loving your work tidy street

Tidy Street in Brighton is wearing its energy use on its sleeve by recording their daily energy usage and telling the world about it in a giant infographic painted on the street outside. Local street artist Snub is providing the graphical know how and over March and April 2011 they will not only be able to see their own electricity use but how they measure up against households across the uk.

The project is part of Change, a collaboration between Goldsmiths, Nottingham Uni, Sussex Uni and the Open University - check it out here - http://www.changeproject.info and follow the progress of Tidy Street at ww.tidystreet.org

Community Permission: Seeing the community as client

Communities are all too often bystanders in the regeneration and development process despite being profoundly affected by the changes that the process can bring. The planning process can also be a mystery, shrouded in tiny fonts, aggressive institutional-speak, over-the-top bureaucracy, the safety blanket of policy and a funfair of forms. Instead of being receivers of development, local people should be agents of change, helping to define and steer the shape their own neighbourhoods take?

The Localism agenda provides an unprecedented opportunity to place communities at the heart of the local decision-making process by creating important new roles and responsibilities for them. The community is now a client and needs to be satisfied that development is meeting their needs. But they also need to manage the responsibility and burden of being a permission-giver. Following from this, developers now need a mandate from a community to develop in their area. They need to obtain “community permission”.

If communities are expected to run services, take on assets and give permission for development then they need a new set of behaviours, skills and competencies that are currently not there in abundance and often have to be brought or bought in. This is all very well but communities often lack the confidence to articulate their needs effectively and play with the people that don’t normally play with them – i.e., developers. So, we need to gear up communities to become savvy clients and representative permission-givers and we need to do this fast.

Developers and communities often have uncomfortable experiences of going through the planning process and gaining permission can be painful for both sides. We need to change the relationship between developers and communities from the adversarial to being much more collaborative. Developers also need to be up-skilled in communicating better with local people. Obtaining community permission needs to be considered as important and startegic to the success of a development proposal as obtaining planning permission or getting environmental consents. The costs of gaining community permission therefore need to be built into the development model from the start just as gaining expert advice on planning, enviornmental matters and design is.

Community as Client is not a new thing – we have a long tradition of community regeneration in the UK, but it is about how the exception becomes the rule. The government is pushing for all of this but there is a worrying lack of clarity and funding for practical pathways for communities to have some control. The granularity of where things work well, and why, is being lost in the noise of the debate over what we should be doing at a national level – cue Big Society.

How can best practice on the ground punch through to inform government thinking and change behaviours in the development industry? This is important if communities are really going to see the benefits of Localism as the Bill implies and critically determine it away from being just an exercise in dismantling the planning system at the local level.

The Localism Bill demands a set of roles and responsibilities that communities do not have in abundance. Some key questions arise from all of this, namely:
- Who will these community permission-givers be?
- What roles, skills, and support do communities need in order to become clients?
- What structures do communities require to confer permission and participate in the process instead of just rubber stamping it at the end?
- What form will permission given by the community take?
- How will developers obtain community permission effectively?

Community as client starts with making best use of the resources that already exist at a local level. Valuing what is already there and reactivating it to suit new needs and realities. It is about seeing local people as the experts on their own places; they know what works, doesn’t work and what change they want. They are a wealth of untapped resource in terms of the places, knowledge, experience, skills and networks that are built up over time. Allowing people to stamp their identity on a place gives them more than the role of caretaker at the end of the process, but the role of designer, catalyst for change, community champion. This is something developers can benefit from to inform their development and ultimately make them more attractive and palatable to local people.

Facilitating the development of a mandate and galvanizing local people and developers to work together requires a type of glue that can help build the social bonds and positive behaviours to keep everyone working as a team. The outcomes will be better achieved if the community client is engaged as part of the project team from the very start. We work with the community client and the developer to create a shared charter setting out the key outcomes and outputs being sought from the development by the community and developer. It is our job to steer the project according to this charter.

