Make everything ok

If 2011 wasn't a good year, press here.

Glasgow 2014

I heard a Scottish comedian talk about London's 2012 Olympics as a "warm-up" for the games we all know is important - the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. After 18 months immersed in London and the Olympics, I was reminded of this visiting architect friends in Edinburgh, and opening a drawer full of souvenirs from 2010, when I spent some time with Glasgow City Council's Planning Department. London has to a large extent turned its back on the rest of the UK, and its easy to forget there are exciting things happening elsewhere, even if the economic slowdown is biting harder. Among my Glasgow souvenirs, I've a series of beautiful postcards depicting Glasgow's Lighting Strategy, lending an elegance to the old industrial city (that I hope is being continued, even if there is no more funding for postcards), and a plethora of brochures on the Financial Services district (although key tenants include Direct Line and ACE Insurance - not exactly cutting edge multinational institutions.) I also remember attending meetings on the Commonwealth Games, which will bring investment and opportunities to Glasgow's East End, just as the Olympics is doing for the East End of London. For the gloomy regeneration practitioners out there, London 2012 is not the only show in town......

Edinburgh trams

Spend some time in Edinburgh, and people will soon be complaining about the delayed and over-budget tram system, which many of the mainly automobile-based Edimburgers regard as civic eogtism. This Christmas, the main shopping street is closed to all vehicles (or "open to pedestrians" as the tram people put it), as part of the tramsworks Christmas embargo. Princes Street will soon be full of Hogmanay revellers, but even in the post Christmas sales it seems underused, while George Street (where many of the up-market shops have migrated due to cheaper rents: Princes Street is I believe the only main street in Europe to have shops only on one side - with gardens on the other - making it incredibly expensive) is overloaded with buses, traffic and people.

Despite the terrible press, getting around this tiny city by bus I can't help thinking the tram will be wonderful for Edinburgh - when it eventually comes. The reason most people go by car is despite constant moaning about traffic and tram-induced diversions, you really can get from one end of the city to the other very quickly - if you go by car. Going by bus is another story however - in my experience it's mostly quicker to walk.

Alex Salmond - and the importance of visionary local leaders

For some reason I can't fathom, England doesn't seem to be keen on regional and local politics. The north of England voted against regional parliaments, kyboshing the previous Labour administration's devolution agenda. And when they had the chance to vote for directly-elected mayors in 2000, only 37 local councils (out of 353) held referendums on their introduction, and most voted against (25 against to 12 introduced). It may be that local politicians have so little power in the UK that voters don't see the point. Or they may buy into the theory that corruption in politics is endemic at local level (although if this is true, better to make the local politicians democratically accountable). England will shortly be given the chance to vote again for mayors - and I hope they see the light.
In Scotland, Alex Salmond's leadership has recieved a plethora of accolades, and even international recognition. The London-based Times voted him Briton of the year. Apparently (Murdoch's firewall prevents direct consultation) the newspaper hailed the SNP's win and a first ever majority government at the Scottish Parliament in a system designed to prevent exactly that. "He persuaded voters that he was a man of bold vision, a man who, with charisma, would be able to do things differently." Salmond is a captivating speaker who is bringing much-needed confidence and ideas to Scotland , and for whom I have great respect (even if leaving a room after hearing him speak, some of the magic falls away and you think 'hang on a second'). 2011 has been his year with awards including "Best Politician" at The Scottish Green Energy Awards and the "South Australia International Climate Change Leadership Award" from the government of South Australia. He was also named "Politician of the Year" by the Spectator magazine, the Herald newspaper and The UK Political Studies Association. BBC Radio 4 spoke about the inspiration of local politicians making things work for the places they know well.
 
Ken and Boris have both raised the profile of London politics, fought for London, and won respect for doing so. The dominance of Westminster in British politics is such that more regions should be clamouring for respresntation. The South East keeps claiming to be the bread-winner for the rest of Britain, but if policies were designed to stimulate other parts of the country and not just the South East, you would see a more balanced economy. If The Times of London (as the newspaper is known internationally) recognises the benefit of Salmond, hopefully this will inspire other parts of the UK to challenge the London dominance and show they have leaders with the talent, charisma and vision to make their economies and communities vibrant and confident and just as valuable as the South East.

Parliamentary Power

It's not often I agree with The Daily Mail, but I do like the way they chop through the government's proposed reforms to the planning system. And hurray! It appears that MPs have listened. The Commons communities committee today said that the changes - which reduce more than 1,000 pages of planning regulations to just 52 - need refined. As the RTPI, TCPA and others have long been saying, they found that the 'presumption in favour of sustainable development' is both vague - and open to legal challenge - and risks putting short term economic considerations ahead of our long term social and environmental interests. And a bit of legal certainty would help developers have the confidence to invest in the houses and places that we need.

