knowledge transfer: the role of academia in today’s placemaking
‘Academia is striving to meet the challenges posed by climate change and the need to create communities at a pace much faster than ever before’
Knowledge transfer: the role of academia in today’s placemaking
University departments have key knowledge banks and research resources. Increasingly, researchers and students are working closely with industry and government on a range of projects addressing built environment design, placemaking and sustainability
Fifteen or so years ago, courses in urban design were offered by a handful of universities: now 40 courses in urban design and related subjects are listed on the RUDI website, virtually all at postgraduate level. The scope of these courses is constantly broadening, becoming increasingly multi- and inter-disciplinary. Academia is striving to meet the challenges posed by climate change and the need to create communities at a pace much faster than ever before.
Academic outreach
Working with local communities has always been central to research at the Joint Centre for Urban Design (JCUD) at Oxford Brookes University, says department head Professor Georgina Butina Watson. The JCUD formed in the polytechnic days when policy favoured outreach into the local council estate over retreat behind ivory towers, and it has adopted a practical, hands-on approach ever since. A JCUD team is currently working with young people living in Oxford’s Blackbird Leys estate.
‘The UrbanBuzz Routescape project aims to help young people to understand what matters in terms of urban design,’ explained Professor Watson. The one-year project will involve 14-19 year olds in drawing up ideas for the reshaping of their housing estate. JCUD academics will offer training to young people, with the view that some might even become the urban designers of the future. In addition, urban design students from the university will be working on their own projects for Blackbird Leys.
John Punter, Professor of Urban Design at Cardiff University, says academics can be found working in an increasingly diverse number of areas relating to placemaking, both locally and nationally. For example, there are no less than eight active research centres at Cardiff, including the national Centre for Education in the Built Environment, the Urban China Research Centre, the Centre for Environment, Society and Space and the Regeneration Institute. Five research groups span sustainability, governance, housing, spatial planning/design and spatial analysis.
Academics from the universities of Cardiff, Glasgow, Manchester and UCL are currently involved in a major evaluation of the UK built environment in the high profile ESRC Seminar Series 2007/8: Urban Design and the British Urban Renaissance.
Sixteen academics are debating key urban design issues with local politicians, planners, urban designers, developers and local communities in each of the four UK capitals and larger regional cities – Cardiff, Nottingham, Birmingham and Bristol. The series concludes with an analysis of the City, central London, Docklands and the Thames Gateway in June. Seminar proceedings will be summarised in the journal Urban Design and on the RUDI website, and will be published in full by Routledge in early 2009.
Placemaking practice
 |  | Universities, of course, train the urban designers of tomorrow – but they can only learn placemaking through practice, emphasises Michael Hebbert, Professor of Town Planning, at the University of Manchester. ‘Town planning at the University of Manchester is rooted in practice,’ he said. First year students begin by making a detailed architectural assessment of an urban space in their home town. In year two, each student completes an individual masterplan for a residential neighbourhood in inner Manchester. Third year design-based dissertations often tackle real planning problems involving fieldwork with local communities.
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| Cardiff projects Left: Bay Pointe: densities of 500 dwelling units per hectare and building heights up to 41 storeys are unnecessary and inappropriate in medium sized cities. This land is owned by the local authority and the project is intended to cross-subsidise a leisure project Right: Celestia, Cardiff Bay: while this scheme also has a significant affordable component, its all-surface car parking and negative treatment of the quayside are quite unacceptab | ||
By year four, says Hebbert, the students have professional experience through placements with planning consultancies, agencies or local councils. ‘The final year project is “client-based”, in other words, it’s done out in the real world on an external commission – just like a professional consultancy report but without the price-tag.’
Community sustainability is another vital ingredient of academic research, points out Dr Noha Nasser, Director of the Centre for Urban Design Outreach and Skills (CUDOS) at Birmingham City University. Increasingly, she says, urban design courses are being seen as a test bed of ideas and a space for small-scale experimentation into new urban design agendas.
During its short existence since 2004, the MA Urban Design course at Birmingham School of Architecture has successfully extended its activities beyond the teaching of graduates and into urban design consultancy. Within the past few years, an area of research has been emerging that brings two disparate strands of regeneration closer together: community cohesion and placemaking.
Recent community unrest in several English cities has been attributed to resource inequity, said Dr Nasser. ‘However, one area which has not been considered is the issue of ‘space’ as a resource, and the complex ways in which diverse communities mark their identities and territories within the buildings and spaces of the city. These spaces, therefore, hold within them some of the solutions to social unrest, street violence, and perceptions of segregation,’ she explained. ‘The ethos of CUDOS is the commitment to foster the expertise and imagination of local communities in creating vibrant, liveable neighbourhoods.’
A new pilot project will explore a key public space that borders a number of communities. Utilising the design process as a vehicle for developing community cohesion, it will involve communities in the development of a design brief. Design skills workshops will help give participants confidence in their own ideas and encourage them to engage as equal partners in the project.
Other areas of work at Birmingham include the exploration of new housing typologies suited to a multicultural society developed through a Knowledge Transfer Partnership between the university and a local housing association. ‘Many of these projects have already begun challenging commonly held misconceptions and stereotypes about culturally diverse communities. This new urban design agenda is still in its nascent form but, with more applied research, can provide new ways of designing sustainable neighbourhoods. There are already signs that central government is interested in this work, with Birmingham set to lead the way,’ she added.
Bringing policy, will and knowledge together
Academics at UCL (University College London) and the University of East London are leading the UrbanBuzz: Building Sustainable Communities (www.urbanbuzz.org) project across the UK. Urban Buzz is a practical, evidence-based programme designed to share knowledge and stimulate new thinking. In spite of policy and best intentions, says David Cobb, Urban Buzz programme director, there is little confidence that today’s developments will form thriving and vital sustainable communities. There seems to be a lack of the right knowledge in the right places to inform development. Urban Buzz aims to link professionals and practitioners, so-called innovation fellows, with leading academics, or business fellows, to work on live projects. The two-year £5m funding package came via BERR and the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), and currently 28 projects are in development.
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 | Manchester projects Top left: Drawing of Church Street OswestryTop middle: Detail from plan for a neighbourhood in ManchesterTop right: Detail from design-based dissertation on inner BirminghamBottom: Detail from client-based project for a civic society More case studies and features from RUDI's recent publication PLACEmaking can be accessed online in pdf format, or from the case studies or features menus. For a printed copy, please order here | |
