An Integrated Recovery Plan for our Cities, Town Centres and Transport Hubs?

The current crisis is placing huge stresses, threats but also potential opportunities on our cities, town centres and transport hubs. Inevitably our retail, office, hospitality, F&B, leisure and cultural sectors are all under pressure, particularly because many of them were already suffering due to macro changes in behaviour and the economy prior to the onset of the virus. Our city and town centres though are valuable pieces of real estate which often underpin the nation’s pension funds and are of cultural and social significance, they therefore deserve a creative approach to secure their future both in the short and longer terms.

So what should we potentially be thinking about to tackle these challenges?

During lockdown, I have been reviewing developments to address these issues here in Scotland, across the UK and around the world. From my perspective there are recurring themes, not least that every part of our city or town economy is interconnected and that our public realm, urban design, zoning and placemaking all have a role in securing their future.

Here are my thoughts to promote debate.

Short to Medium Term Initiatives

In the immediate future Covid restrictions will have been relaxed but people’s anxieties and the demands of social distancing will remain. Our town centres must in the short term therefore both feel safe and do that in an attractive manner. Office staff often makeup a significant part of the weekday spend in our town centres, so their return from home working to new approaches to office environments needs to be encouraged otherwise that loss in income will become a permanent drag. Likewise operators who may have to carry the financial burden caused by social distancing in the form of less covers, less stock display and less throughput of customers need flexibility to maximise their potential income.

Taking these in turn:

Our town centres must flex in the short term to:

1. Accommodate additional space for Social Distancing
2. Create space for people, pedestrians, cyclists and bikes
3. That this is done in a manner to enhance the quality of experience and to reduce anxiety
4. Adopt a curated approach so that measures are maintained and situations managed
5. Continue the efforts catalysed by the initial Places for People grants and learn from the best examples in Scotland e.g. Aberdeen, on the Continent and America

Many employers have indicated that they will adopt long term homeworking strategies, whilst that is good in certain respects (carbon emissions) those decisions will create an immediate financial burden which will be felt by investors and by our High Streets. Staff may also be ill at ease regards a return to work within an office environment. How then can we better balance the benefits and threats caused by these circumstances? In the short term we should:

1. Develop space planning and technical guidance which is increasingly available internationally for a Scottish Context to make office environments safer and more welcoming to returning staff
2. Question what is the office and potentially develop blended approaches to office occupation where it is used in phases for socially distanced collaboration
3. Encourage the development of outdoor screened/covered meeting spaces

Individual operators should be given the opportunity to flex in the short term:

1. Promoting the use of street canopies to cover queues
2. Facilitating the creation of street pop ups to temporarily enlarge floor plate
3. Encouraging the use of surrounding fallow space or surrounding carparks to temporarily enlarge floor plate
4. Temporarily relaxing licencing conditions to facilitate that
5. Once more that this is done in a manner to enhance the quality of experience and to reduce anxiety
6. And again adopt a curated approach so that measures are maintained and situations managed

In inhabiting the public realm to a greater extent, we must of course think about each other and how each activity is co-ordinated to create an overall experience which underpins society’s desire to make a return to the High Street. To facilitate this in as streamlined a manner as possible a national level design guide should be developed to influence local authorities, Business Improvement Districts, Community Councils and operators, whilst balancing requirements for social distancing, continued car use, refuse/deliveries, amenity in all its forms etc. To coordinate these efforts and support economic recovery each town should have a designated Town Centre Champion (probably re-designated member of staff as opposed to new member of staff). 

Fundamentally though all of that must delivered quickly at a time of financial pressure and in such a manner as to create an experience/environment which people wish to take part in. Affordable design quality is therefore paramount.

The Longer Term Vision

Looking beyond the short term, many pressures will remain and may become entrenched. There may well be a decrease in certain types of retail, office space and perhaps temporarily hospitality and F&B, but that may in turn be balanced by a beneficial increase in town centre homes (thus further reducing carbon emissions) which in turn will drive additional footfall and thereby drive a resurgence in retail and F&B space.

