‘Each of us narrates our lives as it suits us…’ says Elena Ferrante in her novel Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay. it is possible to recognise the great truth in this reflection. We strive to become what it is we want to be, even sometimes presenting a face to the world that we do not, in truth, cleave to inside us.
Now technology can map our journey from beginning to end. The humble laptop or mobile device can show this life track to the casual visitor. The wonder of the novel is it’s ability to draw us into the individual life, to be able to join the sole reflection of the journey.
The visual displayed below shows the power of aggregation. Making moving pictures of the lives of many. From their birth to the place of their death. In the aggregation comes another story.
It is an informative, broad brush canvas about the creation of communities, cities and centres of culture. It is also, to our mind, both art and science.
Researchers at The University of Texas, Dallas have tracked the beginning and end of life of notable figures in history from 600BC to the present day.
The database of notables was drawn from Freebase, a Google owned data service, and the skills and enterprise of the individuals is seen as a proxy for the spread of culture across the globe.
It is a ‘western’ view of cultural dissemination. It omits much influence drawn from the movement of Asian and African peoples through time. One of the most stunning sequences in the film is the movement of people from the east coast of the USA to the west.
It does visualise the rising importance of the West Coast, particularly in the Twentieth Century. Showing how inevitable the collapse of Native American culture had become.
On balance, a great presentation that shows the cultural spread of European ideas, over space and time.
We are living longer, even despite social and economic disparities in society. We are retiring later and some individuals are not seeking to retire at all. A trend to longer, healthier lives means that there is more experience and energy that older people can offer than ever before. (You can see an Office of National Statistics report on retirement age from 2012 here…Ed.)
As a society do we value the mature contributor? Do we capitalise on the learning and earning capacity of this age cohort? Jonathan Collie thinks not. He is looking to raise enough funds to hold a conference on ‘The Age of No Retirement‘ on the 1st to the 6th October, 2014.
‘…‘The Age of No Retirement?’ is Britain’s first ever national conference to debate & revalue our opportunities in retirement. Gathering experts, policy makers, key stakeholders and the public we will explore retirement and the opportunities we can provide in an ageing, technological and engaged society’.
It is planned that the first two days of the proposed conference will look at, debate and construct visual outputs and nascent policy proposals around some key themes…
Work & employment
Ageism & prejudice
Health & well-being
Technology & communication
The plus-50 consumer
Self, family & society
Knowledge & education
After a closed day of consolidation and publication there will be a public, three day open event for the review of, and a wider consultative approach to, the work and its outcomes.
The Collie manifesto on ageing has it’s own practical outcome too. Jonathan founded, and has gained wide support for, a new social business called Trading Times.
The project connects local employers with mature workers who are often retired, single parents or carers. They may not need a full-time job, but can offer a wide range of skills to interested employers.
We think this is an important debate. Not only because the conversationsEAST office is a ‘no-retirement’ zone, but because the potential contribution of this section of society is untapped. Trading Times is not the only player in town, but could provide an economic model that works well for the mature employed.
Why not a Trading Times hub in every RSA region? (It’s not immediately obvious from the web site, but we suspect that TT is a London centric initiative at present…Ed.)
In conclusion, the Age of No Retirement constitutes a move to an important new social shift. Support it, whatever your age, as the outcomes may condition the whole life contribution you can make. Wherever you are on your journey now.
Today sees the launch of a new RSA report, generously sponsored and in collaboration with British Land – Socially productive places – Learning from what works: lessons from British Land – born out of an earlier RSA conference.
Social productivity is the additional social value that can be created through better relationships between citizens, society, business and public services…
The report is a long letter to developers, communities and planners, essentially pleading the case that ‘…long term property value is driven by the long term economic relevance of an asset’.
A socially productive place would build community capacity to benefit from and drive growth, and increase resilience to shocks and give an ability to adapt to new circumstances. This is not a new idea. The evidence in the report tracks community development progressive initiatives from early EU regional funding to the New Deal for Communities.
