passing traffic possess for shops and services. Urban Design, Strathclyde University

[The government’s claims to want to] to lessen the impact of cars at metropolitan centres [is] not supported by [its] increased investment in road building. Design Manager, City Council, England

Mass public transport systems. Green infrastructure. RTPI

Meeting Discussion (in the picture Graham Ross and Diarmaid Lawlor) 06 of April 2009

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7. Policy and LegislationThe main elements of the new 2006 Planning etc Scotland Act come into force this year including the creation of Strategic Development Planning Authorities for Scotland’s 4 main cities. There is a huge opportunity, as a result, to develop policy relevant research which helps these new bodies to operate and deliver effectively. Town and Regional Planning, University of Dundee

It is Secondary. Professor of Architecture, Strathclyde University

‘Joined up thinking’ is important. Most cities have large journey-to-work areas which cross local authority boundaries. Urban (and rural) policies should therefore identify and respond to issues of rural-urban interaction. Professor of Civil Engineer, Aberdeen

Scotland would have to concentrate its

resources in developing what is at present it’s most successful urban ‘knowledge cluster’, rather than dispersing scarce resources throughout the country. Professor of Urbanism, Oslo

Also, there is a vast quantity of good guidance in place, perhaps certain ‘guidance’ should be strengthened, e.g. what will happen if Designing Streets is given guidance only status and not policy status? Urban Design, Strathclyde University

8. Integration of city planning, local ecology, and livelihood

The most interesting towns and cities seem to be the ones that embrace and found themselves upon their natural ecology and landscape to create a place that is entirely unique. Foundation for Built Environment, UK

The separation of, for instance, food supply from our individual and collective eating, is endemic of a politically laissez-faire attitude to resource management. Understanding reconnections between food and place (Steel, 2008), particularly at the median scale, is a fundamental issue which needs to be addressed by regional cities today. School of Architecture, University of Edinburgh/Practicing Architect UK

In recent years the Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI) has promoted a move to ‘spatial planning’ rather than town planning. Spatial planning is a European concept, which according to the 1983 European Conference of Ministers ‘gives geographical expression to the economic, social, cultural and ecological policies of society’. Town and Regional Planning, University of Dundee

Too frequently those who administer the systems for looking after cities have little understanding of their city. Regional and local plans tend not to operate from region/city/place/design principles. They tend to be too diagrammatic and very un-architectural. University of Edinburgh

9. OtherNeed to recognise that the system is not working. Design City Leader, Scotland

We need more positive consultation between Scottish Government and LAs and the community. Communities can offer valuable views when asked but if they are not approached, and then development becomes one-sided – usually from the ‘outside’. Private Architectural Practice, Architect & Community Councillor Scotland

Task Force Members Meeting 06 of April 2009

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Sustainability was understood in a number of ways in the questionnaires, including:

the development of towns and cities in ways that minimise climate change;

the development of sustainable energy sources;

development that prevents damage to the environment and natural ecologies; and

development whose design sustains communities and their many and varied cultures, identities, and heritages.

There was frequent criticism of the out of town housing development, which increasingly is favoured by developers for financial reasons. Sustainable development is not only about designing and manufacturing ‘green’ building components and designing ‘green’ housing units. It is also – and perhaps more importantly – about sustainable planning which involves the coordination of, e.g., new housing schemes with transport planning, resource management, amenities, etc.

The economy elicited the most conflicted responses. Developing the economy was linked to the strengthening of town centres and of regions; at the same time, the fact that land and development is exclusively profit driven, was criticised as one of the most corrosive effects on the public realm.

Social justice was understood in terms of the provision of shared space and pollution-free environments, and the re-instatement of value systems other than the money system. [A favourable reference to the guild system was presumably about creating an electorate comprising multiple elites rather than the overriding and unitary money elite.] Forces against social justice included competitive forms of wealth creation, and the erosion of privacy by surveillance regimes.

The continuing and increasing threat to the quality of the environment, both natural and man-made, was linked to problems of overdevelopment, which was linked to the way the market system overvalues land and distorts land values. It was also linked to population growth and climate change.

Good design was difficult to achieve when development decisions were market driven. Given current financing arrangements, low density sprawl was simply too attractive to the developer. There was concern that the ecotown was another name for low density newtown. Design has to be place-based because it is about making or extending places, and places have particular – not universal or general – characters and values. Design is not only about solutions to problems, but about showing us how to live (i.e. visualising scenarios).

It was recognised that it is not possible to divorce transport planning from place-making, that transport planning (and resource management) raises region-wide issues; suggested the necessity of factoring the cost of road and infrastructure in development. Almost without exception, responses focused on the corrosive effects of the car on the natural and street environment, and on social life.

Policy changes – including the creation of the Strategic Development Planning Authorities – were seen as opportunities for greater regional-city collaborations and coordination. Such collaboration was regarded as highly desirable. There is a need for a genuine consultation process that allows the electorate a strategic role in planning, and not merely in choosing alternatives that have already been decided upon.

In summary, the overriding concern expressed in most categories of the questionnaires was with the environment; in particular with environmental change and with the effects of policy, development, and lifestyle, upon the environment. This is not new. Rising global average temperature is the current indicator used to measure the degradation of the environment, but we have been concerned about pollution for more than a generation (Greenpeace was founded in 1971).

Summary and Discussion (LH)

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A secondary and closely linked concern was the economy, but not the current economic downturn. This was barely mentioned. Rather, concern with our particular forms of economy: the particular ways that land acquisition and development are financed as (public or private) investment opportunities. The deleterious effects that the market system has had on the quality of public space and planning, on the environment, on social justice, on transport policy, was mentioned in almost all categories. The market system was singled out repeated as the single biggest impediment to achieving sustainable development in terms of community and the natural environment. Repeatedly the responses noted the conflict between the value of, e.g., places and their diversity (local topography, climate, and history), and the effects of the market, which reduces all value to the single value system of capital.

