David Barrie

Urban regeneration needs a new narrative

 

This could have been the closing caption for a private "summit" on urban renewal held in London this week.

Sponsored by Eversheds and King Sturge, the event was a wake/brainstorm for an industry that has ground to a halt - but for the design and delivery of the 2012 Olympics and its East London after-burn. (my regeneration Bhagwan Jackie Sadek has also posted on it here.)

The last twenty years has delivered some remarkable urban regeneration schemes in the U.K. - like Tate Modern, the transformation of Shoreditch, regeneration of Canary Wharf in London Docklands, the arrival of Westfield shopping mall in West London and new waterfronts in the cities of Newcastle-Gateshead and Liverpool, not to mention the Scandi-style minimalist repaving of most U.K. city centres.

But the debt-fulled boom is over: bank lending is tighter, house-building has slowed, the mathematical equations of 'value uplift' have been wrecked by falling land values and the number of people in poverty in the U.K. has increased, when the very purpose of regeneration is to help poor people become more prosperous - or at least that's what it says in the manual. 

Urban regeneration needs a new narrative. What might it be?

Well maybe...

...since in a speech this week called The Big Society, Conservative Party leader David Cameron laid out his thoughts on a new role for the state: directly agitating for, catalysing and galvanising social renewal.  

Labour minister Tessa Jowell then unveiled public service partnerships, public management that champions co-operative working - call it The New Mutualism, the name of a key policy paper of over a decade ago: 

We think mutuals have a much broader potential across the public sector, especially now where they can become an expression of the new national soul post-credit crunch.

What do these two statements suggest for the future of urban renewal?

1. Economic change will be less reliant upon property developers, unless they are prepared to innovate by shifting to sustainable development or become increasingly transparent and flexible
2. Local development will be more answerable to 'the people' -  and we'll see less of a "massive- shopping-centre-with-a-town-attached" approach to urbanism  
3. 'Value' will be assessed on a broader basket of local currencies, over and above rental income
4. More time, attention and pride is about to be invested in local councillors and planning officers,
5. Small projects that trigger social renewal - rather than physical projects so big that they make the earth tilt - will come back in to vogue (cf City Challenge), and
6. New, non-aligned organizations or aggregated civic organizations at the most local level are about to become flavour of the month, since they offer a bridge between citizens and state, can engender trust, express identity and promote the welfare of the larger community above parochial Nimbyism

The poster boys and girls of this new mutualist world will be the army of activists and entrepreneurs who lead their communities, believe in collaboration and the welfare of their larger community.

These need not be either anti-capitalists or anti-development - just people who understand that enterprise in all of its many forms - social, as well as mercantile - is a key route to progress.

In the United States, these figures are lionized - just listen to President Obama at a press conference in June celebrating the work in particular of innovative non-profits:

At the centre of this new narrative are two of the oldest characters in the book. First - the taxpayer. Second - the consumer.

But the new element is the collective. The new formation: the non-profit. The new cast member - the social entrepreneur.

Either this is the dawn of a glorious new age of the social economy, political cynicism or the last bout of communal generosity as a post-industrial nation takes to the lifeboat.

What I do know is that I am yet to speak to a pension fund manager who is in the least bit interested in sharing an algorithm on life-cycle costs or dreaming up a vanilla-wrapped product that capitalizes upon social, as well as land, power, skills, knowledge and data assets.

I assume that's because the financial returns don't fit in to client demand, the terms of managers' annual bonuses and no bright spark has yet to work out a marketable link between carbon credits and the financing of urban renewal.

What I also know is that some - if not all - of this was the elephant in the room at the event this week: part of the paradigm shift that everyone cites, but an equity revolution that no-one really quite dares engage.  

Images courtesy of fliegender.

Cultivating a new Butyrkskaya, Moscow

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.

Links for 2009-10-30

Kim Gordon Rodarte Exhibition Art [hypebeast]

Otis College-trained Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth's artwork on sale: Failing Lights, Noise Nomads, Dude War, and Pussy Galore. 