What is new, perhaps, is the tight focus on new skill acquisition by all partners and a fresh focus on method and delivery for impact. The same refocus is taking place in the community finance sector, where the ‘impact investor’ and how outcomes are mapped and delivered is a priority for funders, project planners and community partnerships. The report exercises this viewpoint well.
(As an example of this new social finance mode of delivery see how Social Enterprise East Midlands worked in collaboration with Big Society Capital to deliver an informative and effective mapping session for politicians, social bankers and financial intermediaries in this new sector. See more here…Ed.).
The RSA Report also shows how private capital is developing both it’s land bank and its ideas with impact in mind. The report references brands such as Asda ‘... adopting a ‘community venturing’ approach, forming partnerships with charities and public services‘.
Discover more about shopping for shared value and community venturing in a recent edition of Matthew Taylor’s blog – read more here.
Planning should be thought of as a front-line service.
The success of a development should be judged by its impact on those who use it and its ability to contribute to a broader set of social and economic outcomes, the report declares. Building high quality public realm is expensive, but, says the report, privatising public space is not the answer.
Accessible public realm is an important feature of social productivity places – places designed to support social and economic connectivity. When built, the people must come.
To achieve the above, then there are a number of often new issues to wrangle with for key players in the development process. Investing in community relationships, by any mature, established corporate entitity requires agility and commitment. The report focuses on three key elements…
Successful community investment takes time and effort by developers, including long term consistent representation, engagement by senior executives and dedicated staff.
Local political support is essential, site specific planning frameworks are not.
The results for developers can be profitable as quality of public realm drives rents, and local consent for density allows greater floorspace yield from a site.
The Cambridge sub-region:
One of our own sub-regional cities features in the report too. Cambridge, which quietly broke out of green-belt constraints in the 1990’s, created new communities and growth areas. These well designed and built communites, although having offered an increase in take up of local services were less successful, the report indicates, in increasing employment in those new communities. They have, however, increased pressure on transport links.
As universities become ever increasing drivers of economic development, then local areas should increasingly consider graduate retention as an important part of their
social and economic development thinking, the report highlights. Working with both universities and developers to pursue this goal should be a strategic priority for the future. Certainly a key development driver for Cambridge, being the world class research nexus that it is.
Finally, the report gives readers examples of non-linear, non -traditional development models which utilise public spaces for community benefit in innovative ways.
One such featured is Incredible Edible – whose growth has been achieved by by-passing bureaucratic processes, ‘…which rely on a narrow account of how value is created and maintained’.
In summary, this is an important paper, which whilst containing no ravishing new insights or philosophy, should score very, very highly with the community development sector in the way that it brings together, in a new meld, a variety of distinct skill sets to map a new way forward for developers, planners, politicians and community groups.
You can still find the content of the original conference, and the papers presented by a list of distinguished speakers here, on The RSA web site.
Continuing our diversions for summer 2014 , we nonetheless remain interested in gender inequality and below take the opportunity to look at interesting initiatives designed to boost the engagement and equality of status for women in technology.
Girls in Tech Paris 2014 – European Lady Pitch Night
Despite the rather off message phrasing of the translated title, if you are a female technologist, active in a European based start-up and have been operational in your company or project for between six and thirty six months, then you could be n your way to Paris for this Girls in Tech Paris/Orange sponsored annual event on the 23rd September.
Applications have been extended and are closing on July 23rd, so you still have time to get your bid in. All finalists will receive tickets to Europe’s top technology conferences, including Dublin Le Web, LeWeb and Europas. Your submission will be tested, in English, in front of a jury, after a telephone interview to complete the selection process.
If you are a female technologist intent on a career in the sector, despite some of the reservations below, we think Girls in Tech London is a great resource. Their pages offer insights into fifteen UK Tech Women to watch in 2014. Great role models and great examples of women driven technology enterprise. See more here…
Microsoft – supporting change in the gender balance
The Seattle giant recently, in June 2014, held a number of sessions at its Cambridge Research building in our region, designed to interest and promote female engagement with technology and software.
