Tag Archives: cities

Bigg Market: Night and Day

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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: .

 

Working together on cooperative neighbourhoods

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On Wednesday 25 January, the School hosted a participatory workshop reflecting on the use of communities within recent policy agendas. It considered the emphasis placed on “localism” over the last nine years, the forces driving it at the national level and how it has been interpreted in northern, urban locations. It also asked how a localism agenda might be reworked to better reflect the needs of these areas.

The event was organised by Dr David Webb of the School, with partners Greening Wingrove and the CHAT Trust, and funded by the Newcastle Institute for Social Renewal and the Global Urban Research Unit.  This participatory workshop is the latest output of their collaborative partnership, building on their project Reclaim the Lanes which worked with residents of an area surrounding a back lane in the Arthur’s Hill area of Newcastle.

The workshop proved extremely popular, around 85 people attended from local authorities, charities, community interest companies, Newcastle and Northumbria Universities, consultancies and arts organisations.

The morning was structured around several presentations with time for panel and table discussions.  After an introduction to the themes from Dr Webb, he and Caroline Emmerson (CHAT Trust) presented their work on Reclaim the Lanes. Caroline Gore-Booth (Giroscope Ltd) talked about collaborating around self-help housing in Hull and after some initial reflections, Alan Barlow (WEA Greening Wingrove Project) presented Wingrove’s community innovation fund. Armelle Tardiveau (Newcastle University) and Cllr Marion Talbot (Newcastle City Council) talked about their experiences of co-designing Fenham’s Pocket Park.

Read the morning presentations at the links below:

The morning panel discussion was led by a presentation from Annabel Davidson Knight (Collaborate CIC) which reflected on early attempts in Oldham to use public services to support community action. She described their intention to create a virtuous circle, with learning and feedback generated from community hubs being used to adapt and update the way services were provided locally.

The afternoon presentations also focused on the use of community hubs, with Tony Durcan (Newcastle City Council) explaining the importance of digital for reducing the cost of service delivery in the city, and setting out Newcastle’s support offer for those who find it difficult to use digital technology unaided. Mark Cridge (MySociety) then explained the use of Fix My Street as a way of encouraging more efficient and transparent reporting of environmental problems. Rob Webb (Transmit Enterprise CIC) described the potential benefits of the Poverty Stoplight system and Pete Wright (Newcastle University) set out the work they have been doing to promote digital civic technologies in Newcastle. An interesting discussion was had on the use of digital to promote a culture change in public services, including the sometimes unseen benefits of face to face communication and the dangers that innovation might be driven primarily by austerity.

Read the afternoon presentations at the links below:

The event allowed for the sharing of experiences of community work from around the region, with numerous insights being offered during the morning panel session. Many of the themes raised were also relevant to Newcastle City Council’s policy cabinet meeting, which directly followed on from the event. Despite the huge challenges presented by austerity, it was interesting to reflect on the variety of responses being taken both by community organisations and local authorities. The experiences of Oldham and elsewhere show that creative ways of promoting joint working are emerging, and that future reflection on these may have much to offer for the way we seek to manage our cities and neighbourhoods.

Dr David Webb is Lecturer in Town Planning and Director of Engagement in the School

Exploring the Southbank Undercroft: heritage film wins national award

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You Can’t Move History is an in depth account of the 2013 battle to save the Southbank Skate Park.  On Monday 14 November 2016 the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) awarded You Can’t Move History Best Research Film of the Year.

In this post project team member Dr David Webb reflects on what makes places valuable.

The campaign to save the South Bank undercroft revealed important insights into what makes places valuable, and why that value is often so difficult to recognise and legitimise. The recognition offered by winning the AHRC’s Best Research Film of 2016 award will help us explain these insights to a wider audience and champion the value of social and environmental campaigning.

