Thriving too

Social Business: A response to the Portas Review on highstreet revival

(Photo credit London Shop Fronts blog by Emily Webber)

Over the Christmas break I read the Portas Review into the future of our highstreets - and I agree with the sentiment expressed that highstreets seem to be an often under-used or under-respected asset; and that in order for high streets and communities to thrive that we need a mix of commercial retail, with other cultural and social experiences; and that we would benefit from people making the shift from consumer to more active co-creator.

However, I found myself questioning some of the methods or solutions proposed - and here is some of my thinking why.

Representative 'Town Teams' to create shared vision of high street 

I like the idea of a group of passionate people working together for the benefit of the whole high street. Bringing together retailers, building owners, Council and residents to collaborate and develop new possibilities. But I think that as we make the shift to 'co-creators' we are learning new roles, and new ways of working together that are unlikely to happen spontaneously in a classic meeting or planning setting. As Portas notes later in the report "quite often it is only the noisy minority that contribute" which can sometimes be an issue with small groups claiming to be representative of a whole community. We've seen the positive impact of leaving things 'unfinished' so that people can contribute in meaningful ways - perhaps if the whole vision is completed and curated by a small representative group this may hamper wider involvement and co-creation. I think that because we need a more sophisticated shift in thinking and acting, we need to move past getting people together to problem solve, and employ both new meeting techniques and some creative ways for people to engage in different ways. See Tessy's post for more on the differences between representative and creative collaborative paradigm.

Serving a community's needs and community consultation

The report states the role of a town centre is to serve a communities needs. But what if the role of a town centre were to be an asset, a resource for a communities aspirations, and a source of inspiration? It also says that people should be consulted on town centre development - with big corporates putting money behind a campaign to get more people involved in town planning. Getting more people involved is something I would agree with - but again I think that it needs to be more nuanced than traditional consultation (we listen and go and design what you want, then bring it back as a finished product for you to consume). What if instead of 'consulting' local councils were there to encourage and facilitate involvement, create connections and help make ideas a reality.  

Community use of vacant properties and short term 'meanwhile' uses

While I agree with the need for highstreets to enable innovative, creative activities I think that hosting this solely in vacant or temporary spaces is perhaps not the best way forward. Why are we reducing the social uses to short term animation and temporary spaces? If we acknowledge that the high street needs to be a 'dynamic social place with a sense of belonging' we need to give people time to get to know each other, give the social elements time to bed down and be a permanent part of the mix. And by viewing the social simply as a colonisation method that can then be transplanted by 'real' business and full rates when it's successful in bringing in more people, new ideas and connections -  begins to price the social out again, and keeps the current competitive profit driven model at top of hierarchy, potentially loosing the extra social value found in supportive co-creation methods.

Social as a secondary effect of economic activity

The report says that the high street is social space: people interact by chatting in the market place, or sharing an enjoyable consumer experience. Social connections and the positive benefits from this are seen as an important secondary effect of shopping on the local highstreet. I wouldn't disagree with this - knowing the name of my local green grocer feels like something important to my sense of place (but I'll be honest, in a decade or more of local shopping I've not made new friends through the experience, because a straight transactional relationship is not really conducive to this). So if the secondary (perhaps unintended) social benefits are clearly a valuable thing then why are we stopping there? Imagine the secondary effects of a truly co-created high street experience - what if people had the opportunity to meet over baking, growing, building, making. Building lasting relationships through shared activities - rather than chance greetings over transient commercial transactions.

The individual's role to shop locally

The report highlights our responsibility to 'meet, trade and shop in high streets' in order for them to thrive. I don't disagree - I personally chose to support local businesses as much as I can and feel much happier about my contribution going to Hassan and his family up the road, that the bottomless pockets of Tesco. But as noted above, I think that this consumer model that we know so well reduces us to simply economic players in the town centre. It is our role to be there and shop. We aren't expected to, and largely don't have the opportunity to create, or build it. We are there to consume - and it could be argued that is is this pattern of behaviour that created the out of town shopping phenomena, largely responsible for the decline in high street success, in the first place.

