Future of planning: designing the most desired public spaces
The release of the redevelopment in Bermondsey has faced objections from various social groups i.e. the Victorian society, SAVE Britain’s Heritage: an independent charity campaigning for historic buildings by a group of architectural historians, journalists and planners as well as the spokesperson for the society.
Concerns towards the possible damages towards the historic character of Southwark has been raised by the spokeman regarding the redevelopment. SAVE director Henrietta Billings has also urged for the planning proposal to be revised while emphasising the importance of listening to the local people.
From the case of Bermondsey development, there are serval issues that can be identified within the current framework for public space planning and consultation. Firstly, there is a significant lack of citizen involvement in neighbourhood development plans.
As mentioned in ‘User research insights report: prototyping the future of planning’, the residents are only able to participate at later stages of the design process as forms of objections towards the proposed plans once it has been released. However, they have very little influences on decision making and through the process of planning.
The vital role of local involvement has been reinforced by the ‘Localism Act 2011,’ under the ‘Neighbourhood planning’ session:
The Localism Act 2011 listed the importance of local involvement at the earlier stage of the planning process.It is also set out by the city of london Corporation procedures in Statement of Community Involvement 2012 (SCI) for consulting the public on planning applications.
Although Sellar and Renzo Piano Building Workshop has responded following the objection:The design put forward is the product of detailed and sensitive consideration and extensive consultation. The meaning of ‘extensive consultation’ is under-defined. The limitation in traditional consultation method is reviled. Traditional consultation method works under a none transparent system of data collection. With consultancies offering ‘black box’ reports with no methodology provided, the accuracy of the consultation became hard to measure. Furthermore, as the traditional consultation method follows an ‘ask and responds’ consultation model reaching very similar demographics. Therefore the result of the consultation is not the most representative sample of the local community.
Further to the current consultation method, the amount of information available on current planning applications within London also set a high barriers for citizens who might want to comment or participate in the consultation process
On the city of London website, informations given for a planning application uses traditional architectural languages of plan, section and long pdf files of related information, the information provided is not visually communicative, sets high professional barriers.
Furthermore, the consultee comment (image on the left) is very brief- no objections. There is no constructive contributions to the planning proposal.
In order to solve the issues within the current consultation system, increase the ease of accessibility, increase the range of participating citizens , new consultation methods are needed.
Future of Consultation
Further to the none-transparency in the consultation method, the gap of understanding caused by the formality of the architecture proposal is also another barrier of engagement for citizen participation.
In order to reduce the barrier for engaging, many organisations have employed different method i.e. Plymouth plan 2011–2031, Using schemes like the Plymouth Plan Sofa , where they ‘they travelled around the city with a sofa inviting members of the public to chat with them about the future of Plymouth’, creating a more relaxed condition using a daily activity for data collection, resulting in engaging a wider range of audience to participate and contribute. Also by having a podcast on the Local Plan called ‘Sound Like a Plan’ to increase the awareness for the local people regarding the place they live, passing the information to a wider range of audience.
Companies like Sticky world and UrbanPlanAR has employed a more visual way of communication. With sticky world providing a more rounded range of information from photos, videos, maps, 360 panoramas, and pdf to communicate the proposals more visually, enhancing the understanding of the architectural proposal and increase the change of getting more meaningful feedback. Whereas, UrbanPlanAR has revolutionised communication and engagement within urban planning and design through the use of mobile augmented/hybrid reality platform for architectural visualisation.
CITY COL[lab]: an alternative consultation method
we are proposing an collaboration and collective design method in the local planning process using a more interactive method: video game to provide a more immerse and direct way of communication when compared to conventional presentation and consultation methods. we advocate for a higher level of citizen participation and public accessibility in the consultation process of public space design
Through using video game(a more direct and accessible method), we aim to open up of profession to real space users expand our data collection groups, encouraging wider demographics to participate. The consulatation method has shifted from a passive ‘ask and respond’ method to an immversive and interactive model:empowering the public to participate in the design process,
We aim to tackle the none transparency in data collection and extend public involvement from the brief development, conceptual design to the developed design stages (Stages 1 to 3 in the RIBA Plan of Work 2013) that are conventionally confined as the scope of work of architects and planners only. The citizens are able to take part in the earlier stages of the design, enabling the them to actually influence the design.
Methodology
A tool-kit for formulating the preliminary design elements within the game is designed i.e. a warehouse of architectural elements for building including columns , walls, windows, stairs, benches, chairs, tables, lamps, trees with various textureU
Once a design brief is given by the local council for a specific public area, the architects and game engineer work together to extract and create project focused 3D models elements, and input the proposal into the game for the public to play. The players of the game consists of the residents within the bourogh. Each player can create their version of design through the game for the planning area which is then evaluated by architects.
Using Video game, CITY COL[lab] has decoded the archiectural language, reducing the professional boundaries for designing, enabling the people of the area to create the local places that they would like to live in using an immersive method.
Non-profit social enterprise: We design for public good
In the case of Elephant Park development, The developers holds different interests to the local community. Due to the lack of expertise within the southward council and the lack of information, planning regulations consistently fails to be enforced and the current planning process runs largely in favour for the profits of the developers instead of benefits of the local people.
As a non-profit social enterprise,CITY COL[lab]collaborates with governmental planning bodies for long-term public space planning of an extensive neighbourhood.
We honor the human, social, and professional values the operation of the company. Therefore, as a compnay, we advocate for a higher level of citizen participation and public accessibility in the consultation process of public space design and planning by using video game as a medium for open-source imagination and public consultation. We believe in the power of design for public goods and we see the need of professional architectural knowledge in the public sector.
By working in collaboration with the council, we aim to help the council to reinforce the planning regulations, while using video game as an alternative consultation method .We aim to use our professional knowledge as architects to design for the need for the public,our model primarily focuses on creating the bridge between the public and the local government bodies.
References
user research insights report: prototyping the future of planning
Heritage campaigners attack Renzo Piano’s ‘gratuitously clumsy’ £100m Bermondsey plans, AJ