Of equal concern was the corrosive effect of the car and car use on the environment, social life and public space, and the cohesion of cities. The car should be a recreation not a necessity. This is related to the critique of the way the market is structured, which makes car-based developments the most financially attractive investment opportunity.

It cannot be emphasised enough that these three concerns – and only these three – were mentioned by every respondent, in at least one, if not more than one category, in each questionnaire: environmental change, the market, and the car.

The Task Force divided into 3 subgroups to discuss the questionnaire categories. The subgroup discussions are summarised below.

Group A: 1. Sustainable Development & Energy; 2. The Economy and Economic Competitiveness; 3. Social Justice.

Treating these as separate issues was a mistake; they need to work together.

There is no understanding of what sustainability is, or what a sustainable city is.

Inverness is about creating a city that serves the Highlands.

The question is how we criticise places, even as we go on use them? – i.e: shopping malls, Victoria Arcades.

We want beautiful places, but this is not the main thing we aspire to. We want interesting rather than beautiful places.

Exchange is about consuming culture. How is the quality of that exchange?.

Cities are places where creative minds come together.

Re-balance the cities that are of balance. Ricky Burdett’s Map of Global Cities.

How to imagine a self-sufficient Scotland?

Regions should be independent and self-sufficient.

Group B: 4. Environmental Quality, including resource and waste management;

5. Design; 6. Transport and Infrastructure networks.

How is regional sustainability defined?

If sustainability = self-sufficiency, how do you define as the boundary within which sustainability occurs?

Is it possible to influence behaviour through design.

Community peer pressure, recycling is the thing to do.

How do you create a legitimate engagement with the community?

Sustainability is a problem of educating people.

How do we create mechanisms for engagement?

Most planning processes do not use viable mechanisms of engagement so people feel they own the place where they live.

Group C: 7. Policy and Legislation; 8. Integration of city planning, local ecology and livelihood.

The group imagined that Scotland was a city of 5 Million inhabitants: what problems and opportunities become apparent?

Reframing and remapping the country boundaries, economy and politics.

Mapping knowledge industries, commerce. Look at the map of where activities take place.

Sub-group workshops (AMP)

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Connectivity and flows of art practice.

Richard Florida’s criterion should be applied to Scotland.

We should improve the high speed railway for cities and regions and create a transport system between the 6 node points.

And post-group discussion…

There are too many reports that no one reads, not enough action.

Put imagination and craft at the heart of place-making. Support the creative industries (design, making, craft, and construction) too. Take politics and value-engineering out of place-making.

More joined up thinking: develop spatial, economic, transport, resource strategies in which cities and regions work together; and in which regions and regions work together, rather than in competition. Since there is only a finite amount of money, this means that we need to develop other economic models so that economic growth in one area does not drain capital from another.

Develop the financing and executive structures that make good design possible and bad design difficult. This requires development corporations with the necessary political and economic power, and the necessary leadership, and imagination.

Change the market conditions so that good design is possible and bad design is difficult.

The government is committed to wealth creation.

It seems that most developers do not love the place they develop, but only regard it as an investment opportunity.

Use design to expand the horizons of the possible: use design to imagine new lifestyles, new forms of living, new relationships to the land and its resources, new relations between city and region.

It is important to understand the concept of the city-region in its European and Scottish context. According to Edward Soja (Professor at UCLA), “a regional urbanisation process is replacing old ideas that cities are not simply growing through suburbanisation and sprawl but in a very different way. They are hiving off new cities. We get multicentric, polycentric, networked city-regions forming, and so Mexico City region is the one that is 37 million”.

It is predicted that by 2050, 75% of the world’s population will be living in cities. This phenomenon is not dissimilar in Scotland. Such growth is already taking place in the Central Belt, Fife and Inverness. According to Guy Battle “it is clear that any future new urban model must be sustainable at heart. However, we can establish that our present models are flawed. The new model must find a balance between the needs of individuals, society, the economy and the environment”. Whatever growth or urban models we apply to cities and regions in Scotland, they will have to be sustainable, and this is the great challenge ahead.

Joan Clos (Mayor of Barcelona between 1997 and 2006) in his essay ‘The European City Model’ defines 4 types of European City: Anglo-Saxon, Central European, Nordic and Mediterranean. These models have common characteristics; they have tight urban centres and close relations to their regions:

“The normative European city is a dense, compact area grouped around a core rather than sprawling like American Cities; this preserves the integrity and coherence of its open spaces. When dense enough it favours mobility on foot and public transport and its able to avoid and excessive level of Greenfield development. In such a city a host of various activities occur in the same place, combining residence, work and leisure to create, a diverse and complex lifestyle. It is home to people from a substantial mix of social backgrounds, reducing the tendency towards ghettos caused by income, origin or race and encouraging social integration. Public areas are places of peaceful enriching coexistence. The mobility of its residents is not entirely dependant on cars, and public transport plays a major role. Public transport needs a high concentration of people, and public areas call for a variety of uses. All these features and characteristics are interdependent, and all play a part in shaping the city”.

Shifts (exhibition and subsequent publication, the Lighthouse, 2007) looks at future projections into the Central Belt. In Shifts, Nick Barley (Director of the Lighthouse) indicts the city-region in Scotland. “Real Scotland, the country we engage on a daily basis, does not often look like the photo library pictures. The two biggest Scottish cities are so close that their tongues almost touch when they stick them out at each other across the central belt, but for thousands of people that travel regularly between them, the snapshot from a train or car window won’t be found in any photo library. It is more likely to feature

Conclusions (LH & AMP)

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a light industrial building, a slap heap, a characterless housing state or a battery chicken farm”. He goes on to describe the unplanned mix of landmark buildings, heavy traffic, and dreary retail/office.

