Preparing businesses for post lockdown trading.
Last week we posted a blog on Business Engagement, where we discussed the importance of strengthening relationships between councils & BID teams, with high street and town centre shops.
Launch of the new placemaking book ‘our city: countering exclusion by designing cities for all’.
On the 17th of July, I attended a placemaking regeneration event and book launch titled: ‘Our city: countering exclusion by designing cities for all’ in London. The event was held to provoke a discussion and to mark the launch of the book, which looks at how public spaces can represent and serve the people that use them. It covered a wide range of topics around placemaking, profiling five case studies by authors who are included in the book. Somewhat surprisingly, the discussion didn’t start by positioning place shaping as being a warm and fluffy activity in isolation to the events around it. It was discussed as being quite the opposite and there were strong views from the authors as to [...]
Manchester’s model to increase city centre living, fast.
Whether you know Manchester or not, this is worth a listen - BBC Radio 4 - Manhattan-chester. 20 years ago (around the time I left Manchester…) few people lived in the city centre (Castlefield was about the nearest) yet now the number of residents is expected to reach 100,000 by 2025. The programme takes a look at this rapid growth, mainly since 2011 and the challenges it may pose. The scale of development (each time I visit) is staggering which is backed up by the referenced crane survey citing nine towers of 25 stories or more that simply didn’t exist three years ago. It also raises many questions about how we reshape and increase residential developments in our city and town [...]