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

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...

What the hell is a Local Enterprise Partnership?

On Wednesday morning I found myself in the Caledodian Club at 8.30am, eating posh biscuits and feeling decidedly out of place in a sea of suits. I was at a seminar, organised by the Westminster Social Policy Forum thrillingly entitled Regeneration and local economic growth in England - innovation, investment and the future for LEPs.

I went to this because I'd wangled a free ticket, and someone on the Just Space Economy and Planning (JSEP) mailing list mentioned it may be interesting, but I had no idea what LEPs (Local Enterprise Partnerships) were. So, in case you are as ignorant as I, LEPs are partnerships between Local Authorities in England and business bodies, which exist for the purpose of promoting economic development. There are 39 of them, and a bit more information can be found here.

LEPs were set up when the Regional Development Agencies were 'burned to the ground' (in the words of one of the speakers) by the Tories in 2012. If you don't know what they were either, they were then non-departmental public bodies set up by Labour from 1998 to promote development - you can find out more here. Significant for me is the London Development Agency, which came into being in 2000 when the Greater London Authority was set up (and we elected Ken Livingstone as Mayor of London) which has now been replaced by the pan-London LEP, nattily entitled the London Enterprise Panel (acronym also LEP).

With a couple of small peeps of dissension, the speakers at the seminar mostly agreed that LEPs are a good idea, and that the private sector is a source of bounty for economic development. Several key themes emerged over the course of the morning:

1. Flexibility – LEPs are not well defined, so they have the potential to be anything
2. Purpose – what are LEPs for?
3. Accountability – what are LEPs up to? In whose interests?
4. Resources – who pays for it and how is this significant?

Resources

In 2012 LEPs were set up on a wholly voluntary basis, with no resources and the expectation that activities would be self-funded by local business and local authorities (LAs). The problems with this are obvious. First, LAs have suffered massive budget cuts, to the extent that because there is no statutory requirement for them to have departments responsible for economic development, many have disbanded them (and consequently lost their expertise) altogether. Second, the types local business which would have money and time available to contribute would only be the bigger ones, who are already more powerful and don't necessarily represent the interests of small local business, and certainly don't me necessarily represent the interests of local non-business people.

Recently, EU money (from the European Structural Investment Fund and the European Social Fund) has became available for LEPs to apply for, with present project funding of between €95 and €250 million per LEP. They have the freedom to pool money from different funds, but significantly it must be 50% match funded from the private sector. This requirement is reflected in the disinterest in the money available from the European Social Fund in for building social housing or retrofitting existing social housing as low-carbon. The returns are low, so because the private sector must be closely involved it is unlikely to happen through the mechanism of LEPs, even though money is available for it.

European law dictates what can and can't be done and the European Social Fund is particularly interested in employment, education and skills. LEPs get the money, they draw up strategies for spending it (although several speakers said that actually spending it is more complicated than it sounds) and ensure that the proposed outcomes happen. The EU prizes delivery and performance above all else, but the majority of LEPs have a permanent staff of under 10 people, so how this actually happens was the focus of much debate.

Keith Burgess from the Federation of small businesses summed it up nicely. Although there are resources from the EU, do the skills and capacity exist to manage these? The LEPs are composed of private interests and local authorities,, with few which include local communities in the development. The UK Government is keen on locally-led growth... but growth for its own sake seems pointless, for whose benefit?

Flexibility

Professor John Shutt suggested the engagement of LEPs, it is hugely advantageous for universities and FE to be key partners, because every LEP is different, all over the UK. Economic restructuring of the city, developing new institutional structures to deliver economic growth at a city-regional scale, which is not an easy task.

Alex Pratt: For the first time in living memory we are sitting down locally to consider local economic imperatives. It’s the first time we’ve got buy-in from local businesses. 50% of the LEPs are Local Authorities. All LEPS are different, but in general there is much more business engagement than there was with the Regional Development Agencies.

Alex Pratt: Delivery is the focus of LEPs, the LEP network was devised in order that 39 separate solutions don’t emerge to solve the same problem. It will not go away soon, LEPs are set in stone (although how soon is soon?). Competition should be between between the UK and the rest of the world, not within the UK.

Purpose

Baroness Valentine, Chief exec of London First, explained that the Pan-London LEP works closely with London First on the long term economic development of London, focussing on things like HS1 and HS2, the Northern Line Extension. Other cities can learn a lot from the way these have been developed. London needs to invest in transport and housing in order to maintain growth, we have a projected population of 10 million by 2036.