Long Live South Bank

Today’s system of heritage conservation has its roots in a reverence of the past and its most majestic and well preserved remains. However it has evolved to recognise that our towns and cities have an in-built bias towards offering up the most durable heritage, which is often that of the rich and powerful. Twentieth Century bids to popularise and democratise heritage reacted to this by expanding and pluralising what counts as heritage, but left us questioning the basis on which we recognise and care for the past. The notion that heritage is not just given to us but actively created through our choices about what to conserve opens up questions about

  • why it is that we focus so much on place?
  • what would happen if we made place subservient to broader questions about how we should relate to the past?

The dominant approach to conservation planning rests on two assertions which, at first sight, appear self-evident but which, once we have broadened our thinking about how we relate to the past, can be seen to bias particular aspects of that relationship.

The first assertion is that some places are better than others. Some feel cold, windswept, empty, artificial or derelict while others invoke warm feelings of history, intrigue, social connotation or awe. This statement seems hard to disagree with; the next one takes it further. Because of the value stored up in good places, these places deserve to be protected from wholescale redevelopment or insensitive alteration. Places can be put in a hierarchy, with better places subjected to ever stronger legislative protection.

These two assertions may seem simple, even self-evidently right, but hidden with them is a battle for the management of the built environment. The idea that some places should receive privileged treatment depends on public interest justifications that appeal to the aggregated desires of today’s and the future’s public. If some places really are better than others then we need to understand why, collectively, we believe this to be the case. The use of precise and technical terms to define the valued characteristics of place has been associated with a concern for distributional fairness. Comparing places against fixed criteria, or universally agreed principles, can help to justify why certain places are privileged and help make decisions appear less subjective or less spurious. Such principles or criteria provide an immediate way of making sense of the built environment, one that offers the promise of advance judgement and with it the potential to support long-term plan-making. The use of criteria within a public interest framing seeks to provide transparency and accountability to political judgements about which places are better. Where policy makers have sought to move beyond fixed criteria, by instead asking what the significance of a place is, there has been a tendency to think about significance in line with established framings and practices and to underplay the importance of conflict in revealing significance.

Attempts to use the public interest to support the management of the historic environment can come unstuck at the point of contact with people’s direct experience of place. Such experience does not always fit easily into universal categories or predefined assumptions. It is infused with things that are not driven by a concern to differentiate one place from another: human behaviour, politics, cultural norms, imagination, emotional connection all go on within places and affect how people relate to them. Very often these phenomena occur in, and bring together, multiple places and times. For different people with different experiences, place might be central or peripheral to other concerns. Battles might be over places, or they might be larger battles which go on within or are caught up with places. Ironically, the depoliticisation and technicalisation of places that tends to follow the use of public interest based framings can have the effect of excluding the very social, political and community orientated dimensions that make places valuable.

Southbank

London Southbank

In February 2014 a group of researchers with backgrounds in media studies, heritage and town planning came together at a research sandpit and began to think through these issues. How could unorthodox, marginal voices be heard by those involved in the heritage system? We found relatively little research into the views of young people on heritage, and noted that the research which existed tended to assume a common definition of heritage. Joining up with film makers BrazenBunch, and the Long Live South Bank campaign, we set out to explore how skateboarders, BMX’ers, musicians and graffiti artists made use of the undercroft space beneath London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall and what it could tell policy makers about the meaning of place. By producing a short documentary and holding a workshop, we then sought to legitimise and convey understandings of place that are too often side lined.

Undercroft

Southbank undercroft

Our film You Can’t Move History is the product of our collaboration. It describes the connections between young people and place, and together with the project report, it explains how these meanings differed from conventional ways of understanding the place which centred on its architectural history and role within the Thames riverscape. Quotes such as “the space is also within the people” revealed the integral nature of humans in making and reproducing the value of heritage and places. Links made by participants to wider processes of gentrification highlighted the inevitably political nature of the campaign and references to the sound of the space and its emotional role as ‘home’ or ‘the vortex’ emphasised its central importance within a culture that emerged from street skating.

While the battle about how best to manage our historic environment is unlikely to go away any time soon, we hope these insights will spark people to reflect on what makes places valuable and on the importance of community, politics and attachment to our lives. The question of authenticity will remain central to ongoing debates about how to support these values on the Southbank.

