GLA draws back from Mayor's pledge on Public Space

A disapppointing report from the GLA - Greater London Assembly - which draws back from the Mayor's pledge that public space in London should be genuinely public - ie. adopted by local authorities. The assumption of the GLA's review into public space is that it will inevitably be privately owned and that local authorities should negotiate with developers to ensure public access. Not the right way to go. I published a comment piece in Building Design, printed as part of a debate on the issue. My opponent makes the case very well I feel, by stating his view that the "the notion that when we go out in public we are exercising our role as citizen" is outdated!
As the magazine is subscription only the piece follows here:

Should local councils reclaim ownership of the public realm?

03 June 2011

Yes, says Anna Minton, the new report is a backwards step; while Crispin Kelly says shopping centres show the way forward.

Yes
Anna Minton, author of Ground Control

I wish I could welcome the London Assembly’s report on the city’s public space. At first sight it seems to say all the right things, that the public realm should be public, open and accessible to all. But the clue to the real message is in the title. The review is called Public Life in Private Hands, and that is exactly what it proposes.

Public space has become a surprisingly complex subject, as over the last decade in the UK virtually all new development has followed a model based on private ownership and private control, which includes the streets and public spaces within these new places.

This marked a significant change. Since the rise of local government and local democracy in the 19th century it has been customary for local authorities to “adopt” streets and public places.

In 2009 the mayor of London, Boris Johnson, grew so concerned about what he described as a “growing trend towards the private management of publicly accessible space” that he published a Manifesto on Public Space in which he explicitly stated that local authorities should continue to adopt streets and public places. But this report barely mentions this and appears to take it for granted that the ownership and control of places is changing because local authorities cannot afford to look after our streets and public places.

Instead it recommends that boroughs negotiate with developers to ensure public access is maintained in private spaces. This is a significant rowing back from the mayor’s manifesto and is no way to safeguard a genuinely public realm.

No
Crispin Kelly, developer, Baylight Properties

Management of public space hasn’t really caught up with the reality of what goes on there. The idea that public space needs to be managed and mothered by the state is left over from the notion that when we go out in public we are exercising our role as citizen.

In fact now we are largely going out for entertainment and shopping, and the codes developed for shopping centres have turned out to deliver both what the punter wants and the investor needs: safe, clean and orderly places. Now these codes can be applied more widely.

The fact that they are without character is accordingly inevitable. Interesting spaces have to be somewhat uncertain and edgy. They are unlikely to be strictly managed by anyone, public or private, and they are likely to transit from interesting to dull as they become successful.

Places may become attractive precisely because they don’t have the open arms of “inclusive access”. In my view, adoption by local authorities can just as often be a sterilising factor, leading to homogeneous management by the apparently unanswerable. At least private developers may have an eye on the market value of edginess. What is so hard is to preserve it. I would rather leave this calibration to the private sector.

For me a more fruitful discussion would be on the rules governing spaces which are not specifically public, but are shared by a smaller community: they have the potential for irrigating the dryness of the completely public space.

Dutch life

Just returned from The Hague, where I was invited to give a talk by Stroom, an arts centre and gallery with a specific focus on the city. Holland is in a very different position to the UK with regard to the themes covered in Ground Control, with for example only one gated community in the whole country and an incredibly high quality public transport infrastructure.

The day after my talk my hosts suggested I borrow the office bicycle and cycle around the city, which was fantastic. Boris Bikes may have arrived in London but we are light years from Dutch cycling culture. Cycling in London is virtually impossible without levels of assertiveness bordering on aggression and I am normally too much on edge to enjoy it. The Dutch experience is entirely different with a network of cycle lanes, with equal status to roads, built into the city. Also nobody wears helmets - after all there is no feeling of danger - and the bikes are notable for their utilitarian unfashionability, in contrast to the hugely expensive top of the range models competing for status on London streets.

Cycling is just one aspect of Dutch life where the standard of living seems incomparably higher than in Britain. This was my feeling from the moment I arrived in Holland. The transport system apart, I couldn't quite say why this is the case but I think a perception - and gross generalisation - that everyone is middle class contributes to such a feeling. My hosts assured me that this was not the case but income differentials between people are far, far less than in the UK which does create an all round sense of greater common affluence, emotionally as well as financially.