John Shutt echoed this: Place matters, powerful city-regions are important in the global context, cities need to federate with one another in order to be globally competitive. The LEPs need to understand local institutions and economic situation. Place-based issues include leadership and governance locally, institutional restructuring of the LEPs, analysis of assets networks and places with development potential (to do this at a fine enough grain to appreciate the nuances of particular streets requires huge resources – local authorities certainly don’t know this level of detail).

There are problems with overlapping boundaries and places which lie on boundaries in terms of delivery, there needs to be policy in place to drive co-operation between LEPs rather than competition between the regions. London is particularly good at this, elsewhere is less so. Some places are combined authorities, others are not and it is a complex, evolving and contradictory process. Margaret Hodge in her report on the LEPs argued that not much of the money was actually reaching businesses.

Carol Sweetnam gave a run-down of I was particularly interested in Community led local developments, although I had great difficulty finding out about his on the internet afterwards – mentioned an orchard which apparently had regenerated an area, created jobs, community cohesion and all sorts of other things. THANK GOD FOR ORCHARDS.

Alex Pratt was an excellent speaker, very engaging and spoke without slides which was a nice change. In the UK in the length of a lifetime we have gone from being the richest and most powerful country on the planet to on which is £1.5 trillion in debt, with a series of crises on our hands – housing, obesity… what’s happened to us? Part of the problem is centralised economic decision making, and when things are centralised you get sub-optimal outcomes. There has been no strategic influence on the factors which influence production locally. We seem to have all agree that the private sector is the source of all things good. The problem is that the balance is wrong between the short term political priorities and the medium to long term economic priorities. The LEPs will possibly be a step along the way towards solving this, some by choice, some co-erced. We run a nationalised system, eg. skills are nationalised, the national system is ‘dug-in’, and the LEPs have less support than we might like to see ideally. Councillors sometimes see LEPs as a ‘slap in the face’

Accountability

Professor John Shutt established a core theme when he argued that they organisation around governance, resources and funding has not yet been established. John Shutt raised the question of governance, and noted that resources are required for LEPs to be accountable to everyone else in what they do, and as yet we do not know where the money for this comes from.

Keith Burgess from the Institute of Economic Development said The RDA valuation reports were going to be scrapped, and the Institute of Economic Development has saved them for the LEPs to use. LEPs are intended to be bottom-up. LEPs, what are they going to do and why?

Paul Watson from the FSB: Between 2008-11 95% of people who found a job found a job within a small business or set up a small business. Jobs in small business are jobs, and are also important for social inclusion, they often employ those who find it difficult o find jobs elsewhere. Local Authorities need to be empowered, and small businesses lack trust for Local Authorities. They suspect that LEP money will be used as an easy means of plugging deficits, and they have a poor record when it comes to ameliorating town centre decline. They see consultation as ‘tickbox’, and that LAs don’t take the time to engage in genuine consultation (I have observed exactly this in Haringey). LEPs need transparency, accounts, minutes, members’ interests – otherwise people don’t know what’s going on. FSB could find only 50% with published information. Governance of LEPs should be accountable to SMEs, which are a blind spot for a lot of LEPs. They need to ensure against ‘mission drift’ in which they drift towards becoming mini RDAs. LEPs should be about business support, ensuring local procurement for LAa. Business rstes reforms incentives (Enterprise Areas) are not working.

Comments

The problem here seems to be between the scale of the LEP, and the scale of a large proportion of the economic life in an area, which is SMEs. I wondered if there is any mechanism in place to help very small businesses, and those which belong to non-native speakers or those with a lower level of formal education. All in all, it seems there are 39 bodies throughout England who have the potential to bridge the gap between vast institutions which may be a source of money, and the individual business person who lives and works in Tottenham. But there are 59 million people in England. Divided into 39 LEPs that's 1.5 million people each. That's a lot of people for a small, voluntary, business-led organisation to be of much use. Which is probably why I've never heard of LEPs before.

The Big Meet: Addressing the National Place Leadership Gap

Last Thursday (17th July) I spent several exceedingly hot and sweaty hours in a big tent in the quad at UCL discussing the findings of the Farrell Review of Architecture and the Built Environment, "Our Future in Place". The conversation was focussed on two key questiones posed in the Farrell Review: Do we need a 'Place Alliance'? and would 'National Place Leadership' be beneficial?

