Neighbourhoods

What we gain from the public realm

Travelling a fair bit lately. In the last couple of days on trains I have...

...heard someone say they got a cheap ticket from London to Aberdeen, eight hours, 'I just went for the ride'

...heard someone explaining why he keeps smoking rather than endure the stressful cure. 'I like a fag first thing in the morning to clear me lungs'

...half-watched a young woman perform a 20 minute phase of what may have been a marathon meticulous make-up, including fastidious uprooting of eyebrows, the full MOT

…witnessed a clear example of a curious trend, where a couple sit apart from one another in a sparsely populated carriage, and then talk loudly across the compartment. (In terms of irritation level, it compares with insensitive use of the mobile phone, but there is a good tactic to deal with it: you simply go and sit ostentatiously next to or opposite one of them, it makes them realise they are not at home in the lounge)

...heard a tattoo-festooned and behooded young person strike up a conversation with an elderly couple, she saying it’s nice to have a chat and the lad saying 'I met my best friend on a train.'

And I just sit there like a sad blogger. But something I relish about the micro connection with others, without which we would not be able to know ourselves.

Suburban gaze

This image is by Christopher Campbell and comes from an exhibition of paintings about London's infamous A406 North Circular Road. To most people who have to negotiate it, the North Circular is an obstacle or a set of traps, not a road in which people live. Yet the homes were built to the high expectations of suburbia.

If you've read Edward Platt's fascinating study of the homes and inhabitants of the (not dissimilar) A40, Leadville, Campbell's images will be all the more compelling. Like Platt, Campbell takes the mundane, refuses to heat it up, and yet still creates something I'm reluctant to look away from. The exhbition is at StArt Space, Columbia Road, east London until 25 May.

Among the comments Edward Platt made from his interviews with residents, I'm occasionally reminded of this one:

It is not the noise on the road, but the noise of her neighbours that upsets her.

Community groups' survey on open spaces

CABE have set up a survey for community groups to find out what they need to help them create better open spaces.

This was the scene taken a few years ago outside a community venue in Brent where I did some work.

And this is an aerial view of internal estate space, from a tower somewhere in London. It's crying out for kids playing ball, an occasional BBQ or street party and community drama in the summer.

Which helps make the point that often it's not necessarily the redesign of spaces that should be prioritised, nor even provision of funding for creative solutions, but facilitating the release of energy by bringing people together and helpng them shape their own ideas: ie community development. Plus a few hundred quid maybe for a tent, some tables and a BBQ.

Death to the springy chicken!

To the RSA last night for a debate on 'home is where we start from' organised with the Family and Parenting Institute and chaired by Polly Toynbee.

And thank you Sarah Gaventa of CabeSpace, for a clear and passionate articulation of the arguments some of us have been trying to make about children and play in the neighbourhood: 'kids have to get out of playgrounds' she said, adding a well-aimed swipe at the obsession with safe play equipment - 'death to the springy chicken!'

Because there are some confusions over what is being argued here - see for instance some of the comments posted in response to this BBC piece - it's maybe worth making the point that children's imaginations are not the problem.

What I see as the problem is the government-led, adult-endorsed preoccupation with ordering and controlling childhood. Of course kids can have fun on a springy chicken/parrot/hippo/whale/dolphin; but designed, controlled environments to the exclusion of genuine adventure and the discovery of risk, are not desirable in the long term.

(In theory, you can hear the RSA debate here, but I couldn't get any life out of it).

Play in the street: a straw poll and a doodle

Society Guardian tomorrow is running some comments on the government's play strategy which has been published for consultation. (My two euros-worth on JoePublic. More here). Trying to get a handle on the issues, I did two things.

First, I ran a straw poll among contacts to see what they thought was the single biggest obstacle stopping children from playing in the streets. I got 22 responses, not all easily categorised but with eleven people saying cars or traffic and seven referring to parental concerns or perceptions. Some people made the reasonable point that in their areas, children and young people do occupy the streets.

While the responses were coming in, I tried roughly to flowchart the parental decision-making process to see if doing so would bring any clarity to the issues.

