START SMALL, THINK BIG: LOCALISING CHANGEEVENT NEWSLETTERTHE CASTLEGATE, NEWCASTLE, APRIL 17TH, 2013

The aim of the conference was to begin to test what we believe is possible to deliver place-based approaches to regeneration and development.

Opening comments: why this, why now?Diarmaid Lawlor, Head of Urbanism, A+DS

Diarmaid began with the question of place: if we made places people want to be in, what would the role of housing be? Working from people’s lives enables clarity about economic decisions around services, assets and resources in a place setting. The rationalisation of the public sector estate potentially creates land and building resources for localised development to support communities who want to be in that place. The order of things is important. The starting point is to build conditions for better lives first, then build useful spaces, and seek place based models to achieve them. View presentation

“People, places, pounds”CHAIR: Joe Simpson, Local Government Association

Joe suggested that we need a radical re-think about public resources and outcomes. Efficiencies alone are not enough: we need to change how the public sector does things. He believes we are at a tipping point, where bottom up is beginning to be taken seriously as a strategic way of doing things. This means a series of behaviour changes, which we need to see through the prism of people, place and pounds, with politics increasingly taking a centre stage. A crucial part is the move tin emphasis from the supply of services to a balancing with the demand side: what do people in the places they are in need to live their lives? This might lead to models like Self financing, Price rationing, Personalisation (Ikea), Co-responsibility,

Selling to the public things the public want to pay for [Better understand the customer]. Importantly, these ideas will work at different ideas and

geographies of place, place plus. They will also require a shift in thinking about people as consumers and more as citizens; from communication to conversation, from public management to co responsibility. Partnership and collaboration are key but to prevent these ideas being self sustaining structures that fail to achieve anything, they need to be based on people wanting to contribute, on shared resources, on trust. View presentation

Localised assets?David Roberts, Igloo

David reflected on managing large scale regeneration areas by working a series of small scale solutions. His provocation was around intent, structures and skills. In our bundled land estate, the risk is we focus on the big and miss the small. We can establish place based mechanisms like Special Purpose Vehicles [SPV’s], but do they get over focused on organizational issues. Do they have the resource, skills, experience, and support to deal with the little places. Using examples in Cardiff and Ouseburn, David showed how a long term relationship to place, investment value, and relationships with communities can create values.View presentation

Localised financing?Clive Bird, Catalyst for Homes

Clive set out an investment approach to development to build communities. The aim is to channel large scale investment via a property trust to create mixed tenure communities, providing

investors with a scalable investment with low risks but commercial returns. The Trust connects registered provider finance and a range of local assets and finance and the bigger scale money as a place based Community Interest Company [CIC]. It creates profit which is recharged into community, based on taking a long term view of sales and rents. Because there is a long term investment view, there is collective commitment to create value and steward the place, in everyone’s interest. View presentation

We need the small…and the big

Steven Tolson, RICS Scotland

Steven’s asserts that placemaking is investment, and that this investment is a consequence of an active relationship between state, developer and citizen. Place then is a public good. This forms one of the 10 propositions in ‘Delivering Great Places to Live’, co authored with Professor Stuart Gulliver. They suggest that investment has financial, human and physical capital all needing to be collectively managed. In this, the state needs to play a more active role in setting the spatial and organisational framework for places, within which a variety of small and medium scale enterprises can build. He emphasises the need for strong civic leadership to make places that deliver competitiveness and cohesion. In broad terms, Steven proposes a placemaking model working around two key issues: Infrastructure Investment (Long term – Place Making by the state) and Block Development by multi Players – (Short term build but long term occupancy). View presentation

Workshop 1: CollaborationSam Cassels, Strategic Design Advisor

Key issues emerging from the morning session were around intent: what is we need to do in places, and how do we know; and how do we collaborate to make things happen. Collaboration is about bringing together diverse experiences for extraordinary outcomes.

Barriers to collaboration: the first discussion raised issues of behaviours, models and personal professionalism. Some

of the key points included issues around lack of trust, suspicion, skills and confidence in communication, nervousness around issues of accountability, cynicism about failure of partnerships, personal nervousness-worries about risk, exposure

Starting point for collaboration: engage early to jointly shape a vision of what to do in a place, get clarity on resources but don’t focus on this only, be honest and don’t overpromise, build trust, facilitators with authority, accept failures as part of the path to success and get management support, agree that business as usual isn’t working and co-create a different way, strong leadership

Personal accountability and organisational accountability; are we too polite about people who do not take responsibility? Should we be harder on people?

