A good city has industry: email from Mark Brearley to a man called Vincent, on Twitter

P Wilkinson Containers / William Say & Co, Verney Road, Bermondsey. Producing metal and plastic containers in London since 1930. They are now threatened by Southwark Council and the GLA’s plans for big scale housing development in the area.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the road a residential tower is already rising, part of a development that makes no attempt to accommodate the again burgeoning industrial economy clustered around the Old Kent Road.

Hello Vincent.

Your Twitter comment about the Old Kent Road plans, to replace an extensive mixed economy with housing dominated development, have been pointed out to me. You wrote that people need homes not the industry that is there. You launched you views in the open, and so I have taken the liberty of widely sharing my observations in response.

I am upset by your comments and I do not understand the inference that this has to be an either / or choice. Why can’t we have both? London would be a sad place if it could no longer welcome a diverse economic and civic life. Surely we don’t want our city beyond the centre to become a vast housing estate, a steroided suburb, to be unable to house the full range of activity that its people make happen, to suffocate vitality. Yes, London needs much more housing, but it also must address a wider accommodation crisis. Glib assertions that swathes of commercial activity are not needed do not help.

My business, Kaymet, has been producing anodised aluminium trays and trolleys in the area since 1947. We are proud to be a growing company that exports to 30 countries, and to be one of the hundreds of thriving industrial businesses in the area. We do not want to be pushed aside, we have no interest in leaving our city.

I do not believe it is right, or necessary, to expel all those vehicle repair businesses, the rich diversity of builders merchants, courier facilities, hirers, storers, shippers, printers and caterers. In fact people do need the aluminium and plastic container makers, the shim producers, the metal polishers and finishers, the hydraulic equipment refurbishers, the waste handlers, the powder-coaters, art restorers and steel fabricators, the set and prop, festive decoration and ceremonial hat manufacturers, the stone carvers, terrazzo producers, bakers, potters, painters and sculptors, the leatherworkers, jewellers, garment and furniture producers, the operators of ice cream vans, and more. All this is there, around the Old Kent Road, productive, dynamic, providing thousands of jobs. All this is what you claim people do not need. You are wrong.

I am sure you would not be happy if, following a process that you had no opportunity to influence, without there having been any coherent public discussion, without any options having been made visible, plans were laid out for your nice bakery to be brushed aside, to be replaced by residential focused developments. You would not like it if a councillor talked casually of expropriation, and even those running other businesses not far away started applauding, saying that you are not needed. If people started to point out that perfectly good baked items can be produced in efficient factories elsewhere, outside London, and that small scale bakers' claims to be valid are as nothing compared to the need for housing, that you and your workers can all find jobs in offices or similar, you would not be pleased, you would perhaps feel insulted. Well, you should be able to understand why we are unhappy, and why your comment is so hurtful.

Please Vincent, think again, join us in shouting out that a good city has industry, as part of its rich mix. Help us to argue that we can shape the Old Kent Road area to embrace a fully diverse economy, that this can be compatible with large scale development of housing, that bold change could seize the widest range of opportunities, could be done nimbly, inventively, inclusively. We do not need to expel, to throw away what we have, that would be foolish.

Mark

Kaymet

It will be interesting to see what variant of steroided suburb Berkeley are cooking up. I’ll bet it makes no place for industry, nor for most of the rest of the vibrant (and fast growing) existing economic and civic life of Peckham.

Berkeley's proposals for the Old Kent Road area. The exhibitions took place on Wednesday 20 April from 2pm to 8pm at the Unwin and Friary Estate Tenants’ and Residents’ Hall, Frensham Street, Off Peckham Park Road SE15 and Thursday 21 April from 2pm to 8pm at the Links Community Centre, 353 Rotherhithe New Road, SE16 3HF.

Some words from Mark Brearley, owner of Kaymet (tray factory) and Professor of Spatial Planning and Urban Design at London Metropolitan University:

My business, and the neighbouring businesses, just meters away from Berkeley’s land, have not received emails nor leaflets, even though I get the impression that Southwark Council have shared contacts with Berkeley. I guess they don’t count the economy as community.

