Cities that Truly Value Human and Natural Flourishing, Sean Bradley
Our online February talk was led by Sean Bradley, a Sustainable Urban Designer and environmental engineer specialising on the development of healthy neighbourhoods for future sustainable cities. Currently working as the CLEVER Cities Programme Manager for Groundwork London at Thamesmead, on a project that aims to:
- increase and improve local knowledge of nature-based solutions,
- demonstrate that greener cities work better for people and communities,
- contribute data and information to EU policy-making, and ultimately promote and enable the uptake of nature-based solutions in urban planning world-wide.
We heard about the landscaping (an edible garden and green spaces), being developed with the local community in Thamesmead, to improve a poorly maintained, brutalist environment. Plans are funded and enabled by the ‘social landlord’ Peabody. Thamesmead (a 1970s/80s tower block housing development) was typical of its time. Unfortunately, the ‘future city’ is still envisaged too frequently as skyscraper buildings on “an industrial scale”, for example much of Dubai, where the “buildings have no connection to humans and the natural environment”. Sean showed new developments with large flat open spaces around skyscraper blocks (in Brazil and US) which seem to be designed for visual impact rather than community use.
Sean advocates a ‘human-based’ approach because it supports greater social cohesion by enabling people to interact with each other and to ‘know’ their neighbourhood. He stated that humans can generally only recognise people up to 30 meters away and that facial recognition is key to supporting safety within a neighbourhood. So in a block above 5 storeys, one would not be able to recognise people down on the street. Many traditional housing units in European cities were of this scale. He told us of Appleyard’s social interactions study (1969) on three streets with different traffic, suggesting that designing-in low traffic / traffic-free areas supports social interaction, and other studies suggest 5,000-10,000 is the maximum size of a community to enable social cohesion.
His message is that we need to design-in external spaces and structures to enable community connections, such as a limited range of natural pathways to the shops / café / bus stop. How providing a pedestrianised area with outside café seating areas can have positive impacts. That design should capture the “the spirit of the place” (genius loci), e.g. using London brick, and references to ships and the water as seen in parts of the Canada Water development by the Thames. He emphasised how important it is to design-in ‘real’ green spaces that enable wildlife to thrive, and with permanence for shade, light and comfort. And of course, the importance of involving the local communities.
Questioners asked about the risk that design ideas which are deemed ‘good’, might be found to have unintended consequences such as the ‘streets in the sky’ of the 70s that proved to be disastrous. There were concerns over the increasing privatisation of public spaces affecting people’s access, such as pedestrianised town centres now closed overnight and patrolled by security guards. There was a real wish for proper engagement with communities but frustration owing to the very poor track record across London (tick-box activities which have no impact or influence on final developments), particularly as the investors of developments are frequently international companies where economic ‘viability’ trumps sustainability, environmental concerns and community cohesion. Sean felt there may be some optimism despite this as ‘placemaking’ and the concept of the ‘15 minute city’ had traction and these pressures may influence future planning, but he knew there was a major need to train architects, planners, local and national politicians.
