C O N T E X T 1 0 6 : S E P T E M B E R 2 0 0 8 23 IHBC Annual School 2008 IHBC Annual School 2008 IHBC Annual School 2008 between, disconnected. Highway management was to be a major influence in the success or failure of a new improved urbanism. Working with highway engineers to achieve adaptability was a key design change. After a number of landscape and space changing initiatives, including hard-fought-for stepped access to the Metropolitan Cathedral, architecture was now coming back to Liverpool. A new and improved urbanism was transforming much of the city centre. It was a thought-provoking talk based on positive practical experience. Mariana Beadsworth Rob Cowan Tools in placemaking Rob Cowan of Urban Design Skills is the editor of Context and the author of The Dictionary of Urbanism. His most entertaining presentation began with an examination of the development of an area of south London next to Merton Abbey Mills on the River Wandle. Here, following the industrial revolution, William Morris had manufactured the products he designed as Morris and Company. The area, the site of the former Merton Abbey, had been developed over the past 20 years or so as four blobs of development. One offered a drive-thru burger facility, but like the others was a dead end; another, a retail park, was protected by tank-trap security barriers; and a third featured a hypermarket, recently revamped at great cost but at no benefit to the public realm.The fourth, a hotel and other smaller developments, constituted one of the UK’s least legible spaces: visitors could see where they wanted to get to, but could not work out how to get there. The local context had been ignored; there was no recognition of history (a road had been built over the remains of the former Abbey’s chapter house); no place for people but lots of space for cars; and no connected street network or convivial public realm.We seem to be very good at turning our backs on public spaces. How different the area might have been if the right urban design principles had been applied to help create a place. Cowan provided a staggering statistic: 84 per cent of all planning applications were conceived by people with no design training. He then highlighted the difference between development successfully inspired by traditional architecture and cynical fakery. As one developer had said: ‘You like historic buildings: we build historic buildings’. Rob Cowan illustrated his presentation with many thought-provoking and often hilarious images at breakneck speed, including street furniture jostling for position with pedestrians, supermarkets displaying giant pictures of vegetables in their windows, and toddlers used as a means of traffic calming in the Netherlands.The tools for placemaking, in addition to the familiar means of applying urban design principles through the planning system, included the new techniques of Designreviewer and Capacitycheck. KimWinter Rynd Smith Challenges in spatial management Rynd Smith, head of policy and practice for the RTPI, began his talk by emphasising how critical was the relationship between mainstream planning and our heritage. To many directly outside the conservation sphere the value of our built heritage had taken some time to justify its relevance in respect of the wider issues. This was changing significantly. The new Planning Bill, draft Heritage Protection Bill and draft Marine Bill were a result of the government’s understanding that the planning system as a whole was coming under increasing pressure from a variety of different sources, some of which had not been viewed as particularly relevant in the past. Smith made it clear that he thought the underlining driver for this was climate change, and if not, then it should be. Western society was facing a large challenge created by its consumption of natural resources and was questioning our relationship with others on the planet. The question, ‘how can we become environmentally sustainable without having drastically to change our lives and alter our habits?’ was an important one. The Climate Change Bill would be the first of its kind in the world, Smith told us, and was a clear indication of the substantial commitment the government was making. The commitments that the bill set out had prompted more detailed guidance such as the Code for Sustainable Homes. The government From somewhere to anywhere: one of the new neighbours to the site of the former Merton Abbey
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