Yes, Anastasia [Superqueen]

"The shape of Kristina is reminiscent of the infamous Yves Saint Laurent Cocoon wedding dress, and the scale-like gold satin, with those black appliques as decorations, bring the Fabergé Imperial eggs to my mind."

Access to News Wildly Unequal in U.S. [Washington Post]

Walter Isaacson, President of the Aspen Institute and a former Time managing editor: "Nations that will succeed in the 21st century are those in which citizenry has access to the free flow of information."

Promoting Food Security and reducing carbon emissions through the London Orchard Project [ERM]

"The particular vision of the London Orchard Project is to create mini-orchards across London, thereby developing communities’ access to local food now and in the future; contributing to carbon absorption; reducing the carbon footprint of fruit consumed in London and supporting biodiversity conservation."

And one of the first films I ever made (!):

The Late Show on 8vo Design [Cerysmatic Factory]

"BBC2's The Late Show, 1990; this was a ten minute manifesto/profile of 8vo Design. They were approached by the BBC to do a piece about English type-based graphics and it developed from there. It was organised around a series of statements/themes such as 'Simplify Design', 'Design Not Craft' and these were introduced by titles (designed by 8vo) and film of the 8vo designers themselves speaking the statements in a layered glass stage set. This was interspersed with shots of 8vo's work (such as Haçienda 4, and Haç 7) and footage of them talking about their work."

 

Declare Interdependence

From Berlin-based creatives Lars Schmidt , Stefa Roth and their organization Arts-Ecology-Education comes a 'Declaration of Interdependence' - an 'open experiment' - call it a 'manifesto'.

The Declaration sets down a list of shared principals, of hyper-tolerant, anti-indulgent, eco-aware values that the authors suggest will or should frame our lives post-Crisis.

Is this visionary?

Yes.

(but be aware of the poverty and some of the woozy, manic, at times desperate atmosphere of some squats in London in the late 1970s/early 1980s that once shared some similar values.)

If you like the Declaration, spread it. You'll find it here, at culturalrevolutionaries.org, on Facebook and with images at Social Design. Arts-Ecology-Education can also be followed on Twitter - @aeeproject.  

Venture urbanism

Last week, our bridge in Castleford, Yorkshire was awarded the Palme D'Or - so to speak - of the U.K. urban renewal industry, at the annual Regeneration & Renewal awards.

The professional jury led by David Ubaka of Design for London commended the bridge for the quality of its design and the unusual and direct involvement of local people in its development. 

Six years ago, working in close alliance with local government, I led a group who asked people living and working in Castleford to nominate the ten improvements that they would like to see made to the town - and a new way of getting from the town centre to an area known as 'Duck Island' came out No.1.

Local people were instrumental to the choice of architect, design and many other aspects of the £4.5m ($7m) structure.   

With local government acting as convenor, project/technical manager and banker, local people were the client for the work - rather than just end-user consultee.

So yes, the award goes to the project team - Client: City of Wakefield Metropolitan District Council, Designer: McDowell + Benedetti, Structural Engineer: Alan Baxter & Associates, Civil Engineer: Arup Water, Lighting Consultant: Sutton Vane Associates, Timber Consultant: Engineered Wood Products/Michael Berringer and Contractor: Costain Ltd.

And on the funding and support side, immense thanks needs to go to the local authority, English Partnerships (now Homes and Communities Agency), Yorkshire Forward, the Environment Agency, British Waterways, the Heritage Lottery Fund, SITA Trust and the project and cost managers of the broader initiative, MACE Group and Gleeds.  

But in the end, this is just set construction, cinematography and commendation all round for production services.

Because the Best Director slots need to be reserved for the three organizations who were instrumental to making the bridge happen: the Lock Lane Residents Association, Castleford Riverside Community Group and Castleford Town Centre Partnership.

Now before you reach for your hankie to wipe away a tear, can I just leave you with a thought.

Recession has stalled the momentum, value and yield of regeneration, renewal and construction in the U.K. and rest of the world.

With big investment gone from the sector, big projects are history.

