The Academy of Urbanism Glasgow Congress Report Final 2011

8/3/2019 The Academy of Urbanism Glasgow Congress Report Final 2011

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Liveable Neighbourhoods:Renaissance, Regeneration andReconstruction.

The Academy of Urbanism Annual Congress VI11-13th May 2011, The Lighthouse, Glasgow, Scotland


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1. Introduction 1

2. The future is here! 5

Community 11

Psychology of place 19

Health and liveability 21

Making things happen in a recession 29

3. Conclusion: The future is now! 33

Bibliography, Appendices and Congress Programme 37

The theme of thisCongress, LiveableNeighbourhoods, formsan integral part of the

Academys ongoing workin promoting debate,exchange of good practice,stimulating research andcelebrating achievementat the level of the city,town, neighbourhood orcommunity/street.

Professor Kevin Murray,Chair of Academy of Urbanism,

opening Glasgow Congress.

Produced by Architecture and Design Scotland (A+DS) with the Academy of Urbanism. A+DS is Scotlands champion

for excellence in placemaking, architecture and planning.

The Academy of Urbanism is an autonomous, politically independent, cross-sector organisation formed to expand

urban discourse.

CONTENT


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i

The 6th Annual Congress of The Academy of Urbanism took place in Glasgow in

2011. The rst day provided an opportunity for orientation for the delegates. The

day commenced with introductory speeches from The Academy of Urbanism

Chair, Kevin Murray, Glasgow City Council Bailie Liz Cameron and Glasgow City

Council Head of Planning, and Academician, Alistair MacDonald. A series of city

tours followed, familiarising delegates with the stories of the city from the grid

iron street structure, to Glasgow Harbour and t he recently constructed Riverside

Museum by Zaha Hadid. Pollokshields, an Academy of Urbanism nominee for

Great Neighbourhood Award was explored, as were Crown Street in the new

Gorbals, and the Clyde Gateway Urban Regeneration area, which will be home

to the 2014 Commonwealth Games.

Day 1 concluded with an evening reception at The Peoples Palace at Glasgow

Green hosted by Clyde Gateway URC. The reception hosted a soft launch ofMassive Small by Academician Kelvin Campbell. Massive Small explores the

idea of new relationships with complexity as a basis for making better places.

The central thesis of the book is that simple rules and enabling mechanisms,

animated by the agency role of people, communities and decision makers

allow for adaptable, resilient and sociable urban structures to develop. This is

a challenge to move thinking about the shaping of the urban environment from

command and control to more open system thinking, emphasising the power

of agency.

Massive Small suggests that urban structures should be the product of a

constant dialogue between ve system elements: [a] simple rules; conditions or

actions which allow for solutions to emerge [b] networks; the sticky structures

that provide an overarching interconnected framework at all scales [c] elds;

scalable and intelligent elements, which in the system of urban form are the plot,

the lot and the block [d] defaults; choices or settings that apply in the absence

of active intervention and [e] catalysts; agent that stimulates or precipitates a

reaction, development, or change. The idea of the dialogue of elements is to

enable informed, emergent structures to form and prosper in response to a

constantly shifting set of contexts. Achieving these urban environments require a

new set of behaviours by t he actors involved in shaping the urban environment;

designers, decision makers, developers and citizens. The combination of an

open system approach to shaping the urban environment, and cultivating new

behaviours is, argues Massive Small, key to achieving better places for people

and impacts on the ground.

Day 2 of the Congress provided a mix of expert speakers, seminars and

keynote presentations on the broad themes of Regeneration, Renaissance and

Reconstruction. The morning set out the strategic context for planning and

placemaking at Glasgow scale by Gerry Gormal of Glasgow City Council and

Scotland scale by Jim McKinnon, Chief Planner with the Scottish Government.

Lord Andrew Mawson completed the morning session by discussing a social

entrepreneurs approach to working with people, the key assets of a place, to

achieve effective change on the ground.

The mid morning session focused on the sub-theme of Neighbourhood Stories.

This series of presentations and discussions was chaired by Professor Brian

Evans of the Mackintosh School of Architecture. Liz Davidson, Project Director

of the Merchant City Townscape Heritage Initiative, gave a lively illustrated talk

The Academy of Urbanism

Annual Congress VI11-13th May 2011, The Lighthouse, Glasgow, Scotland

ii

on the regeneration efforts of the Merchant City area. Carol Tannahill, Director of

The Glasgow Centre of Population and Health (GCPH), gave an informed lecture

on the ndings of the GoWell Study, linking health and mortality indicators to a

need for social reform led by urban regeneration. Ian Manson, Chief Executive

of Clyde Gateway Urban Regeneration Company explained the role of the URC

in driving transformation of the East End of Glasgow, to achieve regeneration with

communities and provide a setting for the 2014 Commonwealth Games. Arie

Voorburg discussed the nancing social renewal, speaking about the clear need

to be focused, and be aware of what levers to inuence to achieve change that

lasts.

The afternoon session took the form of a series of parallel workshops, working

along themes of Neighbourhoods as places of learning, work, living, and as part

of the wider city vision. These workshops built upon, extended and questionedthe themes introduced in the mornings talks. The workshops generated

a number of themes and ideas around new ways of doing things to make

neighbourhoods work better. These ranged from the use of prototypes to test

ideas and interventions to new models of measuring how neighbourhoods work.

Professor John Worthington of The Academy of Urbanism concluded this session

with a number of observations:

Centrality addressing the tensions between centralised thinking and local

action

Methodologies There was much discussion of an adversarial system of

working is deeply embedded in what we do. The challenge is to develop

methods to achieve outcomes more positively, faster.

Dependency change needs initiators. In some cases, lack of change is a

consequence of waiting for someone else to do it.

The workshops and subsequent discussions suggested to Professor Worthington

that, to achieve better places, we should develop a new approach, seeing places

and organisations, learning places. These places need pro-active individuals

and the responsible people who can do things as well as look at those who can

envision a future place. In this context, a learning place approach requires an

understanding of three things:

How the place provides a setting for things to happen: how do placesprovide a setting for learning for example? (place) provide as a setting for

learning?

What would the infrastructure of this setting need to provide?

How do we identify the opportunities, leads and deals in a place to make

thing happen constantly - a learning neighbourhood?

In the evening a Civic Reception, hosted by Glasgow City Council, and The

Congress Dinner was be held at the magnicently restored Old Fruitmarket,

during which The Finalists for The Urbanism Awards 2012 were announced. On

the Friday morning, a Post Congress Action Workshop took place building on our

UniverCities and City X-Rays programmes and launching our new initiative, Place

Partnering.


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1. Introduction

This paper has been written by A+DS with the Academy of Urbanism. The

purpose of the paper is to pull together the themes and discussions generated

at The Academy of Urbanism Glasgow Congress 2011. The aim of the paper is

to draw out some of the key issues for policy, research and practice from this

resource, to inform debate about how to build better places. In this context, the

paper reects broadly on the practice of urban change in terms of three related

ideas: urban renaissance, urban regeneration and urban reconstruction.

The structure of the paper is laid out in two parts:

The rst part, The Future is Here, provides a synthesis of the issues

presented at the Congress. In broad terms, this part of the paper considers

the practices of urban renaissance and urban regeneration. It considers how

the thinking around these ideas of urban change have generated the places

we live, work in and are challenged by today. This review is undertaken

by looking at each of the Congress themes individually and developing a

narrative based on the content generated at the Congress.

