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Gap widening between ‘resurgent’ and ‘stuck cities’

 How Can Cities Thrive in the Changing Economy?

The Work Foundation today releases a league table of the productivity of different cities across the UK that reveals wide and growing disparities between ‘resurgent’ cities and those that appear to be ‘stuck’. Lack of vision and failure to collaborate with neighbours are considered significant waeknesses. Historic coastal towns fare particulary badly in this changing environment. Differences risk being exacerbated by the credit crunch as too many UK cities have built up a reliance on financial service jobs compared to their European counterparts, the How Can Cities Thrive in the Changing Economy? report warns.  

"Many refuse to recognise that their economic future relies on trade links with a neighbouring city that, despite being a historic rival, is now thriving. And they are often blighted by either chaotic or complacent leadership."

Nowheresville, China. pop.5m.

Welcome to China's backwater - population five million

Hefei is nowheresville. Even in China, lots of people have never heard of it. China has witnessed such rapid growth in the last decade that even the cities you've never heard of are twice the size of Paris.

"As with so many Chinese cities, half of Hefei is a building site. So the drive from the airport will take you through rubble-strewn streets that, in the rains of last month, lay half submerged by great puddles of oily, brown water. [...]To say Hefei is nondescript is unfair not just its residents but to a hundred similar cities across China. "

 

First city of the future

The Observer special features on Beijing

'I am Chinese but my life is westernised in a city in which history survives in isolated fragments, sporadic pieces of tradition ruptured by modernity. We want to preserve our traditions and promote our value systems but we don't know what either of them is. After 30 years of this explosion of power, there are no rules, no plan for this city. We are crossing the river by feeling the stones beneath our feet.'

 

 

Beijing has rebuilt itself faster than any city on earth, turning from a warren of alleys into a capital fit for a superpower. No wonder the world's top architects - from Foster to Koolhaas - have flocked to make their mark on it.  Deyan Sudjic:

"Very few architects say in public that they will not build in Beijing. The only notable dissident is Daniel Libeskind of Ground Zero fame, who has questioned the seemliness of building for an authoritarian and undemocratic regime, under which construction workers endure the most primitive of conditions, with minimal safety provisions and poor wages."

The great ecotown land grab

Glancey and Greer in The Guardian

Whatever the government says, they will need to be served by even more cars and - this being England - out-of-town supermarkets. In any case, how can a town be called "eco" when its existence requires the loss of green land and a spread of new homes away from established towns, as so many of these proposals do?

Developers accused of pursuing gadgetry instead of saving planet

Architects and developers are ignoring the threat of climate change and failing to address concerns over sustainability, according to the government's watchdog on urban planning and design.

"There are some architects and developers who really get climate change, but most don't or choose not to. As a result we get a lot of greenwash, such as green gadgets and microtechnology stuck on to buildings, rather than a proper approach to sustainable design."

FOOL'S GOLD

2012 Olympics will break 'legacy' promise unless rules are changed quickly.

Fool's Gold, the new report from the New Economics Foundation, shows that unless cast-iron guarantees are built into plans for the 2012 Olympics, the Games will fail to leave the promised positive local legacy for the poorest residents of East London. The report identifies the ‘trickle down’ economics that underly the approach to regeneration at the heart of the Olympic bid as the root cause of the problem.

Dreams set in concrete

Forty years ago, work began on the construction of Thamesmead, 'a 21st century town'. But has it lived up to its promise, and what does its future hold? Michael Collins reports in The Guardian.

Cities are the new green

"It will not save life on Earth, but merely drive ever more people into hypermobility. "

The Housing Minister has announced a short list of locations for Brtian's eco-towns, and a period of consultation.

Simon Jenkins questions a strategy which ignores the eco-needs of existing towns and cities.

"Britain has plenty of potential eco-towns. They are called London, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Sheffield and Newcastle, to name a few. They conform to every one of Flint's declared objectives. They have an infrastructure of utilities, schools, clinics, libraries, welfare services and public transport already built. People have shown themselves ready to live, work and play in them without using cars. They are settled communities able to absorb immigration and high-density living, without tearing the bonds of local leadership. "

Travellers, land and home

Our view of house and home allows no place for Travellers

Libby Brooks in The Guardian:  considers the 'land grab  hysteria' and concerns of identity and home in the traveller community. "Settled people are told all they need is a house, and to encounter those who don't share that absolute can be baffling."

Hitting the target, missing the point

How Government Regeneration Targets fail deprived areas, is the first of two nef reports on inequality and local economic development, and shows that a new, more sophisticated approach to measuring change is needed so that a clearer understanding of the impact of regeneration programmes  can be used to inform the development of future policy.