To see tweets from the event search for the hashtag #bigmeet. There are some good ones, and there were some very interesting conversations on Twitter relating to conversations in the room. The findings will also be published later as part of the Evaluating the Governance of Design UCL research project.

"As a follow-up to the Farrell Review, The Bartlett School of Planning is holding a high level ‘Big Meet’ of cross-sector organisations with an interest in place design at UCL’s Bloomsbury campus on Thursday 17th July.

Drawing on current AHRC funded UCL research into questions of design governance and Professor Matthew Carmona’s recently published suggestions for how to build on the place leadership recommendations of the Farrell Review, the Big Meet will take forward this aspect of the review and seek to formulate a common manifesto or set of principles for advancing this agenda at the national level. The Big Meet will be followed by a meeting with the Minister for Culture, Ed Vaizy MP."

We were organised around tables of 8-12 people, arranged rather like we were at a giant wedding (the white marquee added to this effect). To promote discussion, Carmona had authored a short discussion paper, entitled 'National place leadership: three steps to filling the gap in England' suggesting a route to promoting the importance of place in the husbandry of our built environment. First, the 'Big Meet' with cross-sector discussion about the desirability and viability of a politically sanctioned emphasis on place. Second, the formation of a Place Alliance to bring together 'key players' to speak with one voice for the built environment. Third, the establishment of a cross party, politically independent Place Council for England led jointly by government and industry with its own non-governmental funding and objectives. This would be something a bit like a more independent version of government-funded CABE (which existed between 1999 and 2011, and UCL research suggests did a good job at improving the built environment, but didn't make many friends in the process).


What is the Farrell Review?

The Farrell Review, predominantly funded by Farrells, and commissioned by the Dept. for Culture, Media and Sport, examines the way the built environment is planned and designed, across agencies and stakeholders. It then makes recommendations for ways this could be improved. Primarily, it concludes that "...the built environment is extremely complex and that this complexity must be recognised within all our education systems, within the broadest professional life and within government at all levels." Astutely, the report recognises that what brings together this complexity into one arena is place - which is a combination of topography (buildings and streets) and society (people, their lives and interrelationships) as well as invisible institutional, legal and administrative structures tied to specific locations.

The heat is not apparent in this picture. It was, however, very hot.

Towards a Place Alliance

It was generally agreed that a Place Alliance (PA) has the potential to  advocate for places, above the competing interests of organisations and institutions who have a stake in them (ie. everyone). In terms of what the Place Alliance might actually do, this was as far as consensus was reached. How and where this advocacy ought to occur, by whom (are members of the PA invited, appointed or voluntary?) to whom (the public, government, industry?) and how the outcomes should be measured (in money, in 'well-being', in participation?) and then enshrined in what kind of policy (planning? economic? how do we control what developers build?) all remained up for grabs. This seems to be a taster for what is to come in such an organisation - the prospect of getting so many competing interests to speak with 'one voice' seems nigh on impossible, and also undesirable. It seems to me that rather than discussing the administration of such an organisation we would be better to begin with ethical questions, such as those asked at the London For All afternoon by Rachel Laurence of the NEF: what are places - who and what do they serve.

In the Review, as well as place being an ordinary word, place is also converted into an acronym: Planning, Landscape, Architecture, Conservation, Engineering, as the outline structure of a 'method', or a toolkit, for understanding and dealing with place. Alternatively, encompassing the 'concept' of place, the acronym Politics, Life, Advocacy, Community, Environment is suggested. As pointed out by Matthew Carmona, the possibilities for acronyms are almost endless: Particular, Location, Area, Conversations, Economy to name just one example. I fundamentally disagree with the abstraction of the word 'place'  because in its deepest essence, a place is not a concept. A place a concrete thing, rather than an abstraction, within which concepts can be accommodated, but which are always specifically connected to a particular location and geography. To frame it as such means the conversations around it get conceptual and abstract, rather than concrete and specific. This was a problem with much of the discussion, from which places themselves were wholly absent.

National place leadership

Introducing the second session, Carmona made some excellent points about the lack of collaboration at present in the highly fragmented built environment 'sector' (I would argue that it is not a 'sector', it is the underlying foundations of everything - in a very real way -  but let's put that aside for the moment and proceed with the jargon). He argued that the fetishisation of design, the tyranny of the market vs. regulation the NIMBYs and the BANANAs (Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anyone - I love it) compete in an unfruitful way, to the detriment of actual places. Rather like the first session, the second was dominated by questions of governance, funding etc. and studiously avoided questions of what the purpose and approach of the Place Council for England could actually be.