It is widely recognised that women entering the sector are faced by a massive gender imbalance, with attitudes to women still in transition in the industry. However, keen to not lose good minds and the opportunity for original research, Microsoft held a workshop on Tips and Tools for Scientific Research Success – ‘…aimed to educate attendees about Microsoft research tools, equip them with advice from experienced researchers about the opportunities of being an early-career researcher, and inspire them with examples from Microsoft Research that show the potential of computer science to change the world’.
Although 55% of enrolments in higher education are for women, data from HESA in 2013 shows, fewer than 3% of graduates were in computer science. Of that cohort only 17% were women.
Attendees at the Microsoft event in Cambridge looked at issues around cloud computing, research tools that Microsoft currently offers and how attendees might master Excel and WordPress in order to deliver and publish their research.
The attendees also looked at Chronozoom and Microsoft’s WorldWide Telescope. If you are interested in history and star gazing, these are great tools to find out more about your subject at any level, even if you are not a research scientist .
Another solution to the gender imbalance in ‘tech’ is to build a steadfast Bailey castle, and exclude the male majority from it. In San Francisco, the Double Union feminist hacker space does just that.
Just using the word castle would, we expect, bring us into conflict with the collective’s base assumptions. However, an overwhelming belief in open-ness and collaboration is, we recognise, trumped by the assessment that the problems for women in ‘tech’ industry are so large, that barriers need to be erected to allow a comfortable, clear space for reflection and creativity.
Fast Company recently published a profile of the feminist work space and of Amelia Greenhall, the spaces Executive Director. To sign up for Double Union women must evidence that they share a similar world view as other centre residents.
A key ‘counter-text’ for Unioner’s is Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In. The Union holds that it is the tech industry that needs to change, not the women in it. Sandberg, Chief Operating Officer of Facebook, drove a movement forward. You can see the Lean In web pages here. But the more ardent, Double Union feminist approach, and the data, argues that for most women in technology, the barriers are not falling. Despite gentler feminist movements, girls who code projects and the well known female faces in the industry – tokenism at best the Unioner’s would probably argue.
They present a cogent argument. Google’s payroll includes only 17% of employees who are women, whilst Facebook offers workspaces and careers to only 15% of its staffing levels to women. Not much evidence of internal change in these major sector players, we would argue.
Perhaps the solution is the rainbow coalition approach? The ardent, exclusive feminists and the gentler, inclusive mainstream corporate sensibility will together reshape the face of ‘tech’ in the future, for all women? We hope so.
We read and were stirred by the Fast Company article. Written by a female journalist it none the less includes a description of what the Executive Director of the feminist space was wearing. We can’t remember the last time we read an interview with Bill Gates which featured his wardrobe?
(Are there any similar feminist community initiatives for ‘tech’ in the Eastern Region? We can’t think of any. If you know of one, let us know. We’ll feature it on our journal pages and continue the conversation…Ed).
In his recent RSA Annual Lecture, Matthew Taylor espoused creativity. How the RSA should exist to ‘…empower people to be capable, active participants in creating the world we want to live in…’
In his lecture Matthew argues that we stand on the edge of a vast plain of opportunity. Social, technological and philosophical changes in the last century have the potential to enable every person to be creative, in the widest sense.
His core argument cites Amartya Sen, amongst others, who have argued that with the creativity that education and open-ness deliver, runs alongside a reliance on resources. These must be garnered, deployed and accounted for too.
He does stress that in this century those resources are, or can be for most, free. This journal, for example, is a product of imagination and the utilisation of Open Source software to create and deliver information and opinion to a social network.
Although we would bind ourselves to the argument it does not fully extend itself, yet, into the sphere of hardware. The technology we need to deploy free assets still comes at a cost, a la Amartya Sen.
Matthew also presses us to the concept that creativity is not the sole remit of high culture alone. For a creative individual, it is perhaps starting a new socially focused enterprise, writing and publishing new works or working with others to deliver societal change.
