John Billinghan URBAN DESIGN - FROM DREAMS TO REALITY URBANISTIČNO OBLIKOVANJE - OD SANJ K RESNIČNOSTI. Urban Design Group (UDG), London

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1 URBANISTIČNI INŠTITUT REPUBLIKE SLOVENIJE Trnovski pristan 2, 1127 Ljubljana t: , f: URBAN PLANNING INSTITUTE OF THE REPUBLIC OF SLOVENIA Trnovski pristan 2, 1127-SI Ljubljana, Slovenia t: , f: j a v n o p r e d a v a n j e p u b l i c l e c t u r e John Billinghan Urban Design Group (UDG), London URBANISTIČNO OBLIKOVANJE - OD SANJ K RESNIČNOSTI URBAN DESIGN - FROM DREAMS TO REALITY Britanska praksa The impact of urban design on Milton Keynes and other places John Billingham je bil mestni arhitekt in uslužbenec oddelka za planiranje v Oxfordu, kasneje pa vodja oddelka za načrtovanje in razvoj pri Milton Keynes Development Corporation. Na svoji poklicni poti je od ustanovitve dalje sodeloval s stanovsko organizacijo Urban Design Group, urednikoval njeni reviji in kot soavtor sodeloval pri pisanju knjige o urbanističnem načrtovanju in oblikovanju v Veliki Britaniji in na Irskem z naslovom The Good Place Guide. Skupina Urban Design Group je bila ustanovljena leta 1978 kot promotorska organizacija, v kateri verjamejo, da urbanistično oblikovanje ni delo ene same stroke in da je ustvarjanje uspešnih prostorov odvisno od preseganja meja in od sodelovanja med ljudmi, ki imajo moč udejanjanja. Petindvajset let propagande s strani skupine Urban Design Group je veliko prispevalo k prisotnosti urbanističnega oblikovanja v političnih in strokovnih agendah. John Billingham was City Architect and Planning Officer in Oxford and then Director of Design & Development at Milton Keynes Development Corporation. He has been involved with the professional association The Urban Design Group since it was formed, edited its journal and co-authored a book about Urban Design in the UK and Ireland - The Good Place Guide. Founded in 1978, the Urban Design Group (UDG) is a campaigning organisation. It believes that urban design is not the job of any single profession. Making successful places depends on breaking down professional barriers and building collaborations between the people with the power to make things happen. Twenty-five years of campaigning by the Urban Design Group has played a large part in putting urban design on political and professional agendas. 28. september 2006 September 28, 2006

2 What is Urban Design We all know what we mean by good urban design but achieving it in today s society is different matter where accessibility by car has changed the environmental balance. traditional city: a sense of order, place, continuity, richness of experience, completeness and belonging Urban design lies somewhere between the broad-brush abstractions of planning and the concrete specifics of architecture. It implies a notion of citizenship: life in the public realm. It is not just about space, but time as well. Much of what passes for urban design is conceived only for one moment. Good urban design is more than just knitting together the townscape. Urban designers should be configuring a rich network in which buildings come and go: a framework of transport, built fabric and other features, which will create natural locations for things. Urban design structures activities. Kevin Lynch and Jane Jacobs both contributed ideas to the theory of urban design in the 1960s, in Kevin Lynch s terms trying to understand how people perceived the city. In Britain the Urban Design Group wasn t established until 1987 and its objective was to fill the gap between the architecture and planning professions. Architects were concentrating on the individual building and the planners were very systems oriented leaving the three dimensional environment untouched. Image 1: St Marks, Venice. Urban design wasn t used as a general term until about 1956 when a conference was held in Harvard convened by Jose Luis Sert who went on to establish the first course in that subject (even though civic design had been taught in the UK at an earlier date). The Dictionary of urbanism provides a useful definition of urban design: The collaborative and multi-disciplinary process of shaping the physical setting for life in cities, towns and villages; the art of making places; design in an urban context. Urban design involves the design of buildings, groups of buildings, spaces and landscapes, and the establishment of frameworks and processes that facilitate successful development. In the words of the writer and critic Peter Buchanan: Urban design is about how to recapture certain of the qualities (qualities which we experience as well as those we see) that we associate with the Francis Tibbalds was the moving light in this group and he expressed the principles as follows: Places before buildings Respect context Mixed uses Human scale Freedom for all to walk about Involve the community Legible environments Build to last & adapt Avoid wholesale change Promote cultural vitality & diversity. Prince Charles took a swipe at the architectural profession in the 1980s bringing the issue of style into the forefront although he did support very similar principles to Francis Tibbalds. To his credit he decided to put his ideas into practice and whilst one can disagree with his design details one good thing he did was to involve the community in design discussions. John Gummer was the first politician to support urban design ideas with a publication Design in Town