We help developers understand the range of existing resources and capability in the community (including assets, unemployed and retired people, volunteers, arts and social enterprises, youth organizations and the third sector) and mobilise them to be part of the development project. This helps build the vital bridging capital between people and groups choosing to cooperate and support each other, which is needed to build community strength and confidence. The confidence, capacity and competency built in the community through the development process can be used to fuel other projects such as community asset transfer, social enterprises and volunteering.

Mend has developed a process and set of procedures to help communities take on the role of the client and to help developers gain community permission. We are pro-development in the sense of seeing the development process as an opportunity to improve a local area, not replace it. So the way we see community permission working is a bit like marriage guidance counseling; reconciling different and competing agendas or personalities and identifying common ground and affinity.

Fundamentally if we want better development we have got to be prepared to be a good client; and if we want community permission we have got to be prepared to respect the community as the client.

Scenius & TechCity: A new form of place-making?

"TechCity" is the official brand name given to David Cameron’s vision for a hub in east London which could rival Silicon Valley for attracting high profile technology firms and spawning the next technological innovations. The concept builds on the existing hive of tech creativity and innovation based in Shoreditch and the plans are to extend this to link up with Olympic legacy assets and spaces in Stratford. This corridor could stimulate the growth in jobs and enterprise that is necessary to diversify the UK and London economy away from a reliance on financial and business services which were shaken by the global credit crisis.

As a vision, it adds neatly to the collection of other “visions” that have been announced for east London over the years including those that claim to the area being a beacon of clean energy and creative industries, etc. etc. This has contributed to a confused identity and lack of focus for what should steer the future of this area. Cue TechCity......What is needed then, is the substance behind what TechCity means to the existing business ecology of East London and Shoreditch and an appreciation of what these businesses need in order to thrive.

Elizabeth Varley is CEO of TechHub, a business that provides space and services for tech start ups. She has listened to her clients and confirms that “what businesses themselves say they want is access to affordable space and good broadband and technology support but more importantly, opportunities to network and share ideas and good coffee!” Is this possible in a conventional science park? See www.techhub.com

The "Silicon Roundabout" in Shoreditch has been busy bubbling away for a few years only for civil servants to gallantly announce its arrival. The choice of location is no accident. Old Street's scruffy charm and relative cheapness of space has been a significant factor in its success in attracting young tech creatives. This has led to an organic growth of networks and spaces for people to share and cross-fertilise ideas. Just in time for a big government scouring pad to come along and sanitise those very charms in the name of making it more corporate friendly?

Creatives are well known for pioneering new futures for city parts rendered downtrodden, forgotten and made redundant by the prevailing market preferences that shifted away from it. Their energy, ideas and networks breathe new life into a place, helping to reinvent it by reactivating old strengths and bringing much needed injections of people and money.

A critical mass builds up before it catches the eye of mainstream prevailing market preferences again, but not before the place has ascribed itself a new raison d’etre. The return of the market brings with it a levelling and sanitising urge to bring the area back into its fold. But the transition can often push out the very people, ideas and energy that brought it back to life. No matter, as the area is self-sustaining again and the pioneers move on to the next place that is ripe for reinvention.

This cycle is already being seen in and around the Silicon Roundabout and poses a challenge for the capacity of the area to continue providing a vital and fertile incubation ground for micro-start ups. Big corporate brands are eyeing Shoreditch as an alternative to the media mainstay of Soho and a few are already on their way over.

The density, granularity and messiness of Shoreditch is key to its success in generating successful ideas through creative collaboration. They are allowed to mingle and merge until a spark catches and it grows into something really good – a phenomenon Stephen Johnson credits Brian Eno for coining as “Scenius” in his recent article in the Financial Times about information spillover leading towards lightning in a bottle. See http://tinyurl.com/6kus2p9

According to Kevin Kelly (2010) “The serendipitous ingredients for scenius are hard to control. They depend on the presence of the right early pioneers. A place that is open, but not too open. A buffer that is tolerant of outlaws. And some flash of excitement to kick off the virtuous circle. You just can’t order this.”