If we want to preserve the European model for the development of our cities and their regions, we need to change these current growth patterns. Among the points that emerged from the Task Force we note the following:

In view of the paramount importance of the market in shaping decisions relating to design, planning, and development, there is a need to study: how the market shapes urban and rural form; how the

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market can be turned to the advantage of sustainability and design in cases where it currently seems to work against them; how the market can be altered to make good development possible and bad development difficult. There are new economic models being developed, including so-called zero growth economies (cf. New Scientist 18 October 08), and it would be interesting to see what forms of urban and regional development these entail. In a world with finite resources and a finite capacity to absorb waste, sustainable economic growth is an oxymoron. At some point we have to contemplate zero growth and the idea of making things better without making them bigger.

Exploring ways of intervening in the market forces is critical to evolving socially, economically and environmentally sustainable development. This may include alternative models of public private partnership, alternative forms of building financing and procurement.

The formation of regeneration agencies (Bilbao Ria 2000, Sheffield One) is vital for success as a facilitator for regeneration and also to promote the objectives set out in local/regional/city plans. This helps unify all tiers of government and can act independently of political and private interests.

The structuring and financing of regional agencies is key to their success. For example, Bilbao Ria 2000 is a limited company, in which local and central government each have a 50% share. The city allocates land to the company for development and the financial gains are re-invested in the area.

It is important to have a vision and improve the image of cities and regions (Bilbao, Liverpool). A vision needs to be clearly expressed and communicated.

It is important to apply environmental measures to industrial areas, and to promote the re-use of brownfield sites for regeneration and new housing, rather than Greenfield areas.

Look after heritage – but not as an end itself. Heritage must work for its living. As a

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Group A (in the picture Alona Martinez, Husam Al Waer, Rob Cowan, Suzanne Ewing

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nation, we are deeply conservative and this can be used to our advantage. Heritage is not a constraint, but an opportunity.

It is essential to link regeneration with issues of design quality – we are all competing globally and trying to attract the same investors. Design quality based on place-making and context is not a luxury but an imperative and should be used as the major instrument of the regeneration tool-kit.

Sustainable urbanism should be considered not just at a local level but at

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the regional level. Regional strategies for transport, jobs and economics, education and health can be developed so that towns and settlements work in harmony with each other.

There are tools to deliver sustainable places such as the Enquiry by Design Process (EbD, developed by the Princes Foundation), pattern books and design codes. The EbD masterplanning process brings key stakeholders together, to assess a complex range of design requirements for the development site, with every issue tested by being drawn.

Main streets need to offer attractive survivable, environments – not places where people are afraid to go out. There is incontrovertible evidence relating traffic speed to accident causation and injury severity. Shared surface can allow pedestrians and cars to co-exist.

Need for Leadership – City Governance The poor quality of the experience offered along the major routes into towns and cities is clear evidence of funds not being allocated either by private or public sectors, and an absence of any understanding of the importance of these routes as places, or of any vision that they could be of much greater value to the surrounding community and the city as a whole.

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It is essential for the 6 cities and regions to work together and not separately, and for regional and local governments and authorities to have common objectives in their local plans and frameworks. For example Glasgow/Edinburgh, Perth/Dundee, Inverness/Aberdeen and the regions in between.

It is essential to link land use with public transport and infrastructure both in regional and local plans to achieve sustainability.

It is important to work on a European City-Regional model that promotes compactness and uses public transport systems, and avoids sprawl and car use.

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•Group B (in the picture Malcom Horner, Ariadna Perich, Maarten Neering, Lorens Holm, Cristina Gonzalez & Robert Huxford)

References Nick Barley, Shifts: Projections into the Future of the Central Belt (The Lighthouse 2007) pp. 11-12. R. Burdett & D. Sudjic, The Endless City: the Urban Age Project by the London School of Economics and Deutsche Bank’s Alfred Herrhausen Society (Phaidon 2007).

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The purpose of the Task Force is to identify problems and opportunities confronting development in Scotland and in Europe today, and to form research collaborations to pursue them. The Task Force is essentially an open network of researchers, whose active membership – like that of the Geddes Institute - is defined by collaboration on projects. [diagram 1] Given the size, disciplinary spread, and demographics of the group, we expect each collaboration to be different.

1.0 Expertise: the Task Force as it was convened in April has a multidisciplinary approach and expertise with a strong background in planning and architectural design and problem solving at both academic and local authority levels, which puts it in a position to develop research partnerships that address a broad range of cultural and environmental issues. We have significant participation from two other essential quarters: from civil engineering with research track records in infrastructure and resources management, and from urbanist from European universities, and from UK local authorities, Scottish Government, and public and professional bodies. The task now is to develop different scales of partnership and different scales of funding to support this collective expertise.

2.0 University Partnerships: 2.1 The Task Force is aligned with a Sustainable Housing Unit currently begin developed in the School of Architecture, with a research remit in sustainable housing design and technology. There is a logic of scale to this collaboration. It’s remit begins with the site and works down to the design of building components; the Task Force’s remit begins with the site and works up to regional planning.

2.2 There are opportunities to contribute to EPSRC (Environment and Physical Sciences Research Council) teams – primarily based in Civil Engineering – engaged in research in infrastructure and resource management at the regional level. The EPSRC recognises the need for contributions to their teams from the humanities and social sciences in cases where their research has bearing on lifestyle, local culture, and heritage.

3.0 UK Partnerships: research partnerships with UK Higher Education Institutions (HEI’s), UK stakeholders (public and semi-public bodies, including local authorities, Scottish Government, and government advisory groups), and UK industries, in particular developers. A research team comprising stakeholders and industry is essential for addressing questions of planning policy and market forces, both of which emerged as critical areas in group discussions and/or the questionnaires. [diagram 2]

4.0 European Partnerships with European HEI’s to broaden the research and knowledge base beyond Scotland, to establish comparators for best practice, and to establish a network of regional centres of planning and design expertise. [diagram 3, item 6.2] In particular, a research partnership with our participants from Oslo, Bilbao, Barcelona, and Liverpool has

a geographic logic:

2 island sites + 3 continental sites

3 northern sites + 2 southern sites, all of them slightly ‘edgey’.