You can watch the film via our website www.youthandheritage.com which also provides a guide to the project, an archive of campaign-related materials and the interim report Engaging Youth in Cultural Heritage: Time, Place and Communication.

 

David Webb is Lecturer in Town Planning and Director of Engagement in the School.
david.webb@ncl.ac.uk

Fenham Pocket Park

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In this post, Fenham Ward Councillor Marion Talbot reflects on her experience of working with the University and other partners to develop and build a Pocket Park in the heart of her ward.

The Pocket Park came about almost by accident!

Fenham ward, in the west end of Newcastle, had received some funding for a DIY Streets Project to involve local people in improving their streets and making the environment people, rather than car, focused.

The project was coordinated by Sustrans, working closely with Newcastle University’s Architecture, Planning and Landscape Department.

As ward councillors we were able to build relationships with lecturers from the School, particularly Armelle Tardiveau and Daniel Mallo, which gave us access to expertise, skills, knowledge and a degree of challenge, which was such an advantage and pretty unusual.  To be honest I didn’t know that academics got stuck in and got their hands dirty. Literally in this case!

Our joint discussions helped shape the consultation for the DIY Streets and ensured that residents played a significant role in the final design.

Many residents had commented that the library, swimming pool and doctors’ surgery on Fenham Hall Drive formed a community hub, but that there was nowhere to sit, wait for their kids, or just generally hang about. The temporary intervention, designed, built and installed by Armelle, Daniel and their students, proved very successful. It showed, better than a map or diagram could ever do, the way in which people could change their environment for the better.

There was not enough money to change the temporary to permanent, but we had a sense of what could be done if we could identify more funding.

Then DCLG announced funding for Pocket Parks and, in a fit of enthusiasm, we applied.

We were successful and awarded £15, 000, of which £10,000 was revenue and £5,000 capital. We were pretty excited…then reality kicked in.

The timescale was very challenging.  We had to produce plans, check land ownership, agree a steering group, design the park, source and cost materials and plants, find a project manager, build the park, produce and deliver a communication plan, all the while remaining calm and reassuring DCLG and local residents that we could deliver.

It was fraught and the budget was tight but we had planned for contingencies, the project manager was brilliant and the park opened on time on May 21st. It looks like an oasis in a sea of concrete and is really popular.

Pocket Park Opening

Pocket Park Opening

This Pocket Park not have happened without the relationships we had already built up over the 18 months we had spent working together on the DIY Streets Project. Those relationships built trust, joint commitment and a better understanding of what we were trying to do.

Ian, Karen and I, as councillors, really appreciated the practical implementation of the theoretical and had seen how that had already worked so well.

We could not have delivered this without the skills the University contributed.

Cllr Marion Talbot, Fenham Ward, Newcastle upon Tyne
Cllr Ian Tokell, Fenham Ward, Newcastle upon Tyne
Cllr Karen Kilgour, Fenham Ward, Newcastle upon Tyne

To find out more about how the Pocket Park was developed take a look at the Storify for #FenhamPocketPark

 

YES: Planning with Young People

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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.

Towards creative and integrated responses to demographic ageing in north east England

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Professor of Ageing, Policy and Planning Rose Gilroy reports from the British Society of Gerontology (BSG) sponsored event held on May 26th at Newcastle University.

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On a cold and miserable day in May more than 30 people from the University and the third and health sectors joined with older activists to consider how we can get more energy into our work on making the north east region more responsive to demographic ageing in a time of institutional and economic change.

Professor Tom Scharf from the University’s Institute of Health and Society set the scene in the first keynote.  He challenged us to consider what we mean when we say the phrase `age friendly places`. Are we talking about places that work for older people; that pay attention to inter-generational concerns, or that are dementia friendly? Can we really talk about any place as age friendly if people there have poorer life expectancy than the UK average? It was this demographic data that propelled Manchester to become an age friendly city. He suggested that inequalities need to be embedded into every age friendly vision and that every place, no matter how difficult the context, can make progress in some areas.