 

Shops can be more than just shops

I read through 55 pages to find the bit that most interested me, right at the end...There is a suggestion that an ideal would be "big shops being more than just shops" and the examples cited are book shops in cafes, or a running club meeting point in a sports shop. And perhaps a 'swap shop' for different skills, and work hubs.
This sounds more like it to me... we need to bring back the social to the highstreet in an integrated, co-created way. From the grass roots up, skillfully facilitatied by those who know their way round the red tape and systems - be that local authorities, landlords, or retailers.

What's the alternative?
I think that if we are a bit braver in our expectations of the high street, more critical of the impact of our current repeated patterns of behaviour, and made the best of our opportunities to reimaging the assets and resources contained in it, we could begin to create a much richer social space ogether. 

If instead of another service that is provided for us to consume, (albeit by a new wider group of players than previously) we could be genuinely involved in the creation of social, cultural, and educational experiences. Instead of reducing the social to occasional spaces or secondary effects, I think we should aspire to create a truly integrated social high street. 

Putting it into practise
Mary Portas ends by recommending that several trials and pilots are initiated to take this report forward. If anyone would like to offer a highstreet to start putting this into practise, do get in touch - we'd be more than happy to get stuck in...

 

Bridging the Gap

This evening I was at the ELBA summer reception on the rooftop of Nomura - a rather smart investment bank in the city with their very own sushi chef. The East London Business Alliance work to create opportunities in East London, by ensuring community investment is well directed and managed.

It was a fantastic evening - and not just because of the bravery and team work of the Eagles throwing each other several feet into the air. I undertook the 'Extreme Interview Challenge' which consisted of an interview role play, attempting to answer questions while someone whispered negative messages in the other ear "what you're saying isn't interesting... you can't really do that...". A powerful way to convey the barriers to employment facing some people.

And I did the tombola and won a tennis ball when I really wanted the trilby hat. But the clever part was that your ticket also had a question to ask the young people running the stall. Mine was 'what is the biggest issue facing young people today?', and the opinion from the year 10's was stereotyping and demonising of young people as a group, and assuming they are all the same.

It was also very interesting speaking to someone in corporate CSR express frustration at the government cutting so many services, organisations or programmes that once helped identify and nurture talent from a variety of backgrounds, and bridge the economic and cultural gap that enabled their business programmes to create routes out of poverty and into employment in the areas that need it most.

But the room was also full of people with energy and ideas, determined to make things work! Including the Ministry of Stories, who gifted me the monster name 'Professor Pointy-Toes' and offered jars of thick snot (aka lemon curd). I think you might need to see to believe...

In-between: interim time and urban development

Things around us are changing. The combination of the economic crisis, the changes in the way we govern society, and  the rise of social media, to name just a few of the big developments (I could have also talked about the ageing societies we live in or the ecological crisis we are facing), seem to spur in people the feeling that we are living in a transition period. That we are living in-between; in between the well- known old, and the yet unknown new. And like I argued in my last post with regard to people taking care of and adding value to public space outside of government, we seem to lack a proper language to talk about this ‘in between’.

In between in itself is mostly seen as something we have to live through, to endure. But maybe there is a different way of dealing with this in-between. Instead of seeing it something we have to live through, we might use it as a way to think through critically and reflexively how we have gone about our business for a long period. So the ‘in between’ then becomes not something instead of the real deal, but be the real deal.

I come – or rather return – to this topic through the work of Ester van der Wiel, who talked at the same meeting as Richard Reynolds which I talked about here. Ester is a Dutch curator and initiator of projects in public spaces. She talked about her latest project: NuHier (NowHere). On their website, they describe NuHier as follows:

NU HIER is an initiative that links vacant sites with users from the neighbourhood, schools, clubs, corporations, and associations. (…)After a party centre went up in smoke, this vacant site awaits a new function, so building ground is reclaimed, if only for a time, as public space. This period can be used as a lab stage before everything has been determined. The transitional stage can even be seen as a way of transforming areas to meet the demands of the market. The great strength of temporary projects is that there is much less opposition to unusual, unfamiliar forms of use and new programmes. This creates opportunities for innovation and experiment. If it works, let’s keep it! If it doesn’t, let’s forget it.

