Tuesday 20 November 2012

The Contribution of Shopfronts


The Urbanists’ involvement in several shopfront enhancement schemes over recent years has led us to consider the issues surrounding, and benefits of, this type of regeneration work.

Is there an approach to supplement the process of reinventing our high streets via the frequently cited methods of establishing free parking, easy access to the shops, reducing business rates and limiting the number of national chains?

An ever-increasing offer from out of town shopping complexes and supermarkets as well as the repetition of national brands in the town centres, quoining the phrase ‘clone town’, has undoubtedly accentuated the decline of the identity of the High Street.

The term 'clone town' often refers to the uses and retailers that occupy them, but could the term also be adopted to refer to their visual appearance?  With town centres containing many of the same shops there can be a danger of visual homogenisation and, in some cases, shopfront enhancements can compound rather than address the problem.  

Many of our traditional high streets were principally developed during the Georgian and Victorian periods and conservation led regeneration projects often aim to return shops to their ‘original’ state.  Whilst there is a vital place for the gentle restoration approach to high street regeneration, there is a danger that blindly following this approach may further magnify the problem of the clone town, with pastiche shopfronts being as unidentifiably 'local' to a particular place as the national retailer sitting behind them.

Whilst there are issues with national retailers occupying large portions of the high street, there are also benefits for independent retailers in having ‘well known’ neighbours through increased footfall and the attraction of a wider audience.  Therefore the loss of any retailer can leave the high street vulnerable to a lack of local identity.    

Shopfront regeneration in town centres can be overlooked for its part in reinventing how high streets function as community assets.  Developing a character of the place rather than of a time, alongside a holistic street or town wide strategy focused on a set of community specific functions, may help to cement a genuine local identity.

Take Camden High Street as an example. Terraces of traditional Georgian townhouses take on a unique, vibrant and youthful character, instantly recognisable as Camden without damaging the quality and rhythm of the original block. This simple, and largely cosmetic, approach could be echoed in other high streets by taking cues from local assets such as heritage, culture and function.

Camden High Street (Image from  www.flickr.com/photos/stephaniesadler/)
Perhaps this may be achieved by promoting an architectural language, which not only compliments the historic and local context of the place but also meets the requirements of a modern society. 

Tuesday 13 November 2012

Tales from a Mega City


I’ve been fortunate to have visited some of the World’s mega-cities, like: London, Delhi, Lima, Rio de Janerio, but last week I was working in Chongqing in Western China. It’s not the obvious place that springs to mind when you think of the new cities that have sprouted as the BRIC countries transformed from agricultural to urban societies.

In fact Chongqing, although almost anonymous in the West, is predicted to be in the top ten of Most Dynamic Cities of 2025 (McKinsey Global Institute, 2010) based on the fact that it achieved a 418% growth in GDP in 2010. With its population of 15.7million (based on 2010 figures) it is one of the fastest growing and most dynamic cities on the planet. What is really staggering is that thirteen of McKinsey’s predicted top twenty cities are Chinese.

It is because of this startling growth that Chongqing feels different to the other global mega-cities that I have been to. All of the others have developed, to some degree, incrementally. Apart from very special historic buildings, there was no evidence in Chongqing of any districts or urban blocks that were older than 1990, whereas Rio and Delhi bear evidence of colonial post-war urbanism. 

Chongqing is growing so quickly it almost seems that there is a skyscraper and LED arms race currently enveloping the city (see video). 




Development on this scale is presenting China with some unique challenges. The contrast between town and country is stark and urban designers working in China will need to understand how to manage places, as well as build them.

By
James

Thursday 1 November 2012

A Chinese Balance of Progress and Protection

We are currently supporting a prominent Chinese consultancy to help them prepare several disaster recovery master plans that will rehouse people in the Yunnan region of the County following devastating earthquakes earlier this year. Let's just say its been a bit of an eye opener.

The day started with an update on progress with local officials in the Council Chamber. The officials, including the chief planner and local mayor are under a lot of pressure to re-house 2,500 people of this mountainous rural region. The Chinese PM visited the disaster zone in the aftermath of the quake and it seems probable that promises were have been made to get those people still living in tents into homes by the end of the year. As you'd imagine, it's all being done at a relentless pace. This isn't a temporary fix either. It'll be permanent and makes me wonder if it is really possible to create enduring places under such time pressured duress?
My pre-conceptions of the sites were, lets be honest here, way off. That said, my presentation to the officials, delivered through an interpreter, found favour by the notion of using the water present on one site as the key structuring element. I didn't realise until I got there that it was a paddy field! 




The journey to the site visit was unforgettable. White knuckles and crossed fingers weren't going to be much help if another landslide hit the boulder strewn mountain path that we were bouncing along in a robust looking Chinese 4X4 vehicle.

But the nervous journey was worth it. The climb out of the long steep gorge revealed a hidden upland plateaux framed by a monumentous V-shaped valley at a scale that would not be out of place in the Lord of the Rings. Into this scene farmers were gathering the last of the harvest. Despite the natural calamity, it looked like it had been a good year for them as they carried their rice, chillies, chard, pumpkins, potato and pak choi into their winter stores. Into this rural idyll crashed the notion that five hundred homes, a health club, a conference centre and a hotel were being planned for this wide natural floodplain high up in the Yunnan mountains. 



Perhaps most worryingly was the notion of a shift in lifestyle. The homeless farmers of the valley as well as those from neighbouring areas who were being rehoused into the new village would be encouraged to scale back their farming and take up jobs in the nearby leisure facilities. After all, this kind of peasant lifestyle is backward. Right?

I understand that people need to be housed, but I tried to convey to my Chinese colleagues a notion that we raised in the previous post (below). Authenticity. I wanted them to think about solutions to the problem that weren't just another part of the national trend of urbanisation. Could we create something soft, something respectful and enduring that worked with the peace of the place? Perhaps something that didn't feel quite so urban but a settlement that was rooted in the landscape, culture and language of these minority communities?


Urbanisation seems to be progress personified in China. Whilst we can only marvel at some inspiring global mega cities that are being created I fear that there are also some very delicate and special places that are being lost forever.


By James