Prof Tom Scharf

Tom analysed both the Manchester and Galway examples of age friendly action, suggesting that the first was more bottom up while the latter represented a more top down approach with limited opportunities for the voice for older people. In conclusion he suggested that both responses can work but adopting a strategic approach helps and responses should involve all sectors. There is a need to strengthen the evidence base for developing age-friendly programme(s) and a reorientation of programme(s) required to ensure that the voice of a diverse population of older people is prioritised. More support is needed for older people who wish to become engaged in age-friendly initiatives and the Touchstone programme in Galway (and hopefully coming to Newcastle) is an example of this.

Following Tom, we heard from presenters who discussed place based approaches to ageing.

Patsy Healey and Jane Pannell of the Glendale Gateway Trust and Jane Field of the Bell View Service Centre talked about the way they had made alliances to both spread knowledge of their work, but also to lever in seed corn funding and influence key policy makers in Northumberland County Council. The problems facing all people, but particularly older people, in such a remote rural setting include extreme fragmentation of services and poor public transport which isolates people from services and support. Their goal was to develop a one stop shop to overcome this.

On a very different theme, Andy Ball from the Alzheimer’s Society talked about the need to develop a broad based approach to supporting people living with dementia to live as well as they can. Andy set out how the Society worked with a diversity of industry players, from supermarkets to the fire service, to develop a greater understanding of dementia in those organisations.

After lunch a session on service based approaches showcased Declan Baharini and Jonny Tull from the Tyneside Cinema who talked passionately about why the Cinema had engaged with dementia as an issue and developed the dementia friendly screening programme (funded by the Ballinger Trust).

A short film they shared with us showed older people living with dementia and their carers singing along and dancing in the aisles to the films in the pilot programme. An evaluation by attendees demonstrated unequivocally that, as an activity to share and enjoy, the pilot was hugely successful. A full programme has now been scheduled with regular screenings of films chosen by older people and their carers. A key message was to not be scared but to make a start!

Paul Hemphill of Age Inclusive talked about the need for businesses to confront the shift in working populations. He told us that an increasing number of cases on age discrimination are now coming to industrial tribunals and that good business leaders needed to be aware of the need for change and the key generational differences in their work place. Business must take action to prevent and manage chronic conditions and must adopt flexible practices in recognition of a greater proportion of employees who might be care givers for older relatives. There is a fundamental need for leadership and attitudinal change.

Our final keynote was Anna Round from IPPR who gave a data rich presentation on the ageing workforce – startling us with statistics on poor health in the north east and the implication for work, wealth and well-being in the face of extended working lives.

To what extent is there awareness of the needs of a growing body of older clients that older employees might serve more effectively? There is evidence that older workers exhibit high performance in jobs needing high levels of knowledge-based judgement, time-critical performance and social skills because mental characteristics such as reasoning, using experience, analysis and verbal skills strengthen with age. Contrary to popular myths, the productivity of older workers matches younger workers in ‘skill demanding’ and ‘speed demanding’ tasks. Anna argued that in the North East Combined Authority effective responses needed to consider the holistic impact of work and to liaise closely with employers, communities, skills providers and trades unions. There were interesting and workable models elsewhere in Europe such as Finland and the Netherlands.  The region needs to capitalise on the growth of older entrepreneurship by providing start up advice and more support.

BSG workshop

Following the presentations delegates broke into three discussion groups: demography and the economy; the role of civil society and age friendly place. To close the day, I asked the participants what issues they felt further seminars could tackle.

We closed with the following thoughts:

  • There is a need to consider inter-generational learning to create attitudinal change in society as well as real issues of intergenerational equity
  • We talk about design that works for older people working for everyone but what is the evidence for this?
  • What would new models of the life-course look like?
  • Current narratives of ageing focus on success and a glamourised image of the baby boomer – we need to acknowledge there are other narratives
  • Newcastle is a party city but who is invited? How do we diversify the cultural offer?
  • How do we address the issue of those who are ageing without children?
  • If the state is hollowing out what should be in its place?
  • What is the potential for bottom up solutions, particularly those led by older people?