Old standards staying around too long influencing what people do and do not talk about in negotiation between public sector and other sectors

Scale: to achieve impact against the things we think need to be addressed in communities, what scale do we use to start? What is the home ground, the emotional space people get and act on?

The issue of scale drove discussions around intent; transformation could be about tackling social issue, or economic issues which may or not be place based. Scale suggests physical, absolutes, measureables. There are though scales of stories and place is a practical way in for people to tackle complex issues. Always be prepared to work at 1:1scale, and consider tensions between say the scale investors want to work at, and the scale communities understand. Just because you can get something by thinking at a scale doesn’t mean it is what you need.

Tensions: economic performance and community regeneration. Where you start discussion about change matters.

Learning from Almere

Jaqueline Tellinga, District Manager Homeruskwartier, Almere, Almere is a Dutch new town developed from the 1970s on reclaimed land. Since 2006, the site has been home to an innovative experiment in large-scale self build on a 100-hectare site owned and masterplanned by the local authority. Some 3,000 self-built homes will be built. The site is not sought-after but has good access and transport links, making it viable. Jaqcueline suggested that a strong vision and political support, combined with an extremely clear, non-complex approach to design codes, regulation and governance from the local authority has been key to the project’s popularity. The site has been successfully developed in a remarkably short time. Its key feature is the effective partnerships and clear communication between the public authority and the people who are creating their own homes and community. The project has attracted a very wide diversity of people and each release of plots is hugely popular. Individual plots vary in size from 86m2 to 1200m2 with plot costs ranging from 33,000 euro to 400,000 euro. All plots are sold at market levels of 375 euros per m2.All infrastructure is delivered by the council at the same time as homeowners are building. Plots come with a simple ‘passport’ that acts as a building permit and specifies the (very few) restrictions, conditions and delivery timescales attached to the plot. Typical build costs between £650 and £1500 per m2 (approx £100,000 for a 105m2 home). Individuals or groups hire contractors and builders from on site ‘design shops’: often grouping together to keep costs low. The housing market in the Netherlands is as depressed as the UK’s, but while there is little new build activity among the main volume housebuilders, this part of Almere has proceeded quickly, and has coped with the downturn better than traditional development models. View presentation

Workshop 2: Applying learningJoe Simpson and Sam Cassels

Following Jacqueline’s presentation, participants looked at transferrable lessons and how they might apply in a small town and city neighbourhood:

[a] transferrable lessons

Open and civic focus at all scales, institutional and citizen

Fast timescales for planning, engagement and implementation

Principles of agreement: all infomation and requirements of the contract are clear and given up front Governance and activation: clear support politically and in city hall

Collaboration within individual designDesigning your home your way as a means of creating a long term citizen interest in a place

[b] applying lessons

In Neilston, a housing co-op might suit starter households and older people best. Self build gives more choice for families. Recharging community income like energy tariffs could help fund this model.

Ouseburn planning took over 10 years. At the implementation stage, community tensions around the function of the place are emerging. Ongoing engagement and leadership is needed negotiating the identities and rules for the place.

Chair’s overviewJoe Simpson, Local Government Association

People: we need better ways of collaborating with each other. Language is important

Places: not a singularly defined idea. Historically, we have had a bias towards ‘bigness’. Now, we need more complexity, more small and not just the grand plan

Pounds: we need new models for a new financial world

“Start Small, Think Big: localising change” was an event held in Newcastle on April 17th, 2013 organised by RUDI and Landor LINKS and supported by Architecture and Design Scotland, the Homes and Communities Agency, Newstart Magazine and Glasshouse Community Led Design

Edited audio clips will be available online shortly; all participants will be notified.

A more detailed digest of these issues will be published in PLACEmaking 2013 and on RUDI.net

Please send any suggestions, comments or updates on these themes to Juliana O’Rourke, editor

Workshop participants may also have free access to selected RUDI.net content by following this link:

RUDI housing/development content