Guardian Newspaper Careers Debate on Town Planning

Tomorrow I am a panelist for a Guardian on-line debate on careers in town planning. Town planning has been in the news recently due to the Scottish Funding Council’s consultation on future spending for university courses. The council aims to cut down on the amount of funding given to planning and architecture courses, downgrading these subjects to the lowest possible funding level. 

Town planning is one of the routes into a career in place management – but town planners tend to be more distant from the communities they plan.  At my own university (Manchester Metropolitan University) we do offer an MSc in Place Management - and as this qualification resides in the Business School – it attracts the same funding as other business courses.  The cost of delivering class-room based qualifications rather than those that rely on laboratory study and more practical work is obviously lower. 

Anyway, it will be interesting to see what people post – personally I think a funding shake-up is a good opportunity to critically evaluate an educational product….but then I am not a Course Leader of a Town Planning degree.  If you are interested in contributing to the debate then all you need to do is register on the Guardian’s website and post your comments.

There’s beauty in the beast

I walked across Manchester a couple of times yesterday, in the pursuit of food and ale.  Nearly every road in the city centre is being dug up, either to replace Victorian water and sewerage pipes or lay new tramlines.  Roads that are normally busy with bumper-to-bumper traffic (like Deansgate) are strangely quiet, devoid of the normal background engine noise but, nevertheless, full of pedestrians.

Despite the people of Manchester returning a resounding “no” to the proposed congestion charge, the city centre is certainly less congested as motorists can no longer drive through it.  As my second husband’s grandmother used to say “there is more than one way to kill a spider than pull its legs off” (apologies to insect-lovers).

There is a very healthy debate going on about whether more of the city centre should be car-free on the Manchester Evening News website.  Feelings run high on both sides, from comments such as ”why not go the whole hog and ban cars from the whole of the city centre? Then businesses can go to the wall and maybe that’s the only way to get rid of this anti car council” to “women like to totter about in uncomfortable shoes especially in pleasant surroundings free from noisy diesel engines with plenty of restaurants, cafes and bars to visit” (apologies to practical shoe wearing women).

Nevertheless, at the moment these additional pedestrian areas are only temporary and because of the construction work going on, they certainly aren’t particularly attractive. I fondly remember walking through a major German City a number of years ago and being amazed by the floral mosaic on massive sheets of plywood straddling a major thoroughfare. My companion informed me that German city councils insist that if you are performing construction this ‘cover up’ has to be in place before you start.  I am not suggesting that we should have our construction done under cover of darkness; but could we devise a similar method of adornment of ongoing works?

Most places are in a constant state of change.  New developments are introduced and existing buildings and infrastructure has to be maintained and updated. Not too far away from where I’m typing I can see out of my 11^th floor window a building site of magnificent proportions. I am referring to the Media City development out in Salford Quays, where the BBC and a host of other companies will relocate and change the industrial focus of the area from logistics to media and technology.

Their website has a decent collage of images of the area over the years, however, an IT company situated across the water has been cataloguing the development process in a number of weird and wonderful ways. My particular favourite is this 360 view.

With a bit of imagination I think you can see some aesthetics in the site, from the vivid use of ’safety’ colours, such as bright orange and yellow and the contrast of the activity with the calmness of the canal maybe there is some beauty even in this beast.

Making Mountains

TheBerg

I saw this wonderful idea this week through some new friends we have met digitally and wanted to share it with you.

One of my colleagues passed along Linda Carroli’s Placeblog and after reading into her twitter feed I came across this The Berg.

The idea was hatched by a German professor who wanted to build a man-made 1000metre mountain on a disused airport in the middle of Berlin. The website throws up some interesting ideas, images and even a Facebook campaign which has encouraged users from around the world to make suggestions for alternative sites for their own mountain.

Now while I wholly support a mischievous attempt to throw off the shackles of conventional town planning, (possibly a throw back to my punk days): It is clearly stated as a faux concept and not formulated for actual conception.

But, and I know this is a big but, could we ever envisage a future where an artificial natural icon of this magnitude would be considered as a focal point of urban planning?