I don't pretend to be any good at logical or sequential thinking, and I've no experience at doing flowcharts in theory or in practice. I do have experience, albeit some years since, of taking decisions to do with my children's play.

My doodle proceeds through questions about the weather (issues around screen-based entertainment if the children stay in); do they have friends to play out with? In view? Safe spaces? If there are safe spaces, are they in the street or segregated?

At the bottom I scribbled 'Too much traffic?' and a subsidiary question, too seldom raised: 'Too many cars?'

I noted John Adams, in a letter in yesterday's Guardian, claiming that:

'Since Labour came to power the country's motor vehicle population has increased by almost 8 million. To provide just one parking space for each of these extra vehicles would require a car park equivalent to a new motorway stretching from London to Edinburgh - 90 lanes wide.'

Nope, can't get me head round that. I scribbled on:

'Invent fold-away car.'
'Stomp all over them.'
'Wait for policy to confront car lobby.'

Further suggestions welcome.

Green homes, the N word, and local alliances

I've moaned often enough over the years about the uncritical and unreflective use of the C word, but I've hardly mentioned the trend in using the N word (The C word has a companion). (Although, naming no names, I've been quietly admiring the effortless way one well-known academic writer switched as if it were just a question of Find and Replace).

So here's an interesting example - the government's £100m 'Green Neighbourhoods Initiative' launched yesterday which we're told

'will give a green makeover to up to 100 neighbourhoods in England with an aim to reduce their carbon footprints by more than 60 per cent.'

At first sight it's not about neighbourhoods, it's about homes and their owners' use of energy. But it's a laudable aim, and it has a neat contortion that seems to have been missed by commentators. The initiative will call for local alliances -

'between householders, community groups, local authorities, energy suppliers, private companies, and banks to bid for funding. To receive funding, bidders will need to join together and commit substantial levels of funding from their own resources to help transform the environmental performance of a street or local area.'

I'd say that was a gamble, which I applaud. Will people be bothered or motivated to get together and act collectively? Will it just be the ones with the social and cultural capital ('their own resources'?) in the wealthy areas, who get their large but inefficient Victorian terraced houses made over to be worth more when it comes to resale? The press release refers to 'poorly insulated tower blocks' so perhaps the work of the Sustainable Tower Blocks Initiative will finally be followed up after all these years.

It will be interesting to see how well the fund gets taken up. And I hope someone's going to evaluate it from a community development perspective: how do the alliances get formed, and what else springs from their coming together?

Looking after our houses

I have long found that the occasional glimpses I get of tv programmes about property speculation make me cross. If people try to make conversation about the value of their houses or, worse, anything to do with having more than one, I have to knock together an imaginary trapdoor and exit unapologetically.

Recently I've spent time up a ladder painting awkward bits of wall, it's so much fun, and pondering the responsibility of looking after the housing stock we're lucky enough to have. And I just came across this forceful line in Joe Moran's excellent Reading the everyday:

A whole cultural economy has evolved, consisting of out-of-town stores, television programmes and books, to persuade us that DIY is a source of pleasure and profit, instead of a form of unpaid labour in which an economic system that has singularly failed to replenish an aged housing stock sells us back the tools to patch up our dilapidated houses.

Civilised streets

Is it actually possible to design a street that meets everyone’s needs?

'Most of our streets are not civilised, enjoyable places to be. They are mainly noisy, polluted, hazardous and unpleasant – with serious social and environmental problems the result.'

This is from a new CABE briefing on Civilised streets.

'This briefing is about the sort of streets that are – or are intended to be – used for a range of different purposes, such as walking, driving and shopping... It is about why, and how, we should be creating streets that are civilised...'

CABE rightly argues that streets that have no casualties simply because people have deserted them are actually failures in terms of their social function.

'We think it is vital that streets are designed and maintained in a way that attracts people and we support street design that encourages users to consider others.'