Comments

According to Farrel in his opening address, the Review seeks cultural change, focussed on well-being as an indicator of success. This is an oft-repeated trope and fails to address the key finding of the review: that places are complex, while 'well-being' is so simple as to be almost meaningless. The complexity of places is so deep that it seems rather grandiose to suggest that they can be managed and advocated through a single council. It also promotes the spectre of some kind of pattern book for good places, divorced form the real-life negotiation of civic conflict.

A successful urban structure of adaptability is the cause, not the symptom, of an apparently 'good' place. This is not something which can be achieved through aesthetically-focused design. Instead, it is the capability of the urban structure to moderate and organise the inevitable competition between the different interests of groups and individuals in civic society. It is tempting (as occurred at London for All) to focus on civic questions solely on the economy - particularly at the small scale. But urban structure is also composed of other kinds of institutions which contribute to the negotiation of conflict. The civic city depends on the people, their relationships with each other (embedded in place), sometimes more than on the organisations, particularly the global-scale organisations who are frequently those with the biggest financial stake in the creation or improvement of place.

The initial purpose of the Place Alliance should therefore be to establish an agreed ethical basis which would guide the activities of the Place Council for England, so it does not become the flagship for the present leader's personal aesthetic or BANANA based whims. Measuring the non-economic value of places is difficult or impossible, so success should focus on the extent to which a place enables the participation and commitment-to-place of the people who inhabit it. In order to do this, I propose that the organisation should be embedded in a network of actual places - in the dirt, the bin-collections, the piss on the street and the physically located conflict between councils, churches, clubs, SMEs and internaional corporations.

London for All: Opening up Debate on London’s Economy

For more details about this event see this link:

http://justspace.org.uk/2014/07/21/debating-londons-economy-can-the-global-city-be-a-city-for-all/

Yesterday afternoon I attended London for all: opening up debate on London's Economy, hosted by the Bromley-by-Bow Centre and organised by Myfanwy Taylor from UCL Department of Geography, collaborating with Just Space - a London-wide network of voluntary and community groups working together to influence planning policy. If you want to look up the Tweets made from the event, search #londonforall and #justspace.

Divided into three quick fire sessions, with speakers talking for a maximum of ten minutes, yesterday afternoon was a thrilling discussion about the many facets of London’s economy: its present, future, and how should we measure the value of what it contains. A main theme emerged: the dysfunctional relationship between The Economy (a global-scale phenomenon in which constant growth is desirable, and is measured in money) and the human-scale building blocks of that economy - the small and medium businesses that fill every nook and cranny of London’s industrial estates and high street hinterlands.

James Meadway, New Economics Foundation

It was generally agreed that the London Plan places too much emphasis on housing growth, at the expense of industrial land. The NEF's James Meadway described the huge inequalities of wealth in London, with simple but powerful graphs. The phenomenal house prices (a house costs 10 x average earnings) leads to a ‘wealth effect’, job creation and pressure on the housing stock, in a self-reinforcing system of unsustainable growth. Roy Tindle from LTGF also criticised the conflict between industry and housing, in which housing tends to win. London relies on its industrial estates for almost every system of distribution and it is this infrastructure that underpins our massive and hugely successful service sector.

Michael Bach from the London Forum astutely pointed out that impact assessments are lacking in the drive to increase housing density in London. The economies of most boroughs are based on small businesses, which require spaces that are both appropriate and affordable. While technically the London Plan is accountable (it is consulted on), Opportunity Areas are not accountable, resulting in the construction of something in the region of 250 new residential towers in the coming years. Although planning policy often stipulates mixed use at ground floor, residents do not want noisy or smelly work taking place at their front door. Similarly, as Sue Terpilowski from the Federation of Small Businesses pointed out, business cannot be forced to locate in inappropriate locations or premises, as exemplified by the doomed schemes where the ground floor remains resolutely unoccupied. This is no problem for the developer, who has already reaped their profit from the lucrative enterprise of house-building, but disastrous for place and the local economy.

The London Plan also ignores other key issues. Dianne Perrons of the LSE argued that supporting reproduction and gender equality through child- and elder-care produces growth comparable to construction of new roads, which is also contained within particular geographic area (and local commitment is a prerequisite for ethical city-making). The Women’s Budget Group highlights the issues nationally, but Perrons argued for a specific focus on London. The Chair of the London Assembly Economy Committee, Jenny Jones, pointed out that for Lloyds of London and Price Waterhouse Cooper’s, climate change will be the biggest factor impacting the future of London. It is a systemic issue, which will affect everything (from food, to land, to production), yet it is notably absent from the London Plan. She pointed out that we need measure of adaptation, not mitigation, to cope with the spectre of climate change, but that nothing is happening because “Boris doesn’t believe in it”.