This notion of ‘the social’ is a strong theme in the lecture. Matthew argues for the collapse of ‘Fordism’ and traditional passive consumption of services in the local authority arena. The social transaction in the workplace and wider civic society itself undergoing dramatic change at the social/technological interface. This change, the lecture makes clear, is still under way. Destination unknown.
In the final part of the lecture we hear of two key restraints on creativity.
One is the ever increasing ‘gap’ to reach those who enjoy privilege and wealth. Matthew cites Thomas Piketty’s recent argument that the traditionalist, narrow pyramidal social and economic structures of the past continue to eat into the resources, and undertake exploitation of, the majority in the present. The spectre of Marx is at the feast, even for Piketty.
Secondly, the Weberian notion of ‘splitting’ is a key restraint argued for by our lecturer. ‘Social pyramidism’ is reflected in the largest corporations, whether in the civic domain or in private hands. Where individuals are completely constrained by function and hierarchy…to the detriment of their own creativity.
We would probably extend this argument slightly further, in that the traditionalist, elitist and pyramidal organisation creates a culture of fear, not of creativity. All creative people recognise the tone of those emails, the sense of ‘beyond my pay grade’, that any attempt at initiative and new thinking can create.
This personal creativity is fostered, we would argue, in the private, domestic domain to the disregard of the corporate structures that the individual labours under….perversely perhaps, in order to acquire the technology to be properly free.
In conclusion, the lecture pitches us into the argument of ‘civic effects’, where success for a creative society will be an ad-mixture of engagement in civil society, the activation and support of creative ‘doers of things’ and the press to change entrenched behaviours, in order to disrupt the traditional pyramidal approach.
It’s a powerful argument from and for the RSA and should be heard widely.
Heading away from the Eastern Region over the summer period? Spending some time on the South Coast? A great event with some inspiring and refreshing RSA talks will be taking place at Camp Bestival 2014.
‘The sister festival of the Isle of Wight’s Bestival, in its first year Camp Bestival was awarded ‘Best New Festival’ at the UK Festival Awards and has since won Best Family Festival three times at the awards in 2009, 2010 & 2013.
With a host of thrilling activities from soft play and circus skills to go-carts and glitter, there’s plenty of excitement for kids of all ages. Plus, there are kids’ shows and performances on the Castle Stage and in the Big Top, daring antics to be had at the Freesports Park, and fairytale escapism in the Dingly Dell’.
The RSA Team will be boarding their summer holiday charabanc and leaving the metropolis for the Dorset countryside. With tents, wellies and a relaxed mind, ready to be entertained themselves and to have the children beguiled too.
Fellows, and the assembled audience, will be able to enjoy The RSA Hour events on Saturday and Sunday of the weekend…
Saturday 2 August at 10am. Psychologist Dr Ben Ambridge’s innovative interactive investigation of intelligence.
‘What is intelligence? Where does it come from, and why does it even matter? How much do you know and understand about what makes you tick? And how good are you at predicting other people’s behavior…or even your own?
What’s the link between intelligence and curly fries? Are atheists cleverer than religious people? What about men vs women, or right- vs left handers? Does listening to heavy metal or Mozart make you smarter? What do different shapes taste like? Are you stupider than a monkey?’
Sunday 3 August at 1pm. Dr. Kevin Fong – our fascination with the final frontier.
‘Of the men who once walked on the Moon, only a handful now remain. The space shuttle, the most remarkable space craft ever built, is gone. Our ambitions appear to be failing almost as fast as the Government funds available for space exploration.
Variously described as ‘TV’s face of science’ and the ‘Brian Cox of medicine’, self-confessed space junkie Dr. Kevin Fong asks – have we come to the end of our fascination with the frontier of space? What social and scientific value did our curiosity about space really add, back here on Earth? Perhaps in the future we will look back upon the endeavour of human space flight as we do the building of the pyramids…’
As part of an occasional conversationsEAST series on major architectural developments across the globe, we take a look, in this article, at the The Jockey Club Innovation Tower (JCIT) in Hong Kong.
A formidable block, which at first appears to teeter or lean from its base, yet which is an elegant building, seeming to move forward, conveying a sense of motion.