The second part, The Future is Now, pulls together some strands which

are intended to progress debate about how we approach the issue of urban

change holistically. In broad terms, this part of the paper starts to look at

the idea of re-construction, re-construction of the idea of how we guide and

manage urban change, re-construction of policy and practice. The purpose

of this section of the paper is to invite further debate about how we make

better places in our times addressing the challenges of today.

The Academy of Urbanism Congress VI in Glasgow commenced with strategic,

scene-setting presentations outlining the national, regional and local context,

followed by Case Studies from Glasgow, Beirut and The Netherlands. In the

afternoon, a variety of interactive workshops, explored the ways to achieve

continuous improvements through Understanding Place, Changing Perceptions

and Generating Action. In the evening a Civic Reception, hosted by GlasgowCity Council, and The Congress Dinner was be held at the magnicently restored

Old Fruitmarket, during which The Finalists for The Urbanism Awards 2012 were

announced. On the Friday morning, a Post Congress Action Workshop took

place building on our UniverCities and City X-Rays programmes and launching

our new initiative, Place Partnering.

The paper was developed by A+DS through a mix of methods. First, the paper

is s synthesis of the Congress programme, and the themes of the 2011 event,

namely: placemaking, the psychology of place, community, culture and identity,

health and liveability and making things happen in a recession. Second, the paper

includes consideration of the provocation papers presented at the break out

workshop sessions during the Congress, and the responses generated during the

workshops. (These papers are available separately). Finally, the paper includes

some reections on the themes emerging by Carol McKenzie, PhD, a researcher

in urban policy and member of staff at A+DS.


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Liveable Neighbourhoods: Renaissance, Regeneration and Reconstructionwww.ads.org.uk/urbanism 3

The Host City: Glasgow

Glasgow, the host city of the Academy of Urbanisms 6th Annual Congress

was also the recipient of the 2011 European City of the Year award as voted

by Academicians in 2010. In recognition of Glasgow as host, the rst plenary

discussant, Gerry G, provided a contextual overview of Glasgows regeneration

and how it plans to develop its city vision for the future. The presentation

provided an insight into Glasgow City Councils past and present interventions

and its future aspirations in identifying and dening what it perceived made for a

successful city.

Anyone familiar with the Glasgow Story will no doubt recognise that the citys

economic trajectory during the previous 30 years from de-industrialisation to a

rst-class venue for retail and nancial services, chimes with many similar cities

in Western Europe grappling with the challenges of long-term economic and

urban restructuring. The city of Glasgow stands out as a beacon of successful

transformation in adapting to the challenges whilst harnessing the opportunities

presented by a mature industrial society set within a global context. Testament

of how the outside has in the past and now views Glasgows success at

transformation over this period can be found in the various narratives from

publications including travel guides and newspapers. Glasgow has transformed

itself from being,

The worst corner of Britain, (The Observer, 1980), to A fantastic world

class city, (Cond Nast, 2010) and more recently it has been described as,

Unpretentious, gregarious, and evolving at a dizzy pace, Glasgow denes urban

renewal - a concept that the city has embraced with enormous vigour. Once

synonymous with bleak poverty and grim desperation, Glasgow has managed to

turn things around to the point that it is now a byword for style and chic, (Lonely

Planet Guide, May 2011 edition).

Using the city as a laboratory for learning the Congress talks and workshops

were organised around three main parts

1) Glasgow City Narrative;2) Neighbourhood Stories and,

3) Learning From Place.

While this suggests a structure to the actual event, the dialogue reported here

is organised around a number of themes that have been identied from these

discussions. The report combines the intellectual insight of the author with the

dialogues and makes references to some of the literature on placemaking.


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Planning should be [...]

a collaborative effort

to maintain liveable

neighbourhoods, involving

debate about urban design

and not just the wording of

policy.Jim MacKinnon, Scotlands Chief Planner

Liveable Neighbourhoods: Renaissance, Regeneration and Reconstruction 5

2. The future is here!

Context

As economic transactions and activities have become more global in nature,

cities as competitive spaces have been the dominant paradigm in urban

economic discourses in recent years. Specically, the nature of competitive

cities is characterised by the economic imperative for diversication in order for

cities to compete for investment, populations and job creation. This imperative

has been and continues to be tempered by the subsequent fall and rise of the

command economies of the previous Communist countries and Socialist states,

the accession of states to the European Union and the challenge posed to the

dominance of OECD countries from the developing economies of the Global

South (China, Brazil for instance).

At the forefront of efforts in adapting to the historic and new economic

circumstances, urban renewal initiatives have been informed by the dominant

paradigm that a citys economic growth depends on its ability to stabilise its

economy in order to become competitive. As debate and research on cities

has shown however, to remain competitive, cities must compete to attract

investment and people through emphasising not only their locational advantages

(e.g. both spatial and t emporal proximity/connectivity to international markets;

time-zones and supply chains etc.) or their competitive advantage (e.g. natural/

human resources i.e. availability of a skilled labour supply) but also the quality

of the physical, environmental and urban infrastructural attributes of the city

in the context of these new economic realities. As economic restructuring is

a long-term process, gauging or measuring the success or otherwise of how

cities have responded and adapted to these new realities depends not only on

objective economic indicators (e.g. GDP) but, the extent to which interventions

have embraced inclusiveness and improved the social and economic conditions

of all their inhabitants. In other words, competitive cities must not only be socially

cohesive and just cities, but the spaces and places which dene their boundaries,

must also promote quality of life and well-being through the creation and

maintenance of liveable environments. A liveable neighbourhood is where people

want to live, work and leisure. Crucially, they must be socially sustainable.

Whatever the abstractions required to activate economic models, people live in

places. They are always somewhere in schools, in church, in neighbourhoods,

in the ofce, in the factory, at home. People without placespursuing and

achieving their own self-interestare in fact lost. They are homeless, jobless,

alone. Losers. (Wood, 1995, p139-141).

Street life in Glasgow.


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Placemaking

Land use, spatial development and infrastructure planning is important to

the task of creating liveable neighbourhoods as these incorporate a focus on

development whether this is land availability for housing and services or features

of the built environment such as buildings, roads and streets. In the Scottish

context, the National Planning Framework (NPF) represents a more efcient

and inclusive framework than has hitherto been the case in the previous sixtyyears. With much support from MSPs, the NPF2 was established in 2009. It

focuses much more on community engagement and an acknowledgement that

planning debates now need to focus on the planning and development system

outcomes planning should not be about process. From the perspective of

Scotlands Chief Planner, the issues of placemaking and design have too often

been neglected.

Despite this, Scotland has seen a somewhat renaissance of the importance of

our architecture, both historical and modern, as an asset to good placemaking

and how it serves to underpin the enjoyment of places through how people

experience place.

Were good at re-creating places, not creating t hem.

