JTP Participates in NLA Placemaking Think Tank
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JTP Participates in NLA Placemaking Think Tank

Published on 19 August 2016

Our Managing Partner, Marcus Adams, was recently invited to participate in an NLA think tank, which brought together architects, developers, local authorities, academics and consultants to look at the definition of ‘placemaking’ for London.

With almost every new mixed use scheme and regeneration opportunity in London quoting ‘placemaking’ in how they talk about their project, what does this term really mean? How should we define ‘placemaking’ for London today? What are the questions we should be asking in order to create good places in the capital?

For Steven Bee, principal at Steven Bee Urban Counsel and Chairman of the Academy of Urbanism, there are a number of factors that regularly feature in the places that the Academy celebrates through its annual Urbanism Awards. These include leadership, particularly the value of an active and independent mayor to a city; ‘stewardship’ - making a long-term commitment, and the importance of having a clear and ambitious vision. Successful places will be adaptable, reinforce their local distinctiveness, and ‘recognize, understand and exploit their cultural and built inheritance, said Bee. They will value ‘proximity’ – the new ideas and opportunities that come from people and activities rubbing up against each other, and they will also have an understanding of how places of different scales sit within or beyond each other. 

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Great places are often framed by good rather than spectacular development, not buildings that shout at you, but quiet buildings that provide the appropriate setting. We could do the ordinary rather better, with less focus on the exceptional…Buildings should set the scene, not steal it.
Steven Bee, Chairman of the Academy of Urbanism

Bee took Think Tank members through a series of examples from finalists in the Urbanism Awards, of different scales, from King’s Place in London, Cairns Street in Liverpool, Devonport in Plymouth and current ‘town of the year’ Frome in Somerset, to Rotterdam.  The Academy’s European City of the year 2015. Rotterdam has rediscovered its identity with confident long-term leadership, a high level of autonomy and a clear vision of what it wants to be. Its concept of the city centre public realm as an Urban Lounge is being implemented with great enthusiasm.

Ultimately, for JTP Managing Partner Marcus Adams, the test is potentially that the new places we make are as good as the places we like, with the ‘hardware’ of neighbourhoods, streets and spaces activated by ‘software’ of social and economic activity, and with visions not imposed on places but borne of a collective input. Rather than look at masterplans as finished propositions, the attitude should be one of staged placemaking, and of ‘growing’ a place.

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We believe in engagement with communities. Doing that leads naturally to a distinctiveness, and a cohesive vision for a place.
Marcus Adams, Managing Partner at JTP

This is an extract from the full text, which can be found here.

Tags
NLA, Placemaking, Thinktank