An unusual mix of academics, business owners and other interested parties attended – and its rare to see these people in the same place. It was great to hear from the owners of small businesses in the second session, who have an embedded and embodied experience of what it means to run a business in London under growing pressure from increased rents – and whose voice is often absent from the debate. Truman Brewery is due to lose its Hackney premises in 5 years as the landlord plans to develop the site as housing. Patria Roman-Velazquez from Latin Elephant made the excellent point that much ‘regeneration’ (developer-led house and flat-building) is taking place in areas where migrants have settled (Hackney, Harringay etc. – this is particularly true of Tottenham). Migrant entrepreneurs contribute approximately £30 billion to the UK economy, and nationally migrants start 1 in 7 new businesses (in London this figure is much higher, I’ve met few UK born traders in the survey of small businesses on Tottenham High Road). Yet migrants also lack power and a voice, and their businesses and the places they have collectively crafted are undervalued by local authorities, in the face of the tempting potential for gentrification.

‘Where do we go from here?’ focussed on potential solutions. Jones suggested that land should be set aside for informal, community-led industries and economies, particularly those with low carbon impact. Ben Rogers from the Centre for London argued that London is THE global city, and that we should seek to maintain this position, as it is it hugely beneficial to all. To facilitate this, he suggested more autonomy for the London government, such as the ability to set property taxes appropriately (and gave the shocking fact that the penthouses at 1 Hyde Park pay about £1600 annual council tax). Terpilowski pointed out that accelerated growth is actually bad for small businesses, it is better to grow slowly and sustainable, and ‘scruffy is good’ ie. it’s what’s behind the façade (the human lives and their commitment to their work) that matters. It’s easy to confuse the symptom of economic and ethical success (tidy, nicely painted shop fronts) with its cause (positive, fruitful and sustained interrelationships between people and place).

Considering the London Plan is about spatial planning, space and place were not discussed concretely, although their presence underpinned the majority of the presentations. The small businesses who spoke clearly had a grasp of spatial issues, and how they are embedded in a particular place. According to an individual from the GLA, planners do not understand these issues, as they are reluctant to leave the office. As Tindle suggested, you need to visit your local industrial estate to truly understand what is at stake. From my own experience, you need to speak to business owners to comprehend the rich metabolism of which they are part, because disparate scales of economic understanding are brought together through the physical place and the topography of the city.

This was most well understood by Rachel Laurence from the NEF, who is undertaking a research project exploring new economics in practice. The problems we face are integrated, but the solutions we are devising are ‘chopped up’ between many different agencies. She presented a series of succinct and powerful diagrams, showing the ‘pizza’ of the economy, with concentric rings representing places, society, institutions and the myriad of other bits, connecting between the micro and the macro scales. She argued that in order to devise systemic solutions you have to beg

Rachel Laurence, New Economics Foundation

in by asking: what do we want the economy of London to achieve?

Planning is reactive, rather than proactive, allowing destruction of the delicate balance of the micro-economies of London and replacing them with mono-thematic developments. As a contrast to this, the ‘traditional’ high street is almost endlessly adaptable, with typologies and depth of block that can accommodate almost any enterprise. A 2 bedroom high rise flat can only ever be a 2 bedroom high rise flat – it can never be a solicitor’s office or an off license.

It is deceptive to look at flows of goods and wealth and consider economic growth as a good measure of the value of a city. The economy is not just about flows and movements of commodities, but of human lives, families, relationships and commitment to place. Well-being should be the focus and measure of the success of economic planning, rather than growth. Ultimately, the problem is that planners and government – both local and national – do not have the resources to build the city, and rely on private interests to do it instead. We need to find ways to moderate and control this process to the advantage of all.

Walking barefoot

Walking barefoot through the city is a wonderful, liberating experience. I do it sometimes on my short walk home between the Cass at Aldgate at my flat in Bethnal Green. It all began one day when my sandals broke when I was half way down Brick Lane, and I was left with no choice but to walk home along the tarmac, concrete and paving slabs with only my very own skin for protection.