We need to ensure that the existing quality of scenius in Shoreditch is enhanced and not compromised by the TechCity initiative so that it continues to generate and grow good ideas. This means providing an environment that is conducive to idea and information spillover – for both micro and established businesses. So what do scenius places have in common? They are more than just what happens when space and idea collide. Density, sharing and collaboration is king; neatly organised, windowless sheds shoved on an out-of- town not-fit-for-purpose-built business-park is definitely not king. So is Kelly right - is it nigh on impossible to manufacture or plan scenius because is largely people and idea driven?

Well yes and no. People-driven it might be but these people are attracted to certain places; shared spaces and environments that in turn attract other like-minded people and help them share facilities, tastes and activities. It builds through an accretion of experience and success building on top of each other, attracting and sticking to a place. Place is where these attributes collide and I agree about the serendipity of that collision to a certain extent but doesn’t old skool hard stuff like, rents, transport economics and proximity to a supply and customer network also matter to the development of a shared place?

What emerges for me is that the serendipity factor is actually the seeming magical cauldron of hard spatial economics alerting pioneers to a space where people can share and co-create ideas and sparks that in turn attracts a critical mass of scenius “actors” in the form of entrepreneurs, creatives and facilitators and investors. There is a scenius process. (i.e., cheap rents and opportunity permitting sharing of a specific network in a fringe place) that might seem hidden to the naked eye but like any place-making phenomenon it is often only visible after it has taken plight and possibly moved on.

Is the answer then not to try and manufacture scenius places, but accelerate the process of sharing by scenius actors in these scenius places; support and connect the people and ideas bit and leave the spatial economics bit alone? This is a radical approach to regeneration which has seemed addicted to building stuff and not paying enough attention to the stuff that goes on inside? Time to do that.

The planning profession has a massive opportunity to participate in this if we recognise that we are not just about planning buildings but the magic cauldron that helps grow scenius places and lets successful ideas take off. This is what will help us out of a recession, this will help unlock the rich seam of innovation, experience and ideas of our communities and this will help us move on from a coda of place-making being just about kit. Shoreditch is teaching us that space is far from being a static container for activity but a key factor in generating and attracting creativity.

I’m excited about what happens next here. If we can start to articulate the answers to these question and explore what the implications are for the existing scenius spaces in Shoreditch we can provide a strong mechanism for retaining the small and micro businesses in the area that are vital for keeping it so pioneering.

This does not preclude room and opportunities for more established brands and companies from coming in and adding to the richness. It should be possible for large and small companies to co-exist and potentially share resources, support and ideas for mutual benefit? But the needs of micro-businesses community must be met if the area is to continue to thrive in the way it has.

Mend is interested in engaging with the existing business community in Shoreditch to understand the local business ecology and what barriers/opportunities they face in order to remain there? What they think is the reason for Shoreditch being a scenius place? How can the public sector support them more effectively? How can we use TechCity to grow smart scenius communities?

We are interested in hearing from and working with anyone who would like to share ideas so get in touch if you want a chat....with good coffee!

Mend is on air!

Last Tuesday Mend officially hit the airwaves as we recorded our very first Mend London Blog Show on Shoreditch Radio! Shoreditch Radio is a community radio station based in Hackney and is the latest in a long tradition of community radio in London. We have yet to hear the final edit but I am already bracing myself for being transported to my 16-year old grunge loving self when I hear my own voice back....! How do proper broadcasters ever get used to that?

