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Jobs – New Zealand,, Bournemouth, Cambridge, London, Gloucestershire, Bristol, Hertfordshire, Southampton, Oxford
What Jane Jacobs got wrong about cities
Double standards on workplace versus highway safety
Recipe for getting people on the street revealed: density of buildings, proportion of windows on the street, activity and active frontages, street furniture for a human scale,
Sun-deprived Britons lack vitamin D,
Tropical urbanism / from the Urban Design Group
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The National Conference on Urban Design 2015 - Bristol 8-9-10 October
Development, Design and Profit in C21
Supported by
RICS
RTPI
RIBA
Book now for the conference
NB Bristol is a popular venue.Delegates are advised to book accommodation early. / “the most beautiful, interesting and distinguished city in England“ John Betjeman, 1961
Urban Design Current Edition – Available to UDG Members by Subscription /
Double standards on workplace safety and safety in the public realm
Every day public concern over the danger posed by HGVs increases. BBC research in 2014 concluded that more than half of people consider roads too dangerous for cyclists. And last Friday the London Evening Standard published a poll which found that a majority of people would like to see heavy goods lorries banned from certain roads in the rush hour. .But what does the law say on the subject? Bizarrely, in the factories where heavy goods vehicles are made, there is a requirement in law to protect people from moving machinery. Yet when these same vehicles are brought onto the highway there is no equivalent requirement for protection.Things were better in a hundred years ago: electric trams were fitted with pedestrian guards that extended downwards close to the road surface or devices that would drop down and scoop up any pedestrian who fell in their way, preventing them from going under the wheels. A hundred years on, what devices are fitted to lorries to protect pedestrians and cyclists from a grisly death?
As to the blind spots on HGVs, there is an absurd position that while cars with tinted windows that stop more than 30 percent of the light getting through, can be lawfully prevented being used on the road, there is no such control on HGVs even though the visibility from the driver’s seat can be so bad that the driver can’t see the road directly in front or to the offside.
There is a positive duty on employers to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, the health, safety and welfare at work of all their employees. Yet when it comes to streets and highways, where is the positive duty on councils and central government to act to preserve the lives and safety of its citizens? Where is the evidence that they have exercised any duty of care in ensuring that vehicles that are allowed onto the highway are safe to be brought onto the highway?London with its Safer Lorry Scheme, is at least taking steps, but there is a need for national action. If our streets were treated as workplaces, and we were given the same rights as workers, transport ministers would end up being prosecuted by the Health and Safety Executive.
Urban Design Awards
– Developer Award
– Public Sector Award
Do you know any developers or public bodies who you think should enter the 2016 awards?
if so
pleaselet them know and please encourage them to enter!
Full details of how to apply:
Developer Award
- Deadline 21 August 2015
- Public Sector Award
- Deadline - 21 August 2015
Student Award
£600 Francis Tibbalds Prize
Deadline 9 November 2015
Shortlisting of practice awards is currently underway /
Where do you read Urban Design? Photo competition!!
The Urban Design Group will award two prizes to the best photographs taken during thisSummerand submitted before 5th September 2015. The idea is to show interesting or original places in which members have read the journal. The competition is open to individual UDG members and the photograph (only one per member) should be submitted as a jpg at 300dpi for a minimum sizeof 190mm width, with your name, and the location of the photograph .The author of the best photograph, to be chosen by the Editors, will be given a year's free subscription to the journal; the runner-up will be sent a recentbook abouturban design and invited to review it for the journal. Both photographs will be published in the journal and online on the UDG website.
Deadline 5th September - please email your entry to
Other events
The number of events is on the wane as we approach the holiday period, but there are still events to go to for those that seek them…
Academy of Urbanism
BOBMK Events
Next events autumn
MADE
Museum of Walking
Mindfulness through movementSaturday 22 August 2015 10.30am – 12.00pmStart: Brockwell Park, London SE14 (meet outside the Lido)£15
PTRC
An Introduction to Highway Design & Construction
The Principles of Traffic and Transport 20-Week Evening Lecture Series, London and Bristol
Urban Design London
Events coming up – extensive programme some free, some charged/£175+VAT (Free for subscribers)Housing Skills: Reviewing Housing Design
9th September
Cycling Infrastructure Skills: Commissioning cycling projects – design and construction?
10th September
Design South East / Kent Design
Event Calendar
Architecture and Design Scotland
/ LatestLectures
on UrbanNous
New
Weather in the City – How Design Shapes the Urban Climate
SandaLenzholzer
All urban designers, architects planners, and highway engineers should have a knowledge of this subject.
Urbanism: Improving quality and value
The importance of product, land and money
Yolande Barnes - Savills
Garden Cities Past and Present.
Potential morphologies explored.
Dominic Papa S333 Architecture and Urbanism
Garden Cities: Is there a Business Case?
Jim Coleman, BuroHappold
Health and Urban Design
Lucy Coleman, GLA, TFL
UrbanNous Catalogue available on-line
Highlights include Christopher Alexander, George Ferguson, Hans Monderman and scores of others.
