A few years ago, I was presenting a masterplan scheme when
someone in the audience asked, "Will it have its own rugby team?"
I
gave the only answer I could - 'I don't know - it's up to the people
who live there whether they want to form a team or not! It's not up to
the urban designer.'
But the question raised an important point,
as we build millions of new houses across the UK - "Who, if anyone, is
responsible for creating the conditions that allow community activities
to form?"
This question is probably better addressed to policymakers than designers, and yet 'creating a successful
community' is the holy grail of urban designers everywhere. The part of the government responsible for urban design and planning is now the Department for Communities and Local Government.
In
1955, G. A. Hillery studied 94 different definitions of the word
community, and concluded, "beyond the concept that people are involved
in community, there is no complete agreement as to the nature of
community."
Of course none of us want this inconvenient
statement to get in the way of the UK's ambition to create new
communities, and below I've listed some things which are thought to
encourage community-type activities.
This only deals with the physical aspects of the environment - the walls, buildings, street furniture, entrances etc - and of course there is a limit to what these can achieve on their own.
1. Special places of easy contact
There are a small number of special places in cities, where people are much more likely to talk to complete strangers.
The
pavements outside schools, where parents wait to pick up their children, are the site of many chance conversations because of strong
shared interest in the school, and the fact that parents may need to
wait there for long periods in the afternoon.
However, these
areas are often very poorly designed and congested. If they were better
arranged, with comfortable and sheltered waiting areas or a café, then
their potential as a place for meeting others could be greatly enhanced.

Other similar places include children’s play areas, and parks where
people walk their dogs. Dog toilets are important, and probably trigger more chance meetings than they are given credit for.
Chance conversations happen at bus stops, particularly when buses are late.
2. Encourage pedestrian speed
These meetings in a city only happen at walking pace, or preferably at a
stop. Therefore, designing in places to sit down is a key factor.

The urban designer can organize buildings, streets and spaces in a way
that slows vehicles down to near walking pace. The image below shows an
old residential street in Llandovery, Wales, demonstrating the type of
street in which cars must travel at a walking pace.

In new residential developments, this subtle form of traffic calming is rarely achieved. However it is possible, as demonstrated by
Alan Baxter & Associates and Leon Krier, who pioneered a series of pedestrian-friendly
street designs at Poundbury in Dorset (This development is best known for its neo-vernacular architecture, but the subtle, people-friendly highways engineering is in many ways a more significant achievement).
3. Sense of place/identity/belonging
Creating
a sense of identity, or character, is a notoriously difficult goal. Many of the things that we consider distinctive, or positive, about a
place have nothing to do with the physical design. However, the
physical design is often the only thing that the urban designer has any
influence over.
The character of an individual person can be described as a set of
habits, or repeated actions, and similarly the character of an urban
area can be defined by a set of repeated design features, or customs -
choice of materials, typology or architectural style, for example, or a
method of dealing with the natural landscape.
a.
A clear boundary – a wall, a stream, a hedge, a road, a running track,
a transport route, a line of trees, or a clear built edge – can make it
clear when someone is in the place or out of the place, creating a
clear spatial identity.
b. Unique, recognizable high quality
details or building typologies – a distinctive style or type of
building, street sign, or window design, or type of brick, or traffic
light, or lamp-post – will become familiar elements of the development
and create a material identity for the place.
For example, the
buildings of Glasgow and other Scottish cities are very distinctive
because of their stone construction, high storey heights, large windows
and organization into tenement flats:

c. Thirdly, local landmarks (good or even bad design) can stimulate the
imagination and become points of reference, therefore creating a sense
of shared interest in the local area.
4. Awareness of other people as a source of skills and help
Knowing
someone living nearby who knows how to fix your computer, or knows a
bit about plumbing or DIY, will generate communication within local
areas.
There's not much an urban designer can do about this, though.
5. Online communities supporting real communities
Blogs on websites such as Camberwell Online, the Kings Cross Local Environment website (which covers the area near our offices) are valuable sources of local information, and websites such as PledgeBank created by MySociety also play important roles within real world local communities.
What
can the urban designer do to help online communities? Very little,
except perhaps to design the streets in a way that ensures that new
telecoms infrastructure can be laid without too much disruption.
6. Local Services
Newsagents,
other local shops, chemists, GP surgeries, launderettes and pubs are
all important places where contacts are made and communities can form.

Designers can suggest places where these services can happen, but have
relatively little control over what services will come. This depends on
planning policy and accurate assessments of the demand for
individual services.
However, designers do have an important
role in fixing the details of the masterplan. The
depth and storey-heights of the property unit constrain what uses are possible, while the service and utility infrastructure should be made
generous and robust so that the accommodation does not become
obsolete too quickly.
Towards a new science of liveability:
For
the sake of argument we can assume that a 'community' occurs when
people meet their neighbours and feel a sense of shared ownership,
identity and obligation towards their locality, leading to a safer and
generally higher quality of life for everyone.
The search for 'liveability' and the creation of 'communities' at the urban masterplan scale requires a tricky balance between intuitive and systematic thinking. It is not an exact science which can be accurately measured, but neither is it an impenetrable dark art.
Historic urbanism is sometimes prescribed in a slightly unscientific way, as if there was some
kind of magic at work in the plans of older towns. However, many of the
so-called intangible qualities inherent in older urban areas are
of course a great deal more tangible and objective than they seem.
With
a bit of effort , it is possible for us to systematically and
holistically understand which design features are more likely to allow
successful communities to develop. The examples given above are just a starting point.
This understanding should
then be used to leverage policies unrelated to design, in order to achieve much greater confidence in the success of
the many new communities currently being built across the UK.
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