Grade 1 listing for Lloyds

Since a gentleman I once knew gave me a 'new-to-London' tour of The City, I have been in love with the Lloyds building, whose inside-out architecture appeals to me in a way the Pompidou Centre in Paris never did (although I did enjoy the view and cocktails on the roof). I've also become aquainted with the British obsession with heritage status - an oddity for me after years of living in the ultimate museum city of Paris. I had adopted the French view, perhaps inspired by skyscrapers of The City, that England was more laissez-faire.
Interesting so, that modernity of The City and heritage status obsession should find common ground in the celebration of one of my favourite buildings: only 25 years-old the Lloyds building now enjoys Grade 1 listed status.
According to The Guardian: "The listing was recommended by English Heritage. Its designation director, Roger Bowdler, said it was "fitting recognition of the sheer splendour of Richard Rogers's heroic design. Its dramatic scale and visual dazzle, housing a hyper-efficient commercial complex, is universally recognised as one of the key buildings of the modern epoch.""
Hyperbole aside, for me Lloyds is about trying something new, something that took many people a bit of time to get used to, that drew our attention to parts we had been hiding. I find the building ugly and attractive in equal measures, but it grows on you in the somewhat-inexplicable way only great buildings do.

The Davos of London

Where to start? Billed as the Davos of London, the pre-mayoral election and pre-Olympics London Policy Conference really was much more than a stand-off between Boris and Ken. Both put in appearances, disappointing in different ways, but the intellectual stimuli and new ideas came from elsewhere.

One criticism I would have was that the focus was very much on London’s position in the global economy, with almost no discussion on its role as a capital city serving the rest of the UK. There was much lauding of the Olympics and the opportunities it brings, and talk of devolution – giving London an even larger advantage over other English cities - but almost no discussion over how London serves the rest of the country. Only at the very end did Greg Dyke, who when head of the BBC engineered the relocation of much commissioning power to Manchester, question whether it’s in Britain’s interest to, for example, continue to host the parliament in London.

Some of the most interesting contributions came courtesy of inspiration from abroad. NYC Transport Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan, was almost inspirational, talking of how New York opened up public spaces and cycle routes in crowded Manhattan. At the end of Day 2, former LAPD Chief of Police and NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton held an interesting exchange with the new Metropolitan Police Commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe, with both men arguing passionately for an enforcement culture than encourages civility, rather than a leftist ‘focus on the source of the problems’ poverty-based approach. Inspired by the U.S. – and trials by Strathclyde police – Hogan-Howe said he is in favour of introducing sobriety bracelets for offenders to reduce the alcohol-related offences that plague Britain. Dr Joan Clos, an Olympic-era former mayor of Barcelona, now head of UN Human Settlement, delivered an interesting message – that zoning is an unhelpful policy in a mixed-use environment – but in a dull multi-national-institution way that this crowd were not used to.

Boris, late as usual, entertained the audience with jokes we had all heard before – including a borrowed euro-sceptic FU (Fiscal Union) and FU2 barb – and inventive prose (the Anish Kapoor Olympic Park sculpture is going to “beckon people to East London like a gigantic mutant orchid”). He said nothing of substance, but if this audience were indicative of London public opinion (which it was not), Boris would be in for a landslide, judged on how full the room was and how loud the applause. Ken, on the other hand, was full of ideas, delivered deadpan, face down to his speech paper, after what seemed like hours of gloomy statistics read to us like a half-dead ghoul. He had a big announcement (or two): a London Living Rent and a not-for-profit public sector lettings agency. But it seemed like the fighting spirit was long gone.

In a later panel on the summer riots, the young Symeon Brown of the Citizens Inquiry into the Tottenham riots, showed how public speaking should be done. He said the issue underlying the riots was power. “Burning down buildings and looting gave people a sense of power, for one night,” he said. Speaking on behalf of the haves, Angela Knight, head of the British Bankers’ Association, gave a rousing defence of bankers, dismissing criticism that the finance industry wasn’t accepting its role in the economic crisis that is hurting so much.

Also worthy of note were business leaders Sir Martin Sorrell, CEO of WPP Group, and Willie Walsh, head of the International Airlines Group and the London Chamber of Commerce, taking a pop at Cameron’s disastrous European manoeuvres, which they fear will disadvantage and isolate London. As a former aerospace journalist I also found Walsh’s remarks about how the connectivity between East and West is shifting to the Middle East interesting. The shift doesn’t bode well for London, which is badly connected to emerging markets, he said. Estuary airport or more planes over London’s skies?

Dubai again - the dark side

Fantastic article on Dubai in The Independent – how journalism used to and should be: properly researched and incisive. During a recent visit, I felt colours of the sinister undertones described here, and the sense that this oil-fuelled attempt to battle the dessert into submission (on the backs of immigrant labour) cannot last, although as a fleeting privileged visitor I was spared much of the darker side. I did swim in the sea though, thinking that most people’s preference for the infinity swimming pool was because they could drink cocktails from there, rather than rancid pollution.