It was a warm day and I discovered for the first time the range of temperatures underfoot. Where the surface is dark and smooth and has been in the sunshine, the heat radiates at around body temperature, and feels like the warmed marble surface in a hammam. In deep shade the ground is cooler, but not cold on a sunny day, since every part of the street is exposed to sunlight and the ground has a substantial thermal mass. As well as temperature, texture becomes all-important when walking barefoot through the city. Cobbles feel satisfyingly fulfilling and smooth when fitted exactly into the arch of a foot and I had never before noticed how rough and stony the road surface is, compared to the pavement. It must be both for economy, and to provide traction for car tyres.

With feet unaccustomed to walking without shoes, the road is sharp and prickly, and it is a relief to return to the velvety smooth surface of a concrete paving slab.The various signs and signals for blind people were also suddenly much more apparent. The bobble paving slabs to warn of a pedestrian crossing, and the stripy ones to warn of the entrance to a tube. I wonder if there is a code amongst the which as a sighted person you never need to engage with? [Yes there is! I found it here: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/289245/tactile-paving-surfaces.pdf]

Without shoes, I began to instinctively think through my feet, and connect lots of different experiences of materiality, economy and society. It brought to my attention the difference in quality of road surfaces in different places - more affluent streets with more tourist value have fewer tarmac repairs on which to catch and scuff toes. Smaller paving slabs in posher streets have more spaces that could conceal glass, but at the same time there is less likely to be glass or other rubbish there. Is this because richer people drop less rubbish and smash fewer glasses, or is it because the council cleans the more affluent street more thoroughly or more frequently? But in general the streets of London are fantastically clean. I can walk for a mile without shoes through central-ish London, being moderately careful, and get home with feet that are just a little bit dusty – no injuries, no vile substances. I wonder how many other cities of 8 million people could boast the same thing?

The experience of shoelessness impacts on the mind and the eyes - mine are usually staring ahead while I think aimless thoughts, or at other people, or at shops. Without shoes my concentration is focused on the street surface - where is most pleasing to tread, where is warm and soft or smooth, is there glass, or unidentified wetness, or vomit or dog shit to avoid. I can’t watch other people to see if they have identified my lack of shoes, my focus on my own feet pleasingly clears my head of other thoughts. It’s a meditative, grounding experience, which reconnects me to the earth… albeit through the many urban layers of city surfaces.

Multilingual Streets, London's Litmus Strips of Change

Last week I attended Suzi Hall's talk and discussion - Multilingual Streets, London's Litmus Strips of Change http://lsecities.net/media/objects/events/multilingual-streets-londons-litmus-strips-of-change. Sensitive and imaginative, Hall's work sits very comfortably beside my own, and the Ordinary Streets research project at LSE is a mine of fascinating information, and a pdf of the slides in the talk is available here http://files.lsecities.net/files/2013/06/UC_multilingual_streets.pdf.

Here are my notes about Hall's talk and the subsequent discussion:

High streets are places of many languages and cultures in very close proximity to one another. The shops are highly adaptive, and are often subdivided to accommodate very small scale business (eg. renting out a single hair dressing chair). This means that the high street supports the 'stepping stones' of business development for new arrivals, who can read the cultural and spatial set-up of the high road and often start a new business within a week of stepping off the plane.

The turnover of apparently poor high streets (eg. Rye Lane) is actually frequently greater than the turnover of affluent high streets (eg. Muswell Hill), even though they are viewed in the popular imagination as 'blighted'. Westfield, for example, provides fewer jobs and contains fewer businesses that an equivalent sized section of Peckham, yet took vast infrastructural state investment to build, whereas Peckham is effectively free. By pursuing regeneration through prestigious developments and high end 'retail offer' the real source of economic success on the changing high street (ie. adaptability in the face of rapid changes & immigration) is being overlooked. 

One reason for this is that councils do not have the means to understand the actual metabolism of the high street, because they use the wrong ways to find out about it (eg. phone and paper surveys by large companies such as Experian which do not reveal the important details, or are simply ignored by shopkeepers and business owners who do not want to be involved with officialdom). Hall proposed the solution of 'on-street events' which bring people together to they can mutually understand each other (in Peckham there is an affluent artists' community but their influence is invisible on the high road), but also talked about trade associations and partnerships who could advocate for the small business owners and help to allow the value of high streets to be recognised. It wasn't entirely clear whether she was keen on their recognition solely in economic terms (a la Mark Brearly) or in cultural terms. Both arguments are strong and she made them convincingly - although suggestions of means to make this occur were less convincing. 