NuHier, in a very elegant way, brings together different parties and uses this temporary space, this interim-time, to create value through working with was is there. These kind of spaces, these platforms, create the ability to bring out assets in and around a neighborhood, put them together in unexpected manners, and see if added value – in whatever form – can be created.

NuHier is certainly not the first case of this kind use of temporary space. I have actually been involved in a very extensive project in The Hague Transvaal in which the whole neighbourhood was in this interim time for a very extended period. Over time, and in phases, large parts of this neighborhood where either demolished or refurbished. This has inspired a group of artist to use this interim time to do research on ‘the role of public art in urban development’(the subtitle of a book which came out afterwards). One of the most inspiring projects they undertook during this period was Hotel Transvaal and the related Laboratory of the interim time.

Hotel Transvaal was a hotel with rooms scattered throughout  the district, the rooms where designed by artists and local shopkeepers and were situated in houses not yet demolished. The other facilities (breakfast, dinner, reception where also situated in the district, using existing facilities in the neighbourhood. Hotel Transvaal was for a while ‘the largest hotel in the world’.  The Laboratory for the Interim was the think tank for Hotel Transvaal. The facilities of the hotel were offered to researchers from all kinds of disciplines to stay and work in the hotel, thinking through new strategies for urban renewal breaking away from traditional ‘final image thinking’. Instead strategies for working with the interim were developed. I was in one of these ‘lab sessions’ and it was hard work, but also very fun. Fun because you had to deliver a new concept and give a public presentation after three days creating a lot of adrenaline and momentum. But hard because we all soon realized how much we are used of thinking about the future (without making what is there now part of our thinking). Thinking positively and constructively about ‘interim time’ and what we do with it, seems to go against everything we have are used to.

In a different book Iris Schutten, one of the initiators of Hotel Transvaal, tries to put into words why thinking about working with the interim is so hard for us. For her the problem already start with our language for she says:

The Dutch dictionary gives two definitions for ‘interim time’: ‘the time in between two actions’ and ‘the time elapsed during a certain part of a larger project’. This implies two things: according to the first definition, interim time implies regression – action are either before or after interim time. According to the second definition, interim time is not something in itself, but only exist as a part of a wider thing, a longer trajectory, a different plan than the interim time itself, and therefore inferior to the end goal.  (my translation)

Our language thus already prohibits us to engage with this temporary space in a positive and direct manner. As something which has worth and meaning of its own. We either close these spaces of with large fence in order to keep everyone out until the work on the actual project starts. Or we ask some artists to temporarily enliven the place, keep it from feeling like a really run down place, again, until the work on the actual projects starts. What Hotel Transvaal and the Laboratory for the Interim asks us to do, is to engage with these places in a different manner. To see this time in between as something to use, to take up, to explore, to work with and to create out of this engagement something new, something different, something unexpected, something you could not foresee before you started the project, but which now, looking backwards feels obvious and the natural thing to do.

Exploring and working with this interim time, this ‘in-between time’ in such a positive manner fits nicely with the kind of asset based approaches that have been addressed in several posts on this blog. And if the times are really changing right now, we might live in a time rife with possibilities, if we are willing to take and explore them. I think these interim spaces are interesting and inspiring in that regard. They show us hidden possibilities and undeveloped potential and they enable us to look from the outside to what we think are normal procedures. But we should be wary not to glorify these spaces. This is nicely brought out in an essay by the philosopher Gijs van Oenen in the same book from which I quoted Iris Schutten.

He argues that we actually already have a Dutch ‘philosophy’ for this interim time, and it is called, ‘gedogen’: a practical temporary solution in which we put the official rules aside, thus creating  time and space to find a desirable solution for this particular social phenomena. It’s how we deal with soft drugs, and it’s how we used to deal with squatting. Gedogen is not so much doing nothing, but it’s finding a modus in which all parties involved take part of their responsibilities to come up with a desirable and workable practice. In order to make gedogen work all parties have to take up their responsibility, without being able to fall back on the explicit rules (which would immediately destroy the practice of gedogen). Gedogen, if done right, thus enables social and moral learning. However, for all their value, we should remain critical. For they are fragile solutions. So relying on them as a model might by stretching it too far. Furthermore, because the rules are temporarily set aside, it might just create inequalities and opportunities for those who just want to gain benefits.