Master planning will remain in some shape or form, not least because it evidences the fact that something major is going on or being thought through - but the writing has to be on the wall for that too. 

The flourishing of the Internet Economy suggests an age of direct communications, network relationships and more 'done with' than 'done to'.

The level of business insolvencies in the SME sector and the new relationship between the private and public sectors as a result of Government stimulus suggests a new dialectic of resilience and dependency.

So have we reached a moment of great opportunity?

A moment to develop and deliver small projects that build out in to larger phenomena?

We could follow the lead of Enterprise 2.0 and progress these projects in ways that involve ordinary people deciding who, what and when.

But this is about action, not feasibility, and choreography of initiative, not simply small-scale invention.

What should we call it?

Maybe start with "Venture Urbanism" (and find something sexier a bit later)? 

Crowdsourcing action against climate change

On 26th September, the town of Middlesbrough, North East England, will host its annual town meal.

At the event, people will feast on food that they've grown at home, in kitchen gardens and on formal or informal plots of ground across the town.

The Middlesbrough Meal initiative started in early 2007, supported by Middlesbrough Council, the U.K. Design Council, real estate developer BioRegional Quintain, Groundwork North East and local public agencies. 

Towards the end of 2006, service designer and former NESTA Creative Pioneer Nina Belk, artist and educator Debra Solomon of Culiblog and me put a call out to local people, asking them if they wanted to grow food and to choose their preferred location. 

Over the next year, over a thousand people in the town, clustered in local groups or connected by social networks, grew food in public places. 

They brought their early harvest to cookery classes called 'kitchen playgrounds', inspired by meal-assembly centers in the United States.

The final harvest delivered the base ingredients for a town meal, curated by artist Bob and Roberta Smith, attended by an estimated 8000 people - and reported by the Observer newspaper to be part of a wider move for harvesting food as art. 

 

You'll find more on the project throughout this blog (and I should give it a rest, I know):

- on its relevance to freeing-up of inter-human communications

- on the value of master-planning productive urban landscapes in cities

- or the clue it offers to making additional money from the development of urban land

Now this is all terribly fascinating - or not (please keep reading) - but the real legacy is now starting to come through from a process that was consciously designed to trigger mass participation, sow the seeds of a more localised food supply chain and strengthen social ties - in retrospect very connected to Michel Bauwens and his ideas on Peer-2-Peer Collaboration.

A forthcoming report on Green Infrastructure by CABE, the U.K. Government's advisor on architecture, urban design and public space, will outline some of the project's key legacies:

• 14 new allotments have been created in local schools
•  a training allotment has been set up in a deprived part of town
• three new food co-operatives have been set up in three districts of the town
• a social enterprise restaurant for 13-19 year olds is being set up to help careers in catering
• urban farming was at the core of a successful bid to the U.K. Government for what is now an £8m ($13.5m)  fund aimed at helping the town become a healthier place

This is not to brag. But to make some simple points about public participation in the transformation of the physical fabric and the quality of life of our towns and cities. 

Mass participation at the most local level can generate real, additional value.

Sometimes what matters is orchestration of human activity, not just its production. 

And sometimes it helps people to have a script - in order to write their own.

Images courtesy of Tubbyphunk.

The People's Supermarket

This is English chef Arthur Potts-Dawson. He's on a mission to create The People's Supermarket: a not for profit, co-operative grocery store that will feature in a series of TV shows on Channel 4 in the U.K. in 2010.

The People's Supermarket is designed to offer an alternative use for the thousands of empty retail units on our high streets and counter the belief that you can only have either cheap or good food - and never both. 

Over the last few months, Arthur, me and a Panzer division of people working in design, retailing, property and project management in the U.K. have been working up plans for the new social enterprise. 

The supermarket is inspired by the Park Slope Food Coop in Brooklyn that was started in 1973 and now has 17,000 members, offers them a saving of 20%-40% off their weekly grocery bill and enjoys a turnover of $32m. 

Anyone will be able to shop at The People's Supermarket. You'll find our shelves stacked with a wide range of product, from conventional breakfast cereal to locally sourced produce, seven days a week.  