Given these pressures the quality of experience offered by town centres will be more important than ever to differentiate them from big out of town boxes or the internet. Long term this suggests the symbiotic relationship between specialist/boutique retailers, F&B, hospitality, offices with a different focus and leisure activities to create a tangible experiential storyline, which is attractive to the public. That said, given the likely growth of town centre homes we must create neighbourhoods which are both walkable, safe and attractive to live in. Such mixed use environments will require greater coordination to achieve necessary levels of amenity and day to day management to make them safe and attractive 24 hours a day. Once more we recommend the development of national level design guides to facilitate matters allied to the continued evolution of the role of Town Centre Champion.  

More broadly we must integrate these long term consequences of the Covid crisis with our nation’s sustainability and carbon reduction objectives, the question is therefore how can that be done in a co-ordinated manner?

Firstly we must reflect upon the English experience where planning rules were relaxed to allow the conversion of surplus offices to flats under permitted development. Whilst there will be good developments, it should be noted that bad offices are not guaranteed to create good homes, far from it. Such low quality developments have been particularly stressed during the pandemic because of lack of ventilation, amenity, acoustic separation, space within flats and lack of common space which makes social distancing more difficult. A more nuanced approach is therefore required where surplus properties are considered on a case by case basis.

Furthermore the WHO are suggesting that pandemics are becoming more likely therefore new developments of all building types should have greater resilience both internally and in terms of the public realm they provide, but that is particularly the case with housing.  

Whilst the use of public transport is currently down, that will be a temporary trend albeit its use may not recover to pre virus levels for some time and we are likely to live and travel differently in the future. It is therefore vital that we design around transport to support its recovery and its climate change objectives.

Densifying Around Transport Hubs

Tranposrt hubs (whether stations, bus stations, ferry terminals etc) are both gateways to their wider network and their host city, town or neighbourhood, but are also often highly complex 'machines' and are often stress points within that urban area. They form gateway quarters which require focussed masterplans, which should finely mesh the 'gears' of the transport hub with those of the much larger machine which is their host town or city.

Regrettably urbanity all too often turned its back on such hubs from the 1960's onwards so that too many became dislocated, problem areas, which lacked development appeal mirroring society's move towards the car. Clearly public transport has moved on, prior to the Covid crisis it was more popular than ever and society has been promoting the idea of modal shift to secure sustainability targets, but the built legacy of the 60's, 70's and 80's casts a long shadow and all too frequently is still with us, because the urban realm around too many of our transport hubs is still fractured.

That though is now an opportunity to fix the link between the hub and its host environment, to promote the long term resurgence of public transport via development on brownfield sites, to retrofit and to create densification above and around such transport hubs as their scale, location, potential amenity and land values permit. To achieve that, we must clearly consider the functionality around the hub to rectify challenges and to support easy access, legibility, permeability, footfall, pedestrian flow, access for all, bikes, buses, pick up and drop off, buses, deliveries, refuse, rail replacement buses and yes for the time being cars. Alongside that though we must also create great places, visual gateways, places to dwell, and appropriate levels of restaurants, cafes, shops, drop in offices (for remote workers), housing, hotels and public realm to reflect the station's key role in the passenger's overall door to door journey, but also in recognition of the hub becoming an urban centre in its own right. Whilst planning each of these uses so that they create a high amenity environment, each have their own identity and self-sufficiency so that they each have the resilience which has been needed during the current crisis. Creating a smart connected gateway quarter in which you can live, work and play.

That of course, raises the potential for development opportunities above and around the hub and indeed beyond its immediate demise itself. To do so we must consider the surrounding urban realm, road systems and redevelopment opportunities potentially including where appropriate hotels, offices, drop in offices (for remote workers), retail, hospitality and residential accommodation with the intention to create thriving mixed use gateway quarters. Effectively stepping beyond strict boundaries or silos in an effort to create a cohesive whole, to fix the link via surrounding urban regeneration and create a virtuous cycle. Creating a flexible approach to development which may be applied around the smallest bus station or around and above the largest station, whether they serve cities, large towns or neighbourhood centres around our largest cities. Thus securing the sustainability of public transport, developing routes/services, reducing carbon emissions achieving infrastructure improvements via wider redevelopment by densifying around our transport hubs.