From Victorian times city centre parks and gardens served to remind the city dwellers of the beauty of natural spaces and often urbanites enjoy natural retreats within towns more than a well crafted building. I hope that in the future there will be provision for creating an urban geo-graphical feature of this size. I for one would appreciate the capability for enjoying outdoor pursuits like cycling and walking in natural albeit man-made environments if they were within ten minutes commute from my city centre flat!

The problem is that town and city centre space is important economically, therefore the idea of de-commodifying it and having space dedicated to non-economic activity is, at the moment, unthinkable.

In fact we are having a debate centred around this very subject on the 1^st of October, should you be in the vicinity, please come along. The official bumph will start to wind its way to you very soon, but do keep it in mind. There will be a chance to meet up with Anna Minton who has just written a compelling book ‘Ground Control’ which looks at ownership of cities and places on a macro-level. Plus we’ll be laying on the wine and nibbles afterwards for a bit of networking.

21st Century High Streets

The IPM has heralded this report in our latest Bulletin which went out this week.  The majority of our Bulletins deal with keystone reports like this, but I’m amazed at the activity on our LinkedIn group, where this topic has been raised some time ago.

The report looks at what makes visiting a high street a great experience, irrespective of whether it carries local shops or flagship stores. It  has to be commended for their dissection of the issues high-streets face, even using characterisations and a bit of personalisation.

Place, Realm, Planning, Accessibility, Safety & Regulation and the main characters, although I’m tempted to add Sleepy to make it 7 dwarves who patrol our high-streets!

They also flag up the difference between the traditional high street I grew up in and the ones that meander their way through our cities today. I don’t usually ascribe to cheesy nostalgia but after seeing this advertising legend and its recent progeny, I did recall the necessity of a group of recognisable businesses in one place. Aside from serving the public with their wares, they facilitated conversation and interaction between mothers, butchers and the like.

If the towns we grew up in had no communal area for civic interaction, who is not to say that mistrust and suspicion would run rife between the chattering masses. This lack of cohesion could lead to negative effects in a community which could cost local authorities millions every year. As we set out in our charter, one of the primary goals of place management is to create an area for this engagement, but we often overlook these micro-effects.

A recent article by one of our fellows, Gurjit Singh, put our work into perspective on a Mega-macro-level by analysing the recent UAE developments into the Arabian Sea, and this guy manages an island in Singapore!

Closer to home, we can hail the case studies brought up but the BRC report in particular Belfast. The recent influx of money by the Department for Social Development will, I hope, shrug off years of negative perception and emerge with a Belfast that is rapidly becoming a cohesive and modern city, desirable to live in by all.

Although the crystal ball tactics of predicting how this dreaded r-word will fare in the upcoming months are not my forte. (One thing I have noticed in recent times is that the more we talk about the r-word, the more it is perpetuated, so I shall refrain from referring directly to it!) The one thing I can assure you of is that the IPM will be working hard to ensure high streets will be fully supported by advice and encouragement through their Place Managers.

Obviously, this report is a small part in a larger debate and if you would like to throw your two cents in, you can get in touch with the BRC directly here. Or you could follow some of our lively discussion boards on LinkedIn either.

See you next week

Place Management 2.0

Its been another interesting week here at the IPM I’m glad to say.

In my pursuit to try and establish a forum for talking about all things Place Management, we have used the B2B relationship program LinkedIn to set up a private discussion area. Our members are taking to it like ducks to water, most notably a local town centre manager who was intrigued by the greenfield project known as the Cutting Room Experiment.

The Cutting Room Experiment was a testament to innovation by using some very modern techniques to do a very old fashioned job. They sought to use some of the ‘social media’ tools available to get people to come together to celebrate the opening of a new town square. A commendable effort was made by all and credit should be given to Manchester City Council for the ‘cohones’ to fund such a left-field approach.

I am sure I am not alone in thinking that there is an opportunity for combining the world’s new obsession with ‘online communities’ to the idea of the communities we physically inhabit?

Through urban regeneration we try to reclaim the endemic industrial red bricks of the North West into our new builds. This appreciation for the past in our residences and workplaces is quite evident in some of the new developments such as the ones by Urban Splash.

It turns out that the square celebrated by the Cutting Room experiment was previously a central part of a bustling industrial hub and was even cited by Engels in his works. So, where there is already a bridge from the old to the new in a physical dimension, technology in its modern state has acted as a medium to this transformation.