Regardless of what Berkeley are cooking up, their approach makes a mockery of the planning system, shows their contempt for it, their un-interest in democratic process and civil rights. They are openly sharing their ideas for a residential led development on protected industrial land, running way ahead of the local planning authority’s process to decide on what type of land-use / development scenario will be appropriate for the area in future. That process has so far not even managed to set out issues and options, nor to consult on and engage in a dialogue about them. There have been no opportunities to make comments nor lodge representations about possible changes to planning policy that are likely to have brutal consequences for businesses in the area. Yet we hear rumours that Berkeley want to put in a planning application before Christmas. They should be ashamed of themselves.

Meanwhile the local planning authority are conspicuously failing to embrace an understanding of the economic dynamic of their area. They seem to have no intention of meeting the requirement placed on them by government to ensure that the accommodation needs of the economy in their area are properly planned for. Development rights were expropriated by central government in 1947 (the same year my business started in this part of London) and then they were handed over to local authorities. Southwark Council seems to have forgotten that when expropriated assets were handed to them they came with a responsibility to manage them fairly and without prejudice, indeed that was the very reason why they were expropriated. Now they seem content to disregard the interests of business communities who have little voice and do not get to vote, who are taxed but not represented. The Council seem to think it's fine also to parade the possibility of property expropriation as a way to push through the suburb building plans that they clearly are already wedded to. Businesses have not been kept informed about the process that is ongoing, indeed most (such as mine) have so far received no communication on the matter. Yet the Council state that they will tell us all what their preferred option for the future of the Old Kent Road is in just a few days time! They too should be ashamed of themselves, and their friends in City Hall.

None of this is good.

I urge you all to speak up for a more diverse and accommodating Old Kent Road.

Mark

Kaymet

The Godiva chocolate factory, loading on the street alongside Simonis metro station, Koekelberg, in the city of miracle mix, Brussels.

A good city has industry: A talk by Mark Brearley

We should embrace urban industry, welcome the economic diversity of cities, push back against de-mixing and suburbanisation. 

In this punchy talk Brearley observes the diversity of London’s industrial life. He celebrates its responsiveness and buoyancy, and points out how that city's fast growth and insatiable demand for housing are hollowing out some of what makes it most interesting, vibrant and resilient. Listen well, London is eating itself, an unfortunate side effect of success. Urban industry, including manufacturing, is especially fragile, under threat from a fast moving land market and the floppiness of planning. 

The case is made for ensuring a filigree of industrial accommodation right across London, for a city able to embrace its aggregates, its builders merchants, its waste re-use and its just-in-time production, its hirers, it’s showmen, it’s stock holders and deliverers. 

A good London would be proud of it’s many hundred car menders, of Ford and Caterham, Brompton and Mylands, Tate & Lyle and Dunhill, the Tesco, Sainsbury's and Asda depots, the Yodel, UPS and Parcel Force sheds, the scrap metal, glass and paper, the jewellery and leather goods crafters, the dress makers, cleaners, the scaffolders, the metal fabricators. 

Brearley argues that the city we want would let us see all these things, walk past them, on the way to elsewhere, appreciated and respected. In the city we want we would know about the diversity of industry, perhaps choose to enter that world because it is normal and everyday, choose to help make it stronger and therefore our city the richer.

This talk was recorded at the two day ISOCARP Congress session in Antwerp, October 2015, the first of several public airings of this engaging 35 minute run-through.

http://www.isocarp2015.org/themes/ant...
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/20...
http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesi...
http://justspace.org.uk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eW4GA...

Mark Brearley is a professor at The Cass, Aldgate, London. He heads the Cass Cities initiative, is the proprietor of a manufacturing business in Peckham, and is busy telling the world about over 2000 manufacturers in London (see Instagram: @madeinlondon.uk). 