The tower contains 15,000 square meters of space, and can accommodate some 1,800 students and staff. It crests at a height of 78 metres.
We think the tower is a great metaphor for an enterprising community. Hong Kong, enjoying unique relationships with Britain and China because of its history, none the less has in the Jockey Club Charitable Institute and the islands’s seats of learning, a powerful admixture to reap social and economic change in the region.
Indeed, the building’s occupants define its mission as being ‘…initiated by PolyU and the Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust, Jockey Club Design Institute for Social Innovation (J.C.DISI) convenes university expertise, curates trans-disciplinary projects, and constructs partnerships for social well-being and positive systemic change’.
Exploring the Hadid Architects web pages, the drawings of the tower, confined by the landscape the building is set in for sure, none the less look like drawings for rotational cam devices – using an engineering metaphor to illustrate the movement of all the enterprise contained within.
Supporting the circular energy idea, despite the many contradictions of Hong Kong, are PolyU projects like SOCIA. Striving to co-ordinate and facilitate research and social change with the English speaking world, SOCIA looks to ‘…articulate partnership, with government, business, community and academia, for design-embedded social innovation projects – to incubate a new generation of graduates and young designers as novel thinkers, activists and change-makers from Hong Kong‘.
A building is simply a shelter. In the case of Hadid’s tower it is also a shelter for ideas, community engagement, innovation and education. If the concrete construct is a metaphor for innovation, it’s enduring legacy could be substantial and durable change in the communities that lie within its hinterland?
The web has promoted a revolution in media delivery and consumption, and has generated a similar paradigm shift in production processes and work flows. Whether for the corporate giants of this world, or the lonely writer crafting a masterpiece in his or her garret.
Evidence of the changes in news and visual media were well illustrated in a recent RSA lecture by John Ryley, Head of Sky News. His father, he tells us, was a vicar’s son, who was profoundly affected by his son’s elevation to the ranks of journalism.
You can hear the lecture, and an introduction by Matthew Taylor of The RSA, with an audience Q&A, by using the audio player below…
In his lecture John Ryley describes his own early acquaintance with television. Describing it as a pseudo-religious experience, with the family sitting in rows, silent, facing an iconic piece of equipment, bathed in a particular blue light.
Web technologies and new software have also promoted a similar revolution in print journalism, which that and the ubiquitous access that the web offers to any journalist, would be or otherwise, the chance to profoundly affect their ability as humans to tell simple stories.
Why do we write, and become journalists, historians, authors, self published or otherwise? Has technology really affected the way we look at the word on paper and on screen?
George Orwell, writing in 1946, mapped the landscape of why we write. That perceptive voice is still being heard from Manhattan offices to Cumbrian writerly retreats…
“Aesthetic enthusiasm. Perception of beauty in the external world, or, on the other hand, in words and their right arrangement. Pleasure in the impact of one sound on another, in the firmness of good prose or the rhythm of a good story. Desire to share an experience which one feels is valuable and ought not to be missed”.
“Historical impulse. Desire to see things as they are, to find out true facts and store them up for the use of posterity”.
“Political purpose. — Using the word ‘political’ in the widest possible sense. Desire to push the world in a certain direction, to alter other peoples’ idea of the kind of society that they should strive after. Once again, no book is genuinely free from political bias. The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude”.
Orwell’s philosophy of the narrative is being flexed for the internet age at the The New York Times. Long an innovator in print journalism technology, they have recently published an article on the creation of their new back office production engine for the newspaper.
What is trans-figurative for New York Times journalists is the new focus on web and mobile as the default primary templates in this production process. The ability to blend digital content for traditional press production is not an incidental or trivial outcome, it is imperative to keep ‘paper on the street’, but it is a secondary outcome of the creative writing and editorial process. This is new.
It is also interesting that it is not only production processes and outputs that are being blended. The Mozilla Foundation, creator of the Firefox web browser and scion of the radical, open internet, has recently been the recipient of a grant “…of roughly $3.9 million from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, which promotes innovation in journalism”.
