Renewing the Local CBD: More Hands at Work than You Thought?Author(s): J. W. R. WhitehandSource: Area, Vol. 15, No. 4 (1983), pp. 323-326Published by: The Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers)Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20001966 .

Accessed: 15/06/2014 07:38

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

The Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers) is collaborating with JSTOR todigitize, preserve and extend access to Area.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 195.34.79.20 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 07:38:51 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

area 1983 Volume 15 Number 4

Renewing the local CBD: more hands at work than you thought?

J. W. R. Whitehand, University of Birmingham

Summary. Despite the increasing domination of city-centre renewal in Britain by national concerns, a study of two town centres since the First World War suggests that within individual centres property development has not become concentrated among fewer firms. This has repercussions for the distribution of work among architects and builders, and has consequences for the townscape.

It is a widely held view that responsibility for the renewal of the commercial cores of British towns and cities has become increasingly concentrated in the hands of major, often national, concerns. Evidence to support this view, though piecemeal and often impressionistic, exists in the case of the ownership of property, and the funding and undertaking of redevelopment (Barras, 1979, 55, App. 2; Hillier Parker Research, 1979, 33; Whitehand, 1983, 44-7). In architectural design a similar concentration is assumed to have taken place (Marriott, 1967, 27-9), though hard facts are scanty. It might be assumed from this that within individual town- and city-centres the various aspects of renewal of the physical fabric have become similarly concentrated in the hands of a diminishing number of firms and, by inference, that there has been an accompanying reduction in the stylistic diversity of additions to the townscape. Now that detailed studies of building plan applications submitted to local authorities are at last being undertaken, it is possible to shed light on this assumption and the facts that are beginning to emerge cast doubt on its validity.

The initiators of changes to the physical fabric (usually described as 'building owners'), and the architects and builders, have been identified from the building plan applications for the town centres of Northampton in the East Midlands, an example of a medium-sized administrative and commercial town with some industry, and

Wafford, an almost archetypal suburban town of similar size to Northampton but lying to the immediate north-west of London. The use of records of this type has been dis cussed recently in Area (Aspinall and Whitehand, 1980; Rodger, 1981). The town centres of Northampton and Watford were defined in the field according to the physical extent of central-area commercial land use in 1980. For the period 1916-79 the number of applications recorded for central Northampton was 1,890 and for central Watford 1,664, discounting those that evidence suggested were not implemented. The data pre sented here are for major changes to the physical fabric-redevelopments, additions to existing buildings (both extensions and free-standing auxiliary buildings), and structural alterations, which together comprised 497 implemented plans in central

Northampton and 462 such plans in central Watford. Although there are various defects in the applications, notably incomplete infor

mation, none of them are such as to call into question the main feature exhibited by the Lorenz curves in Figure 1. Rather than there being the expected trend of increasing concentration over time, if anything the reverse has happened. In Northampton in all three categories of firms (initiators, architects, and builders) plans were spread more evenly in 1960-79 than they had been in 1920-39. In Watford the position was less clear-cut in the case of initiators and builders. In assessing this finding it is important to stress that it is not inconsistent with the tendency for increasing concentration to

323

This content downloaded from 195.34.79.20 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 07:38:51 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

324 Renewing the local CBD

NORTHAMPTON 100

INITIATORS ARCHITECTS BUILDERS

C _

C50 / X CD~~~~~C

0 50 100 0 50 100 0 50 100

WATFORD

100, INITIATORS ARCHITECTS BUILDERS

Percentage o

ones rsentbalane ofdisprmse ratercethag concentrmse Percentay. Atofg firms wt

major popertyinterests Dere both conentresuhatio the buildinnatialani tetoric

haveoccurrend tegat nationally. In allthreiateoris of firms thr(as distinctreas thin boles

centre ihn weethe proprgetilona ofwlnes that temanatedfo outsidaed The tonumbegre oflan andlemenumer of initiators' architects,b hearhtet and builders unetactokive bot towns

increaed Haowee,tedspaeeto local architects ndtbuildersinetheeinte-wartperiod oehAs pone baancssen ofithersefidins esecalytheir thanresnentrtdaivy.ativeness fimust awaith

majo promplertyionterestsla invesbotion cenotresrsc tows.ato the Puentilandation Norwiche

Union,tben tohat girsants ogniationalys iniiaordes ofpavnsga distirnct fromesi thei builes ing shrhlder apiatins, motagdteresor theyaveda bepaaen enite,or more acivikac entr individu

all than wexten the argeth local ownvlers tare btheyaen dirsplacedrtheingudiferent actiitis

(frixmpleme,e in initiatown indianiarchitect) thei marcitet sgicance buleres acrtive incoth townsbtweein of9ctiit and 197 whole conideably lnsmalertween firseo numer sametplemented

bytexamajor twoca intatrs)chiecsarly builer in dieth baing nterwa pneriod. inofFgue1

Thermpetion nof simidence inwver,tugstiaon ina either tows.par of link explanaton fo threm

mightleamn that firms and organisations reordedrasingving diffrthamtonae ind Wtford buid

exmpe, intwcesitiatosclay have om dlghrec bynmearng onfndt the inepreainofst-ware peio.

Thr sn vdne hwvr osgetthtete yeo in xsso ag scal mnh fim adognstnspetiginNrhmtnadWfo,ad the intne/hthv oet ih r

ynomascnie oteps-aeid

This content downloaded from 195.34.79.20 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 07:38:51 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Renewing the local CBD 325

INITIATORS ARCHITECTS BUILDERS 100.

