Vital and viable towns
Measuring the relationship between successful public realm and successful development. By Roger Evans and Conrad Kickert (REAL)
As urban designers, we seek to affect social and economic outcomes largely through interventions in the morphology of a town. We are often faced with the question of how a particular town centre can be made more successful, and planning policy has directed such questions towards an assessment of the vitality and viability of central areas. However, the success of the public realm, generally measured in social terms, and the success of development, generally measured in financial terms, are highly inter-dependent and need to be considered together.
Town centre initiatives are too often focused on either environmental or commercial concerns and may fail to address both sets of issues in an integrated way. Also, how are interventions measured? Without proper measurement, how can town centres be ‘benchmarked' and how can proposed design interventions be assessed?
There is a need for a set of methods to measure vitality and viability and the interdependence between the two. Based on a design study of Oxford, originally commissioned by Oxford City Council, Roger Evans Associates Limited (REAL) is working on a research programme to quantify and measure relationships between commercial value in a city and the function and performance of the public realm. The research offers an opportunity to measure the success of town centres, and the potential success of future interventions, in one model.
The research focuses on the conviction that a successful public realm, where people feel safe, comfortable and enjoy using streets and places both during the day and into the evening, is also likely to be an economic viability. The research defines and measures indicators of a successful public realm and tests it with indicators of economic success.
Some of these indicators are shown in the maps on these pages. The research model has both the capability to describe (as a ‘health check') and to predict, making it a useful tool in both analysis and the design stages.
Many UK town centres still fail to find a symbiosis between vitality and viability, a problem that shopping centres have sometimes exacerbated over the last three decades. Common problems in town centres include:
- The zoning of a central area for ‘special treatment' (usually public realm enhancements) while ignoring the wider area and linkages to surrounding quarters or neighbourhoods.The existence of large areas with one single use. This can make daytime or evening use of the public realm unattractive or even inhospitable.
- The roofing in of town centre retail. Public realm may be lost in large scale redevelopment and indoor developments in the past have often had a detrimental effect on outdoor public space. There is in most towns a maximum area that can be successfully roofed in and even this will need to be on tertiary routes, which complement the principal streets.
- Low density development. As the result of single use areas and a preference for cars through the construction of major infrastructure and surface parking, densities in many UK town centres are surprisingly low compared to international or even historic precedents. Higher densities can both benefit investors and create more successful places.
- A public realm with unrealised potential for a wider range of uses. Accommodating different needs within the public realm, even timetabling uses at different times of day or week, can be vital.
The research has led to the production of maps, which analyse and predict how successful streets will be for both daytime and evening usage.
Daytime use
As urban designers, we seek to affect social and economic outcomes largely through interventions in the morphology of a town. We are often faced with the question of how a particular town centre can be made more successful, and planning policy has directed such questions towards an assessment of the vitality and viability of central areas. However, the success of the public realm, generally measured in social terms, and the success of development, generally measured in financial terms, are highly inter-dependent and need to be considered together.
Town centre initiatives are too often focused on either environmental or commercial concerns and may fail to address both sets of issues in an integrated way. Also, how are interventions measured? Without proper measurement, how can town centres be ‘benchmarked' and how can proposed design interventions be assessed?
There is a need for a set of methods to measure vitality and viability and the interdependence between the two. Based on a design study of Oxford, originally commissioned by Oxford City Council, Roger Evans Associates Limited (REAL) is working on a research programme to quantify and measure relationships between commercial value in a city and the function and performance of the public realm. The research offers an opportunity to measure the success of town centres, and the potential success of future interventions, in one model.
The research focuses on the conviction that a successful public realm, where people feel safe, comfortable and enjoy using streets and places both during the day and into the evening, is also likely to be an economic viability. The research defines and measures indicators of a successful public realm and tests it with indicators of economic success.
Some of these indicators are shown in the maps on these pages. The research model has both the capability to describe (as a ‘health check') and to predict, making it a useful tool in both analysis and the design stages.
Many UK town centres still fail to find a symbiosis between vitality and viability, a problem that shopping centres have sometimes exacerbated over the last three decades. Common problems in town centres include:
- The zoning of a central area for ‘special treatment' (usually public realm enhancements) while ignoring the wider area and linkages to surrounding quarters or neighbourhoods.
- The existence of large areas with one single use. This can make daytime or evening use of the public realm unattractive or even inhospitable.
- The roofing in of town centre retail. Public realm may be lost in large scale redevelopment and indoor developments in the past have often had a detrimental effect on outdoor public space. There is in most towns a maximum area that can be successfully roofed in and even this will need to be on tertiary routes, which complement the principal streets.
- Low density development. As the result of single use areas and a preference for cars through the construction of major infrastructure and surface parking, densities in many UK town centres are surprisingly low compared to international or even historic precedents. Higher densities can both benefit investors and create more successful places.
- A public realm with unrealised potential for a wider range of uses. Accommodating different needs within the public realm, even timetabling uses at different times of day or week, can be vital.
The research has led to the production of maps, which analyse and predict how successful streets will be for both daytime and evening usage.
Evening useIn addition to the daytime walkability map, a description can be made of the city centre at night. A walkable environment has different requirements during the evening and during the day. At night, the base need of safety (and related to this, activity) is more significant than active façades or traffic density on streets.
The focus of the night-time map is on safety and surveillance because of their importance for walkability at night. Natural surveillance is the result of land use and urban morphology. The provision of housing especially has a beneficial effect on the night-time surveillance of urban spaces, as residents overlook spaces at night. Residential windows overlooking the street are drawn on the map, with their field of view. Night bus lines and taxi ranks have been drawn to show routes that are likely to be used by night traffic, increasing the chance of surveillance. The night-time leisure functions, such as bars, theatres, and nightclubs have been marked in yellow. As these functions generate nightly street activity, these are spaces where criminal or antisocial behaviour can occur, but also spaces where patrons overlook public space.
Because of the lack of residents in the centre of Oxford, the surveillance map shows that some of the popular shopping streets during the daytime are no-go areas at night. As no one overlooks the space, safety as the base for night-time economy suffers.
Oxford Castle, a successful public realm
Figure ground of Oxford showing covered public space in grey. Over 30 percent of all high street retail in Oxford is under cover
Use of the centre, with retail entrances in red, office space in blue and residences in green. The main retail streets of Oxford have lost their residential use
Footfall dependance of shops: vitality is viability. Retail needs vital public space to generate necessary footfall
Relative retail values: The pedestrianised main retail street has much higher rents than car-dominated streets or side routes