I gave someone a lift in my car recently and she was bemoaning the high cost of petrol. When I told her I thought the price should be considerably higher to reflect its real cost, it shut her up completely - I suppose because some people find it hard to think beyond their own lifestyles.

So given the gloomy prognosis that the voice of the car lobby will for some time remain dangerously strident, this document is for me a contribution to the sound tactic of undermining it by subversion rather than confrontation. We may well come to be very thankful for the political balancing acts that outfits like CABE are playing.

What it really means to lose the plot

Tesco takes on its competitors in Hadleigh, Suffolk:

Valerie Barber, 67, a member of the Bridge Street Allotment Association, stands to lose the plot she has nurtured for 42 years if Tesco is given the go-ahead to turn allotments into a car park.

More here.

The supermarket's response was of interest:

"No allotments will be lost, but unfortunately some will be moved, and we will be happy to meet and discuss these issues with all those concerned. We will work with them on the best soil for new plots and will bring in professional help if needed to ensure allotment holders get the best possible growing conditions."

When I think about the politics of this massive company in its dealings with small local councils - let alone small local vegetable gardeners - the comment suggests a degree of consideration that we might not have even imagined twenty years ago.

All the same, the UK's dominant supermarket, doubtless defended by some very sharp legal and accounting brains, is unlikely to be able to calculate the value of the emotional investment that this woman has made in her small patch of land over four decades of tendering. It's called growing food, and it matters.

The pic I took at about this season, a couple of years ago.

Green cheer

I've been in the Lake District for a few days, which got me pondering the way in which landscape (any landscape, it doesn't have to be A Grade) seems to make people more agreeable.

With impeccable timing, here's Natural England, arguing that people living in towns and cities should have:

• an accessible natural greenspace less than 300 metres (5 minutes walk) from home;
• statutory Local Nature Reserves at a minimum level of one hectare per thousand population;
• at least one accessible 20 hectare site within two kilometres of home; one accessible 100 hectare site within five kilometres of home; and one accessible 500 hectare site within ten kilometres of home.

There's a glossy, a report on accessible natural greenspace in towns and cities,
and a report on green networks with multiple uses in and around towns and cities.

Confession: the image is from Scotland, not the lakes.

Bog post

A few years back I quoted from Paul Carter's book Repressed spaces -

“Residents don’t need signs, only foreigners do… In this sense, all signs are signs of not belonging, of coming from somewhere else."

To a lesser extent this applies to toilets, at least at the neighbourhood level. If you live there, you probably don't need to know where the bogs are. Nor do you want visitors pissing on your park shelter, cos it stinks. Good, I'm glad that's clear.

Now, here's the government coming up with a strategic guide on improving public access to better toilets, and quite rightly telling us that

the state of our public toilets should indeed be a mark of civic and community pride.

Good initiative, no doubt there will be lots of talk about floor targets, and worse jokes to come. I note that proposed measures include the new 'SatLav' schemes, whereby you can receive information on your nearest toilet and opening times by text on your mobile. 'In three metres, take the first urinal on the left.'

The press release tells us that 'Communities Minister Baroness Andrews will encourage councils to consider a range of innovative ideas and actions to boost the availability, and quality of, public toilets.'

How sweet is that? After 100 years of the Labour Party, mostly oriented to the interests of ordinary people, we have their policy on our slashpans announced by a baroness. And I don't even know what a baroness is.

What Robin Hood did for the poor

There's a short BBC news piece by David Sillito about growing disagreements over the proposed demolition of Robin Hood Gardens in east London - yer classic slab estate, or a masterpiece of twentieth century design? As David says:

It's a familiar process, blowing up the sixties' and seventies' mistakes.

Cut to Lord Rogers taking the chance to tell us how marvellous the architecture is. More here on the campaign to get it listed. Hang on, what's it like to live there? According to Sillito 80% of the residents don't think it should be saved.

Here's an alternative take on the architects in question, the Smithsons:

Robin Hood Gardens, a 213-home council housing complex in East London, gave them the chance to practise what they preached on a grand scale. It was disastrous. The brutalist concrete structure turned out to be defective, but the social aspects were worse: Robin Hood Gardens became a hotbed of crime. The Smithsons were exposed as both arrogant and fallible.