Contact Mark Brearley at mark@mboffice.org.uk

http://www.londonmet.ac.uk/faculties/...
http://www.londonmet.ac.uk/faculties/...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkCHz...
http://websta.me/n/madeinlondon.uk
http://www.kaymet.co.uk
http://www.real-craft.co.uk/section76...

Terrifying loss of accommodation from industrial areas in London

[adapted from an email chain from Professor Mark Brearley]

There is now substantial loss of accommodation ongoing from industrial areas in London, due to the permitted development liberalisation. Industrial areas are not immune to this strip-out.

The below are excerpts from The Town and Country Planning (General Permitted Development) (England) Order 2015:

B1 offices

Class O – offices to dwellinghouses
Permitted development
O. Development consisting of a change of use of a building and any land within its curtilage from a use falling within Class B1(a) (offices) of the Schedule to the Use Classes Order, to a use falling within Class C3 (dwellinghouses) of that Schedule.

B8 storage

 Permitted development P. Development consisting of a change of use of a building and any land within its curtilage from a use falling within Class B8 (storage or distribution centre) of the Schedule to the Use Classes Order to a use falling within Class C3 (dwellinghouses) of that Schedule.

Most industrial buildings can be presented as B1(a) or B8 if an owner needs to (in order to, for example, get away with conversion to residential). I assume that very few industrial buildings in a city like London will have clear planning status, pinning them a particular one of those anyway-semi-meaningless B use classes. So it all blurs around, and the result is that most industrial accommodation, everywhere, is now triply at risk. At risk from Local Plans that fail to designate for policy protection, at risk from ad-hoc planning decisions that disregard policy, at risk from permitted development that goes around planning.

The image is of is an example, a building currently being converted to residential in one of the Old Kent Road industrial areas, I believe via permitted development. The same is happening in the nearby Parkhouse Street industrial area, against what even the gung-ho local planners would have allowed through planning application. The same is happening all over town, such as in the Lower Sydenham industrial area where a building, with a very unfortunate relationship to assorted fairly rough industrial uses such as a concrete batching plant, is turning residential.

Grim.

We are Londoners, we don’t want a suburbanised city.

Hackbridge industry is now nearly all evicted and the accommodation demolished. More housing estates coming soon. When Mark Brearley was at the GLA he tried valiantly to argue for a more subtle and mixed future, a more urban future, but to no avail... here's what's happening now:

Plan Zheroes Stop Food Waste

http://www.communitymaps.org.uk/version6/includes/MiniSite.php?minisitename=Plan%20Zheroes%20Stop%20Food%20Waste&minisite_group=plan%20zheroes

Fascinating!

Babies and the City

So, I have not blogged for nearly a year.

That's not what blogging is supposed to be about, it's meant to be regular. Sorry...

...but I have a good excuse.

I've been having a baby (my baby is called Tomas Clossick O'Sullivan and was born on 29th July 2012). Look at him. Isn't he lovely.

However, I am now returned to the serious matter of studying London (mornings only, the afternoons are taken up with smearing food about the place and banging objects into other objects). But before I start blogging about my research, I have some thoughts on London and babies. I have had an enjoyable maternity leave and it has been an eye-opener, showing me a whole underworld (or parallel world) of parents who occupy the same city as the rest of us, yet are excluded from much of what used to comprise 'adulthood'.

Babies are rarely seen in the cinema, in restaurants, galleries and so forth. This has become apparent as we have lugged our baby around to all of the above (he is a quiet little soul, and distinctly portable), and noted the lack of other parents and their children. At the same time, there is a vast array of parent and child specific social events (I speak from a very white, very middle-class vantage point here) - baby swimming, yoga, NCT friends' meetings in cafes or Pizza Express, where (mostly) women block the place up with multi-coloured baby gear and earnestly discuss the best weaning options. The nature of the parallel baby world is highly individualistic. One woman, one baby, go about their day together. Woman does the domestic work of baby-feeding, cleaning, cooking etc. and baby is entertained at some baby event or other. After a year or so of this toil, she gratefully staggers back to work to get some social contact and reestablish herself in the adult world.