Ways forward (LH)

Diagram 2: Task Force Grant Strategy

Diagram 1: Geddes Institute Disciplinary Homes (Architecture, Geography, Planning) and Projects

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5.0 In-house resources upon which we can draw for project planning and feasibility include:

Masters and PhD-level Architecture and Urban Design students, and summer student internships, whose work can become the basis for preliminary research and background information gathering.

The City Think Tank (CTT) seminar series for convening project collaborators and project advisory boards.

A research and development office (RIS) with expertise in developing research proposals, in particular, in partnership with industry.

A website supported by the Department of Town & Regional Planning, http://www.dundee.ac.uk/geddesinstitute/.

Administrative support through the School of Architecture.

6.0 There are at least two Funding strategies:

6.1 Task Force project funding (as item 7.1) – funding opportunities include Research Council (RC) Network grants, and Technology Strategy Board (TSB) and Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) funding calls. (Current TSB and KTP calls are not in Task Force areas, but new calls are announced regularly.) These funding mechanisms involve primarily UK academic, stakeholder, and industry partners [diagram 2].

6.2 Geddes Institute: Revenue funding to build research capacity, drawing on the Task Force academic collaborators in Oslo and Spain. We are working towards European Union grants that would fund a European-wide partnership. Typically this funding includes for PhD and Senior Research Fellowships in each centre, thus constituting a network of research centres on cities and

their regions. This funding would create a research ‘home’ for the Task Force, but it is intended to have a broader disciplinary remit than the Sustainable Development project (below), to include the culture of cities and their regions, in its myriad forms. [diagram 3]

7.0 Current projects

7.1 The Task Force is beginning a Sustainable Development project with our stakeholder partners, that looks at design models for in-town densification, edge-of-town expansion, and out-of-town/new-town development, under different conditions of local context, culture, finance, and brief, across Scotland. This involves graphic methods similar to those described in the Barcelona presentation. This project is in the feasibility/project planning stage. It will be the basis for a funded research proposal at national or European level, which aims to develop regional level sustainable urban design and planning models that address bio and cultural diversity across regions, and address strategically the relationship of cities to their regions.

7.2 Additionally, the Geddes Institute is preparing two AHRC grant proposals that would expand the research context within which the Task Force operates. [diagram 1]

Diagram 3: Geddes Institute EU Grant Strategy

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These include:

7.2.1 Remixing the City aims to develop a model for bringing place-based and internet-based communities (i.e., the neighbourhood and the chatroom) together in order to explore the degree to which the latter can stake a claim on civic life (project partners include Dundee industry and local authority).

7.2.2 Landworkers looks at social formations and their relation to the natural environment through a series of artist-architect collaborations in the landscape (exhibition and conference co-sponsored by the RIAS, May 2009).

8.0 Advocacy: finally, with respect to policy issues that necessarily have a political dimension, the Task Force might also be effective as an advocacy group. Greenpeace and many medical charities fund research and advocacy.

Transport is as much a political problem as a technical one, because it depends upon the lifestyle choices of the electorate, and because any change in car use has to be national policy, not regional (if Dundee were to choke car use, development would simply go elsewhere).

Any major changes to planning policy intended to address the way land and development are financed, is as much a problem of advocacy as it is a problem of knowledge that could be solved by research. Everybody - including developers and policy-makers - knows that sprawl is destroying our countryscapes and cityscapes but we are bound by the market system that encourages it.

The formation of the Task Force would not have been possible without the support of the School of Architecture, its staff, students, and administration; and the Geddes Institute and its three directors. The School of Architecture hosted the April symposium and has generously supported this publication. Richard White prepared the maps; Hugh Campbell provided IT support; Esme Fieldhouse & Stephen Mackie kept the machine well-oiled on the day; Tracey Dixon maintains the website. In particular we would like to thank Graeme Hutton, Dean and Head

Acknowledgements

Group C (in the picture John Deffenbaugh, Graeme Hutton & Lita Khazaka)

of School for his support and the support of the School, and Susannah Kett, the Geddes Institute administrator, without whose labour and continued diligence this event and publication would not have been possible. Also we would like to thank our 5 speakers (Rob Cowan, Lita Khazaka, Robert Huxford, Rob Burns & Ariadna Perich) who wrote the summaries of their presentations and provided the images, for inclusion in this report. Finally Koldo Ocejo, who designed and produced this publication.

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Geddes Institute for Urban Research Directors:Dr. Lorens Holm (Architecture).Professor Nicholas Fyfe (Geography).Ms. Barbara Illsley (Town & Regional Planning).

Staff:Ms. Alona Martinez-Perez, Researcher, Project Manager (Architecture).Ms. Tracey Dixon, Website (Town & Regional Planning).Ms. Susannah Kett, Geddes Administrator (Architecture).

Management Board: The Directors, plusDr. Neil Burford, Architecture.Michael Spens, Architecture. Professor Kathryn Findlay, Architecture.Dr. Catriona MacAuley (Interactive Media Design).Professor Jim Tomlinson (History, College Head of Research).

Appendixes1. Draft invitation letter. 2. Program Agenda Monday 06 April 2009.3. Questionnaire.4. List of Questionnaire respondents.5. Meeting minutes (Esme Fieldhouse & Stephen Mackie). 6. List of Attendees on Monday 06 April 09.7. References List.

International Advisory CommitteeDavid Grahame Shane Professor of Architecture and Urbanism, Columbia University.David Lyon Professor of Sociology, Queens University, Ontario.Lance Strate Professor of Communication and Media Studies, Fordham University, New York City; and President of the Media Ecology Association.Leon van Schaik Professor of Architecture (Innovation Chair), Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Melbourne, Australia.Paul Guzzardo St. Louis and Buenos Aires, lawyer, media activist, and director of MediaArts Alliance.Richard LeGates Professor of Urban Studies, San Francisco State University.