Every fortnight we will be interviewing local residents, businesses, politicians and organisations on the important issues and topics affecting people in Hackney. Our first show features Euan Mills discussing the process and progress of establishing one of the first Neighbourhood Plans in London for Chatsworth Road. Check out their website here to get involved: www.chatsworthroade5.co.uk

Emily Webber from Hackney's very own hyperlocal site Yeah!Hackney also joined us to talk about how the site came about and the reasons it has taken off so much...it is now a major local virtual landmark and is the authority on all things happening in Hackney. The content comes from the local people using it - so nice and eclectic, up to the minute and extremely friendly. Go see: www.yeahhackney.com/

We also briefly talk about the vagaries of government claiming things that are already doing very nicely for themselves thank you....namely the tech hub recently dubbed the "Silicon Roundabout" in Shoreditch which has been busy bubbling away for a few years only for civil servants to gallantly announce its arrival! How to kill something sexy.....For many, Old Street's scruffy charm is the key to its success in attracting young tech creatives and the last thing they need is a big government scouring pad to come along and make it nice and corporate friendly....or do they? Cameron is keen to brand the area and its extention out to Stratford as "TechCity" but is this yet another example of chucking stuff in East London to keep it busy or is there a genuine cluster emerging here?

Check out the show here: www.shoreditchradio.co.uk/show/mend-london/

Get involved, tell us what you think or want us to talk about next, suggest some tunes or invite yourself in as a guest.

Recession: The Album

Tough times, inordinate struggle and challenging situations provide a much more potent creative muse than times of relative calm and ease. Struggle and pressure brings out the best of us creatively. Many an artistic movement has been borne of rebellion and oppression.

Plato said "if anyone comes to the gates of poetry and expects to become an adequate poet....without the Muse's madness, he will fail and his verses will be eclipsed by the poetry of men who have been driven out of their minds." So it seems if you want to write damn good lyrics you need a bit of madness and despair? How about a recession for bringing about a bit of that?

I've been thinking about how some of the best music has been written about a recession or times of economic decline - The Boss, The Clash, Led Zep. Introducing........ "Recession: The Album" !!

Maybe The Guardian will chuck out a free CD with the Saturday Papers?!

I've made a start but as we are so early on in these times of austerity most of the tracks are from the 70's and 80's with a smattering from the 90's and 2000's. The 90's seethe with grunge, a rejection of the vanity and diva-ish-ness of stadium cock-rock. Not to mention the angry and rebellious rave scene that stuck two-fingers up to Thatcher's social conservatism. But rave lyrics are few and far between and grunge's tales of struggles in love and life could make Byron look whimsical.

Rock and rap seem to be the most fertile ground, both being intimately connected to the street and city life. There's also the country music and blues that came out of the The Great Depression of 1930's US that captured the replacement of rural poverty for urban poverty as people tragically and mistakenly thought they would find work in the city. New genres such as grime seem ripe for a new crop of young people/NEET fodder about life struggling on the UK streets.

In short, here is the list so far but I know I've barely scratched the surface. I need your help to grow it and bring new angles on how music has shaped the historical, folk and social record of economic upheaval. So, my Muses of Madness, feed me your songs of so we can learn from the masters and build our own catalogue for the heavy-lifting generation.......

In no particular order:
1. Kaiser Chiefs - I Predict A Riot
2. Manic Street Preachers - Slash and Burn
3. Simply Red - Money's Too Tight To Mention
4. UB40 - One in Ten
5. The Clash - Career Opportunities/White Riot/Guns of Brixton
6. The Specials - Ghost Town
7. Bruce Springsteen - Johnny 99
8. Ray Charles - Hard Times
9. Jane's Addiction - Being Caught Stealing
10. B.B. King - Recession Blues
11. Goldie - Inner City Life
12. The Source - You've Got The Love
13. Pink Floyd - Money
14. Steely Dan - Black Friday
15. The Kinks -Gallon of Gas

Letters from Malmo

Good news today! Mend has been invited to present a paper at the "Psychoanalysis and Politics Summer Symposium" in Malmo, Sweden. The Symposium will be looking at the theme of "Narratives and Collective Fantasies" and will look at the junction of politics and psychoanalysis with literature, rhetorics, film, linguistics, etc.