In the context of liveable neighbourhoods, a criticism of current perspectives

is that there has been too much emphasis placed on technological solutions

to the new challenges posed by climate change. This is often couched in

terms of how we plan for mitigating, adapting and being resilient to the effects

and challenges climate change poses for protecting t he natural (and built)

environment, economic growth and social equity (i.e. the triple bottom line

of sustainable development). Planning and architecture has held some of the

answers as demonstrated by Scotlands housing archetypes such as tenement

dwellings which are distinctive to Scotlands cities and towns. As housing is the

largest consumption of land, tenemental forms characterise some of Scotlandscities as compact city forms. Compact city forms are considered to be the

most sustainable urban form. High density development for instance, is often

selectively confused with high rise or urbanism and in the latter, confusing

this will pose a risk to how we want to progress. Is progress in the placemaking

agenda in Glasgow for instance, evident by our development of community-

based housing organisations such as Woodlands in the West, and, the Crown

Street regeneration programme in the Gorbals as well as the Merchant City

central area of the city?

Embedded in these neighbourhood redevelopments, their historic realms have

been retained, and are residential mixed-use developments and mixed housing

tenure. Combined with an emphasis on the importance of the public realm,

active frontages signal to and invite people that there is vitality on the street.


Rhythm and character of place has thus been created. The Merchant city area

of Glasgow is Glasgows pre-eminent mixed-use space and represents a good

example where the role of buildings has provided a platform for creating liveable

neighbourhoods. Prior to the decision to invest, a number of negative aspects

were affecting the area including the speculative practices of development

interests (i.e. land-banking); ground-level car parks. In this area, there was no

community to speak of; the housing providers had basically used the area as

housing of last resort for those in housing need from surrounding districts of thecity: There was no natural community there was no kinship ties or networks

here.

Three projects had been created for this area involving the re-use of existing

buildings oorspace to create new facilities such as Caf bar Gandol,

refurbishment of a t heatre (Trongate Britannia Musical)1 as well as the

reinstatement of (active) retail frontages. These were restored and thus promoted

the development of a quality urban realm in the area. Work done in the Gandol

bar involved local artists (craftspeople such as furniture makers etc and the

sourcing of artefacts) in which ideas were taken up before work on-site began.

Signicant in the development of these particular projects, was how nancial

leverage was achieved with direct leverage of 53 million (calculated from 2 x 5yr

programmes has cost 6 million of investment) so the ratio has been huge. Both

the use of local craftspeople combined with nancial leverage has translated into

jobs using local enterprises and skills.

1. This is the oldest working musical theatre in the UK.

Crown Street, Glasgow.

Glasgows Merchant City, creative regeneration.


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However, has the singular focus on sustainable economic growth been at the

expense of disregarding placemaking and architecture as important contributors

to quality of life and places where people want to live, work and leisure? We

have policies in place but is it making much of a contribution and impact on

the maintenance and creation of places where people want to be? Currently,

Scottish policy and guidance recognises that buildings are important and the

spaces for interaction between them. However, roads and trafc we still, in this

context, assume should be left to the civil engineers. There is an urgent needfor more collaborative working to plan and deliver better places. The skills of

the urban designer, public involvement and an understanding of development

economics can help to drive the placemaking agenda forward. However, from

the Chief Planners perspective, a number of challenges remain in relation to

planning practice and the planning system. These are:

The culture of planning and planners still requires change - there is a need

to move away from the compendium of policy producing plans.

Planning should not be about the purity of process but the quality of

outcomes achieved.Maintaining collaborative effort to maintain liveable

neighbourhoods should involve debates about urban design and not the

wording of policy.

There is also the question of what the interface is between traditional

planning and the new economy.

What about the differentiation and variability of place context and the dynamics

and processes at work at different spatial scales? We need to accept that there

are wider inuences operating at different geographic scales which can reinforce

and/or undermine the nature of places in an everyday context. Private nance

can mobilised if they see the benets of how that place may develop. Can

specicity of place accommodate certain approaches and therefore should we

be more concerned with how we deliver this rather than what we deliver? Are

there competing tensions between the resilience and adaptability of place? Can

liveable neighbourhoods be created and maintained as places where people will

want to be? How?

Physical settings simple

or complex evoke complex

human responses in the

form of feelings, attitudes,

values, expectancies, and

desires, and it is in this sense

as well as in their known

physical properties that

their relationships to human

experience and behaviourmust be understood.

(Proshanky et al 1970, p.28)

9

(Top) Delegates debate issues

at the Academy of Urbanism

Congress 2011.

(Bottom) Professor Kevin Murray

addresses delegates.


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Community

The theme of community is discussed here in relation to living, learning and

working landscapes. As such, this obviates a need to discuss the economy given

the link between this and learning and working within a liveable neighbourhoods

context. This builds on some of the speaker presentations at the Congress and

the break out workshop sessions.

People inhabit cities, but people live in neighbourhoods - but what are

neighbourhoods? Are they the correct scale for measuring and gauging the

routinised everyday practices in which people conduct their daily life? In

developing liveable neighbourhoods as successful places is this more to do with

how we think and perceive what they could be, rather than how they are actually

currently conceived e.g. as socially-homogenous physically delineated units

or administratively dened boundaries. This is not entirely new as David Harvey

once reminded us that neighbourhood is implicit rather than explicit (1973).

Participants discussed neighbourhood and how we dene and understand it. For

instance, neighbourhood is something we have an afnity with, a place of pride

and has connections with place. A neighbourhood is to accept that you live in a

house and the services and activities you require are located elsewhere or if not,

you need to re-create functional relationships elsewhere.

Is it folly to assume that the neighbourhood as creative spaces for learning,

activities and interaction are important to people and if not, can we make

neighbourhoods successful places so that they do become important? This is

particularly signicant for understanding the relationship between where we live

and where we work, if they are in fact related at all. Often the separation between

home and the workplace is symptomatic of the increasing mobility afforded

by access to the private car allowing access to jobs located elsewhere other

than the local neighbourhood. Evidence shows for instance that the amount of

miles travelled between 1952 and 2002 has trebled. Other evidence suggests

that higher income groups travel more than low income groups. In other words,

adopting the language of spatial sciences, space has got a lot bigger. This

reects what has been termed the hypermobile society, (Adams, 2000). What

are the challenges to our landscapes of work in reversing this long-established

trend?

Politicians in all industrial countries struggle to apply technical xes to the

problems caused by increasing physical mobility. But even if we devise non-

polluting congestion-free modes of transport and all work from home we will still

pay a very high price for mobility , (Adams, 2000).

Some commentators purport to the view that most placemakers know nothing

about the economy. As the new economy strongly focuses on the creation and

harnessing of innovation as important to urban economies, there is a need

to be aware of the scale of this: cities are drivers for innovation. One important


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distinction between the urban geography of t he UK and Germany for instance,

is that London and the West of the country (e.g. city-regions), tend to dominate

whereas in Germany, this is more evenly distributed across the country. As

a result, we need to be careful about the perceived advantages of proximity,

We have few places of a scale sufcient to create the actors that strive in the

creation of innovative ideas. If we t hink about the places that nourish innovation

then they will matter because proximity matters. Conversely, there are places

that ourish when they are left alone: the unplanned places. For example,Speirs Locks in Glasgow is a regeneration process that is developing through

organic change.

Spiers Locks in Glasgow perhaps represents an example of letting individuals

within communities do things for themselves but supported by the public

sector. In terms of spaces within neighbourhoods, the public sector provides an

enabling role for local people to access cheap and adaptable spaces. In fact,

this was a very common theme that ran throughout the various discussions and

examples are provided here. Various sub-themes emerged including the role of

local assets whether this is people, spaces or buildings, social entrepreneurship

and ideas of community ownership and the role of capital investment.