I'm not qualified to conclude what would be best here, but I want to just note the way in which the architects' arguments tend not to give primacy to the question of what it's like to live there. There seems to have been thirty-five years of accumulated misery for a lot of people, but that's not necessarily part of the equation. The terms of the debate about Robin Hood Gardens, for the professionals, risk putting housing as artwork (or perhaps prescribed lifestyle as artwork) right in your face, non-negotiable. Which is interesting because the lifestyle prescription was problematic precisely because so little of it was negotiable.

Here's a flavour of the recognition for the building (from):

As a crucial part of the very small built oeuvre of Alison and Peter Smithson, it is hardly impossible (sic) to overestimate its value, esp. with regard to the international debate on modern architecture in those years.

We're invited to help save this building because of its iconic aesthetic status, according to standards largely independent of the quality of everyday low-income life. Maybe there could be an argument for such detachment, but it gets clouded by the economics of social policy. I guess the folk at CABE work all the time where these tensions are crackling.

And the trouble is that as soon as you see Peter Smithson mouthing about it as 'an exemplar of a new mode of urban organisation' (in a spooky clip reminiscent of Peter Cook) you know you're up against that fundamentally stupid human habit of telling other people how they should live and using some system to try it out on them. (Stupid in the sense of repeating an approach that has failed in the past). Modern architecture was fatally corroded by insistent rhetoric (still echoing) about brutalism, which sought to deny variety.

One of my lasting early memories was of going round some east end estates with my dad, delivering christmas parcels for Stepney Old People's Welfare Trust: I didn't know it at the time but I glimpsed a moment in the exhaustion of working class culture. The ghostly poverty that brushed against me was very modern in its disconnectedness, which I suppose is why we were there, being hesitantly philanthropic. At a relatively tender age I knew about not imposing, about what I now call 'allowing people', but I didn't realise the architecture was the supreme imposition, the supreme way of not allowing. What I think I did understand vaguely was to do with people's right to be different within their commonality. And the way we built in those days was unmistakably trying to deny that right.

Neighbourhoods in an ageing society

The UK government describes its National Strategy for Housing in an Ageing Society, published today, as 'the first of its kind in the world,' which if true is slightly depressing but these things always take longer than you expect. Anyway, this is the sort of thing this government does well.

What I like about the approach is that this is not just about building to age-friendly designs - desirable and long-overdue as that is - and supporting that with  repair and adaptation ('handyman') schemes. It also seems to be driving deliberately at the idea of lifetime neighbourhoods and 'age-friendly cities' (which is one of the ways in which the new eco-towns are being packaged).

The Government is clear that urgent action is required now to better design communities and support older people. The Strategy is key to better meeting older peoples' aspirations to remain independent in later life.

Am I being naive and over-optimistic to think that lasting initiatives promoting neighbourliness could be built on this platform? I really think it can happen.

Press release.

Street of data

Here's an enticing, nicely-paced extended sketch on uses of technology in the high street, by Dan Hill over on City of Sound, arguing that

the patterns of data in the streets, the systems that enable and carry them, the quality of those connections, their various levels of openness or privacy, will all affect the way the street feels rather more than street furniture or road signs.

I quite like the vignettes he didn't develop, like ‘a writer denotes the ghostly presence of a 12th century market using psychogeographical markup language’ ...

This piece got me leafing back through stuff by Stephen Graham and William Mitchell, and other work that hasn't really aged but is nicely crystallised by Hill's crisp scene-setting. Enjoy.

Places to Go? conference

The latest Living Streets newsletter tells us that to get back to child-friendly public spaces we need 'a range of concrete measures.'

We can be sure that the real and the metaphorical will be clearly distinguished at the conference Living Streets are running with Play England, Sustrans and the National Children's Bureau:

The Places to Go? conference will explore the opportunities represented by The Children’s Plan and address some of its challenges. It will present policy and practice for professionals in planning, landscaping, play, school travel, public health, traffic and transport. It will explore links between the twin imperatives of creating a public realm that is enjoyable, healthy and accessible to children; and environmentally sustainable.