We are ridiculously excited and not just because we've been reliably informed that the venue is so close to the sea that we can take a swim during breaks - oh, go on then!

Our abstract was submitted earlier in December and outlined our "Psychotherapy for places" idea that we posted on here a few weeks ago. We now have an opportunity and incentive to explore and develop this idea in time for the symposium in August.

Our basic concept is that places have personalities that are as complex and multi-layered as people. The theme of narrative and collective fantasy hooks onto this idea: that a place or the city itself is a character that we develop in our cultural imagination. In literature the Victorians talked about the Pathetic Fallacy- where descriptions of the landscape and the weather are used as a metaphor for human emotions and relationships.

Film and graphic novels take it a step further. The setting of a film (and a novel) is picked specifically to evoke a particular feel, emotion and social context. Blade Runner was a key source in my Planning MPhil because of the way the city itself is brooding and in conflict just like the main character. A powerful illustration of the relationship between our environment and our behaviour - and not messing with Darryl Hannah! Interestingly the Architects Journal presented their Top Ten Comic Book Cities in 2009 as a selection of the greatest illustrated urban spaces - there are stunning ones in there such as Dean Motter's Radiant City and of course Gotham City.

http://www.architectsjournal.co.uk/5204772.article

The graphic novel genre is a unique in that the city becomes more than just a backdrop to the frame of each illustration - it is a character itself. The city is used to communicate and illustrate the story so in this way urban space is read as text - it carries symbols, signs and meanings that we interpret visually as comic book illustration. This act of reading space is itself evidence that space is capable of holding and attaching emotional and behavioural information that we can then read.

The panels can present a distorted and mutated city to make or it can be brutally accurate pointing out warts and all - or it can be softened and sanitised, heavily stylised to appear beautiful and other-wordly, or nostalgic presenting an idyllic view of life as golden. Whichever, the graphic novel helps illustrate perfectly how place can have a personality.

Graphic Novels and comics grew as urban life grew and their depiction and portrayal of city life - whether its futuristic sci-fi terms, or the undeterred city detective, or underworlds and sub-cultures - have single-handedly managed to convey the personality and contemporary visualisation of what cities look like for over 100 years. We have them to thank for thinking that cities all look like Gotham City! (See the excellent "Comics and The City" J. Ahrens eds. 2010)

So these are the sort of things we will draw upon when we explore our ideas. We will keep you posted....maybe via comic strip...

The symposium is being organised by the Norwegian Psychoanalytical Society/University of Oslo/University of Copenhagen

Photo Credits: Dean Motter and Marc Antoine Mathieu

Localism and other fairytales

The forthcoming Localism Bill is being speculated upon left right and centre. If the delays in publishing it are a cynical drive by the coalition to divert attention away from a myriad other hot political potatoes then it is almost working. The proposals will have far reaching influences upon the way local decision making will take place in our local areas, our interface with local authorities and require a level of community cohesion, joint mindedness and a commitment to working for the common good......no wonder debate is raging.

However, way back in 2001 when New Labour published its "Strong Local Leadership, Quality Local Services" it spelled out that “By removing restrictions and requirements on planning, spending and decision-making and providing new powers to trade and charge, we will free up councils to innovate and deliver tangible improvements in the quality of services and effective community leadership.”

Sound familiar? It’s not the first time policy has been recycled, repackaged and resold?

Many are seeing the proposed relaxation of planning permission and increase in local decision-making as a traditional Tory assault on the planning profession reminiscent of the “jobs locked up in filing cabinets” sentiment of the Thatcher days. A further trip down memory lane would elicit such gems as “been spending most my life living in a NIMBY paradise” “Me & Mrs Jones (and her fat brown envelopes)” and “an unscrupulous developer ate my greenbelt”.

