Rising from the Ashes of High Rise

Yesterday I visited the Laurieston Living Development on a site visit with my Macintosh School urban design students on a fieldtrip very kindly hosted by Stallan Brand Architecture. As a compliment to my article on the potential end of high-rise living in Scotland of a few months ago, I would offer some reflection on what can rise up from the ashes of such schemes.


As my research in Glasgow in recent months has evidenced, there is a real sense of having been 'done to' by planners, on behalf of some of the communities that bore the brunt of the City's comprehensive redevelopment in the postwar years. This finds one of its strongest spatial expressions in Laurieston, where the 23 storey Norfolk Court blocks, demolished in 2010 and 2016, were a concrete example of the loss of the area's dense morphology of modest spaces defined by buildings in favour of a landscape of monumental buildings in space.


As a planner today, I am often torn between my respect for the zeal of practitioners of the postwar years, in attempting to create what they saw as a new form of space and society, and the failings of these visons in the hard, real world. Carmona et al. in their 'Public Places, Urban Spaces' book, a core text of my course define an ‘artistic’ tradition of planning and urban design. While it is not hard to see this in the concern for form, geometry and truth to materials particularly characteristic of professional attitudes at this time, I believe the analogy runs deeper.


Postwar planners and designers, backed up by the government drive for housing and rebuilding were very much therefore, assuming the role of the Old Master. The buildings and spaces resulting were certainly highly provocative, expressive and innovative: certainly worthy of appreciation in a gallery or architect’s journal. As such, we have the likes of Sir Basil Spence’s 'great ship' of the Gorbals and Geoffrey Copcutt’s “machine for living” in Cumbernauld as key exhibits. But what of the voice for those who then had to live their lives within these bold statements?


The ‘social’ tradition and those of ‘place making’ and ‘sustainable urbanism’ that followed I feel, challenge the practitioner to assume more of the role of a performance artist: reacting to both the environment in which their work takes place and the ever-changing demands of their ‘public’. In Laurieston, from the ashes of one tradition and its attendant morphology, comes fresh development and designs aimed at reintegrating this part of the City with its neighbouring locales. My liberal use of inverted commas above hints that the path to implementation of these ideals is not an easy one. However, it is always one that as professionals, whether student or in-practice, we should approach from a firm appreciation of context: both on site and in the hearts and minds of local people.





Image © Copyright Thomas Nugent and licensed for reuse under the Creative Commons Licence.

Keeping the 'Big Players' Round the Table?

My latest reflections on charrettes on this blog have been given impetus by an excellent recent article by Nick Wright, drawing on the experiences of Niall Murphy of Pollockshields Community Council. Both argue that the key challenges in the charrette process extend beyond the events themselves, asking important questions about what happens to deliver the vision and projects arrived at. In particular, the buy in of the local council is a crucial one.

While the days of local authorities having millions to spend on supporting local regeneration and other place shaping initiatives are likely a thing of the (distant?) past, many community groups are well equipped to drive charrette outcomes forward on  their own initiative at the local level. In this respect, some of the most recent practice based research into charrettes and other co design processes points to the imperative that the community takes ownership of this delivery phase. However, 'community' as defined here, is not necessarily restricted to individuals and organisations, but also to local networks and partnerships.

As some of my previous articles have referred to, partnership has become an increasingly more uncertain term in the lexicon of planning and regeneration. Perhaps the most powerful such organisations,  the Urban Regeneration Companies, with the exception of Clyde Gateway have now been wound up. However, it could be argued what is the purpose of a charrette if not create a new vision and partnership for how a local place will grow? In any partnership however, there are 'Big Players' that hold the resources necessary to effect change. Amongst these players, the support of the Council is still crucial, even if this is only in the form of a commitment to recognise the outcomes in policy. Yet, as the experience in Pollockshields attests to, securing such a commitment is not a process which always moves quickly.

These potential difficulties are of even more relevance given the Planning (Scotland) Bill, introduced to Parliament in December. The bill tables the ability for communities to create their own 'local place plans', of which the overarching local development planning process must take account. If these are to avoid frustration and disappointment on behalf of local people, the procedures by which LPP's and LDP's relate to each other must be clearly set out in any Secondary legislation following from the Bill. A spirit of partnership is after all, only as strong as the assurances on behalf of all the partners that they will pull together in reaching for their goals.     





 

End of living 'high rise' in Scotland?

Council plan to demolish 4,000 tower block homes in Glasgow marks end of living high-rise…

The end of living ‘high rise’, the announcement in the Daily Record ¹ and other media in Scotland that one the largest Council landlord could demolish all if its tower blocks over the coming decades, including the iconic Muirhouse Towers, pictured, in the southern part of Motherwell.

I remember five years ago, as one of the local Planning Officers, conducting site visits in nearby Dalziel Park. Catching sight of the seven eighteen storey point blocks, an initiative of an allied group of Council Housing Convenors against the centralised and regional planning of the Scottish Development Department, ² rising from the misty parkland spurred a strange reflection: had the contemporary city of Le Corbusier descended from the historical ether to take root in West Central Scotland?

Before I become another misty eyed aficionada for the ghosts of progress past, having never spent one night of my life in a tower block, let me state that the verdict on this form of housing is still a very open one. The various perspectives on tower life offered up by this recent announcement are varied – there is many a case for saying towers have had their day, especially considering the horrific lessons of this summer.