The conference takes place in London, 20 May 2008. Flier.

Awaiting development

A typical estate, the blocks boarded up. I just wondered, do they always have to take the trees?

Hans Monderman, 1945-2008

The death has been announced of Hans Monderman, pioneer of shared space. Have we learned enough to cope without his wisdom?

From the Times obituary:

Hans Monderman pioneered the concept of the 'naked street' by removing all the things that were supposed to make it safe for the pedestrian - traffic lights, railings, kerbs and road markings. He thereby created a completely open and even surface on which motorists and pedestrians “negotiated” with each other by eye contact.

Comment from Ben Hamilton-Baillie on wikipedia:

What is so remarkable about the man is that he has achieved such a transformation in thinking from the basis of a traffic engineer (not a profession famed for its profound thinking and original analysis). Through remarkable persistence, patience and professional commitment he has managed to put in place well over 100 'shared space' schemes, transforming the urban and rural landscape of his native Friesland, Groningen and Drenthe. I have never met a man so generous with his time, so modest and unassuming about his achievements, and so humane in his application of technology to the benefit of everyday human society.

Previously:

Cross with caution

Psychological traffic calming

Formal and informal in public space

The revenge of the public realm.

Investing in playgrounds, investing in streets

I came across these two metal ghosts, looming from the echoes of playing children, defying the overgrowth. Then I trotted home and continued reading Tim Gill's No fear.

He recalls the execrable 1980s tv programme That's Life, which ran an over-excited campaign for safety surfacing on children's playgrounds. One consequence was that the costs for authorities to provide facilities rose steeply: combined with the fear of litigation, this gave rise to a reduction in funding for other measures, and then a reduction in the provision of play areas.

The rubber surfacing most commonly used costs up to 40 per cent of the total capital cost of a playground. This means that, over the decade or so following the That's Life playground safety campaign, perhaps £200 to £300 million has been spent on a measure that, on the most optimistic assumptions, would have saved the lives of one or two children.

The same period saw perhaps 1,300 child pedestrians killed and around 40,000 seriously injured, most on streets close to their homes. Cost-benefit analyses show that residential traffic calming is at least ten times as effective in reducing accident numbers as playground safety resurfacing... The same sum would beyond doubt have saved far more lives if it had been invested in streets rather than playgrounds. Simply providing more playgrounds may have saved more lives, since it would have reduced children's travel distances and hence the likelihood of being run over.

Claims over neutral territory

I took this hurried image with my phone when I was in Antwerp city centre. The building is a large school which apparently has pupils from about 80 different nationalities. It's adjacent to an area with street prostitution.

The sign says 'no peeing against our classrooms.'

From private to civic to 'community'

The government has published a vision for 'a new generation of open, accessible, inviting and environmentally friendly fire stations where communities can come together socially and crucially hear key fire safety advice.'

Since I'm doing quite a bit of work with public libraries as local resources, I found myself reading the press release substituting 'library' for 'fire station'. The parallels are curious.

The design of many fire stations - often intimidating and closed-looking Victorian buildings - does not make them naturally inviting places for the public.

Stations can also play a greater role in promoting good community relations by opening up to them...

The guide also suggests new uses for fire stations that would encourage the local community to visit their local fire station and thus help in engaging with the community to spread fire safety messages. The suggestions are:

• hosting community events and services;
• on site cash points;
• providing car parks in rural areas; and
• providing space for art displays.

Some years ago I ran a workshop for the Library Association London branch, before which I put images on the wall and asked participants to identify the theme. The pictures included a doctor, a 19th century fire engine, a lifeboat, and a community-based online centre (I can't recall the others).

This was about perceptions of public ownership. People forget that until my parents' generation, medical care was not publicly funded in the UK. The lifeboat service has never been publicly funded, and the fire service developed as a private initiative of insurance companies.

