URBLOG

Surveillance city

These cities within cities are eating up Britain's streets

Anna Minton on how urban regeneration has seen entire districts pass into the hands of private companies – and their security guards.

This monitoring and surveillance of innocent activities, which does not necessarily require anti-terror laws, is taking place all around Britain as a result of the growing private ownership and private control of cities. Liverpool One, which spans 34 streets in the heart of Liverpool, is effectively owned by the Duke of Westminster's property company, Grosvenor, which leased the entire site, including streets and public places, from the council for 250 years. Cabot Circus in Bristol, Highcross in Leicester and what promises to be the biggest of all, Stratford City in London, are all owned and run by property companies.

Newcastle - top green city

Newcastle-upon-Tyne takes top spot as Britain's greenest city

A city once wreathed in smoke and deafened by shipyard steel-hammers, has transformed itself into the greenest in Britain, according to the country's most comprehensive sustainability audit, published by Forum for the Future.

Tyneside's triumph drew on improvements in air quality, biodiversity in public parks and open spaces and the best salmon run on a English river. The audit shows the city performing well on waste collection, extending green space, life expectancy and the local strategy for tackling climate change.

Yesterday's Tomorrow

Interesting reflections from the weekend's press on the architetcural legacy of modernism and Friday's BBC2 programme on the renovation of Park Hill Flats in Sheffield by Urban Splash.

Penthouse and pavement  Owen Hatherley in The Guardian

"Brutalism was never just an architectural style. It was a political aesthetic, an attitude, a weapon - dedicated to the precept that nothing was too good for ordinary people. After decades of neglect, its buildings are now either "eyesores" or "icons", fine for the Barbican's stockbrokers but unacceptable for the people who were always its intended inhabitants."

Jonathan Meades on Owen Hatherly in The New Statesman 

Hatherley  'makes a brilliantly audacious suggestion that will leave the Prince of Wales, Léon Krier and their “new urbanist” acolytes speechless: what if modernism was not imposed on a working class that really yearned for good old back-to-backs and outdoor privies but was welcomed “as part of a specific collective project”? Streets in the sky were paved with hope. Aneurin Bevan envisaged a National Housing Service.'

Planning for 'inclusive growth'

Inclusive growth in Bristol

According to a new report from the Centre for Cities based on Bristol , the recession could be the opportunity 'to set plans for mixed communities within an economic framework that links housing provisionto wider economic objectives.'

'The workless have typically been disengaged from the labourmarket for a sustained period of time, and face multiple barriers to employment. This is reflected in high levels of health deprivation and disability; barriers to housing and services; and education, skills and training deprivation.  [...] Housing plans for the new growth point will need to be closely aligned with economic development policies and initiatives that will tackle the underlying causes of deprivation. This will mean linking major development sites to more proactive engagement with the long-term workless...'

Regeneration in a time of recession

Professor Michael Parkinson's report The Credit Crunch and Regeneration: Impact and Implications   for the Department for Communities and Local Government.

"Many communities that have experienced difficult times for many years have been badly hit by the downturn. It is crucial that everything is done to protect the plans that were made for those communities. Many regeneration agencies are concerned about breaking moral commitments to communities if they cannot deliver agreed projects."

Site Savers

Stalled plans to revive rundown town centres illustrate how the property slump and credit crunch have hit regeneration. But is there a solution?

Britain can build its way out of recession

"With thousands of jobs disappearing each week in Britain, and the lingering potential for unrest, it is time for our government to be similarly bold and ambitious in the one area that could show relatively quick social, economic and environmental returns. "Getting Britain Building" is not a bad slogan. "

New report reveals UK cities most exposed to recession

Cities Outlook 2009

Centre for Cities today released a new report that reveals the cities most exposed to recession - and least well placed to ride out job losses and business closures over the coming months.  In 2009 all cities will feel recession bite but they will also be leading the upturn as the economy recovers.

Woolies: The Cantle Challenge

From The Times

January 17, 2009

Woolies’ demise is a community opportunity

Woolworths was at the heart of communities and must be replaced by local businesses not more faceless brands

Sir, The tragic demise of Woolworths has left a huge gap to fill. In market towns all across the country “the wonder of Woolies” was that it provided a heart to our high streets. Instead of refilling all of the 800 shop premises with yet another “brand”, we believe there is the opportunity to do things differently: to help to remake the high street and to create local community/business networks to harness entrepreneurial talent, foster resilience, build local sustainability and create a new and productive bond between people, business and the community.

A number of reports have already drawn attention to the homogenisation of our high street — a handful of national and local brands dominate every shopping centre from Truro to Tynemouth. Moreover, for once, let’s anticipate the impact of recession on communities and intervene before tensions arise, and we all pay the price in loss of cohesion. If the money is there to underwrite the financial system, there must surely be enough for the modest intervention in the renewal of our communities.

We propose that the former Woolworths stores be converted into modern market halls, owned and controlled at a local level, providing space and support for local grown produce and locally produced goods. The first occupants could be the local farmers who presently have to contend with all weathers on windswept car parks. They could share refrigeration, storage, cash handling and marketing, gaining a prominent daily foothold in the high street, benefiting from the economies of scale.

But other local products could also be brought to market, again sharing many services and with access to business support and business development.

Each local store could be run by local chambers of commerce or other community groups with support from local authorities, using their economic development powers and, just as importantly, by networking local producers and business services to reconnect with the retail industry in local communities. We hear a lot about the importance of building social capital and the role of civil society. Rarely do we get the chance to invest in their renewal to the benefit of people and community.

It would be a tragedy to waste this once in a generation opportunity.

Ted Cantle

Executive Chair, Institute of Community Cohesion

Recession to hit Leeds, Brighton and Bristol hard

Into recession

Leeds, Brighton and Bristol together could lose over 5% of their jobs over the next three years, according to a new Centre for Cities study on the three cities.

City redundancies hit London hard last year - and dominated the headlines.  But the impact of the credit crunch and the deepening recession is now being felt in every city - and will play out very differently across the UK during 2009.

The future is culture

As Liverpool asseses its year of culture DCMS Secreatry of State Andy Burnham considers the lessons and future possibilities of a British City of Culture competition in a speech at the University of Liverpool.

"...the long-term test of success is not whether the events ran smoothly - or grabbed attention - but whether going forward it changes the life chances of the people of this city."

In Liverpool's footsteps: now every city can aim to be Britain's capital of culture

Hey presto! We're the best 

"Britain's cities don't need imported spectacle, or visiting awards ceremonies, so much as a sense of their own worth. [...] If Burnham's dreams become a reality, the first British capital of culture should be somewhere whose accent you can cut with a knife, whose bricks are grimy with identity. Character is culture, as scousers knew long before the EU title came their way."

The happy architect

Irena Bauman is on a mission to make cities more loveable. Martin Wainwright hears why she is challenging the profession to stop, look around and stand up to developers.

"We could have done so much with the amazing period of expansion we had. Instead, we've built a huge amount of really bad stuff. We've been driven by commerce, the media, quick wins, one-liners."