One other piece of news: a new edition of Ground Control will be published in January 2012, in time for the Olympics, which will be a focus.

Events for 2011

Happy New Year!

I’ve posted new upcoming events on the site and will be back on the blog as I return to work after maternity leave. I am particularly looking forward to giving a lecture at the Architectural Association on February 15th. Should be a good evening.

Solutions to the financial crisis from Edinburgh

Just returned from Edinburgh where I spoke at a couple of events organised by the Edinburgh Old Town Development Trust. Saturday afternoon saw a packed crowd of community organisors turn out for an afternoon seminar on the themes covered in Ground Control. The best thing about the day was the sense of enthusiasm about where the city finds itself post financial crash and what can be done. A key focus was the Caltongate site in Canongate. The development there, like so many others around the country, has stalled following the financial crisis and despite a number of possible alternative uses - including a literary centre - the council is so far failing to consider alternatives and hoping to resurrect the privatised mall model, despite very considerable opposition.

The upshot was a number of suggestions to take things forward and the Trust has a series of meetings and seminars planned to coordinate activities. The day produced a number of ideas that I really hope are followed up. These include setting up a 'Free the spaces database' to coordinate community groups engaged in similar issues around the country, which is a much needed resource. Another idea I particularly liked was 'Site Seeing', alternative walking tours organised around the key areas under discussion, to which local decision makers would also be invited.

From Docklands to the Olympics

Found myself immersed in the Olympics this weekend after leading a walk around Docklands and Stratford, curated by Ruth Ewan for the Chisenhale Gallery. It was an unusual event for me – a talk on the move, or series of talks – but it worked very well. We began at Crossharbour, outside The George pub, where Ground Control opens. I chose it as it seemed to draw a boundary line between the finance district and the Isle of Dogs which remains almost entirely untouched by the supposed promise of ‘trickle-down’. Next stop was the privatised Canary Wharf Estate, before crossing the dual carriageway which separates Canary Wharf from Poplar. There can be no better illustration of the stark segregation of the area than Aspen Way, a motorway which separates the glittering towers from local communities, who are literally on a different level. The walk drew to a close in Stratford, overlooking the Olympic site. With its reliance on Westfield Stratford City, Westfield’s 170 acre open air shopping mall, the development looks increasingly outdated. However, while Stratford City will effectively be a private city within a city, the Olympic Park might have a more promising future. While there is no doubt that the entire Olympic site will be a disturbingly high security zone it is by no means certain the park will be entirely private. I understand the details on who will own and control the site have not yet been finalised and I hope to do more work on this soon.

Debating with BID managers

Spoke today at the 'World Congress of Town Centres and Downtowns', a mainly American and British gathering of Business Improvement District managers. My remit, clearly, was to give the audience something to think about, given the stance I take towards BIDS in Ground Control. On the whole I got a receptive and interested reception although I did provoke the ire of one American BID director who claimed that I conflated gated communities and BIDS in a 'sloppy' manner. His question was the last of the session so I didn't have time to address his points properly, which I'll briefly do here.

The reason I think BIDS and gated developments have a lot in common is because both are privately run organisations which rely on fees from their members to provide common - ie. 'public' - services. Secondly, I draw parallels between BIDS and privately owned places such as Liverpool One because they are both run according to the same 'Clean and Safe' - ie. high security and sanitation - principles laid out by the New York Mayor's Office in its guidelines to BIDS. He also felt I was simply arguing that public money was 'good' and private 'bad' and was harking back to a non existent socialist utopia. One of the themes underpinning Ground Control is that the last decade has seen a wave of development comparable only in scale with the 1950s and 60s which saw modernist arterial roads and tower blocks slice through cities and communities. My argument is that the disturbing consequences of the very public centralised planning of the post war period have in many ways been replicated by the wholesale privatisation of cities more recently. Ground Control is not a call for a return to centralised planning but a commentary on the consequences of today's property fuelled approach to cities, as practiced particularly in the US and Britain.

I spoke afterwards with Cathy Parker and colleagues at the Institute of Place Management who suggested that we both debate these points in their journal, which I'd be very happy to do.

'Tesco Towns' artlicle in The Guardian

Published this piece in today's Guardian, on the spread of 'Tesco Towns' - where homes, streets and even schools are built by Tesco:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/may/05/urban-development-tesco-towns