 

 

Not just making do

This afternoon, courtesy of Linda Clarke from Westminster, I learnt that Somers Town was historically famous for making bricks. The mud from the brick fields was mixed with ash and rubbish, recycling the dirt of London back into the materials building the city - which is satisfyingly circular.

I was there to visit 52 Phoenix Road - a pop-up community space organised by the Make Do Collective (Lucia and Mark) and drop off a picture for an exhibition on Thur 16 Dec, being put on by Untitled Space (Andy and Nick). If you want to put something up, you need to get it to them by Weds 15 Dec, so super quick!

There's lots of other interesting things going on over the next couple of weeks including a film screening and community eat-in, check it out...

 

(speaking of circular, I was there because Untitled Andy is a friend of my friend's ex-housemate, and it turns out Make Do Lucia is a flat mate of my ex-colleague from the RSA . Neat.)

 

FixCity

Another great tool from the folks over at the Open Planning Project in the States:

fixcity.org is about taking small steps to fix your city. Our first endeavor, FixCity:Bike Racks, is a social mapping application designed to "crowdsource" community and government collaboration in the gathering, planning, and implementing new bike racks.

This application encourages residents and community organizations to suggest new bike racks, verify suggested locations, gather statements of support from the broader community, and finally submit a "shovel-ready" bulk order to the Department of Transportation. This application is designed to use the best of today's web technology to enable smart ways to meaningfully and efficiently match residents' wants with city services.

My pod

The future is (almost) here. Environmentally sustainable public transport for the weary city dweller. No more gathering at stops waiting for crowded polluting vehicles and putting up with a chip-munching, music-blaring, litter-dropping so and so in the seat next to you. Instead, a personal pod to whisk you smoothly on your way with a minimum of fuss...

But somehow I am in two minds. I applaud the development in more sustainable public transport but I think I would miss my chance to daydream and catch up on podcasts as I wait for the bus. And there's something to be said about the entertaining idiosyncrasies of bus journeys terminating early, or the invigorating morning sprint to catch the 8.35 when you've left the house late.

Hmm. If someone can sort it out, I think I want a hoverboard first.

Civic revolutionaries

This is the clean and simple, inspirational image of cities that we like - and it's fantastic.

But in the London Observer, design writer and curator Dejan Sudjic offers a great reminder of some of the complicated and dirty casting that delivers the reality:

Cities are made by an extraordinary mix of do-gooders and bloody-minded obsessives, of cynical political operators and speculators.

They are shaped by the unintended consequences of the greedy and the self-interested, the dedicated and the occasional visionary.

The hole-in-one here is that cities are made by people - and (more than) occasionally mad ones at that.

Not just the real estate dealers in their sheepskin coats, or the shady, cynical operators in City Hall but also the total fanatics.

This is an image of some of the bloody-minded obsessives that I have been working with over the last few years on an urban renewal project in the U.K.

There are many people missing from the shot but this picture includes community leaders, an architect, a property developer, a former school cook and a cleaner who won an Order of the British Empire - in part for her commitment to the cause.

Every town or city in the world has such a group.

Dejan calls them urban obsessives.

Doug Henton of Collaborative Economics has a better romantic catch-all description of the cadre. 

He calls them civic revolutionaries.

 

Megacities - Urban Growth Trends

An exciting development is the start of the first sustainable, zero-waste, car-free, carbon neutral city Masdar in Abu Dhabi. The new city is due to be opened in late 2009.

When Sir Ken Robinson spoke last month at the London Business Forum he talked about the growth of super sized cities and mentioned Dubai as an extreme example of growth. I chased up the pics. Tokyo is already a megacity with a population of 12 million.