Place is security, space is freedom: we are attached to the one and long for the

otherFrom the security and stability of place we are aware of the openness,

freedom and threat of space, and vice-versa Space is more abstract than

place. What begins as undifferentiated space becomes place as we get to

know it better and endow it with valueSpace is transformed into place as it

acquires denition and meaning (Tuan, 1987, pps. 3; 6; 136).

Key questions might involve asking whether we should be using neighbourhood

level assets and spaces better and how we might achieve this? Does t his invite

a process where we ought to be less concerned with the dependent relationship

neighbourhoods have with the macro processes in which cities congure

themselves? Will successful places be more about the micro processes thatactually develop at the neighbourhood scale and can learning from place

reinforce a shift in thinking about how communities can be better helped to

help themselves? This is, of course, not a new idea but many would agree

that there is urgency in the need to elevate individuals at the micro level of the

neighbourhood in creating successful places. As the urban is essentially a

dynamic and complex system of interactions, how can we integrate the elevation

of people within this? The socio-economic status of individuals and therefore

behaviours, have strong links to well-being and if we can improve the socio-

economic output at the micro level then this will feedback into the macro. Do

we need to turn our ways of doing things inside out? For example, low levels

of education, poor health and unemployment when combined result in those

remaining vulnerable to the cycle of social, cultural and structural disadvantages.


This becomes more acute and urgent particularly in times of economic recession

where labour market disadvantage is accentuated due to for example, low skills

attainment. Material and socio-psychological factors thus inuence how people

behave. If people can be elevated then, this will bring about behavioural changes.

Socio-cultural disadvantages refer to values and in particular, value-oriented

personal values. A key question is where and how can we invest our money

given these disadvantages?

The core assets of making liveable neighbourhoods is the people already living

there

People are considered the most important assets of a neighbourhood. Why?

While other assets such as social and capital infrastructure are also important,

there is a general consensus that to nd creative people in neighbourhoods, we

must get nosey and loiter with intent. We cannot take as given that those who

claim to represent the community are the ones who instinctively know what the

community wants. We need to get inside. While the role of the third sector is

often regarded as being more trustworthy and in tune than the large government

bureaucracies, some suggest that even this sector emulates the practices o f

the public sector to an extent. Is there an alternative? In some sense, this

chimes with ideas about the positive role and/or contribution of social capital in

maintaining and sustaining communities or neighbourhoods. But it is necessary

to be clear what we understand by social capital in the context of liveable

neighbourhoods and placemaking.

Lin argues that if the premise behind the notion of social capital is, investment

in social relations with expected returns in the marketplace, then this appears

quite simple and straightforward (Lin, 2001, p.19). The market chosen for

analysis may be economic, political, labour or community. Capital captured

through social relations is an approach wherein capital is seen as a social asset

by virtue of actors connections and access to resources in the network or group

of which they are members (Lin, 2001, p.19). This suggests that embeddedresources in social networks can enhance the outcomes of actions . While

there are different and converging conceptualisations of social capital, the most

appropriate perspective relative to the level at which return or prot is conceived

is how the aggregate of individual returns also benets the collective, in this

case, the community or neighbourhood. More specically, and for our purpose,

this perspective can be extended to focus at the group level. This is concerned

with how certain groups develop and more or less maintain social capital as a

collective asset and, how such a collective asset enhances group members life

chances. The central interest of this perspective is to explore the elements and

processes in the production and maintenance of the collective asset (Lin, 2001,

p.22).Changing Glasgow People: place assets.


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The future is inside outand its all about tappingenergy and enterprise.Everybody brings something

to the party... but how dowe create an environmentthat gets real about who haswhat? Thats about movingbeyond theories about socialequality and fairness. Itsabout peoples capabilityskills. Human beings arefundamentally creative.

Lord Andrew Mawson,Speaking at Glasgow Congress


Because modern organisations are governed by rules, there are accepted

procedures for making decisions and responsibilities are often dened in

terms of a position rather than a person (Field, 2003). But when they want

to make something happen, many people will bypass these procedures and

responsibilities and talk to someone they know. This is especially true when there

is an element of uncertainty and risk involved when taking important decisions:

outcomes can be better and things move faster than if they were to deal with

bureaucracies (Field, 2003). Given this, in relation to people assets, the collectivehere is the overall neighbourhood and both the community and economic

markets are the marketplace.

The butteries started to appear

There were some excellent examples given by Lord Mawson where he charted

the development of social capital in relation to how a local church was adapted

for community use and eventually, community ownership and capital investment.

In one example, ownership of local community assets was allowed to happen as

the local council permitted Andrew to develop some greenspace on a tarmac

site behind the church. He bought the site for 1 (30 year lease) from the council

on the condition that he maintained it which he did. He eventually started

to doing gardening for local people who saw how successful he had made

this derelict site. Deepening working relationships with other locals appeared

and persisted over time. From taking ownership, the gardening turned into a

landscape business, Greendreams. A barn was eventually built with the capital

investment and now houses 37 local businesses (micro-small enterprises). An

international business recognised the good work of the landscape business and

a relationship was built. This example shows how bridging capital was developed

from the existence and establishment of local networks (social enterprise +

business).

If people are not part of the core creation of an area, they will rubbish it. The

future is inside out and its all about tapping energy and enterprise. Everybodybrings something to the partybut how do we create an environment that gets

real about who has what? Thats about moving beyond theories about social

equality and fairness. Its about peoples capability skills. Human beings are

fundamentally creative.

If workplaces are to thrive then they need form a part of the neighbourhood but

this also requires that neighbourhoods have to have some essential and optional

services to enable people to socialise and eat. How you create agreeable places

is very important. How do we creatively support grassroots business start up and

social innovation? How do we support scaling of enterprise? Is there a need for

enterprise agencies and business support organisations to reach out and engage

with social innovation businesses? Are they aware of the potential of this model?

(Top) Lord Andrew Mawson

(Middle) Ian Manson, Chief

Executive, Clyde Gateway

(Bottom) Gerry Grams, City

Design leader, Glasgow


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Criteria based assessment of business support can mean that micro business

opportunities fall through the cracks. We need to become more enabling. For

some there is a lot of frustration at how institutions work given the appetite for

grassroots approaches. Entrepreneurs have to make the economic case for

doing something. If you make an investment in a place, the benets may not be

apparent to the investor. This highlights that there is need to develop pathways

for identifying how the investment has beneted the place. In other words, it is

not a linear path.

The idea that spaces in places should be left for people to do what they want

to do chimes with the example noted above by Lord Mawson. Another example

is the Clyde Gateway (URC) who tidied up the sites, cleaned the shops and

opened a shop in the community center. In the workshops the idea of leaving

holes in the urban fabric to be colonised by the community was suggested.

This idea was referred to as derelict incubators, suggesting that while this may

not be tidy, it works for community benet. In other words, spaces need not

be planned in all places. Is there some merit in the idea of spontaneous cities

where development is at plot level? An eco-system approach would entail an

area identied as a district centre wherein once the central point is located,

development cold then graduate outwards to t he next area.

From the experience provided by Employers in Voluntary Housing (EVH), they

realised that they had the potential to do more. They had learned a lot of what

is being done, is essential to good health in the community, the promotion of

social cohesion, social capital, relationships of trust and mutuality. This they

argued contributed to the mental well being of people in these communities.