With the money Mozilla will build a new ‘comments’ software for the New York Times and the Washington Post. It is remarkable that both newspapers are the properties of major league capitalists, but this non-profit initiative is geared to giving readers the chance to generate content, and to take part in the journalistic process by offering the writers direct feedback on their articles in new and innovative ways.
A new blend of capital, charity and community engagement, which may well transform newspaper publishing?
Finally, amidst all this corporate activity and development at scale, technological innovation for the lone writer has not been lagging behind. From your own desk you can change the world one article at a time by using the services of Medium – a mixture of blogging platform, paid for content, social networking and collaboration tool.
With a beautifully designed interface, and tools that are intuitive and graceful, you can craft stories, news and research that are delivered in an elegant format to your readers.
We like Medium. Its content can be challenging and provocative, but it is also a place where the thoughtful, considered article can find a home. From new fiction to a story of how the cellular structure of the nematode worm has an impact on human brain function, sculpted with light…all writing is here. (You can find the worm article here…).
Of course, as an RSA Fellow in the East of England, you could publish your thoughtful piece in the pages of conversationsEAST. That’s new too!
Send copy at any time to editor (at) conversationseast.org …your audience awaits.
Here at conversationsEAST, this was a story that had everything. High art, craft skills, invention, controversy and ladles of genius. Entwining a Texas entrepreneur, a seventeenth century Dutch painter and an obsessive journey into the ‘how it was done’.
Tim Jenison is a Texas based inventor and technologist with a deep interest in the painting of Johannes Vermeer (1632 – 1675). Put simply, Jenison is of the view that Vermeer could not have painted his interior scenes from life alone, the application of technology, Jenison insists, is how the stunning art works were created so long ago.
The short film below encapsulates the long journey of exploration that Jenison has undertaken to make his point. He has deployed art history skills, the talents of a craftsmen and the inquisitiveness of an inventor to make an argument, which whilst contentious is, none the less, powerful.
His five year journey involved making exact replicas of the furniture and musical instruments in a Vermeer painting, and through utilising the concept of a camera obscura and a mirror on a stick, Tim sought to recreate Vermeer’s picture, The Music Lesson.
The interiors of the room, it’s content and effects were built by Tim, even hand building the lens to seventeenth century specifications that he used to deliver his painting technique.
The results? Well you can see the full depiction of his work over time in this original article from an issue of boingboing.net.
Is it a good argument? We have looked at another old master to see if his thesis is watertight. We have used images stored on the pages of the Google Cultural Institute. (If you have a love of the visual arts this is a storehouse and toolkit of very impressive proportions – Ed.)
Section of Il Canal Grande de Ca’Balbi verso Rialto 1721-1723 Antonio Canal detto Canalletto | Ca’ Rezzonico – Museum of the 18th Century Venice
Within the broad sweep of this large Canaletto, the texture of the oil paint, the slightly impressionistic depiction of the figures and the matte ‘depth’ of the boat clearly show Canaletto’s brush work and his hand.
Below is a similar size section of the painting, The Music Lesson by Vermeer, that was the object of Tim Jenison’s attention. In it the light falling from the window, the tone and smoothness of the wall surface by the window and increasing colour change away from the light source into the room are, to echo Jenison’s argument, extremely photo-like.
Section of Lady at the Virginal with a Gentleman, The Music Lesson c. 1162 – 1665 Johannes Vermeer | Royal Collection Trust, UK
This might disturb quite a lot of people
…David Hockney
The work of Jenison and his collaborators is a wonderful example to anyone who has an idea or a need to find out, whether an RSA Fellow or not. Obsessive perhaps, but stunning in the execution of so many skills and techniques.
Was Vermeer really a tech geek?
Read the article, watch the film and tell us what you think….
Image: Albert Robida, 1882 – The Public Domain Review, 2014
A wonderful vision of city and cultural life, imagined in 1882. Even in the 21st century it is hard to contemplate leaving a cultural event in a city, stepping into your floating air carriage and drifting off home in ease and solitude.