For an annual fee of UK£25.00 ($41.00) - reduced for older citizens, the unemployed and students - and a commitment to volunteer four hours time per month, members will earn a discount on their shopping and a share and role in the management of the enterprise. 

The People's Supermarket is about a great shopping experience, collectivizing the enthusiasm and skill of its members, direct democracy and affordability through participation. 

Just take a look at the message board at Park Slope to see the value of "a shop that you can call your own": 

 

We're hoping to raise thousands of members. 

We're creating a simple product that we hope other entrepreneurs, communities and people across the U.K. will copy.

And we are looking right now at several different empty retail units in the U.K. - here's an image of one, but I can't reveal the location, since it will simply inflate its price.  

The People's Supermarket connects with the growing band of people interested in supporting innovation in recession.

And it expresses utopia, resilience and the power of mutuality.  

 

Do you?

If the answer's "yes", become a member of The People's Supermarket or lend us your support and register at our new website. 

Please show link love and pass this post on. 

If you want to get involved, just drop me a comment here. 

And if you know a philanthropist or investor who wants to support innovative, collective and profitable social enterprise, send them my way. 

The blood, sweat and (let's say) joy of securing the premises, forming the co-op and members' first experiences of running the enterprise will be the subject of a series of prime-time shows on Channel 4 Television in 2010. 

And The People's Supermarket will be published in a book, available in all good stores, featuring recipes created by Arthur from ingredients for sale. 

Images courtesy of Elizabeth Pascoe, Park Slope Coop, Heather Ring, APD and Marcus Foley.  

Clouds, platforms and the future of the planet (no less)

It's proving to be a Summer in which design gurus join up the dots - and it's fantastic!

First up was John Thackara who in a brilliant paper called Clean Growth for Design Innovation Scotland promoted the idea of enabling platforms as a way of mobilizing the masses.

In answer to the challenge of pulling people together in support of sustainability - and in part inspired (perhaps, maybe, dunno) by work we've done together - John urges an approach that starts with existing grassroots activity and then moves on

to creating frameworks that enable these actions to grow and develop. The concept of enabling platforms is key here. A variety of tools and techniques has been developed by global business in recent times that can be re-purposed for ultra-local use. These range from service design, to technologies of co-operation, and systems of resource allocation - ranging from people to water.



Next up comes the mighty Ezio Manzini, Profession of industrial design at Milan University, a pioneer of slow design who I've met just once and exchange emails with from time to time - but God, this man is inspiring!

In a new book on service design edited by Satu Miettinen and Mikko Koivisto, Ezio explores its role in an age of networks and sustainability - and forgive me, but it needs to be quoted in full:

The world is rich in potential resources. They are diffuse natural and social resources such as, for instance, solar energy and wind on the one side, and people's creativity and entrepreneurship, on the other.

Traditionally these resources were not considered, because the idea of economy of scale was blinding us, and we were unable to recognise their potentialities.

Today, we have learnt that, in the network society, things can be seen in a quite different way: diffuse resources can be valorised by distributed systems.

The Internet has made thinkable and practially feasible peer-to-peer organisational models that allow us to valorise diffuse knowledge and people's capabilities.

The result is that now we can see a solution in the richness of these diffuse resources, and most probably the only viable solution, to the current major problems of our Planet.

Wow!

But wow - to the power of two.

Why?

Because if you interleave these ideas alongside a definition of cloud computing by Luis Vaquero and recently cited in a paper by McKinsey, you start to see ways and means by which technology might support the delivery of a more sustainable tomorrow:

Clouds are a large pool of easily usable and accessible virtualized resources (such as hardware, development platforms and/or services). These resources can be dynamically reconfigured to adjust to a variable load (scale), allowing also for an optimum resource utilization. This pool of resources is typically exploited by a pay-per-use model in which guarantees are offered by the Infrastructure Provider by means of customised SLAs (service-level agreements).

Meaning: a radical and (perhaps) more sustainable idea of service provision is arriving and one which could have profound implications for certain industries, especially ones that have traditionally relied upon fixed assets - real esate for one. 

