Can we plan it to be B********?

‘The ostracism of beauty extends to every corner of public policy. With the single exception of "areas of outstanding natural beauty" (nature being splendid only in specific places), the word beauty does not appear in statute law. The most ubiquitous sphere of policy, development control and land-use planning, averts its eye from beauty, despite that concept having been its catalyst in the ribbon sprawl of 1930s England. It worries over plot ratios, materials and proportion. The conservation movement deals in antiquity, rarity and chemistry. Historic buildings are about heritage, architecture and dates …Such nihilism has justified the political right in opposing arts subsidies as market distortion, and the left in opposing them as subjective and elitist.

Everyone senses beauty. In this delayed and demented spring, millions of people have driven out of towns to see snowdrops, crocuses and daffodils. They take and buy pictures of them. A few will mutter lines from Wordsworth. Summer will see a surge of visits to museums and galleries, to country houses and parks, to dales and peaks, to old villages and towns. In cities people will crowd into the few surviving old quarters, for the simple reason that they find them more beautiful than the new ones. They do not flock to London Wall or Canary Wharf, Moss Side or Milton Keynes. They know what they mean by beautiful, even if they have never been to the Courtauld or the Royal College of Art. By far the largest art college in Britain is that supplied every day by guides to museums and country houses, most of them volunteers …The collapse of town and country planning through the ban on "value judgments" by planning authorities does permanent damage to townscape and countryside’.

Simon Jenkins in today’s Guardian.

 

This email has been scanned for viruses on behalf of CABE For more information please visit http://www.epagency.net

URBANISTIKA.EE

Just a bit of a website bookmarking exercise here: URBANISTIKA.EE - A ‘cloud of blogs’ with a physical base based in Tallinn…

 

‘Beyond locality, we try to enrich the experience of cities around the globe and open the windows to the outside world. Our goal is to provoke discussion and work towards more intelligent planning and better urban life’.

This email has been scanned for viruses on behalf of CABE For more information please visit http://www.epagency.net

URBANISTIKA.EE

Just a bit of a website bookmarking exercise here: URBANISTIKA.EE - A ‘cloud of blogs’ with a physical base based in Tallinn…

 

‘Beyond locality, we try to enrich the experience of cities around the globe and open the windows to the outside world. Our goal is to provoke discussion and work towards more intelligent planning and better urban life’.

 

This email has been scanned for viruses on behalf of CABE For more information please visit http://www.epagency.net

'The Tesco chumps of Norfolk'

‘A thumping great Tesco is the last thing this seaside town needs. But try telling the planners’ writes Jonathan Glancey in today’s ‘The Tesco Chumps of Norfolk’ Guardian article. An interesting piece, and interesting comments – seeing how this obviously contentious local planning issue pans out. Whilst I can’t comment on the case, not knowing the full ins-and-outs of all parties involved and the full context I’d like to at least say that, as an urban planner, I’m listening!

 

That said, that’s not to assume I either whole-heartedly despise large supermarket chains or local-out-of town initiatives – or love either (ok, perhaps ideally the latter is far more appealing, especially with its potential free allotments and carbon-reducing local produce). It would all, ultimately, have to depend on context and what the site/town/community needs. To my knowledge though, Sea Change investments haven’t yet centered around new large supermarkets at the centers of such places. More to this case is the concern as to how the elderly, or those that don’t drive, or those that don’t want to drive (perhaps hampered by poor cycle routes, public transport connections etc) are supposed to benefit from shops and services on the outskirts? This conundrum isn’t without its remedies, but then, come to think of it they can’t be conducive to steaming High Street/Town centre decline in Britain (drawing people away from Sheringham’s inner sphere)?

 

Perhaps the answer in this circumstance is neither, plus a little bit of both?

 

 

This email has been scanned for viruses on behalf of CABE For more information please visit http://www.epagency.net

Battle of Branchage - Architectural Projection Mapping

This piece of light/projection art was for the Branchage Film Festival in Jersey a few months ago - and is by Seeper:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGXcfvWhdDQ

This email has been scanned for viruses on behalf of CABE For more information please visit http://www.epagency.net

Battle of Branchage - Architectural Projection Mapping

This piece of light/projection art was for the Branchage Film Festival in Jersey a few months ago - and is by Seeper.

 

<object width="560" height="340"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/BGXcfvWhdDQ&hl=en_GB&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/BGXcfvWhdDQ&hl=en_GB&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="560" height="340"></embed></object>

This email has been scanned for viruses on behalf of CABE For more information please visit http://www.epagency.net

It looks so simple from a distance...

Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

LGBT history month and the Built Environment

My colleague Chris Edwards has written an interesting post on his personal blog about the contributions of the LGBT community to the various built environment professions.

It's well worth a read and coincides with LGBT history month... There's also a slide show:

LGBT Architects

Europe's Shrinking Cities...

Prior to a week in Berlin later this month with fellow UCL students coming up with a new spatial plan for Hauptbahnhof, two interesting links about Europe’s shrinking cities have come my way…

 

Firstly (with thanks to my mate Adam Coombs) – Fred Pearce’s Guardian article on ‘The population crash’: ‘Across Europe, we are having fewer babies. In many places, such as the deserted town of Hoyerswerda in east Germany, the falling birth rate is already taking its toll’.

 

And Secondly – LSE’s work on ‘Phoenix Cities’: ‘Cities which were brought to the brink of ruin just 20 years ago after the collapse of manufacturing industry are completing an extraordinary comeback. A study of seven major European cities - including Sheffield and Belfast – has found they are successfully rebuilding their environment, economy and society from a low point of industrial decay and unemployment’.

 

I wonder if cities that are today facing falling and aging populations, plus recent economic turmoil, can turn around based on successful strategies for cities affected by industrial decline 20-30 years ago? And if not, if there are any cross-over lessons or re-applications that might of help?

 

Urban Design & Civil Protest

I’ve just uncovered an exhibition at MIT curated by Tali Hatuka that ran from February 28^th to June 9^th back in 2008 on the connection between urban design and protest, or, between ‘voice’, ‘boundaries’ and the ‘appropriation’ of space:

 

The press release sums it all up in a nut-shell: ‘…visiting architect and urban designer Tali Hatuka, creates a laboratory for examining the socio-spatial dynamic of protest as a public dialogue between citizen and regime...[t]he exhibition also identifies key moments during protest when violence or contention unfold as the outcome, underlining the complexities of urban form, architecture and human reaction in a place and time of protest.

 

Luckily the website is still up and running for a look-around: urbandesign-civilprotest.com:

 

‘What makes citizens choose a particular form of protest? How does space function as mediator between these citizens and their political acts? Whose power and control drive negotiations between citizens and regimes during protests? As a laboratory for examining the socio-spatial dynamics of protest, the exhibition looks at the relationship between three themes: Boundaries, Voice, and Appropriation, as the key interrelated elements of protest, which become its Spatial Choreography. These themes are investigated, both separately and in relation to one another, as abstractions that re-position space as an actor in the discourse of protest’.