Even after the most vigorous Tannhauser at the Royal Opera House, a trip on the Northern Line to return to the solace of High Barnet bears no comparison.
We have not given up on the city yet, though.
Our recent Fellows Annual dinner in the East of England was held in the surroundings of Emmanuel College in Cambridge. Dating from 1584, the original Dominican Priory has been embraced by later buildings, yet Fellows were able to hear an entertaining and informative after dinner talk by Matt Lane, Head of the Royal Opera House site at Thurrock, the Bob and Tamar Manoukian Production Workshop, where ROH productions are built and delivered to cities.
The conversation also ranged across the occasion of the region’s forthcoming conference at the University of East Anglia. The programme for which includes Norwich Fellows session on Empowering Invisible Norwich and another on What is a Learning City? So although we will not arrive by hover car, the idea of the city will continue to echo.
Extending the city:
Writing just before the start of this century Peter Hall, in his book Cities in Civilisation – Culture, Innovation and Urban Order ( Weidenfeld & Nicholson, London, 1998) was minded that…
At the turning point between the twentieth century and the twenty-first, a new kind of economy is coming into being, and a new kind of society, and a new kind of city: some would say no city at all, the end of the city as we know it, but they will doubtless prove wrong…
Hall goes on to develop his argument about societal change and stresses the enormous impact of technology on urban dwellers across the globe. This is true, but the forecasts of the end of the city have proved somewhat premature.
In fact, the building, or extending of cities, continues to be a hot political issue. For the forthcoming report by Sir Michael Lyons there is an indication that he will recommend that cities should be allowed to expand at their edges, a return to the New Town concept perhaps. With councils free to borrow and invest in house building and bringing reform of land release for house building to the table.
This latter point outlines how strong the the High Victorian concept of urban spread as an entirely bad thing remains. Surely the point is what sort of urban extension or city growth you achieve. We must not build urban ‘rookeries‘, or blanket ‘Bedford Brick‘ box extensions across acres of green fields either, we would argue.
Land release for social housing or city corporation development will be a thorny issue for private landowners, what ever the political persuasion of the originating idea, we suspect. You can see this debate outlined in more detail in a recent article from Patrick Wintour in The Guardian here.
Farming the city:
Using existing infrastructure in conurbations for innovative purposes is immensely appealing. Using it to farm, to develop new urban and social businesses based on food, new flowers and green space cultivation is a great way to deliver new skills, better diets and employment into communities, we would argue at conversationsEAST.
Robida in 1882, or Hall in 1998, could not have imagined the Massachusetts Institute of Technology MITCityFARM project.
“As part of the City Science Initiative at the MIT Media Lab, we explore the technological, environmental, social and economic design of scalable systems capable of producing affordable and high quality food in the heart of our future cities”.
If you have an interest in this green aspect of the debate an on-line visit to MIT is worth it. The MITCityFARM team are working in three key areas.
Re-thinking the ‘grow it there, eat it here’ agenda
reviewing the ‘urban infrastructure facade’
developing global open access course-ware, to make knowledge about agriculture available to all.
In the East of England, the agricultural heartland of the UK, arguably, there must be Fellow’s projects that can be blended into delivery of vertical gardens, rooftop farms or the reclaiming of industrial and derelict sites for community owned small holdings or gardens? (Write to the Editor, let us know, we’ll do a feature…Ed.)
The edge of the city, in the city garden:
A blending of city growth concepts and urban farming/community greening agendas come together in the now, with the recent release of the short list for the Wolfson Economic Prize.
The Wolfson Prize team undertook research to see what sort of urban development was uppermost in people’s minds. The Garden City was by far the most popular ‘civic choice’ of growth mechanism. Simon Wolfson talks about the design choice in this short film below…
In conclusion, maybe the time is now right. We have innovative thinking on edge development, an energised architectural sector with modern materials and community sensibility, coinciding with increased interest in city farms and Garden Cities from the civitas.
You can see the original film on YouTube here…
You can find a thoughtful reflection on the novel by Elena Ferranti here. It is written by Rohan Maitzen.