3 and Country in Key responses to that document were: Promoting mixed use Design Guidelines & Local Identity Environmental Awareness & Design Training Higher densities Local Involvement A change in government soon followed which slowed up these ideas but then the new government established CABE, the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment, and also set up an Urban Task Force. This was followed by a publication in 2000 entitled Urban design in the planning system: towards better practice. This defined the following objectives of urban design: Character - a place with its own identity Continuity and Enclosure - public & private spaces are clearly defined Quality of the public realm - attractive outdoor spaces Ease of movement - easy to get to and move through Legibility - clear routes and landmarks Adaptability - allowing future change Diversity - variety and choice. There has always been a discussion about whether urban design is concerned with process or is it about product. Most urban designers consider it is about process but the public and many professionals still need to see good examples. The Urban Design Group therefore decided to publish A Good Place Guide in This defined a good place with A Sense of Place as follows: Scale - human Uses - varied Environmentally friendly - sun, wind, noise Identifiable - distinctive Appropriate - context Accessible - space for pedestrians Continuity - connected to its surroundings User-friendly transport Local involvement. This publication included about 130 places and the best places included Broadgate and Covent Garden in London, Bristol waterside, Brindleyplace in Birmingham, Albert Dock Liverpool, Hull old Town Square, Coppergate York, Whitehaven harbour, the Quayside in Newcastle, Buchanan Street in Glasgow, Temple Bar in Dublin. Image 2: Bristol, images from the Good Place Guide.

4 Milton Keynes Milton Keynes was designated a new town in 1967 and demonstrates the way in which development changed to respond to urban design principles. It has been probably the most successful new town in the U.K. in terms of being able to provide as many jobs as the population required. The process is interesting in itself which enabled land acquisition, planning powers and investment to occur as part of the development corporation s activities. DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION PROCESS Regional Study Land Area Required Draft Designation Order Public Inquiry Designation Order Board Appointed 1967 Power to acquire Land - Finance from Central Gov. Key Staff Appointed Planning Consultants Appointed Master Plan Completed 1970 Sec. of State Approval Detailed Plan for First Area Submitted to Govt. Power to give Planning Permission for such areas Multi-Disciplinary Working Development of most of Designated Area Devt. Corp. wound up in 1992 Commission for New Towns takes over assets CNT wound up English Partnerships - successor to CNT Milton Keynes Council - Unitary powers MK Partnership formed in June 2004 Image 3: Milton Keynes Master Plan.

5 There were many mistakes made in the development although the principles were beyond criticism: Opportunity and freedom of choice Easy movement and access Balance and variety An attractive city Public awareness and participation Efficient and imaginative use of resources. The early developments in Netherfield, Bean Hill and Coffee Hall contained too much purely rental housing and were unrelated together failing to provide the connections that made the grid squares into a larger entity as part of the city. An Urban Design Unit produced a critique of these early developments and proposed local routes linking adjacent areas together with residential development concentrated on these local routes. The next area to be developed in the north east area applied those principles and achieved a design generated from a geometry related to the village church. Grid squares were linked together, gateway features introduced and a landscape strategy adopted which tied into the neighbouring canal structure. The revised design process for a grid square involved consideration of uses, movement strructure, landscape, materials and housing types. The housing range was related to the ability to pay of a typical cross section of people starting from income support through to high priced housing and plots. The city centre continued the grid structure and provided a serviced grid enabling development to proceed over a period of time as investment occurred. One major difference to traditional city centres was the lack of overlapping uses and the difficulty of providing cultural uses unless they were packaged with adjoining commercial development. The Development Corporation had the advantage of pump priming development before developers were prepared to risk capital but this benefit was removed by central government in the later years. Apart from its beneficial location the successful development of MK was built on good marketing and some typical slogans included: The use of positive features such as: Inner city riot - meaning flowers Bumper to bumper - showing narrow boats Critical of other places: Drive - stop - putt - putt - stop - at 6 pm you re on the golf course in Milton Keynes Still crawling to the boss - leave the jams behind - move to Milton Keynes And finally: One day we all go to a better place - Milton Keynes. Image 4: Local routes plan for continuous integrated movement.