So it's interesting to think about the transformation of fire stations from private through civic to 'community' buildings. Is this pattern comparable to that of libraries? If so, what comes after 'community'? Personal?

Sense of place: designing-in neighbourliness?

With all this housebuilding going on and planned, questions are raised more often about the quality of residential design and layout. Even getting that right isn't going to guarantee the promotion of neighbourly relations, but you'd have thought it was an important start.

CABE is on the case, and has just published research into the views of residents of new homes completed within the last three years. The study blends two surveys, one involving 643 residents living in 33 new developments; the other covering 704 residents at six case study developments.

A key point is that being highly satisfied with the home itself does not necessarily imply a high degree of satisfaction with the wider development, or vice versa. People may express satisfaction with their new home (and often are reluctant to acknowledge problems with it), but very significant numbers of respondents expressed negative views about their neighbourhoods.

For example, although 82% of residents thought that their development was attractive and 69%found it had a pleasant road layout:

• 40% thought that there was not enough public open space in the development
• 48% thought there was not enough play space
• 34% thought the layout of their development was unsafe for children to walk, cycle or play in the streets, and
• 45% say that they live in the kind of neighbourhood where people mostly go their own way rather than doing things together and trying to help each other.

Well, the sense of belonging on new estates is unpredictable. The received wisdom is that you usually get an initial high level of interaction because people move in at around the same time, have similar issues, and may be at a similar stage in the life-cycle (especially parents of young children). Car-based lifestyles make a massive difference of course; and after a few years anyway this sense of community often dissipates or settles back down.

But in a recent conversation at a fast-expanding housing association I was told that lack of social integration on several new developments was giving rise to a lot of problems.  I suspect social landlords are generally well aware that it won't do to lay all the blame on the designers or the developers.

Meanwhile, CABE says:

This is not about a failure of national government policy: there is a perfectly good policy framework in place, which puts a strong emphasis on the quality of residential design and layout. It is housebuilders and planners who need to take more responsibility for creating a sense of place within new housing developments.

But how? I think there is some confusion about expectations of neighbouring. First, a general disinterest among people looking for housing (and I have only contempt for the stream of television programmes encouraging people to buy, make profit and move on without a moment's reflection on the social context of the home). Cultural expectations of local social interaction tend to be low: for the prospective resident they're a matter of chance not choice. Neighbourly relations are an afterthought.

And secondly, perhaps there is sometimes a naive assumption among developers and planners that people are motivated to be neighbourly, as if it just needs an appropriately-designed environment and we all live happily ever after. There's a whole stack of sociological issues waiting to tease us for this approach.

I've always said that since it seems possible to design-out neighbourliness, it ought to be possible to design it in. But that is certainly simplistic. Perhaps we need a study of evident neighbourliness in a poorly-designed environment, and of low levels of interaction in a development described as well-designed, in order to understand a bit more.

The right to an impermeable front garden?

One of the issues that comes up consistently in consultation and mediation at local level, is the rights of the householder vs wider impact. Noise remains the classic theme of course, but other issues emerge from time to time such as Christmas lighting, car parking, trampolines in the garden, smelly garbage and so on.

My little theory is that the age when the rights of the householder seemed to trump most other rights could be coming to an end, because its ambiguities and contradictions are becoming more frequently exposed, and awareness of collective environmental impact is growing fast. Here's an instance now:

Householders should no longer have the automatic right to lay impermeable surfaces in gardens or driveways according to an independent review of the summer's flooding.

The measure is one of a number of proposals for mitigating surface flooding outlined by Sir Michael Pitt in his interim report on managing flood risk.

The report said that in urban areas, permitted development rights allowing private property owners to carry out works such as paving driveways can prevent the drainage of surface water, which accounts for two-thirds of all flood waters. It concluded that in areas of high flood risk, this right should no longer be automatically assumed.

(Planning resource).

This could have heavy implications for urban and suburban streets, where improvised parking across pavements is already excessive, inconsiderate towards pedestrians and often dangerous. Which brings us round to the need to stop people buying more cars. Some households near me appear to occupy more carspace than floorspace. Paved tracks, with permeable surround, would seem a sensible solution in many cases. More in the RHS guide.

