Bigg Market: Night and Day

The Bigg Market Consultancy Project is work which has been undertaken by Newcastle University Master of Planning students in collaboration with NE1. The project provides in-depth research and analysis into various aspects of the Bigg Market, focusing on topics such as media influence, the built environment and the opinions of visitors.

Key contacts for the project are Loes Veldpaus, Research Associate in the School, and Gareth Neill, Bigg Market Project Manager at NE1.

In this post, the project investigates the disconnect between the night and daytime economies of the Bigg Market and the resulting impacts on the public realm.

The original post appears on the project website.

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The Disconnect: Night and Day Usage 

A sense of place derives from the way in which a place functions. The area is home to numerous different uses but remains divided. There is a clear disconnect between the night and daytime economies which has lead to the formation of a hotch-potch use of space.

The daytime economy of retail, cafes and restaurants are mixed side-to-side among the evening economy of bars, pubs and takeaway food outlets. As a result, the public realm is suffering badly.

Daytime

Before we commenced this project, we had all passed through the Bigg Market during the day. None of us had stopped to visit the shops and restaurants or taken stock of the built environment. Because of this lack of connection, we began this project with an open mind. What we observed was an area with limited attractions or staying power. To us it is merely a place to pass through. Throughout the day the area consists of unopened bars and takeaway shops that look rundown, large amounts of buildings to let are particularly noticeable. On our first visit to conduct the questionnaires, it was a sunny mild day as seen in the pictures below.

Bigg Market

Bigg Market

Bigg Market by Day

We noticed people stopped to eat their lunch on the broken benches and some used the Kafeneon restaurant, but only in limited numbers. We concluded from the first visit that we did not value the space as social meeting point in the day. The area lacks an anchor to attract people, meaning low footfall and suffers from a poor unkempt urban realm. We also visited at 9am, the space remained devoid of people but extremely busy with servicing and deliveries

Night-time

As students, we use this space socially on an evening. We have all been to High Bridge Street and Pudding Chare for meals or drinks but only use the Bigg Market as a final destination the end of the night. The image below shows how the public space is well used and provides both a meeting point and an area to catch a taxi. This project made us more observant when out in the evening to see what type of people used the space at night and how they used it.

Bigg Market by Night

Bigg Market by Night

During the evening the shops and restaurants were hard to see next to the bright lights of the takeaway shops, bars and taxis. The area is mistreated with litter and people failing to care about the urban realm. The aftermath of the night-time economy is felt by people who pass through the area the next morning, creating an unwelcoming and dirty environment.

Conclusion

From our own observations we noticed the disconnect in Bigg Market from day to night. In our opinion, the day shows the area as a tired space that is underutilised and not recognised as people pass through. We believe that despite the negative reputation the Bigg Market receives due to its night-time events, it is actually the day time that is the biggest hindrance to its overall offer. Whether it caters to your tastes or not, during the night Bigg Market comes alive with people socialising, providing the area with a buzz. This cannot be said about the day usage, which is mostly typified by its tired urban realm, its poor retail and restaurant offer.

Would visitor numbers increase if the daytime retail/restaurant offer was improved, or would the night-time economy remain a barrier to attracting visitors?

To find out more about the project please contact Dr Loes Veldpaus: .

 

YES: Planning with Young People

It is often said amongst the planning profession that it is hard to explain exactly what town planning means.  During this last academic year, 15 undergraduate planning students at Newcastle University have been rising to that very challenge.

Volunteers for the YES Planning project have been learning how to discuss planning issues with young people, to help them understand the processes that change our planned environment, and to allow them to feel that their opinion about the environment is important.

In October 2015, Kevin Franks, from Youth Focus North East trained the student volunteers to work with young people using engagement and participatory techniques.

Building on the tried and tested planning activities that the YES Planning project had developed over the previous two years, this year’s volunteers have worked with around 100 young people in schools and youth councils on local planning issues.  Projects have included a controversial planning application for a hot food restaurant; town centre provision for young people; designing an eco-town; and research funded by the Catherine Cookson Foundation which has explored young people’s visions for Tyneside in 2030.

The sessions have been well received by the young people and their leaders.  As one youth leader explained:  “The sessions were centred around them and their future which is great; their opinions were really valued”.

Yes Planning

Yes Planning volunteers trialing their resources

The student volunteers have also enjoyed the experience of being involved in the project. One volunteer shared: “I enjoyed getting younger people involved in discussions around planning – and gaining their opinions on planning topics”.

YES Planning will continue during next academic year, offering young people in the region the chance to take part in exploratory planning projects relating to their local area; and for the student volunteers, an opportunity to develop skills of working with the community, which are after all, a large part of what being a town planner is about.

 

The Yes Planning project was initiated and directed by Teresa Strachan,
Lecturer in Town Planning in the School.

For more details please contact Teresa.Strachan@ncl.ac.uk.

Digital Civics in the School of Architecture, Planning, and Landscape

In the School we’re developing new ideas about future forms of citizen participation in the built environment.

