Creative Spaces, Catherine Puthod
Creative Spaces: a toolkit for participatory urban design
To coincide with the publication of the Urban White Paper last November, the Architecture Foundation has launched Creative Spaces, a website and book to set out an agenda for creativity in participatory urban design. Funded by the DETR, Creative Spaces forms part of a three-fold national dissemination programme: an evaluation, a publication and training programme targetting all local authorities, social landlords, regeneration partnerships, the voluntary sector, residents' groups and urban design professionals.
Creative Spaces presents methods and case studies from the Architecture Foundation Roadshow, a participatory urban design initiative which over the last two years acted as the catalyst for the regeneration of 19 public sites across three London Boroughs. Using methods from theatre and video to design festivals, live art and schools workshops, local people worked with architects to generate an urban design brief for their area. The results were design proposals that the partner local authorities committed themselves to fund and implement.
Why do it?
Creative Spaces points towards practical ways of ensuring that approaches to community planning, regeneration programmes and local development plans are wide-ranging, inclusive and creative. It also offers ways in which neighbourhood renewal initiatives can integrate a vision for a high quality built environment with strategies for reducing crime levels, and improving health, employment and educational attainment. It contributes to the Urban White Paper's vision that seeks to improve the public realm, both by raising the standard of urban design and by providing better mechanisms for involving communities and the general public.
The approach was experimental in that it took place at an early stage in the development process - before funding, priorities or development plans were in place. Commenting on how participatory urban design brings in skills necessary to enhancing the quality of the built environment, Jon Rouse, Chief Executive of the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE), said: "Creative Spaces shows how involving architects and urban design professionals at the very early stages of brief setting by the community can produce visionary statements for a local area that are clear, understandable and shared. It points to ways of using the regeneration framework so that it is not so much design-led as design-fed from the start, therefore ensuring that the best urban design skills are matched to local needs and aspirations".
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In addition, the initiative involved people who would normally not take part in planning and design consultation, by offering engaging and accessible activities ranging from very public design festivals to school workshops and arts projects. The open and exploratory nature of the participatory activities encouraged positive responses and enabled local concerns but also aspirations to be expressed. This made the Creative Spaces approach different to traditional public consultations, where often people are asked to react to plans and are not asked to contribute ideas.
What did it achieve?
An evaluation of the Roadshow initiative across 19 neighbourhoods in London highlighted a series of generic principles that should be considered by all involved in promoting creative approaches to involvement in urban design.
Creative Spaces demonstrates the benefits of active participation based on creativity, new learning opportunities, and the representation of culturally diverse perspectives. A major advantage to starting early - before funding is identified - is the lack of constraints or pre-determined outcomes. This enabled architects and planners to work in different ways. Although working across professions and Council departments had many challenges, the process encouraged professionals to seek alternative solutions to problems. Architects' - and by extension the design profession's - skills in enabling urban design strategies to reflect local needs and bring in new ideas were an essential contribution to professional creativity. Specifically, the participatory process enabled good quality urban design solutions to emerge, which reflect needs, concerns and aspirations, as well as deal creatively with social, cultural and built environment issues.
Nevertheless, when it comes to delivery and implementation of a community's vision for the future, mechanisms and procedures need to be approached flexibly and creatively. Creative Spaces suggests that the formation of a creative team comprising of local users, the local authority, the architect, other design professionals and an independent facilitator should help maintain a developmental approach through to implementation. The reticence to taking risks and working flexibly within constraining structures and budgets still constitute real barriers for participatory urban design to develop within local authorities. But the process allows for the right amount of funding to be identified for implementing holistic urban design strategies.
How the toolkit works
But how can a broad-section of the community be involved in changing their environment in a way which is fun, relevant and engaging? And how can this process be linked to imaginative, high quality urban design solutions? Published on the web and as a 64 page book, Creative Spaces includes a practical illustrated 'toolkit' of methods, 'site stories' from each of the Roadshow sites and a national database of useful contacts.
The website and the book aim to offer a practical set of tools which, although are not a recipe book, can engage and inspire all involved in regeneration projects. A large part of the toolkit is dedicated to "generating ideas", the pivotal step of design brief setting, from digital mapping to involving artists as facilitators and working with young people. "Preparing the ground" includes a roles and responsibilities check-list for each member of the creative team, as well as a case study on ways of finding, selecting and appointing an architect. The last section, "Visualising the future", demonstrates the process of applying good urban design skills to a brief set with local concerns and aspirations. Each section has an illustrated case study describing "how it works" in one particular neighbourhood. The case studies also contain practical tips in the form of key considerations and time, people and money charts, particularly useful for people wanting to try and adapt the methods to their projects.
The "Site Stories" present an overview of 19 different public spaces, the toolkit in action and resulting design proposals by the architectural practices selected to work on the Roadshow. The sites range from open spaces and town centres to public spaces within residential communities and neighbourhoods bidding for New Deal for Communities funding. On the website only, a national database lists organisations able to provide advice, information and support in all aspects of community involvement in urban design. These include at present around 100 groups and bodies working in architecture, technical aid, community development, arts, education, sustainability, housing and regeneration. It enables organisations to highlight examples of good and innovative practice. It is also quite unique in that it gives access, from one single source, to all those different sectors, highlighting the contribution that each can make to creative community involvement.
Applying the toolkit
Finally, a training programme has applied the Creative Spaces toolkit to live regeneration projects regionally. Each training event allowed for participation by community organisations, residents, local artists and arts organisations in order to foster or encourage collaborative partnerships.
Two training days were organised in partnership with Southern Arts as part of their innovative "Art at the Centre" pilot funding programme: one for the Thornhill New Deal for Communities initiative in Southampton and one for Reading, Bicester, Milton Keynes and Slough town centre renewal teams. The day at Thornhill has resulted in a decision by the partnership to proceed with the selection of a design team to undertake a comprehensive community consultation and masterplanning project. This is a very positive outcome as prior to the training there was little clarity about how to proceed to solve the open and green spaces issues on the estate. The second event, with the four town centre renewal teams, has also received very positive feedback, particularly from those councils which were able to include community and arts organisations in their teams. Southern Arts have found both events very helpful to their work in promoting community and arts involvement in town centre development. A third training day is planned for residents and partners involved in the Elephant & Castle regeneration scheme. #
Catherine Puthod
'Creative Spaces: a toolkit for participatory urban design' is at www.creativespaces.org.uk and is also available as a book, priced £8 from The Architecture Foundation on 020 7253 3334.