The loss of extended family as people move away (particularly prevalent in London) means that (mostly) women are left entirely alone in this bizarre parallel world, and as a result they cling desperately together trying to find kindred spirits and another adult to communicate with who might have some modicum of interest in their offspring.

I am not remotely surprised that post-natal depression is so prevalent, as there is something deeply unsatisfying about a life in which the highlight of the day (indeed, the only event of the day) is a baby class where a group of maniacally grinning women sing mindless songs together while the babies look bemused, followed by a 'stay and play', where each mother-baby pair plays with colourful objects and the mothers try and sneak in a bit of adult chat in between. 

For parents the psychological effect of this apartheid are immense. To move from one arena (the baby-free) to the other (baby-filled) is discombobulating and strange, it shakes the base of your self identity. Suddenly your social life with child-free friends is gone, because children cannot be taken out at night to pubs, restaurants etc. Because of a lack of exposure to children on a daily basis, the child-free are afraid of, or at best disinterested, in children. This separation of worlds is self-reinforcing (if you only associate the presence of children with noise and annoyance, rather than fun and interest, you will reject the idea that they might be included in the adult world).

Almost everything child-specific seems designed to prevent them from becoming quickly and easily socialised, which is odd, because presumably the ultimate goal of all children is to become a functioning adult. For example, a sizable majority of restaurants and cafes do not have high chairs (or just unwelcoming) so parents congregate in a few places which are accessible to pushchairs, which quickly become zoos of squealing and running while frazzled women try and drink coffee together. Instead of enjoying the business of sociable eating together with adult companions (as seen in Italy and other southern European places where parents are not pariahs), children are placated with colouring pencils and boxes of toys. What does that teach about the value and pleasure of sharing food?

So what sort of measures do I suggest could be taken to ameliorate this unpleasant situation? 

One possible solution would be for people to work together with children in tow. For example, by forming housework and cooking co-operatives where baby-carers come together to achieve things (so, everyone gets together at one person's house and does the cleaning, while one or two people look after the kids). Similarly, the total exclusion of children from all working environments seems unnecessary. It wouldn't take massive imagination (with changes to break structures and working hours) to enable people to take their babies to work in a sling where possible (eg. working in a supermarket).

It is sad that such a blessing as having children is SUCH an imposition on ordinary adult life in our society, but it needn't be that way... we just need clever, creative solutions.

Turner Contemporary, Margate

This sunny easter weekend I adjourned to the faded seaside resort of Margate in Thanet on the North Kent coast, where the Turner Contemporary art gallery, designed by  David Chipperfield Architects, opened to a fanfare of regenerational enthusiasm earlier this month.


Margate is a peculiar relic of a bygone era, trying to find a place for itself in the new world order of EasyJet and Ryanair, steeped in the crumbling history of the British seaside resort. The coastline here is long, sandy, edged with cliffs and obsolete 20th century marvels - lifts, lidos, sea-pools and dance halls. The buildings in the tightly packed lanes and tiny streets are an essay in Victorian grandeur. Between the the two, the sea front is lined with hotels of varying seediness, bars, chip shops, candy stalls and giant sheds full of flashing lights and machines to put money into. On Saturday of Easter weekend, the place was bustling with families, couples on day trips from London and gangs of young people with tattoos and cans of beer, all with enough sunburn to rival Brits on the beaches of the Costa del Sol.


The turner Contemporary stands, a slightly snooty white beacon, overlooking the seaside hubbub. It is at the far Eastern end of the main Margate promenade, and is housed in a series (six, the Chipperfield website says) of pitched roof blocks which face out to sea. The blocks are unassuming in shape, rather like big garden sheds. They are bluish-white, entirely glazed with etched glass which is neatly and symmetrically housed in lattice of rectangular mullions.


