CONTENTS DIARY OF EVENTS - The Urban Design Group

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TOPIC Above 2K3 consultation 22 | Urban Design | Spring 2005 | Issue 94 The Bluecarpet Newcastle) worked with members of the street sports community on ideas about the form of skatable art features for the city centre. These ideas are the basis for a project providing relocatable skate sculptures due to be completed in the summer of 2005. A sponsored event took place to clean up parts of the city centre affected by street sports. This helped to raise funds for a group of young skaters and BMXers to visit Scotland in August 2003 to look at the design and implementation of facilities there. The trip to Scotland involved meeting other skaters, hearing their views and learning from their experiences. Design meetings have continued to look at the provision of skatable architecture and facilities at Station Square, Central Milton Keynes, temporary facilities within the central bus station and a wider strategic approach for provision of facilities within the city centre. SK8MK, through Milton Keynes Council’s Urban Design and Landscape Architecture team, now employs street sports enthusiasts on training schemes to support the project, receiving training through work experience, funded by government training schemes, such as ‘E into work’. The SK8MK Generator group designs street sports facilities and supports other local authorities as a design consultancy service. STRATEGIC APPROACH The underlying principles of the strategic approach now adopted are: To keep the process of engagement alive, anticipate and respond to, and perhaps even set new directions in, street sports and the management of the public realm. To develop physical solutions based upon a series of ‘honey pots’ and routes throughout the city, with the intention of minimising clashes by making areas more attractive to groups with particular sporting needs. To ensure that ‘soft-touch’ management is to put into all facilities so that they are ‘owned’ by the users not ‘park-like’ ‘council’ facilities. WORKING GROUPS SK8MK has established a number of dedicated working groups looking at specific issues: • SK8MK Generator - an independent fund raising organisation of young and older street sports enthusiasts, which has raised nearly £6,000 from fund raising, sponsorship from The CentreMK, Xscape and grant funding. Initial funds raised went towards research and fact-finding, and some funds raised will be used for equipment to produce and present filmed evidence of what is required. This group is a forum for the local street sport community via the internet, regular meetings and fund raising events. • Branding and communications group - organises events, publicity, and manages the branded image of SK8MK, gathering and sharing information via the media. The group has also produced a film on the street sports in Central Milton Keynes and the SK8MK initiative. • Funding group - pursues opportunities for sponsorship and funding; so far £115,000 has been secured from the CMK joint venture for street sports facilities, with a further £30,000 for projects via grant funding from Skaters First EBMK (landfill tax). • Design and location group – addresses the design of facilities, their location, access routes and materials, meets to discuss design opportunities within Milton Keynes and provides advice to a number of local authorities. Research into new materials and designs to improve the profile and image of street sports is an essential role for this group. • Management group - This group examines long term management issues of maintenance, cleaning, upgrading of facilities, insurance, safety and a monitoring of facilities. CMK BUS STATION This is an extreme ‘honey-pot’ constructed in the former Central Milton Keynes bus station, and designed by a team involving local street sports participants, pro-skaters and landscape architects. The design incorporates legendary street sport locations from around the world and acts as a laboratory for new materials and design testing their resilience in this punishing environment. The facility is under cover, but open to the sides so is accessible at all times, and a local skate supply business will provide a ‘soft-touch’ management by locating a retail outlet as part of the facility. MOVEMENT MK Following the success of the Moving Units Project at London’s South Bank/Hayward Gallery – a popular skate location - SK8MK has secured funding to progress designs resulting from the design workshop with CMK artist Thomas Heatherwick. These designs and street sculptures will be made by volunteers receiving training to establish a unique range of relocatable skate units for Milton Keynes. Their location in underused areas of streetscape will help to create activity and animation in otherwise barren areas of the street. LESSON LEARNED The key lesson learned through SK8MK is that it is vital to get the process right, engaging people in a way that they understand, without being patronising or domineering. For general information about SK8MK, for advice or for a copy of the DVD film (£50), contact Richard Ferrington, richard.ferrington@milton-keynes.gov.uk. Andrew Armes, Head of Development and Design, Milton Keynes Council