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The Geddes Task Force on Cities & their RegionsAberdeen Dundee Edinburgh Glasgow Inverness Stirling

Monday 06 April 2009, 10:00-5:00pm, Crawford BoardroomThe Crawford Boardroom is located on the ground floor of the Crawford Building, Duncan of

Jordanstone College of Art and Design, 13 Perth Road Dundee. 10 minute walk west from the train

station. Any questions and problems, please contact Lynn Alexander 01382 385 260 or

l.alexander@dundee.ac.uk

9:30 Morning coffee begins

Morning Session-Selected Speakers

10:00 Introduction: Lorens Holm + Alona Martinez

10:15 Speaker 1

Ms. Ariadna Perich Capdeferro Lecturer ETSAB (School of Architecture

Barcelona): the relation of Barcelona to its regions.

10:45 Speaker 2

Mr. Rob Burns Liverpool City Council Lead Urban Designer: the regeneration

of Liverpool.

11:15 Speakers 3&4

Mr. Rob Cowan Urban Design Skills (Designing Places author) +

Mr. Robert Huxford (Urban Design Group Director UK): planning policy UK.

11:45 Speaker 5

Lita Khazaka, Architect and Urban Designer with the Prince’s Foundation:

traditional urbanism.

12:15 The Geddes Task Force on Cities and their Regions- Presentation of

questionnaire findings.

Dr. Lorens Holm, Director Geddes Institute (Architecture).

Ms. Alona Martinez-Perez, Regional Convenor, Urban Design Group Scotland.

1:00 Lunch

2:00 Afternoon Working Sessions:

Master of Ceremonies

John Deffenbaugh, City of London Project Manager (Public Realm).

Sub-Groups

1. Sustainable Development & Energy

2. The Economy and Economic Competitiveness

3. Social Justice

4. Environmental Quality, including resource and waste management

5. Design of cities and city spaces and city region networks

6. Transport and other Infrastructure Networks

7. Policy and Legislation

8. Integration of city planning, local ecology, and livelihood

Followed by general Round Table Discussion and presentations by Sub-Groups

+ Tea Coffee Cookies

4:00 The way forward: future meetings, the report, research grants.

Discussion led by Lorens Holm + Alona Martinez

5:00 close

2. Program Agenda Monday 06 April 20091. Invitation letter

The Geddes Task Force on Cities & their RegionsAberdeen Dundee Edinburgh Glasgow Inverness Stirling

Date

Dear Sir/Madam,

The Geddes Institute for Urban Research would like to invite you to

join a ‘boardroom’ of key people from government, local authority,

urban design practice, and academe to develop an urban design agenda

for Scottish Cities and their regions. The boardroom will meet in

Dundee but its reach is intended to extend across Scotland. Its

purpose is to agree a position statement addressing the issues and

problems facing Scottish cities, with a view to focusing funded

research in urbanism. We intend to present this statement at the RIAS

convention in Dundee in May of this year.

We would like to begin by asking you to fill out a short answer

questionnaire (enclosed) which will form the basis for the meeting.

Please return this questionnaire to Alona Martinez-Perez at

a.martinezperez@dundee.ac.uk by Friday 06 March. We intend to convene

the boardroom towards the end of March at the University of Dundee.

This will be an all day event, involving speakers and a discussion of

the tabulated questionnaire answers (date and program to be confirmed

next week).

The Geddes Institute is an interdisciplinary research group at the

University of Dundee with members drawn from across the arts and

social sciences, including architecture geography planning history

economics design computing fine art and new media. For more

information, please check: http://www.dundee.ac.uk/geddesinstitute/

We hope you will agree to join us,

Signed,

Dr. Lorens Holm, Director, Geddes Institute, and Reader, Dundee

School of Architecture

Ms. Alona Martinez-Perez, Research Director, Geddes Task Force on

Cities Regional, and Regional Convenor, Urban Design Group

cc. Professor Nicholas Fyfe

cc. Ms. Barbara Illsely

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The Geddes Task Force on Cities & their RegionsAberdeen Dundee Edinburgh Glasgow Inverness Stirling

Patrick Geddes, Think globally act locally.

QUESTIONNAIRE

What are the issues and questions facing regional cities today?

Although it is our intention to bring your observations to bear on Scottish

cities and their regions, arguably regional cities across Europe share

characteristics and problems, in terms of identity, sustainability, resource

management, relations to their regions, and the like. Please answer this

question under the following categories using short paragraph format. You may

want to focus on your areas of expertise, or answer in as many categories as

you have knowledge. We will collate them anonymously for presentation at the

boardroom meeting, where they will be used as the basis for action. We will

shortly email you an electronic version of this questionnaire. Thank you.

1 Sustainable Development & Energy

2 The Economy & Economic Competitiveness

3 Social Justice

4 Environmental Quality, including resource and waste management

5 Design

6 Transport and Infrastructure Networks

7 Policy and Legislation

8 Integration of city planning, local ecology, and livelihood

9 Other

Area(s) of expertise:

Name and affiliation (optional):

Note: categories 1-6 are taken from Scottish Planning Policy 1, planning system

(SPP1, 2002). Categories 7&8 reflect the interests of Patrick Geddes.

Please return this questionnaire by email to Alona Martinez-Perez at

a.martinezperez@dundee.ac.uk by Friday 06 March 2009.

3. Questionnaire

The Geddes Task Force on Cities & their RegionsAberdeen Dundee Edinburgh Glasgow Inverness Stirling

31 Questionnaires

Alastair Keyte.doc

Archie Clark.doc

Ariadna Perich Capdeferro.doc

Barbara Illsley.doc

Charles McKean.doc

Christian Hermansen.doc

Clive Gilman.doc

Cristina Gonzalez-Longo.doc

Deepak Gopinath.doc

Dorian Wiszniewski.doc

Graham Ross.doc

Gordon Murray.doc

Harry Smith.doc

John Deffenbaugh.doc

John Nelson.doc

Juan Alayo.doc

Karen Stevenson.doc

Lita Khazaka.doc

Malcolm Horner.doc

Nick Barley.doc

Ombretta Romice.doc

Ranald Macinnes.doc

Riccardo Marini.doc

Rob Burns.doc

Rob Cowan.doc

Rob Joiner.doc

Robert Huxford.doc

Robin Harper.doc

Sandy Robinson.doc

Suzzane Ewing.doc

Veronica Burbridge.doc

4. List of Questionnaire respondents

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The Geddes Task Force on Cities & their RegionsAberdeen Dundee Edinburgh Glasgow Inverness Stirling

Monday 06 April 2009, 10:00-5:00pm, Crawford Boardroom

Meeting Notes (Esme Fieldhouse & Stephen Mackie)

Introductions Lorens Holm

Speaker 1 Ariadna Perich Capdeferro – Barcelona

Legislation – rational way of occupying building territory

- relate to what nature requires, environmental memory

- social needs (housing)

Partial plans within city master plans. A hierarchy of rules and

scales.