Jobs
Graduate Urban Designer - Broadway Malyan
Weybridge, Surrey
Principal Urban Designer - Auckland Council, New Zealand
Candidates wishing to relocate internationally are encouraged to apply.
Opportunities for creative Urban Designers - Savills Urban Design - Southampton - Oxford
Design and Conservation Team Leader (Post 10.099), Guildford Borough Council
Guildford
Urban Designer/Masterplanner - EDP
Gloucestershire
Urban Design Officers (x2) Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames
London
Urban Designer / Master Planner – Terence O’Rourke - Bournemouth
Bournemouth
/
PROJECT OF THE WEEK
West Winch, King’s Lynn
Alan Baxter
The village of West Winch, to the south of King’s Lynn, dates from Norman times and grew around a church and manor farm. Estates were added in the late 20th century but today the village lacks coherence and the historic centre is blighted by HGV traffic on the busy A10.
Since 2009, Alan Baxter has worked collaboratively with the Borough and Parish Councils and Neighbourhood Forum to create a masterplan and movement strategy for the future growth of the village, on behalf of a group of local landowners. Alan Baxter’s ‘Strategy for Sustainable Growth’ demonstrates that by focusing growth around the historic centre of West Winch they can reconnect the disparate parts of the village and provide new amenities.
A bypass connection to the A47, traffic calmed village centre, and retention of green corridors leading to the Fen will deliver significant benefits for both King’s Lynn and West Winch while retaining the special character of the area. The strategy has been well received and the area is now allocated to deliver around 3,500 homes. Alan Baxter are currently retained to progress the planning application.
Read more
Urban Design around the World
Australia
Tropical Urbanism to Create More High Rises in CairnsIndia
Need to build environmentally friendly housesIran
Tehran Designer is Creating cities of the futureScotland
On minimum housing standardsSingapore
How planning made Singapore a Garden CitySouth Africa
Can better urban design reduce crime in even the most deprived communities?….Installing street lights or building a hospital would not be enough to fix the problem, she said. "There's no work. All the houses are overcrowded. The streets are full of angry people. Where's the space to keep your sanity?
USA
Brutalism in Los AngelesLA Urban Design Forum summer newsletter
UK
Green light for £3m Crawley town centre redevelopmentHundreds of homes outlined in green project – Hungate York
GB Population growth is greatest in the places where we're building the fewest number of houses
Select Committee on National Policy for the Built Environment
Call for Written Evidence
Movement
Out of control Range Rover Flattens bus stop Video
A demonstration of the power of a moving vehicle over street furniture
First traffic light – 101st anniversary?
The Politics of the Boris Bus
The infra red sensors that could make cycling safer
Men walk 1.5 miles per month owing to being lost
/
Latest Research, Policy and Practice
Built Environment
Memorable Streets draw more pedestriansA new study has published in the latest issue of theJournal of Planning Education and Research on“Streetscape Features Related to Pedestrian Activity,”
Only three of the 20 streetscape features had a positive impact on pedestrian activity. They are:
- the proportion of windows on the street, - are important for creating a welcoming interaction between people and buildings
- the amount of “active street frontage” shops, restaurants, parks and similar
- the quantity of street furniture. Such as benches, signs, lampposts and trash cans help keep the street at human scale
Want to boost street life in Salt Lake City? Smart designs can do the trick, study shows
University of Utah researchers studied 179 street segments downtown, tying the number of sidewalk passers-by in half-hour periods with a wide array of urban-design features along each block. The study, published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Urban Design, found a direct and measurable link between higher pedestrian counts and key design qualities, most notably,
- the density of buildings and
- the level and mix of activity on their ground floors.
What Jane Jacobs got wrong about cities
Low cost refugee camp made from sand + video
Settlement dated to 8000 B.C being excavated in southern Turkey
Around 200 – 1-2 room houses
Humans, Health and Society
World Map of Life ExpectancyLink between intestinal bacteria, depression found
Diet high in refined carbohydrates may contribute to depression
Sun-deprived Britons lack vitamin D, say health experts
Happiest and Most Miserable Places to live in the UK
Human colour perception changes between seasons.
Humansidentify four unique hues that do not appear to contain mixtures of other colours:- blue, green, yellow and red -. Research by the University of York suggests that our perception of what we think is our perception of “unique yellow” changes over the course of the year. Like a cameras, we appear to have an automatic “colour balance” which changes possibly in response to the verdant greens of summer and the greys of winter.
Politics, Philosophy Economics
Crisis, what crisis? Majority of houses more affordable than in 1997
The majority of the country can buy with money to spare - just not in London
How UK property prices have changed in real terms over the past ten years - up in London – down everywhere else
The Architecture of Oligarchy
The Shard, ZahaHadid’s Heydar AliyevCenterNeo Bankside – are we celebrating the wrong sort of city architecture?
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