In terms of differences between our work, she is clearly focused on the social/economic aspects of the high road and (for want to a better term) the 'spatial' arrangement is secondary. Some of her drawings were certainly of the 'depth' of the high road (which she calls 'one layer back') but she does not consider the relationship between the high road and two layers, or fifty layers 'back'. Her great advantage is that she is lucid and easy to understand (which was not immediately apparent in her PhD) and her ideas are attractive and 'saleabl'e. She also has some interesting survey methods which I am keen to discuss with her. We are very much on the same wavelength.

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.

Horizons of Involvement

Living in the city involves all sorts of things, it involves knowledge of customs, habits and language; knowledge of places, the way they are connected with each other and what purpose they serve; knowledge of institutions, systems and political structures at all levels and much more.The exercise of existing within all of this knowledge does not require that it be articulated at the forefront of people’s experience. Instead, living in the city involves embodying this knowledge through action, which here is called ‘praxis’.
Praxis routinely involves making decisions in the face of situations and settings that are composed of many layers and have many aspects.These conditions are horizons of involvement, and it is within these horizons that judgements for action and involvements are made.The horizons of involvement are composed of urban topography and architecture, as well as non-physical, institutional and systematic elements that are embodied in the city.

This is unlike the horizon found in perspective, where the horizon exists only with respect to the viewer (who stands at the centre of the universe). Instead the horizons of involvement in the city exist outside the individual who makes judgements within them; and are defined and located by the situation and its component parts – or the topic.The topic may, for example, be ‘café’, which has its own history, set of traditions, decorum, systems – all of which are embodied in a specific place (and in all places which we recognise as café).Thus, the individual in the café is not just ‘perceiving’ the café, as though in a snapshot with attached information, but is ‘involved-with’ the café, and all that the situation entails.

It is indicative of how utterly embodied such praxis actually is when one comes to describe it; the words do not come easily and a new vocabulary is required to write about it.Walking into a café to buy a cup of tea takes minutes, but to start to unpick the layers of history; cultural context; monetary systems; the details of human interaction and all its rules etc. that are actually required to accomplish the tea-buying will take pages and pages of text.Yet, it is an action that is thoughtlessly and habitually achieved by millions of people ever y day. All of this latent knowledge is a background and context which forms the horizons for involvement with the café, and that are not acknowledged until an involvement with the café occurs. It is these horizons with respect to topic that provide the shared and common ground for all people in the city, in which possibilities (within the constraints of the horizon/topic) can be played out.

Architecture and the topography of the city are the place where involvements take place, and it is within this common ground that architects work.The ‘language’ of architecture and place is a framework for understanding the depth (or the common ground of difference) and richness of civic life. It allows an ethical interpretation of what is found, since what is common to all ultimately concerns ethics.

Twitter survey - where is Dalston?

I am about to launch a scoping survey to define the edges of Dalston, on Twitter.

What I'd like people to do is name the roads which form the edges of Dalston on each side, as they understand it. Then I can see if there's any major discrepancies, or if there is general consensus about where the edges of Dalston lie.

Your participation is much appreciated.

Reply via Twitter to @Jane_Clossick. If you have no access to Twitter, please reply via email jane.clossick@gmail.com

Thanks!

Mapping the Riots

Here's an interesting thought:

This is a screenshot from http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/interactive/2011/aug/09/uk-riots-incident-map, focussed on north London, around Tottenham Hale. There is a clear correlation between the high streets and the rioting activities, particularly around the A10 just south of Tottenham Green, where three separate serious incidents occurred on the main road.

The reasons for this concentration on high streets is likely to be severalfold. First, the ease of access by transport/car/foot. Second, for looting, high streets are more plentiful than suburban residential roads. Third, unlike an industrial estate (as exists close to Tottenham Hale station), a high street has lots of ways to escape and a crowd can break up very quickly as it scarpers up streets off the surrounding streets.

The Guardian is at present, in conjunction with the LSE, carrying out a study in which participants in the riots will be interviewed, and the 2.5million Tweets about the riots will be analysed http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/series/reading-the-riots. It will be very interesting to find out how far the rioters traveled to access the place of rioting, as clearly everyone did not just step outside and begin rioting outside their own front door.

What is 'Depth'?

The title of my thesis is one of many things about my work which I do not yet fully understand.