Identifying growth, strategic positions for places that can and cannot

grow.

Half of housing that is build must be social housing and 10% of

profits go straight back to Catalan government.

‘That’s what I want from a city, that it excites me. Every kind of

urban planning by definition tends to some homogeneity. The city

contradicts that, the city defines itself through oppositions. It

wants to explode’ Wim Wenders

Questions

Diarmaid Lawlor - Are there political tensions between cities and its

regions?

Ariadna Perich Capdeferro – Important for local to promote other

centres away from Barcelona to strengthen relationships between them.

E.g. Ryan air flights to Gerona airport.

Speaker 2 Rob Burns – Liverpool

When approaching regeneration question why does a city end up looking

the way it does?

Heritage - make it work for its money.

Re-engage the city with the waterfront and celebrate a city of

movement and transition.

When an area is redeveloped it acts as a catalyst for other

developments within the city.

Questions

John Deffenbaugh – How do you achieve so much from low ebb?

Rob Burns – Establish a quality agenda. Only accept the highest

quality design led projects funded from the private sector.

Speaker 3 Robert Cowan, Urban Design Skills

1. Place planning (not master planning)

• Design assessment, a system to help planners that lack skills to

assess and check the quality of a design.

2

2. Place check

• Basic questions that need to be asked

• What do you like?

• What don’t you like?

• What needs to be improved?

• What do you want this place to become?

3. Capacity check

• Monitoring the skills of those making the decisions.

• Case study, Neilstown

Speaker 4 Robert Huxford, planning policy UK

Transport.

Car dominates the city public realm.

Radial routes should be the best our cities can offer, not the worst.

Incorporate the car into design instead of fighting against it.

Travel choreography.

Speaker 5 Lita Khazaka, Traditional Urbanism

Tools for planning building and design:

Enquiry by design

Design coding

Pattern books

Stigma attached to traditional architecture. It is something that has

been tested and has worked so why change it and create something new.

It is about evolving what we have to suit today.

Questions

Alona Martinez-Perez - How would Princes Foundation approach

Brownfield sites?

Lita Khazaka – Key to sustainability, avoid demolition.

John Deffenbaugh – How does the PF deal with tension between

traditional and contemporary urbanism?

Lita Khazaka – You would choose the traditional over the contemporary

as the traditional has been tested and has ‘wisdom’.

Lunch

Key points brought up in reference to questionnaire

Diarmaid Lawlor – Profit should be at the point of design not at the

end of the process. Profit is something that motivates but it should

takes place within a framework that we understand.

Alona Martinez-Perez – Developers have models to predict areas that

can make them money in the future. In the UK councillors make planning

decisions and are at the heart of the design process instead of

trained professionals.

John Deffenbaugh – Lack of certainty in the planning process that

affects the quality of the design.

5. Meeting minutes

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Graeme Hutton – Countries like France have a qualitative approach to

development models.

What is causing growth and depopulation of cities?

Ric Russell – Rather than latching growth onto suburbia and existing

infrastructure. Build new towns with the amenities and infrastructure

that can support new housing.

Robert Huxford – Housing based regeneration is not sustainable.

Diarmaid Lawlor – what are causing these transitions? There is going

to be growth where there is space. Perth, regional objective to

increase population by 28% (to live, not work) research by Experian

and Scottish enterprise.

Alona Martinez-Perez – Instead of competition between cities, they

should overlap and work together.

Suzanne Ewing - who is taking the profit? Supermarkets are driving new

developments. They can have unprecedented control. They supply and

give the demand. How do we not let them do whatever they want. How can

supermarkets know who their ‘citizens’ are but cities don’t.

John Deffenbaugh – relationship between public and private sector out

of balance. Private sector is building everything.

Lorens Holm – This country needs private development with public

interests. Like Bilbao where a portion of profit goes back to

infrastructure.

Graeme Hutton – Need a level of ambition to replace profit.

Malcolm Horner – It is a stereotypical perspective to presume local

authorities don’t have a big say on urban regeneration. How to

regenerate in the event of market failure that is economically

sustainable.

Group discussions

The Last hour

Lorens Holm – interesting that one group was discussing how regions

can become self sufficient and independent and another group talked

about how the regions could be more joined up.

Diarmaid Lawlor – A policy that is from the design angle within the

strategic development plan. Conceptualising a system that can bring

about a useful outcome.

Defining what the regions want and what the regions need.

Alona Martinez-Perez – Look at case studies because there are similar

4

issues.

Graham Ross – Identify which broader theoretical global issues apply

to the Scottish context.

Wider inter-city and inter-regional regional relationships. Collective

power of working together. Don’t look at it on a region to region

basis.

Ric Russell – Housing, it is an issue that has already been

identified. Find out what work and research is already happening to

avoid repetition.

Even though architects have identified flaws in urban sprawl. The

public still demands it. Interesting that the theory and vision

perceived by architects is far removed from the deliverability.

Lorens Holm – Issue of taste?

Diarmaid Lawlor – Absence of choice let alone taste.

Need a framework that defines who owns the public space, streets,

infrastructure and where they should go. Scotland could construct a

different model as apposed to one that Barcelona has used. It is how

you deliver the choice

Ric Russell – Poor urban design is creating a lack of sustainability.

If you present a more exciting model to developers, then as long as it

makes them money, then they will go for it. Rather than having an

architectural model there would be a social and economical model.