80.

~60 -

~40. .-c

-20 5

ol 20-29 70-79 20-29 70-79 20-29 70-79

Decades Decades Decades

Figure 2. Percentage of plans from external firms.

What is a much more important consideration is the tendency for the main national owners of property to spread their interests widely over the country as a whole. This is almost inevitable in the case of the main owner-occupiers, the retail and the service chains, but it is also the case with organisations primarily interested in property as an investment. For example, the 93 town- and city-centre properties owned by Prudential Pensions Ltd (one member of the Prudential Group) at the end of 1980 were spread over no less than 56 towns and cities (Prudential Pensions Ltd, 1981).

The influence of this dispersed pattern of ownership within individual town centres is considerable as far as the spread of activity among other agents of change is con cerned. Standing relationships between initiators and architects are common and the

main owners tend to have their own architects' departments, so a dispersion of work among a variety of architects is much more probable than when ownership is concen trated. This effect is spread further down the chain of firms involved in the construc tional process because of the major influence that initiators and architects exercise over the choice of other firms, especially builders.

As far as the concentration of activity as a whole is concerned, as distinct from that among initiators, architects and builders individually, two observations may be made about firms undertaking more than one role: first, there was a reduction in both centres in the proportion of firms performing the dual role of initiator and builder; and secondly, there was a fall in Northampton but a rise in Watford in the proportion of firms performing the dual role of initiator and architect. Broadening the perspective further to include other types of firms involved in the building process, it is worth noting that the number of different consulting engineers and specialised contractors employed rose sharply in both centres from the 1950s onward, both types of firms having been weakly represented in the inter-war period.

While some of this dispersion of decision making among more firms probably left little imprint in the townscape, it may not be entirely co-incidental that an investigation currently in progress of architectural styles in the centres of Northampton and Watford reveals a greater diversity among buildings erected since the late 1960s than in any comparable period since the First World War. One reason for this may be the fact that in the inter-war period it was possible, in a medium-sized town at least, for a few local property owners with standing relationships with a similar number of local architects to have a considerable impact on the appearance of a town centre. By com parison their national successors, while making a massive impression over the country as a whole, have not as yet necessarily had as much influence within individual town and city-centres.

Naturally, factors other than the range of firms at work affect the diversity of archi tectural styles. Since a much larger proportion of firms of all types are now national,

This content downloaded from 195.34.79.20 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 07:38:51 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

326 Renewing the local CBD

less inter-regional diversity and a more rapid response to national and international

fashion and innovation would seem to be inevitable. The diversity of architectural styles that has characterised new buildings in town centres in the 1970s partly reflects the rapid local manifestation of the stylistic plurality that exists at the international level. Furthermore, the outcome in the townscape is also a reflection of many other influences. The fact that the scale of the largest individual projects during the 1960s and 1970s was larger than ever before must be taken into consideration. This was aided by the increased powers of local authorities to acquire land-a much more significant factor than the comparatively small direct role of these bodies as initiators of develop

ments (Whitehand, 1983, 44-5)--and the much greater size of the national firms involved.

Now that the acquisition of locally-owned property by national firms has reached an advanced stage, the process of competition between national firms is likely to succeed it in importance; a process that would seem destined to lead ultimately to the concen tration of activity within fewer firms at the local level. In this view the local reversals of national trends suggested by Figure 1 are temporary. Lorenz curves for 1980-99 may well demonstrate a condition that some of us mistakenly thought already existed 20 years earlier.

Acknowledgements

The research on which this paper is based was funded by the Social Science Research Council. The author is indebted to Mrs S. M. Whitehand for her help with the extraction of information from the building plan applications, and to Mr J. D. Lillywhite, Chief Building Control Officer,

Northampton Borough Council, and Mr D. W. Shepherd, Chief Building Control Surveyor, Borough of Watford for granting access to their records. Mr R. G. Ford and Mr J. N. Marshall made helpful comments on a draft of the paper and Mr T. G. Grogan prepared the diagrams for publication.

References Aspinall, P. J. and Whitehand, J. W. R. (1980) ' Building plans: a major source for urban studies', Area

12, 199-203. Barras, R. (1979) The development cycle in the City of London Centre Environ. Stud. Res. Ser. 36 (London)

Hillier Parker Research (1979) British shopping developments (London) Marriott, 0. (1967) The property boom (London) Prudential Pensions Ltd (1981) Report to policy holders for the year ended December 1980 (London) Rodger, R. G. (1981) ' Sources and methods of urban studies: the contribution of building records', Area

13, 315-21 Whitehand, J. W. R. (1983)' Land-use structure, built-form and agents of change', 41-59 in Davies,

L. and Champion, A. G. (eds) The future for the city centre Inst. Br. Geogr. Spec. Publ. 14 (London)

China geographers

We wish to create a network of geographers in the UK teaching and/or researching on aspects of the geography of China. People interested in joining this network are asked to contact Alan Jenkins, the Geography Section, Oxford Polytechnic, Oxford OX3 OBP. If there is sufficient interest an informal meeting could be arranged at the IBG Annual Conference in Durham.

Terry Cannon Thames Polytechnic

Alan Jenkins Oxford Polytechnic

This content downloaded from 195.34.79.20 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 07:38:51 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions