LOOKING TO THE CITIES OF THE FUTURE
Looking around any Midlands city at the moment, one cannot fail to notice the level of urban regeneration taking place on a dramatic scale. Cranes dominate the skyline and every corner turned seems to reveal a new apartment block under construction. But can this pattern possibly continue at the same rate and what are the issues we should be aware of in a society with such mass-scale development?
Leading architect Bob Ghosh gives his thoughts on the current state of the Midlands and what he hopes to find in our cities in the future: "I consider the Midlands to be the new capital of regeneration."
Outside London, cities like Liverpool, Manchester and Leeds were always seen as the key regeneration areas of the last decade. Whilst developers scramble for every square foot of land in those cities, places like Birmingham, Leicester, Coventry, Derby and Nottingham are confidently announcing themselves as the new destination for ambitious developers and investors.
The Midlands has vast tracts of derelict industrial land, as well as a fine stock of under-utilised buildings. When I show clients around from London or Manchester, there is almost a sense of disbelief about what they see. The sheer number of opportunities and their potential scale seem unlimited.
What most people class as the 'city living' boom, namely the mass movement of affluent young professionals back into the city centres after long periods in suburbia, has been with us in the Midlands since the mid to late 1990s. We're even building loft apartments in Wolverhampton now! This would have been a pipe dream even five years ago.
Attitudes are changing and the next 10 years will see a real renaissance in the Midlands, the scale of which we have never seen in our lifetimes.
The important thing to remember is that there is more to regeneration than building more and more residential schemes on brownfield sites. This is an oversimplification of the whole issue. What we really need is a much more radical re-examination of planning, infrastructure, transport and quality of environment.
The main concern for the future is the need to create city centres with less cars and more oxygen. For this to happen there needs to be enormous improvement in city-centre and inter-city public transport. Most people in central London and Manhattan don't drive to work, as they have a viable alternative (albeit sometimes at breaking point). It would be great to have a really sophisticated and futuristic underground system in the Midlands and this is a scheme that is already being given some very serious consideration in Birmingham . Nottingham is already blazing a trail in this area by re-introducing its tram network recently. It is strange to think that the future of our 24-hour cities is to be found in the past.
The other vision for city centres, although slightly utopian, is an aspiration for more independent retail and a less homogenised high street. I don't want my local high street in the Midlands to be an almost identikit version of the high street in Reading or RochdaIe. With rents in prime retail locations at a premium, it's never easy for the start-up business with great ideas but little capital to get their foot on the ladder and start competing with the might of the chain stores.
Developers like the Space Organisation with the Custard Factory in Birmingham are offering a vital lifeline to the entrepreneurs and creative businesses by providing affordable workspace and retail units in a city-centre location with low overheads and business support. Such communities are not only self-sustaining, but are also catalysts for further change, Such schemes are also being launched across the East Midlands - most notably Leicester with the imminent launch of 'The Depot' which is a creative industries hub designed to nurture and support local creative businesses.
For the city living ethos to fully evolve into a more inclusive phenomenon, communities must be formed from a true cross-section of society, including families and elderly people as opposed to the creation of investor ghettos. This not only requires vision, but also very careful strategic planning and implementation.
Really successful regeneration schemes are few and far between, but ones like Coin Street in London are particularly well conceived. The Coin Street community has been built close to the Oxo Tower on the South Bank of the Thames. This includes high quality, mixed-tenure housing, shops, bars, restaurants and offices, which knit seamlessly into the existing urban fabric.
They even take into consideration issues like affordable childcare as part of their overall strategy. Coin Street feels like a real part of London, rather than a sterile place with the obligatory Starbucks and an extortionate dry cleaners!
Closer to home, developers who are trying to address this situation include Urban Splash with their schemes at Fort Dunlop in Birmingham and the Walsall Waterfront, where bold interventions will create a chain reaction of other initiatives.
This is a great time to be living and working in the Midlands, both witnessing and facilitating the resuscitation of our urban areas. We will, however, be judged in the future by the legacy we leave behind. Hopefully, this era will be remembered as a golden age for the region.
Bob Ghosh is a Director of Kinetic AIU, a new architecture practice based in Birmingham, with a bias towards innovation and urbanism. Their recent projects have included a flagship store for cutting edge fashion house All Saints, one of London's busiest mosques and a series of unique city centre regeneration schemes including 'city living' developments in Birmingham, Wolverhampton and Manchester. |
