Urban Design events are held throughout the year. Details of forthcoming events (and feedback from others) are shown below:

Urban Design Network – Tour of the Regions:  The Urban Design Network are hosting a series of events to bring the Network to the UK regions. Keep an eye on this page for further details!

Feedback! URBAN DESIGN REGIONAL EVENTS – NORTH WEST

Event: ‘Money for nothing but your conscience is free’ - High rise living getting you down?! 

Taylor Young, in association with the RTPI Urban Design Network and the Urban Design Alliance (UDAL), hosted two evening ‘coffee shop’ debates focussing on urban density, mixed use and housing. The purpose of these events was to:

• Engender lively and engaging debate;
• Develop a focus for the exchange of ideas, experience and best practice;
• Promote links between professionals practicing in the North-West; and
• Champion urban design in the region as part of successful communities building.

The first event was held in Liverpool at the London Carriageworks on Tuesday 18th September, and attracted 65 people from a wide range of planning, design and regeneration disciplines. The second event was held in Manchester at Drip Coffee Shop on Thursday 20th September, and attracted a similar range of professionals, including Town Planning undergraduates (62 in total).

At both events, Stephen Gleave (Managing Director of Taylor Young) steered the debate through three thought provoking presentations delivered by key note speakers, followed by a question and answer session and concluding in an open floor discussion.

In Liverpool, the three speakers included Hilary Burrage – Honorary Director of the British Urban Regeneration Association (BURA) and consultant in Strategic Public Policy, Jon Lovell – Head of Sustainability at Drivers Jonas, and Andrew Taylor – Planning Director for David Wilson Homes. The presentations sparked debate around the value (economic and environmental) of delivering sustainable development in urban areas, the lack of green space and community services in cities to encourage mixed communities, and the importance of strong leadership in delivering high quality and holistic schemes from the public sector.

In Manchester, the three speakers included Michael Hebbert – Professor at the University of Manchester specialising in urban design, Shelagh McNerney – Director at Taylor Young, and Andrew Ashall – Regional Planning Officer with the North West Regional Assembly (NWDA).

The speakers enlivened discussion around the need for sustainable development by reducing urban sprawl, the conflict between market-led development and the need for community facilities such as schools and health care to support mixed communities, and the need for better maintained high quality city parks and playgrounds to enrich the urban landscape. The key message resulting from this discussion was that Manchester needs to demand more from developers to achieve these aims.

Both debates were lively and engaging and provoked a significant amount of participation from attendees. The events were extremely valuable in providing a forum for sharing experiences, and in energising movement towards addressing the challenges that urban practitioners face in delivering better places.

URBAN DESIGN REGIONAL EVENTS – NORTHERN IRELAND

Feedback: ‘Designing for Life’ RTPI Urban Design Network / Irish Branch (Northern Section) Conference, 11 October 2007, Guildhall, Derry

On a misty Derry morning two hundred delegates crowded into the impressive upper chamber of theGuildhall, located just outside the old City Walls. The Keynote Speaker, Arlene Foster, Minister for Development, set the tone for the day by noting that the high quality urban design of the past, as exemplified in the early 17th century walled city of Derry, provides us with important lessons for both the present and the future. In practical terms, it is envisaged that good urban design in Northern Ireland will be addressed through the recently launched Architecture and Built Environment policy statement (DCAL), and the Ministerial Advice Group who will play a similar, but less expansive role as CABE.

David Waterhouse, Planning Policy Officer TCPA, provided a comprehensive overview of the current and emerging government policy in regard to growth and housing. Touching on the Housing Green Paper, it became apparent that the target housing growth figures (3 million new homes by 2020) represents a serious challenge for all involved in the planning and delivery process - indeed it puts the Northern Ireland Regional Housing Growth Indicator of 200,000 new homes by 2015 within context! There is obviously a serious concern that the pressure to meet this massive level of growth will out-weigh good urban design principles.

Johnathan Smales, Beyond Green, started his address by echoing Arlene Foster in commenting ‘In Derry, you clearly have a past, now you have a future’. However this future is in jeopardy, exemplified by a range of worrying environmental statistics which will require ‘a paradigm shift’ in both the way we plan and ultimately the way we live (see www.beyondgreen.co.uk ). Johnathan pointed out, ‘we can no longer afford Planning Lite’, we ‘need to live on the planet as if we intend to stay’. This vision is exemplified in settlements like Freiburg, Copenhagen and Zurich where investment has shifted away from the car and focused on public transport, walking and cycling. Urban designers need to begin to look at building forms and infrastructure that encourages safe, attractive and sustainable living by focusing on the human scale.

Paul Murrain, Visiting Professor INTBAU, University of Greenwich, gave an inspiring and insightful presentation based around the theme ‘Urban Design, reject the past at your peril’. Tradition, as he points out, is a living, dynamic and ever changing entity that has been refined over generations. Paul suggests that in many cases, planning has become an ‘endless, mindless search for originality’ which refuses to engage with tradition, and has as a result, become increasingly unsustainable. Cities, towns and villages simply cannot be mapped into self contained land uses - they are far too complicated and sophisticated.Paul quoted David Engwicht who suggests ‘Cities were invented to facilitate exchange’. 

Therefore exchange, interaction and the messy complexities of life must be maximised to create real and living places. The trend towards certainty and safety with an emphasis on rules, regulations, tick-boxes and modelling, has created meaningless public domain where streets become roads accessing private worlds and urban sprawl. Paul used a Master Plan from Upton, Northampton to demonstrate how mixed uses, neighbourhood structures and walkable communities can create an environment that encourages public interaction with people passing through meeting people who live there – this is effectively a rediscovery of the form and function of the traditional high street. Finally, using the maxim ‘Newts don’t shop!’ Paul suggested that although eco-concerns should rightly now take centre-stage in urban design, it is more important to get the urbanism right first.

Tim Stonor, Space Syntax, outlined what he called the ‘Science of Urbanism’, pointing out that designers often think form rather than function. This obsession with buildings, without considering what happens in between can lead to isolation. Using computer modelling based on the networks created by the geometry of buildings, Tim was able to chart pedestrian and vehicular flows, which in turn allowed street layouts to be redesigned to make the big connections at micro to macro scale. Essentially this is a science of making the invisible, visible.

The day concluded with Bill Kirk, ILEX, outlining the current vision based regeneration process going on in Derry, and Mary McIntyre, DOE Planning Service, providing an insight into her public sector experience of master planning urban extensions to the north west of the City.

Information on the regional events is updated regularly, so remember to keep checking these pages!

Author:

Nicola Gough

Publisher:

The Royal Town Planning Institute

Date:

26-Oct-07

Categories:

Networks & Associations 

Sections:

Events, Awards & Networking

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