Diarmaid Lawlor – Public sector needs to reclaim the public realm and

learn from how developers manage to deliver outcome and vision.

Graeme Hutton – research by design. Demonstrating ideas through design

as architects and designers. Policies and mechanisms will follow this.

Ranald McInnes – Area for research, volume house developments. Where

it has been successful and where it hasn’t.

Diarmaid Lawlor – what quality of spaces do we want to create, most

Scottish cities are low density. Less rules but better quality of

rules. Remove contradictions in rules.

Ric Russell – Rules could impose particular outcomes. E.g. A

development must be of a certain size, thus generating schools,

community facilities and infrastructure to support it.

Architects and designers need to understand the values that the public

have and incorporate them into a model.

Lorens Holm – A focus on housing in Scotland. Research by design.

Meeting minutes (continued)

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The Geddes Task Force on Cities & their RegionsAberdeen Dundee Edinburgh Glasgow Inverness Stirling

Monday 06 April 2009, 10:00-5:00pm, Crawford Boardroom

28 Attendees

Alona Martinez-Perez, Geddes Institute, Dundee School of Architecture

Lorens Holm, Geddes Institute, Dundee School of Architecture

Koldo Ocejo, Graphic Designer, Photographer

Ariadna Perich Capdeferro, Lecturer ETSAB (School of Architecture,

Barcelona)

Arthur Watson, Secretary, Royal Scottish Academy, University of Dundee

Cristina Gonzalez Longo, Architect-Lecturer

Deepak Gopinath, Town & Regional Planning, University of Dundee

Diarmaid Lawlor, Head of Urbanism, Architecture+Design Scotland

Graeme Hutton, Dean of School, Dundee School of Architecture

Graham Ross, Director, Austin-Smith:Lord LLP

Husam Al Waer, Dundee School of Architecture

John Deffenbaugh, City of London Project Manager (Public Realm)

John Nelson, Professor of Transport Studies, College of Physical

Sciences, University of Aberdeen

Lita Khazaka, Senior Urban Designer, The Prince’s Foundation

Malcolm Horner, Professor of Civil Engineering, University of Dundee

Maarten Neering, Architect, Holland and Barcelona

Dr. Neil Burford, Dundee School of Architecture

Paul Guzzardo, Media Arts, St. Louis and Buenos Aires

Ranald McInnes, Principal Inspector, Historic Scotland

Ric Russell, Partner, Nicoll Russell Studios, Dundee

Riccardo Marini, Design Leader, The City of Edinburgh Council

Rob Burns, Liverpool City Council Lead Urban Designer

Robert Cowan, Director, Urban Design Skills

Robert Huxford, Director, Urban Design Group UK

Rob Joiner, Director, Reidvale and Molendinar Housing Associations,

Glasgow

Robert Sharpe, RIS, University of Dundee

Sandy Robinson, Urban Designer, Scottish Government.

Suzanne Ewing, Senior Lecturer in Architectural Design and Theory,

Edinburgh University

Veronica Burbridge, National Director, Royal Town Planning Institute,

Scotland

6. List of Attendees on Monday 06 April 0930 Apologies

Alastair Keyte, Associate Director, 3D Reid

Archie Clark, Reiach and Hall Architects

Barbara Illsley, Head of Town & Regional Planning, University of Dundee

and Director, Geddes Institute

Beatriz Plaza Inchausti, Department of Applied Economics, University of

the Basque Country

Charles McKean, Professor of Scottish Architectural History, University

of Dundee

Christian Hermansen Professor of Architecture, Oslo School of

Architecture and Design

Clive Gillman, Director, Dundee Contemporary Art (DCA)

David Porter, Professor and Head of School, Mackintosh School of

Architecture, Glasgow School of Art

Dorian Wiszniewski Senior Lecturer in Architectural Design and Theory,

Edinburgh University

Ewan Anderson, Partner, 7N Architects, Edinburgh

Gerry Grams, Design City Leader Glasgow City Council

Gordon Murray, Professor, Department of Architecture, Strathclyde

University, and Director, gm+ad Architects, Glasgow

Graham McKee, Director of Strategic Planning, Principal’s Office,

University of Dundee

Gordon Reid, City of Dundee

Harry Smith, Lecturer, School of the Built Environment, Heriot Watt

University, Edinburgh

Jim Mackinnon, Chief Planner, Directorate for the Built Environment,

Scottish Government

Juan Alayo, Director of Development Planning, Bilbao Ria 2000

Julia Radcliffe, Mackintosh School of Architecture

Karen Stevenson, City Development Department, Edinburgh Council

Kirsten Maguire, Dundee School of Architecture

Leslie Forsyth, Head of School of Architecture, Edinburgh College of

Art

Michael Spens, Dundee School of Architecture

Mike Galloway, Director of Transport and Planning, Dundee City Council

Neil Baxter, Secretary and Treasurer, the Royal Incorporation of

Architects in Scotland, Edinburgh

Nicholas Fyfe, Professor of Geography, University of Dundee and

Director, Geddes Institute

Nick Barley, Director, The Lighthouse, Scotland’s Centre for

Architecture Design and the City, Glasgow

Ombretta Romice Senior Lecturer, Department of Architecture,

Strathclyde University.

Riccardo Marini, Design City Leader, City of Edinburgh Council

Robin Harper, Member of Scottish Parliament for the Lothians

Sebastian Tombs, Director, A+DS

Stewart Murdoch, Director of Leisure and Communities, Dundee City

Council

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The Geddes Task Force on Cities & their RegionsAberdeen Dundee Edinburgh Glasgow Inverness Stirling

READING LISTUrbanism doesn’t exist; it is only an ideology in Marx’s sense of the word. Architecture does really

exist, like Coca-Cola: though coated with ideology, it is a real production, falsely satisfying a

falsified need. Urbanism is comparable to the advertising propagated around Coca-Coal – pure

spectacular ideology. Modern capitalism, which organised the reduction of all social life to a

spectacle, is incapable of presenting any spectacle other than that of our own alienation. Its

urbanistic dream is its masterpiece.

