With the collapse in international bank lending comes a real opportunity in the world of urban development for investment in small projects and those projects growing over time to become catalysts to change.
In an earlier post, I called it (rather unsexily) 'Venture Urbanism' - and the good news is that there's an increasing amount of it about.
Earlier this year, the London Borough of Hackney, Design for London and the London Development Agency published Making Space in Dalston, a directory of improvements to public space in the district of Hackney that they hope to advance in the coming years.
And last year, I was involved in the start of a physical and cultural masterplan called High Street 2012 that aims to use the London Olympic Games as a catalyst for improvements to the very long (and very unwindy) road that runs from (what will be) the gates of the Olympic site to the centre of Tower Hamlets, taking in Whitechapel High Street, Whitechapel Road, Mile End Road and Bow Road.
These are brilliant frameworks for change that are already evidencing first moves, like the recent Dalston Mill wheatfield, a re-creation of American artist Agnes Denes' famous Wheatfield in Manhattan in 1982:
But what if for a moment we disposed of mega design-visioning and went for something hyper-local and more micro?
Last week, I participated in an event in Moscow called Promzone 2.0: a think-tank, organized by cultural organization the British Council, as part of their pan-European Creative Cities programme, centered on generating ideas for the adaptive - and communally regenerative - reuse of a former glass factory called Flacon. (Interest: I have helped the Council design their project programme in Moscow).
For a day, I worked with a team of residents from Butyrsky district, alongside students, journalists and generally committed citizens who came up with a suite of things that they would like to see happen in the area around Flacon that would improve lives today but might also, over time, seed popular, new uses for the former factory site.
The group came up with an inspirational programme - inspirational because of its range, refusing to drill down to the usual bento-box of public art and postage-stamp green space revivalism.
What's more, rather than choose some kind of internationalist, in-flight, Lady Gaga brand identity, the group decided to theme their program to Friendship - to personalize and counter public association of the area with the brutalist Butyrka Prison, the central transit prison in pre-Revolutionary Russia.
This is what the group came up with (with the final presentation, in Russian, available here):
Some highlights:
- In the proposed cultural program was the refurbishment of a dead public building in to a small cinema showing old movies for older people living in the district.
- In the social program, two great ideas: a communal wash-house and a ribbon ice-track that would wind its way through the neighborhood.
- In the economic program, a service exchange initiative.
- In the environment program, a makeover of dull buildings in shades of pastel pink and blue and an apple feast sourced from local fruit trees.
Now the wristy cynics amongst you might say - "yeah right, David, but this ain't exactly the sort of thing that's going to pave the way for Google to relocate to the district. What's more it's frivolous - and this isn't the right response to such a bleak economic landscape."
In part, you'd be right.
But think of this as a prospective sequence of small, highly local projects that, if choreographed in an effective, integrated way, might start to turn around some of the negative sense and sensibilities of the district.
With a small degree of public participation, chances are that by word of mouth, they would start to replace fear or disinterest in the pro-social with curiosity.
The projects would be staggeringly cheap to implement. They would attract a disproportionate amount of interest and the value yield for local people, government and investors in the area would be high.
Put another way, think urban gardening not regeneration - and reap the reward.
First image un-sourced. Dalston Mill courtesy of cakehole. Images of Flacon event: David Barrie and British Council Russia.