Bankers going green

By far the most impressive speaker - with the most novel ideas - at an NLA seminar on meeting London's carbon reduction targets, was a banker. Jenny Curtis, a director at Amber Infrastructure, talked about how she could help finance mass retrofit for the public sector through Amber Green Operations and the £100 million LEEF (London Energy Efficient Fund). Many lenders are apparently wary of investing in energy saving technologies, many of which are not proven, leaving the public sector to take the slack (and we know the problem with this in the current austerity climate). Curtis claimed by leveraging European JESSICA funds and RBS investment, she could offer cheaper money than almost any public sector money out there with less conditions and for a longer period (ie at least 10 years, which is the payback period required on most energy saving projects).
I hope it works. A way for bankers to redeem themselves by helping us save the planet!
Other presentations were interesting - Matt Turner of AECOM talked of energy mapping to show what technology works best in different environments, which sounded feasible. Emma Beal of SITA (a unit of Suez Environment) talked of large scale projects to use waste as an energy source locally, but the logistics of securing agreement from all the different parties involved sounded daunting. And the folks from Ramboll had some interesting lessons about planned large scale decentralised energy systems in Denmark - a dream that will never happen under localism (where the 'duty to cooperate' for local authorities does not even apply to infrastructure providers).

Cities and investment

Scottish investment managers Baillie Gifford have taken to sending me their monthly magazine Trust. In the most recent edition, they have an article vaunting the merits of cities and urban living (yawn). But something in this article (as opposed to the zillions of other pro-urban articles everywhere) caught my eye. According to Tom Slater, deputy fund manager of Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust Plc, investors are looking at cities - or mega-city-regions - rather than countries when deciding where to put their moola. "We're trying to get away from the traditional view of dividing up the world into emerging and developed markets," he says, explaining that in the U.S. they invest almost entirely on the West Coast.

Olympic Fun and Games

‘Urban Governance: Exploring the Political Legacy of London 2012’ was the grand title for a debate organised by the Olympic Park Legacy Company at Kings University. Except it wasn’t really a debate: it was more of a marketing exercise. Richard Brown, head of strategy at the OPLC, Neale Coleman of the GLA, and Charlie Forman from Hackney, whose job it is to promote the Olympics (or more specifically how the Olympics will benefit Londoners in the long term) all agreed that the political legacy will be fantastic: new, affordable homes; regeneration; and a new park and funky venues. Britain has learnt from the Millennium Dome catastrophe, and is ahead of the game: Coleman said Sydney didn’t have a legacy company until 18 months AFTER the games. Probably they are right. But I would have found it more convincing if there was a contrarian on stage – or even in the audience. They had put up uber-sceptic Mike Raco, an academic at UCL, but his convoluted points were batted away swiftly by Coleman. This was mainly an academic crowd however: I expect the public debates to be more lively.

Garden Cities

A strange coaltion promoting the Garden Cities of Ebenezer Howard is taking place, bringing together the left-wing environmentalist think tank he founded, the TCPA, conservative politicians, and the right-wing think tank the Policy Exchange. New towns that people love to live in, where people walk to work, are involved in the decisions that affect them, and enjoy above average public services. A utopia that could solve Britain's housing crisis, if only someone would make it happen.

The devil, as always, is in the detail. The TCPA, in a report sponsored by developers Land Securities who'd like to build at least two garden cities, supports planning new communities from scratch to provide decent, quality homes for working people, as Howard planned. Long term prosperity should be enabled by putting assets into community ownership - as in Letchworth - with financial provision (service charges? rents?) for the management of facilities. Speculative developers should be discouraged. Land Securities argues for public authoities to release land for development - presumably at knockdown prices - in line with their proposal for 5,000 new homes on MoD land in Medway.

Much of this chimes with the government's agenda. Grant Shapps, the housing minister who represents the people of Welwyn Garden City, hailed Garden Cities in an op-ed written for The Guardian. His plans to release surplus public sector land for up to 100,000 homes by 2015 could be used for large scale planned communities of over 5,000 homes. He even said he'd try and perusade local councils make their unused land available for development. The TCPA's insistence on community-led developments chimes with the government's localism agenda - although community consultation is hardly likely to speed up the planning process (a contradiction inherent in much government policy). The TCPA says the New Homes Bonus could finance schemes in certain parts of the country (TIF, CIL and LEPS are also new instruments that could enable financing and development even in these cash-strapped times.)

However, the real reason for right-wing enthusiasm for such projects was revealed by the Policy Exchange's recent contribution to the debate. It argues that planning rules should be relaxed to allow large scale development on green belt or (more easily) on brownfield land, and should be permitted if less than half of those directly affected object.

A recent tour round Hampstead Garden suburb by a friend who has lived in the area all his life was also revealing. Henrietta Barnet's planned settlement has much to commend it: schools, churches and adult education facilities are run by the community, and a community trust manages land use decisions (in conjunction with the council). Several different architects were employed for the 243 acre scheme, meaning a variety of different architectural styles in a well planned scheme with lots of green spaces. My friend's main complaint was the lack of any local pubs. While neighbourly relations are mostly friendly, the stringent planning rules do occasionally cause friction - apparently the reason for Batman and Robin's presence on this balcony.
However, although the scheme's initial aims were to provide housing for all income groups, no poor people live there now. Some of them are filthy rich: we walked past Jonathan Ross's mansion and ambassadorial residences aplenty. The value of such properties is undoubtedly another inspiration to developers and conservative policy. Clearly there are many different ways of re-imagining the Garden City.