I also read with interest this week a statistic that has put ‘flash mobbing’ on the steady increase as multiple homage-de-Michael-Jackson take place across the globe. Through Facebook, Twitter et al, these group activities are being propagated, much like the Cuttingroom.

It will be interesting to see how the new social media and digital marketing tools get adopted and adapted by place managers.  They offer so much opportunity to not get people involved in events but also local decision making and recruitment into other activities that make our towns and cities better places to be.

Just who is in charge of changing places?

I went to a discussion last night, in Manchester, led by Duncan Ecob, Chair of the Urban Design Group.  The theme of the discussion was “Connectivity and Engagement”.

What followed was a lively debate (fuelled by quite a few bottles of red wine), we started off looking at the ‘engagement process’ and discussing different methods.

The general consensus was that the motivations for ‘engagement’ and ‘consultation’ affect the quality of not only how the process is undertaken but also the final outcome.  For example, private property owners are likely to engage in consultations and ‘community engagement’ purely to ‘placate’ those that might be in opposition to their development plans.

Even when the process is part of a large-scale public redevelopment project, and the community is actively engaged, the outcome of the process can still be affected by factors such as, in the case of Hulme, the lack of imagination of those charged with managing the fulfilment of the development process.

We spent quite a lot of the evening discussing Hulme and its characterlessness, brought about by adopting a carbon-copy approach to urban design.  Nevertheless, its original vibe was more accident than strategy.  The widespread squatting of council housing by ‘creatives’ resulted in a large amount of like-minded people living in close proximity – i.e. a community.

Whilst one of our fellow discussants was confident creative collectives still existed in the area, they certainly didn’t number the same ‘critical mass’ as before the redevelopment.  Creativity has moved to other areas of Manchester such as Ancoats and the Northern Quarter.

So whose fault is it that an area such as Hulme loses its identity?  The council’s?  The council came in for quite a lot of ’stick’ last night, but it was pointed out that Manchester City Council are just one of the forces of change.  There are other ‘powerful’ organisations behind what makes Manchester, like the Universities and its football clubs.

Change may be masterminded and effected by the council – but they are usually focussing on the physical aspects of a location, the housing, the transport systems etc.  Another important force behind change is the people who inhabit the area, or, in the case of Hulme, leave it in droves.

Perhaps the lesson to learn is that if you think you are responsible for changing a place, then you are only kidding yourself.  As one agent, actor, organisation you don’t have much hope.  Places evolve organically through the behaviour of those that use them.  Whilst the behaviour of people can be influenced by their environment it can never be dictated by it.

Why me and place management?

Earlier in the week I did a telephone interview with Emerald Insight, the publishers of our journal (Journal of Place Management and Development). Most of the questions were related to what place management was and how it was evolving as an academic subject, but one of the questions that really got me thinking was why I had personally become involved in it.

One of the major factors behind my interest is, not surprisingly, location related.  I came to work at Manchester Metropolitan University in October 1997, at which time there was already a healthy interest in town centre management (TCM), with most of the world’s researchers of the topic having spent some time at MMU in their career.

Why TCM @ MMU?  Well probably because MMU was the first university (in Europe at least) to offer Retail Management as a degree – and we have, for many years, had geographers present in the business school.  The regular social and intellectual interaction between geographers and marketers has meant there has been a lively group of co-located academic colleagues from different disciplines…so it is no surprise a ‘new’ subject of interest has been born.

Another factor was the Department’s interest in the independent retail sector –  family owned small shops and service businesses – especially those located in town centres. From the research projects I was involved with it became very apparent that the embedding of businesses within their local community could have a positive effect on their sustainability.

In many ways a shop’s future is outside the owner’s hands: if their local economy is not being managed well and the town centre is going into decline, then it’s very difficult for them as an individual operator to do much about it. If the stakeholders with an interest in the town centre get together, then, through collective action, changes can be made.  Changes such as agreeing a common day for late-night opening, publishing a town centre guide or funding a park and ride scheme.

I like place management as I’ve always been the sort of person who, if things aren’t going right, I don’t like to sit around and complain. So I see it as something where everyone can make a difference, not just elected representatives or people that have ‘place manager’ as a job title.