Inside, the galleries are pale and peaceful, although the mono-pitched roofs create a lower side to each room which seems uncomfortable where artworks are tall enough to come close to touching the ceiling. They are flooded with north light, which filters through clerestory windows facing the sea. Swathes of beautifully laid pale grey concrete floors abut white walls, all of which are constructed delicately and well, with clever detailing and high quality materials. The main entrance is orientated west, opening with a cafe and bar towards the beach and the existing tourist information office, which is pleasant and inviting.


But (and there is always a but), when examined in the urban context of Margate, the Turner Contemporary is a wasted opportunity for a more complex and thoughtful approach to regeneration and integration of elements into a whole. It seems contemptuous of its surroundings, with three of its four sides having a 'back of house' air. It sits awkwardly oversized in a car park, which doubles as a launching area for the Margate lifeboat. The lifeboat shed is next door, about ten yards away, but Turner Contemporary does not even nod in its direction or acknowledge its presence.  Similarly, the Margate tourist office is just a few steps away, in the same car park, to the West, but the gallery makes no reference to it, no connection with it. On the South side, addressing the road, the disabled access ramp is enclosed by a two-foot deep concrete wall, which cuts off the external cafe area entirely from the street, so it can be seen from the west only, forming an impenetrable barrier between the land and the sea.


These qualities of 'blocking' - the view, the access to the sea, the access from the street - are compounded by the sheer scale of the building. From a distance, it is dramatic and beautiful, like the sea itself, but at street level, human beings are dwarfed by the concrete podium, which soars above their heads as they try to negotiate the badly controlled traffic in the car park which addresses the sea and links to the seafront promenade. The building does not sit quietly, as it ought to, in the patterns of movement through this place, where one can gently drift into the gallery, to the beach, to the chip shop and back again. In scale, in connections between land and sea, in openness and an egalitarian attitude, the Turner Contemporary is entirely at odds with everything else in Margate.


The task of regenerating Margate is an important one, it is depressed, crumbling and has very high levels of drug addiction. Yet physically it has all the ingredients of a fabulous seaside resort. It has flexible and graceful building typologies, a well connected and very urban layout, with streets and squares which trickle down to the sea and a couple of miles of sandy beach. If it had a university, it would be Brighton. In this context, it is hard to see any new, exciting buildings as problematic, particularly as the Turner Contemporary was a bargain at just £17 million. Yet, this building highlights a contempt for the importance of the urban realm, which seems absurd, given that this is a place where the outside is at least as important, if not more so, than the inside.

Comment is Free - The Procurement of Social Housing

This article concerns an experience I had while working for a large practice which specialises in social housing. Owen Hatherley is right to criticise the poor quality of provision of new social housing in London http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/feb/08/heygate-estate-housing-gentrification, and I would like to contribute to this argument with a discussion about the procurement process, with reference to a particular estate regeneration scheme in Kennington. 


In bullet point form, the outline of this article is as follows:

• Usually a client employs an architect (i.e. for a one-off house) and the architect responds to the clients need and desires in exchange for fees. The client is also the user. In the case of social housing projects, the client and the user (resident) are not the same, and have different objectives. Follow the money: the residents are not paying the architects.
• In the private sector, people express their preferences through the market - i.e.. they can move to a different building / location, whereas tenants in public housing have no such control. There is a semblance of control given to residents through the process of consultation, but they are given a Hobson's choice, and ultimately the process serves only to legitimise the clients decisions. Strangely, the more apparent control, the less actual control.
• In my example, the management of the estate had been transferred from the council after several round of voting ('just keep asking until people say yes' brand of democracy) and part of the transfer deal was that improvement works would begin on the estate in a very short timeframe. So the objective of the client was to get something underway as soon as possible, as cheaply as possible, with the minimum objections from residents. Making the estate a genuinely nicer and more socially successful place to live was not the client's objective at all.
• So, we need to change the way housing is procured, and the way the consultation process is carried out. Otherwise the years of training and thought which architects have is wasted, as they do what they are told by clients whose interests do not align with the users. The architect needs a new role, as mediator between groups, with a professional responsibility to uphold what is right and good in the built environment.