This reinforced the view that in uncertain times, this progress in the community

dimension should not be dismissed in the push for greater efciency. Therefore,

the aim should be about recognizing and retaining what is good in the existing

roles of providers and participants, and that this was not just about housing

providers managing the physical aspects of the environment. Things should be

done in an inclusive and participatory fashion, ensuring that the real issues inthese communities are addressed and identied whilst encouraging local people

in the contributions they make.

We already have community organisations that are already anchored but can

they do more? Why cant more organisations get the assistance and help to do

that? We must relate to their individual communities and the issues that there

are there - the only way to do t hat is to give local people the opportunity to

contribute and to participate.

A key theme was related to how we now get started to unlocking that potential?

Specic examples alluded to the idea that assets of the neighbourhood need

to be better connected. One way of doing this is to hang out with local people


on their own terms through a self-organised event. For instance, in one example,

50 web designers were locked in a room to see what happens. From that 30

ideas for projects with business potential emerged and from this, some of those

projects have already gone to market. Meeting people on their own terms was

also reported by another participant whose experience had shown that this is a

very efcient way of dealing with things.

Other examples reported on the idea of latent and expedient proximity. Therelevance of these concepts to community become apparent if we think of the

school playground as a space for networking. The potential of this space has yet

to be realised as somewhere that people can share ideas and values. Schools

already provide the shared connection by virtue of your child attending school.

If the neighbourhood is not the place for the creation of social and shared spaces,

then the alternative is that we need to be more creative in making sense of the

spatiality of cities. A key question then is how do we nurture shared or common

spaces? This idea has antecedents in the role of the high street as the traditional

place for interaction within a shared space. The idea that the high street or town

centres are in crisis illustrates the dilemma: the need to protect and increase

choice and competition in the interests of the consumer whilst at the same time

ensuring the continued vitality and viability o f the high street where independent

shops for example, normally occupy. Could town centres be reimagined as

shared spaces? What matters is the diversity of activities at the centre.


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The psychology of place

Have we been tolerant of an approach or situation where it is people versus

place where policies for places have and are being defended as strategies for

enabling policies for people? (Castello, 2010) In recognising this, as the economic

perspective on cities has gathered momentum over the previous 30 years, the

transformation of cities from basket cases of the preceding decades to key

drivers of competitive city-regions has been characterised by various phases of

economic and physical development activity. In particular, the visual evidence and

perceptible outcomes of activities must be seen and importantly, understood.They can be seen in relation to positive or negative changes, their urban form,

improvements or decline in the quality of the public realm, urban design and

the overall urban fabric. All-encompassing and embracing terms such as urban

renewal and urban regeneration towards urban renaissance and now what we

may call, reconstruction describe the various approaches taken to arresting and

addressing urban neighbourhood decline.

Does the micro scale deserve more credit for how it underpins and serves the

success of macro processes which operate at the higher spatial scale of cities?

What are the elements at the micro level that create liveable neighbourhoods?

What are the challenges and opportunities for this to be realised and what

can our understanding of learning from place contribute to the achievement of

successful places?

The psychology of place is basically about addressing how our local environment

of the place where we live, work and leisure affects our cognitive and perceptible

processes of the brain. These in turn will shape how we will behave and function

in a place. The psychology of place matters as the quality of the spaces that we

move around in can affect us without us even being aware that it is affecting us.

Nervous systems can be affected by how we feel in a place when we experience

the place and its environment. For example, anxieties and fears may develop if

you do not feel safe in an area. Why you do not feel safe can for example, be

because of a lack of attention to design and quality of spaces including street

layout, accessibility, and how spaces intersect with buildings and roads. Someelements of this objective stimuli affect sight, tactile sensations are transmitted

by contact with the materials used for construction of the place, smells enable

the identication of places, coolness or warmth accurately quality a place, some

places are harmonious and others unbearably noisy, and some can stimulate or

whet the appetite so the physical form then plays a determining role in perceptual

phenomena (Castello, 2010).



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Health and liveability

Life expectancy is determined by many factors including lifestyle choices

and behaviours, genetics and hereditary conditions. It is also informed by

an individuals real and perceived opportunities their sense of control and

hopefulness. In the latter, the effects of deindustrialization and subsequent

unemployment are particularly relevant to the Glasgow story of low life

expectancy in parts of the city. The context of neighbourhoods is important

because it is the spatial framework people use to access health opportunities.

Although there are a number of projects which have seen large-scale investment

in understanding why Glasgows health record is the worst in Europe, e.g. the

GoWell programme1, systematic evidence of any skewed distribution in access

to health-improving resources is variable. Connecting and mining the numerous

datasets that exist for communities provides incredible scope to understand the

relationship between aspects of the physical environment and health. However,

there is a need for the development of robust methodologies to support the

maintenance and creation of healthier places. Research using the Mental Health

and Wellbeing Score (MenWB), has found that aspects and attractiveness of

the local environment is a factor in how people feel and perceive place and their

well-being. Factors such as spatial structure and walkability matter greatly in this

regard. Is there some scope for The Academy for instance, to provide input and

ideas to effect a model of change?

Health and Housing

Lifes a drudge with an outside cludge and an inside loo is a joy for you!

The connections between place, housing and health are well known. In Scotland,

Employers in Voluntary Housing (EVH) work with 140 social housing providers, 40

social enterprises and charities. They have set up nine Community-based housing

associations (CBHAs) over 30 years ago. This movement came out of a reaction

to the poor living conditions of the t enemental building in the post war period.

Practical action by communities to improve sanitation, the physical condition ofhousing emerged when adapting the tenements that existed in neighbourhoods

like Govan and Maryhill. Over time, through different programmes of investment,

this process of working with communities, organising investment around local

need resulted in re-imagining the traditional tenement building, in schemes such

as Crown Street in the Gorbals.

EVH now have in Glasgow alone, 50 community-led housing associations

(HAs). These have between them over 50,000 houses. In broad terms, Housing

Associations have moved on from a focus on physical improvements to deal

with the real issues in the communities. These actions are about community

services, led by citizens or communities, enabled by the Housing Associations

and a creative use of the assets they own and manage. The role of Community

1) see www.gowellonline.com/ GoWell was established in 2006 and is planned to run for 10 years.This timescale allows the programme to examine a range of neighbourhood, housing and health

related factors at different stages of the regeneration process.


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Based Housing Associations has expanded to consider wider issues affecting

local neighbourhoods including the quality of t he environment, life, services and

attractiveness as well as antisocial behaviour, and challenging social issues

like addiction. This is resulting in a new broad range of activities including

support services, skills and training, pathways to employment and co-design

of community services with institutions such as Local Authorities and health

professionals. As Foster Evans of EVH says Its about sustainability of their local

areas - not just housing.

The argument put forward by community associations and health professionals

suggests that liveability of local places can be improved by effective community

involvement at the grassroots: tenants . For instance, EVH reported that as

a matter of course, housing organisations get people to be involved through

employability schemes such as working on the local allotments; or the

establishment of walking clubs. Examples of this type of initiative, targeting

the development of positive psychology, have been developed in Glasgows

Easterhouse. The key challenge is about how people can get involved in

their local community. This is about developing sustainability and long term

communities, not just housing solutions.

In Scotland, social housing predominates in the poorest 15% of the population.