Previously:

• Front gardens.
• More on front gardens.

Lifetime neighbourhoods

Many neighbourhoods fail their residents because important opportunities for development and regeneration go ahead with little consideration of age in their planning. The International Longevity Centre has published a paper arguing the case for lifetime neighbourhoods which 'involve the creation of multi-generational space where the needs of all ages are catered for with a considered, negotiated balance.'

Lifetime neighbourhoods should also constitute a preventative investment in good health for future generations... They provide both a built environment and an attitudinal environment in which people of all ages feel both comfortable and informed when taking part.

Towards lifetime neighbourhoods: designing sustainable communities for all.

Neighbourhood branding

What's the significance of an area's 'image' when it comes to regeneration? We don't hear so much about labelling these days, but with the enormous power and influence of local broadcast media, the stench of stigma can be hard to rinse off.

A recent European project called IMAGE has just reported on the testing, use and evaluation of an 'integrated regeneration process,' including tools for branding neighbourhoods. It's argued that 'successful neighbourhoods are usually those with a definite identity,' so it makes sense to raise the notion of identity up the regeneration agenda - but from local people's perspective, not necessarily that of a developer, landlord or local authority.

The report begins with a short essay on the history of high-rise housing in Europe which is worth knowing about. The project concentrated on five neighbourhoods:

• Europark in Antwerp (Belgium)
• Barton Hill in Bristol (UK)
• Poptahof in Delft (the Netherlands)
• Ballymun in Dublin (Ireland)
• Schwamendingen in Zurich (Switzerland).

'All the partner neighbourhoods are characterised by multiple deprivation, often combined with cultural diversity. Of the physical factors, the anonymous open spaces and isolation from the rest of the city (perceived or actual) are mentioned as the most important key issues.'

In exploring these characteristics, the IMAGE project used this two-by-two typology of neighbourhood:

1. A good neighbourhood is a place of trust. People communicate well with each other. The atmosphere is relaxed. New people integrate naturally into the neighbourhood.
2. In a place of hope the problems are not that big. Residents are motivated to work together to improve the neighbourhood.
3. In a place of loss residents are frustrated by the problems. If they had the chance, they would move to another neighbourhood. Groups of residents are in conflict and are looking out for their own interests (such as young people versus old or ethnic minorities that do not integrate into the wider community).
4. In a place of crisis the problems are so big that everybody is only interested in his or her own position. People feel they need to defend themselves against the outside world.

Toolkits were developed for the overall regeneration process, branding, and self-evaluation (yes, another self-evaluation toolkit). The second of these stands out as easily the most significant to me.

'We can describe the identity of a neighbourhood through its key values, an interrelated framework of norms and beliefs relating to the specific area and the community. Well defined key values can inspire the direction the regeneration process takes over a long period. They can answer the questions: what will we have when it is finished and who is it for?'

One way of thinking about its significance is to reflect on the number of occasions when there has been a bit of community development or community activity take place in a neighbourhood, but not enough to force meaningful change: wouldn't articulated consensus around the identity of the neighbourhood have made a difference? I can certainly think of examples, and I can see the value of bringing 'key values' to the surface. Here (to coin a phrase) are the results from Rotterdam (not part of the IMAGE project):

The report says the term neighbourhood branding is used to mean “the search for the character of an area, its identity and its community.”

And this image seems to be the brand statement for Poptahof: 

Community buildings

Latest from the Every Action Counts programme - Your community building counts: helping community buildings lead the way to a better future.

This guide outlines ways in which the use and management of community buildings can be seen as part of sustainable development, taking account of energy use, travel, shopping and caring for the local environment.

Gentrification

A shame if my last post seemed dismissive of people who are probably crying out for their community to be gated, but the local authority won't let them do it.

Well stand well back, cos gentrification, according to the blurb for this new book, has gone from being a small scale urban process pioneered by a liberal new middle class to being mass-produced as a ‘gentrification blueprint’ around the world.