QUALITY HOUSING: THE CRUCIAL ROLE OF THE LOCAL AUTHORITY Roger Estop wonders how, given CABE’s recent audit that showed housing quality is directly related to local authority involvement, can local councils deal with both quality and growth For the ODPM and the house building industry, the delivery of ‘sustainable communities’ means numbers of units appearing on the programme. This measure dominates policy and implementation work in the South and East of Britain. However, it falls to the local authorities, with or without delivery companies, to conjure up these communities through the planning system, and adopt and steward them long after the ODPM has met its targets and the developers have left. Embedding urban design into the local planning process is vital to getting a physical structure and character that makes a place home when the people move in. LOCAL AUTHORITY INTERVENTIONS CABE’s housing audit: assessing the quality of new homes (October 2004) shows that house builders sometimes come up with good schemes, but generally produce rubbish. When they get it right there is a direct link to positive engagement with the local authority. While stressing that house builders and local authorities are jointly responsible for the quality of outcome, the CABE audit demonstrates that local authorities make a difference. They can and do change developer practices, especially in combating the standard building type. So, how are major housing schemes improved by local authorities? • Firstly, the dedicated attention of individual planners, in tireless pursuit of making routes, spaces and perimeter blocks work - ensuring connectivity, continuity, containment of space, separation between public and private • Secondly, a good policy base and welloiled procedures for supplementary guidance, and • Thirdly, the vocal support of chief officer and members - a pro-design mindset in the organisation that sees design as problem solving, the route to sustainability, community and economic promotion. NOT PURELY DESIGN SKILLS Spatial understanding and visualising skills are key, but hands-on designing is not always necessary; scrutiny and challenge forces rigour in the design process. The key skills are those of the new vision development control planner combining a sense of strategic space and attention to detail. The key resource is time, and when these skills and resources are committed to major developments, places are better. What do you call the local authority function in relation to place-making? Not development control, that’s for sure - the term is too closely bound up with the bureaucratic awfulness of getting planning permission, and not associated Higgins Homes canalside development of apartments and B1 accommodation, at 160 dw/ha, designed following a planning brief that suggested a built form Urban Design | Spring 2005 | Issue 94 | 23 TOPIC
Page 1 and 2: DIARY OF EVENTS Unless otherwise in
Page 3 and 4: How Can Urban Designers Save the Pl
Page 5 and 6: Thorp and Dick Longdin made a stron
Page 7 and 8: Do Codes = Quality + Delivery? PAUL
Page 9 and 10: Nelson - Enquiry by Design JAMES HU
Page 11 and 12: The new central business district s
Page 13 and 14: Manchester when his work with Jonat
Page 15 and 16: Such a code could be used to underp
Page 17 and 18: A further difference relates to the
Page 19 and 20: Crescent as it jutted above its Pal
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Page 25 and 26: multiple challenge - higher densiti
Page 27 and 28: its more recent renaissance enabled
Page 29 and 30: additional layer of quality control
Page 31 and 32: the on-looking major landowners tha
Page 33 and 34: a couple of trees’ to relieve the
Page 35 and 36: VISIONS... As the modernist dream o
Page 37 and 38: SHARING THE MAIN STREET Local and i
Page 39 and 40: FRONT TO BACK - A DESIGN AGENDA FOR
Page 41 and 42: MEASURING PLANNING QUALITY MATTHEW
Page 43 and 44: BROADWAY MALYAN ARCHITECTS 3 Weybri
Page 45 and 46: HALPERN PARTNERSHIP LTD The Royle S
Page 47 and 48: PRP ARCHITECTS 1 Lindsey Street, Sm
Page 49: EDUCATION INDEX EDINBURGH COLLEGE O

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