Long term health and illness issues are entrenched in these places. However,

there is hope. Foster Evans says We already have the model, an existing

resource but how can we do more with achieving good services to build better

communities and support better health? The answer is about the specics of

place, citizen participation and partnerships:

Better health unlocks potential and social landlords can act as a centre of

gravity and act to provide a structural solution to these issues and look to

improve the physical, social and eco environment.


Integrating policy: health and places

In Table 2 below, the key determinants of health are set out. This shows

the relationship and connections between the individual and the collective

determinants of health and their internal and external dimensions. A better

understanding of these determinants can inform better policy interventions to

support opportunities for better health in all places.

Table 2: Key Determinants of Health

TABLE 2 Internal External

Individual Characteristics of self Physical world

Collective Shared values and

culture

Social Structures and

economy (e.g. social

capital)

Experiencing the Lighthouse, Congress 2011 venue.

Changing housing landscapes in

Glasgow.


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A key question to examine in the creation of liveable neighbourhoods and their

relationship to health is why are there inequalities between places?

these can be about place

and these can also be about lifestyles (e.g. smoking)

But none of these are sufcient enough to explain the observed inequalities. Is

there then some merit in looking at these issues in terms of the context of place

and the composition of the individual within this context of place? The view is that

everything matters as it is not just one factor than determine health outcomes

or behaviours. It is a combination of factors and it is how we translate this into a

useful and meaningful policy.

The Scottish Governments Good Places: Better Health initiative considers an

environmental focus to addressing the framing of joined up place based policies

to support healthier communities. This policy requires a co-ordinated response

across all agencies working in a place, and partnership with the local community.

This form of initiative is emerging in response to a move to support preventative

spend, a focus on achieving outcomes earlier which last longer. Citizen

participation is central to making this form of initiative work.

There are many policies that address the physical context (i.e. the environmental

context) into which the individual must relate; but there are also a number of

policies which address the external and collective determinants of social structure

and the economy. However, whilst it is often assumed that these interventions

will make a positive impact on the internal aspects of health(both individual and

collective), achieving impacts through policy is often difcult and challenging. In

part this has to do with concepts of space, communities and neighbourhoods:

these ideas are not hard and fast boundaries - these are actually permeable

membranes. Impacts can be better achieved where policies move between

these structures Policy efforts need to be all joined up to make this happen.

This is challenging, and requires spatial designers to t ry and understand betterhow to achieve actual outcomes in partnership with health professionals and

communities. Language matters to effect this form of collaboration. It may be that

new forms of design practice and thinking are needed to make this happen.

In addition to the homes, streets, businesses and parks in our neighbourhood,

the public sector services play a big part in supporting communities and framing

the physical environment. The way such public services are being provided in

communities is changing. Historically, health services where organised around

GPs and hospitals; and disease was most often resolved either by cure or death.

Today, as treatments improve and life expectancy increases, there are many more

people living with long term conditions. This is requiring a fundamental shift in

healthcare policy and strategy with a greater focus on preventative measures,

on self care and on services being provided closer to home, often in close co-

(Top) Alistair MacDonald,

Glasgow City Council.

(Bottom) Glasgows East End

Regeneration.


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We must relate to individual

communities and the issues

that there are there - the only

way to do this is to give local

people the opportunity to

contribute and to participate.

Foster Evans,Employers in Voluntary Housing

27www.ads.org.uk/urbanism6

ordination with related public services such as social care, housing, education

etc. This change is embodied in the Scottish Governments Shifting the Balance

of Care policy. Whilst there is often close working between health boards and

local authorities on health promotion and service planning, the same cannot yet

be said about the planning of physical infrastructure to support health in LDPs

or major new development areas.

The Planning profession grew out of a health promotion agenda, and the NHSare again looking to us to help both in resolving obesity issues (i.e. healthy

planning and obsogenics) and in the development of community infrastructure

to support the changing model of service provision. Many services that had

once been hospital based are now being delivered in the community, based

around neighbourhood facilities servicing a population of 20-70,000 people

depending on the location. For some services this means peripatetic teams

from hospitals visiting neighbourhood facilities to provide consultations and

treatment, in other instances services are provided in schools and the home.

These neighbourhood facilities not only link different levels of healthcare but also

link to other public services allowing new opportunities such as a GP referral to

the swimming pool for weight control or physiotherapy; easier access to a library

for information about your condition, or helping resolve a housing or social work

support issue whilst youre visiting. These multi-transactions are surprisingly

powerful, such as a woman who reported her relief in being able to see a

police ofcer discretely whilst attending a child health clinic as shed have been

unable to safely visit a police station. These service changes of course require

different infrastructure to support them. Whereas previously we might have

dotted a GP surgery, dentist, library, sports centre, council ofce etc around the

neighbourhood, there is now a drive for them to be together. The connections

between home and hub and hospital become critically important too, especially

as for many people the walkable solution may not be possible; a doctor doing

outreach from a hospital, or a nurse visiting homes, each with supplies and

case notes are not likely to use public transport; similarly ill people visiting the

treatment centre may not be up to the walk/bus. Therefore the challenge toplanners and urban designers alike is to accommodate the increased scale of

public sector activity within our neighbourhoods. If we fail in this challenge we

may force public sector services to the periphery of communities and undermine

the other things we are trying to do with health promotion and enlivening our

community centres.

Exploring the potential of

urbanism to creative liveable

neighbourhoods.


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Making things happen ina recessionWhat is distinctive about contemporary perspectives on urban places is the

increasing emphasis attached to the reconstruction of neighbourhoods. But

what do we mean by reconstruction? It suggests something has broken down,

been destroyed and needs rebuilt whether physically and/or socially. If it is t o

describe the development activities within places, then this is not entirely new as

the reconstruction has historical precedents typied in the UK (and mainland

Europe) post-war rebuild programmes during the late 1940s, 1950s and 1 960sand accompanied by the establishment of a comprehensive welfare state.

Reconstruction in the contemporary context of economic recession can apply

to all manner of things in reconstructing living neighbourhoods. But, does its

increasing salience within contemporary debates by urban scholars, practitioners

and government bodies on the importance of placemaking signify - and therefore

imply - that neighbourhoods are and must be understood from a qualitatively and

quantitatively different perspective than has hitherto been recognised?

In the neighbourhood stories, Arie Voorburg introduced how Rotterdam is making

efforts to retain social equality and ethics in an age of austerity. He argues that

the idea of urban development is not complex not even in a world of complexity

and dynamic change. As he puts it, it is about tweaking the right knobs with

the central question of how do we nd the right knobs thats the only thing we

need to do. For him, the new apartheid is social and economic exclusion which

is much harder. In a similar way to evidence presented on Glasgows poor life

expectancy, shorter life expectancy in Rotterdams deprived neighbourhoods is 5

to 12 years less than the more afuent or high income neighbourhoods of the city.

Again, while not totally dissimilar to Glasgows levels of (dispersed) concentrated

neighbourhood deprivation, Rotterdam South, while accounting for half of the

city, there are 1500 projects which focus on cultural and social interventions. This

leads him to believe that there is a managerial neurosis due to the carousel of

many ineffective projects. The missing intensity and coherence of programmes

represents an accumulation of problems resulting in hopelessness: Its inequality,

poverty, injustice and polarisation which makes our neighbourhoods not very vitalfor their long term future.