'The process is shown to be at the centre of neo-liberal urban policy world-wide.'

Meanwhile Kit Hodge, who's been monitoring this theme for some time over on the Neighbors Project blog, offers Seven rules for talking about gentrification.

Local trade

More evidence of backlash - a unanimous decision by North Norfolk District Council to refuse a Tesco superstore that would have 'wiped out local shops.'

According to Planning resource a Tesco spokesman said: 'We want to secure the future of Sheringham and its high street.'

You bet they did.

Tailoring streets for people

Does one street fit all? Tailoring streets for people
Living Streets conference
Tuesday 20 November 2007
Central London EC1V 2TT

Topics include:
• Shopping streets: redressing the balance for people on foot
• Destination places: rejuvenating Manchester’s Chinatown
• Save our Streets Campaign
• Playing streets
• Slower speed initiatives
• Shared space, shared surfaces
• Building sustainable city centres and more.

Not in your back yard: neighbours and development

'Ten years of in-fighting have culminated in residents - desperate to stop a housing development interrupting their view - suing neighbours for six-figure damages.

'The row has already seen some residents of Upper Batley, West Yorkshire, clubbing together to pay £40,000 for a strategic piece of scrubland in a bid to thwart development plans.

'But Brian Gavaghan, who is in the midst of building five new houses on land behind his home, has retorted by demolishing part of his own living room to make way for an access route...'

Planning Resource.

Poundbury lecture and tour: 'Removing the roadblocks'

This lecture and tour explains how Poundbury 'looked away from conventional highways thinking to successfully establish safe, inviting streetscapes that promote modes of transport other than the car and contribute to effective community living.'

Wednesday 14th November 2007, 10.30am - 3.30pm
Brownsword Hall, 13 Moraston Street
Pummery Square, Poundbury, DT1 3RG

More here.

Some video tours here, which show the surprisingly broad streets, unexpected in-yer-face garage doors and house walls, and the scarcity of pedestrians.

'We're most gregarious'

Some time ago I expressed a concern about the tendency to theorise and problematise social capital away from local everyday life. It's important to take account of shallow conversations and brief interactions that take place in the public realm. And now I've just been reading about some research into ephemeral relationships on the trams of Antwerp, carried out by Ruth Soenen.

Over eight months Soenen observed the kinds of brief relationships that spring up and disappear in this kind of public context - she notes for example how people start talking if they have to help one another avoid falling when there's a sudden stop, or if they see something unusual through the window. She records the catalytic effect of a colourful and talkative person stepping on board.

She tries to link this to notions of 'community', arguing that in-depth relationships 'don't have a priviliged status' in this respect:

'Duration doesn’t seem to be the essential marker for the experience of community... Ephemeral relationships can be a social base for the experience of community.'

Soenen goes on to argue that there are limitations in the measurement of social capital when we ignore the potential of ephemeral relationships. Her book about this study is published in Dutch only.

Thanks Jan. My title, showing my age, is from Flanders and Swan.

Previously: Segregation in public space (with reference to buses in Jerusalem).

Ways to discourage cyclists

As someone once said, we don't ask pedestrians to lie down, why do we expect cyclists to dismount? This outstanding example in Harlow comes from Warrington Cycle Campaign's 'Facility of the Month' (well-worth back-checking for a chuckle), via the Streets list.

Street meets cafe: the blending of third places

Sometimes the seats and tables push you right to the edge.

Sometimes they're strategically placed while a bit of cleaning is done.

And sometimes nothing less than the street will do, with a small challenge offered to car-drivers.

Amsterdam, Istanbul, La Palma.

Street games

Having to prepare a few words to speak tomorrow in memory of my bro, up pops my other bro to talk about street games when we were kids.

Like the slow bike race. All the kids in the street had bikes, we formed a disorderly cavalry and it was the last one across the line who had not put their foot down or fallen off. We played bicycle football too.

And Squashed Tomatoes. We can't recall the rules but it was an elaborate variation on a 'Simon Says' or '