First image, source not known. Image of Manzini courtesy of Domus, anime dolls by Youngfook.

Digital Butetown: Building the community collective online

How can all of the excitement of sharing things on the Internet happen at the most local level?

How might online social media bridge communities and network local life in a collective way, much like an allotment site rather than a landscape of fenced private gardens?

Yes, there are community websites and local forums. Yes, applications like NetVibes. Yes, groups on Facebook. Yes, opportunities for networking via Ning.  And yes, lots of brilliant initiatives around the world that encourage digital activism, storytelling and new content creation.

But is there a process that can be rolled out over time locally that encompasses all of these things, brings them together, networks activity, pools interest, shares knowledge and could become a platform for collaborative local change in the future?  

These are some of the questions behind a digital design workshop that will take place in Butetown, Cardiff, in the Old Banking Hall, Bute Street,  July 24th 2009 (1000 - 1800hrs).

The workshop will pool the knowledge of people actively working on the development and application of social technology for social benefit.

It will be a practical session that maps existing online networks, matches them against offline communities and then comes up with a practical plan to implement what might be called - for a slightly hippy phrase - online community weaving. (with respect to June Holley and Network Weaving for inspiration). 

The event is being organised by Tom Beardshaw of Native Media, Jeremy Gould of Whitehall Webby and me. It follows research in to local internet use, analysed by Kelly Page of Cardiff Business School; and will be a backroom brainstorm in advance of an event in the Autumn which will invite local internet users to work with social media geeks to co-design a forward plan.

Butetown in Cardiff is home to 14,000 people and over forty-six different nationalities. It may be cash poor - but it is culturally super-rich.

There are many dynamic members of the community working together on renewal of the area and people keen to explore online media as a way of sharing information, experience and supporting local initiative.

Butetown has a Ning group, local people collect in Facebook groups, kids play games against each other online and there's busy file-sharing going on of music.

This is all great.

But the fragmentation of online social networking mirrors the fragmentation of real life - between new and old communities, diverse ethnic groups, communities of interest and different issues of concern.

If you believe in the power of communication and see the online space as a place that could be socially useful and productive, there's a job to be done to try and find a way to gather online activity effectively. 

And if you believe that a key to the future of public management is online public involvement, the digital space in a place like Butetown needs to be supported in such a way as to be ready and able to contribute to the social and economic planning of the area.

Please join our Google Group. Tell us there if you are interested in contributing to the event on 24th July. And look out for the hash-tag #digitalbutetown.

Digital Butetown is a British Council Wales project and part of a larger, pan-European initiative called OPENCities. And it is supported by igloo Regeneration, an investment fund managed by Aviva and described by the United Nations as "the world's first socially responsible property fund".

Street images of Butetown courtesy of  Paul Corcoran and Walt Jabsco.

digitalbutetown

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Things are getting worse. Please send chocolate.

There are lots of posts here on the theme of food.

There are recipes for cooking dog in Vietnam. Thoughts on why culture has turned celebrity chefs in to society's new investigative reporters. There's been the trauma of the loss of Barbar the Elephant. And food with provenance becoming as luxurious as a felt rug from Kyrgyzstan.

So what's the big deal?

Well, for a long time, I've thought of food as not just a thing that we, er, have to eat to survive but also a bit like art, or at least Nicolas Bourriaud's idea of art as the temporary terminal of a network of interconnected elements.

Quoi?

Well think about food for more than a nano-second and you're instantly thrown in to what it's made of, where it comes from, who has it, who doesn't, its expense, cheapness, how sexy is (friend of Jay Kay) Jamie Oliver, how sincere is Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and why does the following expression always seem so true:

Now I think that I might have the answer. And its nestling in the biog of Canadian geographer Dr Betsy J.Donald, author of the book Food Fears:

Food is a prism through which to explore many dimensions of sustainability -- from local economic development to better ecological practice to social stability and opportunity.

*is slightly in love*(?)

Images of grumpy man and meringue courtesy of Tubbyphunk. Chocoloate image unknown.