In an era of declining nancial capacity, how do we save on our social and

economic inequality and ethics? With budgetary cuts in social investment

programmes including health and welfare, Voorburg argues that these are the

most effective incentives to focus efforts on. As such, he recommends three

things that need to be thought about:

1. Cities as complex, adaptive systems. Cities are not stable they are

continually changing and are non-linear. That is, cities are complex systems

always balancing on the edge of chaos. There is not a strict equilibrium, it is never

found. It is always about the internal coherence of functional elements and the

capacities for adjustments. There is a tangled web of connectivity differentiated


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quote page...


coevolving of sub-systems, an ability to change and continuous adaptation is

emergent given multi-causal phenomena. As such,

2. This means that urban design must have a much bigger adaptive

capacity and this must be about the ability of the system to adjust to, for

example, climate change. There is a certainty about resilience and importantly,

its also about social acceptability and convertibility; moreover, it is also about

expendability the possibility to remove things.

3. Importance has to be given to the costs and benets as well as the

efciency and balance and especially on social investments such as health and

education and social care. Too often these are seen as costs heavily weighted

on budgets and rarely seen as investments.

A key challenge for the Netherlands is the nancial organisational structures.

They are not prepared for the change and to accept that social interventions

now will produce long-term benets nancial and monetary benets. In seeking

what is effective, we need to walk the walk by accepting reality means that

there is no more a mono-causal relationship, i.e. that if something is changed

then there will be whole causal change within the whole system. In the following

three components, urban development of neighbourhood developments must

be much more focused on the:

1. Requirement for much more clearer strategic intents and,

2. Social and physical environment of the neighbourhood must be much

more closely related for development but also looking at the possibility of the,

3. Individuals potentials. These can be hereditary and/or acquired.

(Top) Arie Voorburg discusses

social capital and regeneration.

(Bottom) Workshop session and

discussion on jobs and economy.

Successful urban

development is about

tweaking the right knobs.Arie Voorburg


20/25

www.ads.org.uk/urbanism Liveable Neighbourhoods: Renaissance, Regeneration and Reconstruction 33

3. Conclusion:The future is now!From the Congress dialogues, several overarching themes emerging from the

various presentations, discussions and workshops can be identied. These were

placemaking, community engagement and health and liveability. A number of

issues were also identied which signify the ongoing challenges and inuences

that the creation of liveable neighbourhoods must contend with. These included

an appreciation of the spatial scale creating neighbourhoods as spaces of work in

a new economy which emphasises a focus on t he creation of innovation.

In relation to the Scottish context of placemaking, challenges remain in planning

practice and the planning system in particular. If the current system and practice

produces unintentional consequences as measured by policy outcomes, then the

process in which policy implementation is realised requires ongoing work. Not

to do so will potentially undermine the achievements made so far in maintaining

the momentum for collaborative efforts viewed as essential elements in creating

and maintaining liveable neighbourhoods. Moreover, too often the contribution of

architecture and design is viewed as perhaps as second order issue over much

focus placed on technological solutions to the important challenges of climate

change.

Community engagement is crucial for the creation of liveable neighbourhoods.

The dialogues reveal a general consensus that how institutions engage with

communities and individuals needs to change. Identifying the creators of liveable

neighbourhoods necessitates an approach that gets inside communities in

order that the creativity of individuals who live there can be identied, encouraged

and realised. Only by such an approach can we move away from traditional

methods of engagement and involvement as set out in top-down consultation

processes. Evidence from participants through drawing on their own experiences

shows that the realisation of desired outcomes stipulated in policy plans are

often not achieved within an approach that simply engages with community

representatives. Consultation cannot be done to communities and instead

requires to be undertaken with communities. Doing things inside out may

impact positively on both the micro and macro level processes of cities and

neighbourhoods. They can act to shape, reinforce, and therefore determine the

future pathways of a neighbourhoods and individuals future.

Finally, the theme of health and liveability revealed how the importance of health

status can transcend many other - albeit no less important - issues such as

unemployment. Understanding the connections between the key determinants

of health, health inequalities and health outcomes within and between places are

important for the creation and maintenance of liveable neighbourhoods. While

health promotion and prevention programmes can prove effective at t he scale

of the neighbourhood via for example, improved access to health education and

services, tackling health-related behaviours to effect change in health outcomes

is much more challenging for policy. Increasingly policy is aiming towards


21/25


preventative care, early intervention and holistic thinking about wellbeing. Not

only does this reect an awareness of the nature of the relationship between

health, housing and place but also a wider recognition that services generally

need to engage better with the local physical environment and institutional

context in which services are provided. Through improving institutional

join up at this level, a better understanding of both the environmental and

compositional contexts of individuals in places could help to achieve improved

health outcomes for all. Currently, there is no systematic evidence of a skeweddistribution in the availability and provision of health services. However, there

are a number of ongoing research programmes on the social and physical

determinants of health inequalities and health-inducing behaviours focused at

the neighbourhood scale. Two key conclusions are how the combination of

factors that determine health can be translated into meaningful policy and, how

might the design and architecture of places contribute to this.

What is it that requires change in order to make this happen? How will we know

what a successful place is and will we be able to replicate this as a prototype to

be rolled out in all places? For instance, if we had a list of 10 qualities of place

what would we do with it? What would this place be like?

Castello questions what kind of experiences are involved in the construct

of place? (2010, p.61). Consideration needs to be given to the whole set of

physical, perceptual, cognitive, psychological and social experiences. But

what kind of operational tools can lead us to better understanding of the

psycho-spatial phenomena of the urban environment? As Castello has further

suggested, The interaction between behaviour and environment demands

the construction of a suitable paradigm for giving objective and subjective

parameters to place, (2010, p.61). This is already well underway in the

placemaking agenda. It is how we now devise and deliver the necessary tools

and action on the ground that will make liveable neighbourhoods a reality for all

individuals.



22/25


Adams, J., (2000), Hypermobility,Prospect Magazine, (March 2000 issue)

Castello, L., (2010), Rethinking the Meaning of Place: Conceiving Place in

Architecture-Urbanism, Ashgate

Fanstein, S., (2001), The City Builders: Property Development in New York and

London, 1980-2000, 2nd Ed., Lawrence, KA: The University Press of Kansas

Field, J., (2003), Social Capital, Routledge

Harvey, D., (1973), Social Justice and the City,Edward Arnold

Jacobs, J., (1961), The Death and Life of Great American Cities: The Failure ofTown Planning,Random House, New York

Lin, N., (2001), Social Capital: A Theory of Social Structure and Action , CUP

Mclennan. D., (2011), in Chisolm, S., (Ed), in Investing in Better Places:

International Perspectives,The Smith Institute, found at http://www.smith-

institute.org.uk/le/Investing%20in%20Better%20Places.pdf

NRU, (2001),A New Commitment to Neighbourhood Renewal: National

Strategy Action Plan, (The Social Exclusion Unit), UK Cabinet Ofce

Proshansky, H., Ittelson, W. & Rivlin, L., (1970), The Inuence of the Physical

Environment on Behaviour: Some Basic Assumptions, in Proshansky, H.,

Ittelson, W. & Rivlin, L., (Eds), Environmental Psychology: Man and His Physical

Setting,New York: Halt-Rinehart & Winston

Tuan, Y-F., (1987), Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience,

Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press, 4th Printing

Wood, R.C., (1995), People Versus Places: The Dream Will Never Die, in Caves,

R., (Ed), Exploring Urban America, An Introductory Reader, Thousand Oaks,

CA: Sage Publications, pps.137-144

Porta, S., Strano, E., Iacoviello, V., Messora, R., Latora, V., Cardillo, A., Wang

F. & Scellato, S., (2009), Street Centrality and Densities of Retail and Services in

Bologna, Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design, 36, 450-465.