By the end of the day we felt that there was both the energy and commitment to build a north east regional chapter of BSG with two events a year.

Watch this space for progress!

Rose GIlroy is Professor of Ageing, Policy & Planning at Newcastle University

Email: r.c.gilroy@ncl.ac.uk
Telephone: +44 (0) 191 208 7864

 

The Future of Cities: Newcastle and Gateshead as a case study

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This blog post is an amended version of the essay written by Professor Mark Tewdwr-Jones for the programme for the Northern Stage production of Get Carter and his pre-show talk given on Thursday 25 February.

In this post he presents his original thoughts on Newcastle and Gateshead in the 1960s and explores how current city leaders are faced with a similar question: How do we want to live in the future?

Get Carter

The 1960s are often referred to as a pivotal time in Britain’s history and the decade saw profound changes in the North East. The older industries that had formed the mainstay of the region’s economy were dying; the closure of the Rising Sun Colliery in Wallsend in 1969 was the last pit on the north side of the Tyne, while six shipyards had already closed between 1960 and 1966.

But the spirit of change was underway too. T Dan Smith, Newcastle’s council leader for the first half of the 60s, embarked on a radical modernisation programme. Subsequently dubbed The Brasilia of the North, the plan was ambitious but reflected Smith’s determination to make Newcastle a world renowned 20th century city.

Smith revolutionised local government by introducing Britain’s first ever Chief Executive (in place of the Town Clerk) and Chief Planner (Mr, later Sir, Wilf Burns), and even Cabinet style government. Among the projects he set in place at this time were: the removal of remaining slum housing, the building of new flats, the development of a higher education campus in the city, the building of Britain’s first indoor shopping centre at Eldon Square, the construction of the Tyne and Wear Metro, the expansion of the airport at Woolsington, and the plans for the construction of the Central Motorway to remove traffic from the congested city centre. Traffic was so heavy on Northumberland Street, the main London to Edinburgh A1 road, that footbridges had to be built over the road to allow shoppers to cross safely from one side to the other. New towns were developed in Cramlington, Killingworth and Washington.

On the Gateshead side of the Tyne, change was no less dramatic, with significant road building schemes, the opening of the Tyne Tunnel in 1967, and new modernist designs for public buildings and housing. The construction of the 29 storey Derwent Tower in Dunstan, dubbed The Rocket, and the Trinity Square shopping centre and car park (made famous in the film version of Get Carter) in the late 60s, signalled the height of both planners’ and architects’ frivolity with the urban realm. The professionals treated the city as a machine but at the expense of the need for human scale and a sense of place.

Local architects and construction companies all benefited from the reconstruction and regeneration ethic. But some of it was too good to be true. The utopia, like Smith’s own career, didn’t live up to the hype: developers built quickly and cheaply, and were too ready to dispense with anything that smacked of an older age. And for most, the loss of coalmining and shipbuilding cast a long employment shadow.

Smith’s legacy is fiercely contested and whether you think he was a crook or an inspiration, few can argue that he held a vision for the future of his city.

Newcastle and Gateshead are, in common with other cities around the world, now looking to the future once again and asking vital questions about how our citizens are going to survive – and thrive – in a society facing challenges including climate change, economic austerity, global migration and an ageing demographic.

Universities are well placed to help cities address these questions and the national Foresight Future of Cities project developed a methodology in the Newcastle city region to bring together the intellectual capacity of universities and local stakeholders to identify and address future potential challenges and opportunities.  This methodology can be adopted by cities all over the world.

The resulting report, Newcastle City Futures 2065, is a broad and overarching look at the next 50 years using Newcastle city region as a pilot.  It aims to demonstrate that universities can work more proactively with and for the cities in which they are located, and use both creative techniques and their expertise to foster civic engagement and articulate a vision for the future of the city.

Mark Tewdwr-Jones is Professor of Town Planning and Director of Newcastle City Futures at Newcastle University.