Except these are the things people are complaining will happen under Localism. Is this really all that public planning debate really amounts to still? Who is to blame for this cynical and stereotypical outlook on what planning is about and for? Why is it that people only engage with the planning system when they are thoroughly browned off, want to complain or officially object? How did it become such a deficit model?

Planners? Well, what have we as a planning profession done to alter the perception of us as process monkeys seduced by the resounding kerrr-thunk of the “REFUSED” stamp? For most local people the planning process is a mystery, shrouded in tiny fonts, aggressive institutional-speak, over-the-top bureaucracy, inability to see things without the safety blanket of policy and a funfair of forms. Is this fit-for-purpose and in the public interest? No. It alienates people and divorces them from their local area by sticking up all manner of opportunities for them to go: “it’s just not worth it.” That is not good enough.

Councils? Councils are in the proverbial rock and a hard place; refuse development and they risk stifling any chance of local recovery; so under pressure to let development through it risks chucking hard-won goals to weave strategic, balanced and consultative planning frameworks out of the window. RSS’s have gone, LEPS are coming, LDF’s and AAP’s sit alongside outmoded UDP’s and the landscape is getting very crowded......oh and with less resources. But committee meetings are death by typeset, unsociable hours and go on forever. Why would anyone ever want to sit through that?!

Central Government: to quote Greg Clarke “The current sum of circulars, policy statements and so forth is bigger than the complete Works of Shakespeare, and not nearly as entertaining. Guidance on this scale flirts with the absurd: there’s no way a practitioner can keep it all in mind. “Thanks for your concern, but actually I know many a planner that prides themselves on being able to do this! It didn’t all arrive overnight. Some of us write, research, study and argue it out in court not to mention implement it on a daily basis! These people are also unlikely to be person reading your lovingly laminated planning notice in 5pt arial tied to a lamppost at the dark end of the street.....

Developers? Ah planning, the whipping boy of the development process and then some. Got an issue with your development – got to be something to do with planning! Why can’t I develop what I want, where I want, with what I want and not ask anyone what they think and then just walk away when I’ve got my magic number? Planning is a necessary evil guarding against unfettered development and irresponsible land use. It’s not perfect, is open to abuse and has many holes but it is there for a reason – to protect local areas and local communities from being rode roughshod. Developers need to engage with communities in ways that avoid the adversarial and that means real dialogue and real relationships.

Us? Afraid of putting local decision-making on planning in local hands? It’s as if you expect local people to just be in it to screw each other, self-promote, thwart everyone else’s happiness? It’s not like we are tone deaf when it comes to design, woefully narrow minded and petty, always moaning and never thinking beyond the garden fence? Well, there are a lot of people who are interested and do care but don’t have the time, resources or skills to participate. Or they did once and they were roundly patronised and ignored. Or this is the umpteenth time I’ve been asked to do this now why will this time be different? It will only be different if we make it different.

OK I’m playing devil’s (pro-bono) advocate but it seems to me that we are all culpable. As a planner I would naturally say that it is for the planning profession to step up to the plate and change perceptions of us just being about fulfilling a process and more about enabling it. Communities, councils, developers, activists, businesses, organisations all have a role to play in that process. The real question is what will a planning system look like without planners?

Planners have to manage a wide variety of diverse and often conflicting issues, seeking the best outcome that marries the local with the global and represents wide interest whilst also thinking strategically and decades into the future. That is a craft and a skill and should not be undervalued and undermined. We need to be vocal and assertive about this and the need for sound planning rigour to underpin any transfer of power and decision-making to communities. Without it we could be counting the costs and consequences for a long time. Planners are not the vanguards of doom (mostly).

Localism could make a difficult and convoluted process even more so. Or it can provide an opportunity to offer clarity to local people, restore trust and faith in the planning process and profession, allow proper engagement between developers and the people they will be affecting and finally......treat community as client instead of receiver.

Or.....maybe that’s just my fairytale.