All images are credited to John Thompson, Honorary President,

The Academy of Urbanism, except

A+DS credits: pages 6,7, 12 [top and mid], 13 [top and mid], 22,24,25, 28 and

35

Gary Watt, ISIS: page 12, bottom

Bibliography

37


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Architecture and Design Scotland

The Congress was supported and co-facilitated by Architecture and Design

Scotland (A+DS). As a non-departmental public body, it is the Scottish

Governments national champion for good architecture, design and planning

in the built environment. The aim of A+DS is to promote excellence in

placemaking, architecture and planning. It achieves this by supporting the

creation of places that work, which provide people with real choices and, are

ultimately, places where people want to be. It champions the highest standards

in architecture and placemaking across all sectors, advocating a better

understanding of the importance of quality design in both the public and private

sectors. A+DS does this by working through its established programmes to

champion excellence and advocate the benets of excellence in design. A+DS

has six programmes of work which move across the themes and scales of

placemaking. They are: urbanism, design review, Sustainability in Architecture

[Sust], Access to Architecture, Schools and Health.

The Academy of Urbanism

The concept and background to the Academy of Urbanism Congress VI theme

of Liveable Neighbourhoods: Renaissance, Regeneration and Reconstruction

builds on the work of the Academy in identifying, learning and celebrating what

makes for successful places. Liveable Neighbourhoods forms an integral

part of the Academys ongoing work in promoting dialogue, discourse, debate,

exchange of good practice, stimulating research and importantly, to celebrate

achievement. The major mission of the Academy is learning from place and

this is communicated in a number of ways including publication of books and

working with places particularly the nalists of the Great Places awards e.g. the

2011 Freiburg Charter launched by the Academy in March 2011.

The Academy has a number of initiatives and programmes which it has set up to

promote learning from place. The Cities X-Rays initiative is concerned with the

examining and measuring both empirically but also in terms of stories, narratives

and visits to places. The aim of Cities X-Rays is to get the under the skin of

places in order to understand, interpret appreciate and explain place to people

emphasising that place is not just about physicality. For 2011-2012, the Place

Partnering Initiative is being developed and represents a new way of working

with towns, communities and neighbourhoods. This builds on existing initiatives

already underway in different parts of the UK (e.g. UniverCities Initiative of which

the Glasgow Urban Lab is an exemplar).

Appendix 2:About the report authors

39

Appendix 1:Sponsors

The Academy of Urbanism are very grateful for the support and contribution of

all the sponsors who made the Glasgow Congress a success:

Glasgow City Council

The vision of Glasgow City Council is to enable Glasgow to ourish as a

modern, multi-cultural, metropolitan city of opportunity, achievement, culture and

sporting excellence where citizens and businesses thrive and visitors are always

welcomed.

www.glasgow.gov.uk

Scottish Government

The devolved government for Scotland is responsible for most of the issues

of day-to-day concern to the people of Scotland. The Scottish Governments

purpose is to focus government and public services on creating a more

successful country, with opportunities for all of Scotland to ourish, through

increasing sustainable economic growth.

www.scotland.gov.uk/home

Clyde Gateway URC

Clyde Gateway URC are a specially created urban regeneration company

covering 840 hectares across the east end of Glasgow, including Bridgeton and

Dalmarnock, plus Rutherglen and Shaweld in South Lanarkshire. The URC is a

partnership with Glasgow City Council, South Lanarkshire Council, and Scottish

Enterprise - with Scottish Government.

www.clydegateway.com


Architecture and Design Scotland (A+DS) is Scotlands champion for excellence

in placemaking, architecture and planning. We are an Executive NDPB of the

Scottish Government. We champion the highest standards in architecture and

placemaking across all sectors.

www.ads.org.uk

Glasgow Merchant City Townscape Heritage Initiative

Funded by Glasgow City Council, Scottish Enterprise and the Heritage Lottery

Fund this 3 million grant scheme was aimed at owners of historic buildings

within a designated area of the Merchant City.

www.glasgowmerchantcity.net

Glasgow School of Art

The GSA is internationally recognised as one of Europes foremost higher

education institutions for creative education and research in ne art, design and

architecture.

www.gsa.ac.uk

Liveable Neighbourhoods: Renaissance, Regeneration and Reconstruction8


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THEME SPEAKER ROLE ANDORGANISATION

Welcome to Glasgow(Speech)

B ai li e L iz C am ero n Exe cu ti ve Me mb erfor Development and

Regeneration Services,


Introduction to Glasgow Al is ta ir MacDona ld AoU, Head o f P lann ing,

Glasgow city Council

GLASGOW CITY

NARRATIVE, Welcome

Speech

Kevin Murray AoU Chairman

Glasgow Vision Gerry Gormal Executive Director,


The N at io na l P ers pe ct iv e J im McK inno n C hi ef Pl anne r, The Sc ot ti sh

Government

Social Entrepreneurs:

Making Communities Work

Lord Andrew Mawson Director, Andrew Mawson

Partnerships

NEIGHBOURHOOD

STORIES, (Chair)

Professor Brian Evans AoU, Head of Urbanism,

Mackintosh School of

Architecture

Clyde Gateway and the

Commonwealth Games

Ian Manson Chief Executive,

Clyde Gateway Urban

Regeneration Company

Regenerating Existing

Neighbourhoods

Liz Davidson Project Manager, Merchant

City Townscape Heritage

Initiative (Glasgow)

GoW el l N ei ghbo urhood s C aro l Ta nnah il l T he G la sg ow C en tre f or

Population and Health

Fi nancing Social Renewal Ari e Voorbu rg ARCADIS, Arnh em

LEARNING FROM

PLACE

John Worthington (Chair) AoU

Appendix 3:

Congress ProgrammeTable 1 below displays information on the Congress Speakers for each themeand the organisations they represent.

Table 1: Congress Event Speakers and Organisations

www.ads.org.uk/urbanism 41

PARALLEL

WORKSHOPS:

Contemporary

Neighbourhood Planning

How do Neighbourhoods

Learn?

F: Sam Cassels

Lesley Thomson

Janice Kirkpatrick

AoU, Architecture and

Design Scotland

Director Lidell Thomson

Graven Images

Neighbourhoods as

Spaces of Work

F: Janette Harkess

Rohan Gunatillake

John Lord

Director of Policy and

Research, Scottish Council

for Development and

Industry

Innovation Producer and

Consultant

Yellowbook Ltd.

Living Neighbourhoods George Morr is

Heather Chapple

Foster Evans

Scientic Advisor to

Scottish Government,

Good Places Better Health

A+DS

Director, Employers in

Voluntary Housing

City Visioning F: Prof Brian Evans

Prof Brian Porter

Cathy Johnston

AoU, Head of Urbanism,Mackintosh School of

Architecture

AoU, Mackintosh School

of Architecture

Group Manager Glasgow

City Council

Keynote: Learning from

Lebanon

Angus Gavin Urban Development

Divisional Head, Solidere

Note: F = Facilitator


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The Academy of Urbanism70 Cowcross StreetLondon

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www.academyofurbanism.org.uk

Documents

The Academy of Urbanism Glasgow Congress Report Final 2011