I have just moved into Manchester city centre, across the road from work, which you can see from the cool new Street View from Google Maps.
View Larger Map

I have asked to join Manchester City Centre’s Residents’ Forum. I think it’s about time I got involved in place management in a practical way.  The Forum is actively involved in consultations for planning and developments in the city centre as well as busy doing practical things like making improvements to inner city parks.

So, thanks to Emerald for asking me the question “how did you get involved in place management”…obviously it wasn’t planned but then I am a great believer in serendipity.

You can read the full version of the interview in the next issue of the Journal of Place Management and Development or on the Emerald website .

Luminescence in Place management- A bright idea?

Illuminating!

This week, I introduced our very own Dr. Steve Millington who delivered an intriguing take on the use of illumination in towns and places and their long term effects on the towns therein.

Incidentally, Steve writes a blog which is a great read to all concerned with Place Management.

Some interesting research into the cultural aspects of lighting was uncovered by way of the widespread impact of Christmas Lighting in shop windows. (I never thought I would have to type a sentence like that!)

Within the post-mortem discussion, the IPM’s own Dan McGrath had an enlightening response to Dominic Martinez’s question about the environmental ramifications of major lighting schemes in towns. He said that he:

“…. attended a RUDI conference earlier in the year and recalled a case study in France that used light to create spectacle and also highlight environmental concern (perhaps hypocritically).

Organisers bathed a large tree in the centre of the town/ city park in intense shadow-casting red and pink lights, coupled with a customised ‘soundscape’ (speakers strategically placed throughout the park). The effect of this arrangement made the tree appear as if a pair of lungs, a reference to Emile Zola’s comment that parks are the “lungs of the city”, engaging users of the park in a sensual and topical experience.

It is apparent that place managers must be aware of the impact of light and lighting (yet another place management issue!), not just in the creation of spectacle and for general place functionality, but for the fostering of community spirit through the inclusion of stakeholders in decision-making relating to such fixtures & fittings and event & activities in order to ensure that places are designed and managed for those they serve …”

The event was filmed in glitzy technicolour and shall be posted soon, watch this space. Although, apparently the guys in the office are currently revamping our Facebook Group to a bigger brighter and shinier Facebook Page!!

Animal Attraction

A couple of weekends ago I joined 15 or so others for a stag weekend in Leeds.

Between us we took over a floor of a Soulless Inn (Express), located on the dreary outskirts of the city but clean and comfortable and only £64 per room per night (including breakfast).

As I returned back to the hotel in the early hours of Sunday morning, in full Goth gear (we had been to Leeds University Student Union Wendy House)

With kebab in hand, I sheepishly walked past reception and into the lift to go back to my room.  I imagined that I was going to be one of the last ones still standing at that time.

How wrong I was.  The hotel was full of people stumbling in and out of the lift, in fancy dress and various states of undress.  It was all good-humoured and, around the bedrooms, remarkably quiet.

Nevertheless, from the rather worse-for-wear faces of the hotel’s clientele at Sunday breakfast it is clear that the Souless Inn (Express) is the place of choice for many stags and hens in need of bed and breakfast.

So what attracts the pre-nuptial reveller to Leeds?  In our case, our groom-to-be had studied for 3 years at Leeds University.  So, it was an opportunity to be reunited with some ex-house and course mates and re-visit some old haunts (pubs, kebab shops and taxi ranks mostly). 

In addition, one by-product of working life is often the need to move where work takes you.  During your university years and throughout your working career many of us move about, accumulating friends from all over the place, who in turn, also move all over the place.

So, from a practical point of view, Leeds was a fairly central point for all the stags to congregate, from various points around the country.  It is not one of the most popular choices for stag weekends though, according to the tour organisers “Last Night of Freedom” Riga comes out top, followed by Bournemouth, Nottingham and Newcastle.  Leeds doesn’t make it into the Top 10.

But, I am glad David chose Leeds as it was really nice for me to experience Leeds through the eyes of a student (albeit an over-grown one) and get a sense of being part of someone else’s student life.  There is something special about visiting a place with people that know it so well.

Some old pics I’ve dug up..

IPM Conference 08 Photos