As time and lives move on, so must housing also. What the outcomes of this process might be, let us not speculate, only hope that what is built to replace the blocks is fit for the future and that 2077 does not greet the announcement that the end of living in the currently vogue, ‘low rise, mixed use development’,  is at an end…   

  

DAILYRECORD.CO.UK. 2017. Council plan to demolish 4,000 tower block homes in Glasgow marks end of living high-ris. Available: http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/council-plan-demolish-4000-tower-11728799 [Accessed 21 December 2017].

GLENDINNING, M. & MUTHESIUS, S. 1994. Tower block : modern public housing in England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, New Haven, Yale University Press.

Image: The copyright on this image is owned by Richard Webb and is licensed for reuse under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 license.

My Town the New Town

Image: JR James,2013, 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC 2.Attribution-Non Commercial 0) Creative Commons License

A Failed Utopia?

2017 marked the fifty-year anniversary of the completion of the first phases of Cumbernauld New Town, with its Town Centre opened in 1967. Our latest CPD Event hosted by the RTPI West of Scotland Chapter discussed how, in its relatively short history, Cumbernauld has been popularly “celebrated, neglected, and then reviled”. Behind this story however, lies another, more optimistic vision of the town, from which many residents have gone on to become well known planners and architects. Many of the critics of the new towns and the other postwar reconstruction and overspill projects, view them as “failed utopias”: attempts to provide a radically reordered urban environment which fell flat in the face of shifting political priorities, economic conditions and social norms.

Plan and Reality

At first glance, Cumbernauld’s story is no different from this mould. The Town came out of the blocks to international acclaim when in 1967, the American Institute of Architects declared that the “dreams of the 1920’s and 30’s are being built on a hill near Glasgow” in presenting their Community Architecture Award. In this, the Institute was surely casting a glance to the radical work of figures such as Le Corbusier and his “Ville Contemporaine” from 1922: a grand edifice of motorways, monumental tower blocks and manufactured parkland. Accordingly, Cumbernauld’s form was characterised by complete separation of vehicles and pedestrians on site, most (in) famously achieved via the town centre “megastructure” raised above the central roadway. The housing areas were also punctuated by both point and slab blocks underpinned by a centralised landscape strategy.  Unfortunately, these visions were let down by reality: only around a quarter of the originally planned town centre was completed as the construction challenges and capital requirements of such an avant-garde building set in. The original unity of conception within the town’s housing areas was also eroded as recession and then deregulation set in, making it that much harder to maintain these carefully planned environs. These challenges reflected the dubious distinction of ‘Plook on the Plinth’ being placed upon the town in 2001 and 2005, judges particularly scathing about the town centre as a “rabbit warren on stilts”.

My Town the New Town?

Despite the unhappy side of the Town’s history, our event which attracted a healthy mix of built environment professionals and local community members, highlighted a number of alternative views of Cumbernauld. Despite the radical planning and architecture which shaped the Town’s development, the historical research presented by speaker Diane Waters of Historic Environment Scotland and myself, also highlights a counter current in the thinking of the Cumbernauld Development Corporation (CDC). In this light, the archive indicates that the vehicle pedestrian separation was not an attempt at establishing some kind of ‘auto-topia’ but at mediating the needs of pedestrians and other street users, particularly children with the growing mass car ownership of the time. Similar ideas of balance were present in the CDC’s approach to integrating old buildings on the site into the new town design, as well as attempting to re-establish natural woodland for new residents to enjoy.

The open discussion panel highlighted how the town in its central location with good access to green spaces remains a desirable place to live, particularly for families as was the original design intention. Like many other towns in Scotland, Cumbernauld has attracted a diversity of new residents from around the world who continue its’ story.  A number of regeneration challenges for the town centre continue to be explored. The building holds a particular fascination for urbanists, with the Bauhaus School visiting the town in 2009 and my own students at the Glasgow School of Art generating a number of good ideas for reviving the area, earlier in the year.   

  

All of this points to the fact that the new towns cannot be reduced to ‘failed utopias’ past tense: they remain with us as evolving places, continuing to provide housing, jobs, recreation and the life stories that come with these. This is not to be evangelical about Cumbernauld or any other new town, just to respect the original visions, the challenges to these visions and the need to keep debate on them alive. This debate is all the more relevant considering the recent suggestion from some quarters of Parliament, that Scotland should build new towns again.     

To Have a Vision?

It was great to be involved again in one of PAS's 'In the Footsteps of Geddes' sessions yesterday in Lochgilphead. In the spirit of Gedde's civic survey, the project works with young people to deliver place plans based on heritage assets for their community.

To look forward one must first often look to the past. The day so began with a visit to the Arichonan Clearance Village. Being among the ruined crofts on a beautiful sunny morning brought the group together in understanding and reflecting on the sense of place which still pervades the area. This was true across both the ages since the village was abandoned and the age difference between the participants and facilitators.

On our return to the venue we had feedback gained from the Place Standard Tool used at its most constructive with the young participants discussing how another element of local heritage, the former school, could be re-purposed into a community asset.

At its heart, the planners role is a creative one, yet so often considering the timescales and statutory processes along which we operate, this essence becomes obscured. To be able to work with those who might not have considered what planning does before, but to see them arrive at a vision is a challenging but rewarding experience and always provides inspiration for my own practice! 

And again...

What feels like another milestone with my first publication appearing today in the peer reviewed, academic journal Planning Perspectives. Thanks to Duncan Bowie of the University of Westminster for his excellent book which was the focus of my review.   

New Publication!!!

One more step on the journey: great to have a publication in the Scotregen online journal from SURF, of which I am a member. The article can be read at: 

https://www.surf.scot/scotregen/how-can-charrettes-play-a-part-in-community-led-regeneration/