This theme is associated with the concept of ‘digital civics’ coined at Newcastle’s OpenLab. In conjunction with OpenLab and other departments around the University, the School is actively exploring the consequences of digital technologies for the built environment. One goal is to find forms of more relational citizen participation whereby the public sector moves from one of delivery of services to commissioning services.

But what is digital civics? How did it come to be? What are its drivers?   As a new area, nuanced answers are yet to be found. Projects so far involve a diverse number of motivations, such as overcoming the distance of ‘big data’ to everyday life, addressing collective ownership of data and urban infrastructure. Perhaps most importantly, digital civics addresses the rise of ‘issue-based’ civics, for example, on social media platforms. Through designing, prototyping, and testing digital interventions directly with end users in their everyday lives, digital civics encourages novel interactions between participants and their city.

Projects involving researchers from Newcastle University manifest all of these approaches in different combinations. Successful projects so far include:

  • PosterVote by Vasilis Vlachokyriakos and colleagues: a low cost in-street voting device.
  • FeedFinder by Madeline Balaam: a location-based service to support breastfeeding mothers find safe spaces.
  • AppMovement by Andrew Garbett: a vehicle for non-experts to propose and vote on apps they like to see developed.
  • Tenison Road project led by Microsoft Research in Cambridge involving Vasilis Vlachokyriakos which focused on developing a street-level archive to support and understand the meaning of data to a community on a very granular level.

Digital civics research is delivered through action and change. Representatives of digital civics have emphasised the importance of long-term partnerships on collaborative projects strongly embedded in local contexts. Some projects focused on bespoke devices for tactile interaction in everyday life. This comes with the idea of ‘ecosystems of data’ that embed data deep within the everyday. In digital civics projects, problem solving is often approached through technical innovation with modes such as issue-focused civic hackathons. Social entrepreneurship works as a driver to scale projects and agendas beyond single locations.

As part of the ongoing investment in innovation, innovative teaching, and preparation of a new cohort of architecture and planning professionals for the future, the School has set up a digital civics module, an exciting Stage 2 elective with a ‘challenge-based’ approach to teaching.

We are looking for external partners who would like to work with our students to address a particular challenge (for inspirations see https://scenarios.organicity.eu/).

Within a safe and set framework, guided by Dr Sebastian Weise, students will learn about essential computing technologies and user-centred design approaches and respond to your challenge with propositions of service concepts and technical prototypes.

For full details please see the digital civics call for project proposals (PDF: 2.54 MB).

 

Dr Sebastian Weise is Lecturer in Digital Civics in the School and can be contacted at sebastian.weise@ncl.ac.uk.

Experimental Architecture: Primer

Here is a video produced by Stage 3 architecture students from Newcastle University exploring biological materials – specifically a material called Bacilla Subtilis partly made with bacterial spores which responds to humidity by expending or contracting.

We have tried to exploit this feature in order to create an actuated facade with the ability to open and close dependent on the humidity conditions of the environment surrounding the structure.

As part of the project the students went into the University Biology Labs to make and experiment with the material before designing their own prototype building panels which would be actuated by this biological material.

This project offers a unique opportunity for an architectural student. One to explore an area of the profession often saved for qualified research architects; the chance to integrate scientific knowledge with human designed systems. The advances in synthetic biology have yet to been combined with those in architecture.

This may not appear ground breaking at first glance but when we think that for centuries our architecture has had the purpose to protect from the outside elements, to be a barrier to the harsh environment that surrounds us, proposing that we can remove that boundary and in fact have a facade that will work with nature through nature itself is something that is very current in thinking.

We must remember that due to the technology being in its incubation period, we may not see the results that we wish for. However it is important to realise that through experimentation and failure, we will always be learning from these mistakes.

This innovative and unusual teaching studio is informed by cutting edge research in the field of experimental architecture.

Experimental Architecture is the name given to a new generation of living technologies, their application on architecture and environmental design and the examination of the point at which life and technology converge.

Dr Martyn Dade-Robertson (Degree Programme Director of the MSc Experimental Architecture) is Principal Investigator of Computational Colluids, a research project which investigates how Civil Engineering may be integrated with the emerging field of Synthetic Biology.  Combining these fields has potentially transformative implications for both and may generate a new field of Engineering Design.

Professor Rachel Armstrong is leading on a Horizon 2020 funded project Living Architecture.  This project plans to develop a programmable bioreactor able to extract valuable resources from waste water and air and to generate oxygen, proteins and fibre. Its possible installation in domestic, public and office settings will significantly improve the environmental performance of our living spaces with undeniable benefits for health, productivity and ecosystems.

 

Thinking Through Making

Our Thinking Through Making week took place from 1 to 5 February.  An annual event, this is a week-long ‘festival’ focussed on thinking, making and materials, with workshops and talks focussed on material practice.

From casting concrete to creating self-ordering biological systems, the variety of workshops and talks are a fantastic opportunity for students to engage with architects, artists, engineers, designers, thinkers and makers.

Thinking Through Making

We want to challenge students, open them up to new ways of thinking, inspire them and increase their understanding of working with materials.

We had a number of external participants who contributed and out students set up their own blog for the festival which you can read on the website thinkingthroughmaking.org.