It is 'The Depth Structure of a London High Street: A Study in Urban Order'. On Tuesday I was required to give a four-minute presentation of my research project, and I realised that I have not yet defined the word 'depth', although I have a good sense of what it means, I need to be able to explain it and define it, so I am not sloppy in my writing and thinking. It is an essential term when one is trying to be an urbanist (Google definition of 'urbanist' is: An advocate of, or expert in city planning):

There are so many ways in which the definitions of 'depth' below are apt. They capture the essence of what depth means when used in reference to the city, but none of them refer to the city, or to any of the structures which comprise urbanity [‘the quality or state of being urban’, but where ‘urban’ is used as Lefevbre uses it in The Urban Revolution, ie. all of society is now urban, it all exists with reference to the city and city-based global economies, even if it does not actually exist within the spatial bounds of a particular city].

Dictionary.com defines depth like this:

depth

   [depth]

noun

1.

a dimension taken through an object or body of material,usually downward from an upper surface, horizontallyinward from an outer surface, or from top to bottom ofsomething regarded as one of several layers.

2.

the quality of being deep; deepness.

3.

complexity or obscurity, as of a subject: a question of great depth.

4.

gravity; seriousness.

5.

emotional profundity: the depth of someone's feelings.

6.

intensity, as of silence, color, etc.

7.

lowness of tonal pitch: the depth of a voice.

8.

the amount of knowledge, intelligence, wisdom, insight, feeling, etc., present in a person's mind or evident either insome product of the mind, as a learned paper, argument,work of art, etc., or in the person's behavior.

9.

a high degree of such knowledge, insight, etc.

10.

Often, depths. a deep part or place: from the depths of the ocean.

11.

an unfathomable space; abyss: the depth of time.

12.

Sometimes, depths. the farthest, innermost, or extremepart or state: the depth of space; the depths of the forest;the depths of despair.

13.

Usually, depths. a low intellectual or moral condition: Howcould he sink to such depths?

14.

the part of greatest intensity, as of night or winter.

15.

Sports . the strength of a team in terms of the number andquality of its substitute players: With no depth in the infield, an injury to any of the regulars would be costly.

At its simplest level (and by definition, depth has many levels), it is  a dimension taken through a city or body of buildings, from one point to another either vertically or horizontally. This dimension is physical, a measurement of things which exist in the world and can be touched and seen. So, for example, the depth of the block adjacent to the high street is its dimension from front to back, and its layered composition, such as: shop front; rear of shop; yard; garden, kitchen, living room, front garden, street.

The dictionary definition of ‘depth’ includes references to seriousness; emotional profundity and intensity, (as of silence, colour, etc.): eg. the depth of someone’s feelings, and to the lowness of a voice. Thus, the word depth is a metaphor; it was born of a physical experience in the world (a dimension through space, an object or a body of objects). But it can also be used to represent ideas that also have this quality. So, the structures that comprise urbanity have a ‘depth’, which refers to their complexity and obscurity, their many layers and to their interconnectedness in all dimensions. These structures are manifold, just a few examples are: economy, society, legislation and government.

However, depth also refers to the unknown and the unknowable, usually as ‘depths’ eg. the depths of the ocean, or to an unfathomable space or abyss, eg. the depths of time. So, by definition, the depth structure of the city is, to some extent, always unknowable. It is impossible to fully know everything about the economy, society, legislation etc. in the medium of words, or in one human mind, or in a diagram or image or essay. This knowledge as a whole exists only in situ, ie. The depth structure of the city IS the city itself. So the praxis of the city, and an interpretation of this, is the way to access depth.

The depths are also the farthest, innermost or extreme part or state, eg. the depths of the forest; the depths of despair. Certainly not unheard of would be a phrase such as the depths of the slum, or the depths of the ghetto, usually referring to a tangle of city and people where undesirable and frightening things take place (which also picks up the definition of ‘depths’ as a low intellectual or moral condition). This relates back to the unknowable nature of depth, and the depths of the city would be a place where there are layers and layers of physical and non-physical structures all collide and mesh and mutually change and affect one another in a complicated multi-dimensional way.

Finally, depth also refers to the amount of knowledge, intelligence, wisdom, insight, feeling etc. present in a person’s mind or evident in some product of the mind, such as an essay or artwork, or the city itself, the product of collective minds. There is knowledge, insight and wisdom required to try and comprehend the depths of the city, and at the same time knowledge, wisdom and insight have created it, and continue to create it. It is also a jointly imagined reality that everyone who moves through it participates in – the complex social, economic, historical rules, values, and systems which do not have a physical shape are a product of the collective.