Entry for ‘Urbanism’, in Rem Koolhaas’ dictionary in S,M,L,XL

BOOKS & ARTICLES

Ian H. Adams, The Making of Urban Scotland (1978)Marc Auge, Non-Places: Introduction to an anthropology of supermodernity (1995)Ian Bentley, et al., Responsive Environments: a manual for designers (1985)Gordon Cullen, Townscape (Architectural Press 1961)Guy Debord, The Society of Spectacle (1970).Richard Florida, The Rise of the Creative Class: And How it's Transforming Work,

Leisure, Community and Everyday Life (Basic Books 2004)Patrick Geddes, Cities In Evolution: An Introduction To The Town Planning

Movement And To The Study Of Civics (Williams And Norgate 1915)Jan Gehl, Life Between Buildings: Using Public Space (1987)Felix Guattari, The Three Ecologies (1989)Jane Jacobs, Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961)Rem Koolhas, ‘Whatever happened to urbanism’ pp 958-71, ‘Surrender: Ville

Nouvelle Melun-Senart, France, 1987’ pp 972-89, and ‘The Generic City’ pp 1238-67 in Rem Koolhaas and Bruce Mau, S,M,L,XL (1995). ‘Generic…’ also @ http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.07/koolhaas.html

Rem Koolhaas, ‘Junkspace’ in October: Obsolescence, Special Issue 100 (Spring2002). Also @ http://www.arkitekturskolan.se/servlet/GetDoc?meta_id=1646

Florian Kossak, ed., Shifts: projections into the future of the central belt(2007)

Leon Krier, The Architecture of Community (Island Press 2009).Le Corbusier, The City of Tomorrow and Its Planning (1924/1929)Kevin Lynch, The Image of the City (1960)Richard Rogers, Cities for a Small Planet: The Reith Lectures (1995)Aldo Rossi, The Architecture of the City (The MIT Press 1984)Robert Venturi, Learning from Las Vegas: The Forgotten Symbolism of

Architectural Form (MIT Press 1972)

REPORTS

By Design urban design in the planning system towards better practicehttp://www.cabe.org.uk/publications/by-design

Designing Places A Policy Statement for Scotlandhttp://www.scotland.gov.uk/library3/planning/dpps-00.asp

A Policy on Architecture for Scotland: Public Consultation: Review of Policyhttp://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2006/05/03152513/0

Valuing Sustainable Urbanism: The princess Foundation for the Built Environmenthttp://www.princes-foundation.org/index.php?id=41http://www.princes-foundation.org/files/0707vsuoverview.pdf

Rogers, Richard ‘Towards a stronger urban renaissance’http://www.urbantaskforce.org/UTF_final_report.pdf

Urban Design Compendiums 1&2http://www.urbandesigncompendium.co.uk/

Ecosistemas Urbanos, Madridhttp://ecosistemaurbano.org/

7. References List

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Image CreditsAdam Oakley, page: 27 (right) and 28.Alona Martinez Perez, pages: 4, 8 (left), 9 (left + bottom), 12, 21, 22, 23, 24, 26 and 27 (left). ANNEX INSTRUMENTAL per a la redacció dels Plans Directors i les Àrees Residencials Estratègiques (Jornet-Llop-Pastor arquitectes, 30 d’abril de 2009), pages: 6 (left). Antonio Font Arellano, Sílvia Mas Artigas, Lorena Maristany Jackson, Josep Ma. Carreras Quilis i Jordi Valls Alseda (2005). TRANSFORMACIONS URBANITZADORES 1977-2000- ÀREA METROPOLITANA I REGIÓ URBANA DE BARCELONA. Barcelona: Mancomunitat de Municipis de l’Àrea Metropolitana de Barcelona. 164 p. ISBN: 84-930080-8-7, pages: 5 (middle).Koldo Ocejo, pages: 7 (top), 16, 20, 32, 33, 37, 38 and 41.Ornance Survey, pages: 1, 2 and 3.Richard Carman for Urban Design Skills and East -Renfrewshire District Council, pages: 12Rob Cowan, pages: 13 (top), 14 and 15.Rob Burns, pages: 7 ( bottom) and 8 ( right).Robert Huxford, pages: 17, 18 and 19.The Prince’s Foundation for the Built Environment, pages: 9 (top), 11. web DEPARTAMENT DE POLÍTICA TERRITORIAL I OBRES PÚBLIQUES Generalitat de Catalunya – http://www.gencat.cat http://www10.gencat.net/ptop/AppJava/cat/ http://www10.gencat.net/ptop/AppJava/cat/, pages: 5 ( top and bottom) and 6 (right).Lorens Holm, page: 39 and 40.

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Published by:The Geddes Institute for Urban Research University of Dundee Matthew Building 13 Perth Road Dundee DD1 4HT

The Geddes Institute for Urban Research, Dundee ISBN 978-0-9562949Copyright for the text- the authors. This report has been written by Dr. Lorens Holm & Alona Martinez-Perez with contributions from Robert Burns, Rob Cowan, Robert Huxford, Lita Khazaka, Ariadna Perich Capdeferro, Esme Fieldhouse & Stephen Mackie.

Copyright for images-the listed bodies and photographers

Copyright for publication – the publishers

Copyright 2009©

Graphic Design – Mr. Koldo Ocejo and Mr Travis Mcleod

All rights reservedNo part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any other information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from The Geddes Institute for Urban Research.

PhotographyThe publishers would like to thank the individuals and institutions for giving permission to reproduce photography. We have made every effort to receive copyright and acknowledgement for all images.

We wish to thank in advance anyone we have inadvertently omitted.

The Geddes Institute for Urban Research would like to thank all partners individuals and related organisations forcontributing their invaluable experiences and learning to produce this report.

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“By creating we think, by living we learn” Patrick Geddes

Geddes Institute paper number 1Geddes Institute for Urban ResearchUniversity of Dundee