Glasgow’s new Transport Museum designed by Zaha Hadid Architects (ZHA) is the latest in a series of buildings intended to be key parts of the regeneration of the River Clyde corridor over the last 30 years.  Starting with the Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre (SECC) in 1979, the developments include the Clyde Auditorium or Armadillo, an addition to the SECC complex by Foster and Partners in 1995, the Glasgow Science Centre by BDP in 2001 including the striking Glasgow Tower by Richard Horden and the BBC Scotland studios originally by David Chipperfield but completed by Keppie Design in 2007.  The Glasgow Arena by Foster and Partners is expected to open in 2013.  During this period, the Clyde Corridor hosted the Glasgow Garden Festival in 1988, become home to the International Financial Services District and has seen the construction of new bridges at Finnieston and Tradeston.

For many exhibits in the Riverside Museum this will be their fourth home in fifty years.  Kelvingrove Museum, the Tramway and latterly the Kelvin Hall all housed major elements of the collection but this latest and presumably permanent location in theory can display far more of the collection than previous venues.  The riverside location provides an appropriate transport and movement context in abundance.  There are railways, ferries and the seaplane terminal, the buzzing of helicopters, the noise from BAE Systems downstream building Westminster’s warships and the constant background noise of the Clydeside Expressway.  Despite all this movement, the museum’s context is dereliction and the current recession may ensure that it will stay that way for many years.

Interestingly, Glasgow City Council considered three approaches to the provision of a Museum of Transport:  1) constructing a cheap shed on an accessible site and spending more on interior display and curation, 2) housing the collection in an appropriate historic structure – for example a disused shipyard building or perhaps a tram shed or 3) housing the collection in a new icon building.  Clearly the lure of the third approach won, potentially weakening curation and display, secondary research opportunities and floorspace.

Approaching the building by road or on foot is a disappointing experience.   The latest modifications to the Clydeside Expressway have ensured that the Riverside Museum has few convenient connections with surrounding areas.  The access road has the feeling of a motorway off-ramp to a retail park.  With bitmac footpaths and pin kerbing in abundance around the rudimentary car park, this is a value-engineered environment.  Buses roar backwards and forwards from the city centre carrying two or three people in each while the car park (pay and display) overflows with visitors.  Clearly innovation has stopped at the outside wall of the new building.

Well that isn’t strictly fair on Gross Max who designed the public realm around the building. Gross Max, one of Scotland’s brightest and most accomplished landscape architects have produced a sequence of spaces around the curves of the building with token misters for the kids and green mounds and silver birch trees integrated into a simple paving treatment.  Here it is possible to see a nod towards the aesthetic of scrub and spontaneous landscape that is common to the post-industrial Clyde Corridor.   Is it the intention that the maturing of this landscape would see ZHA’s building in a glade of scrubby silver birch?  Who knows – it is hard to find any sense of landscape in the various visualisations of the building.  One thing is certain though and that is that Gross Max did not anticipate the vast consumption of junk food from three temporary outlets around the new building or the consequent overflowing rubbish bins and tomato ketchup staining around the picnic tables.

The building itself is another of the metal clad genre common to the Clyde, very photogenic and certain to join the family of other recent buildings that have become the postcard face of the city.  Like the Science Centre, Armadillo and the recent bridges, it is flattered by blue sky and vacant surroundings which help to point up its other-worldliness.  Purely by being interesting enough to be photographed, the building becomes a location that is unique and worth a visit.  It establishes a significant place on the river – even if it is disconnected from anything else.  And we may be seeing it at its best because once the Scottish property market recovers and starts to roll out more junk developments, especially to the west of the Riverside across the Kelvin, the setting of the building will be altered for the worse.

There are few clues from the outside as to what is happening in the building.  Its crisp exterior of zinc and dark glass, flawless cladding and signature roofline create a memorable if severe aesthetic.  From across the river at Govan, the presence of the SS Glenlee berthed alongside the Museum presents a slightly uncomfortable visual moment which flatters neither object – the effect may be similar to your granny turning up at your graduation wearing a Crimplene dressing gown.

Inside the building, the atmosphere is chaotic and redolent of a 1950s toy garage.  Presumably there were three phases of appreciation of the building: as an empty cathedral-like space with no exhibits, as a completed building with everything in place except for the ‘customers’ – these two being very important to people living in the architecture bubble – and finally, the crowded and complete environment we see today with kids trying to break exhibits and folk bumping into each other.  It’s a happy place though with much smiling, patient helpful staff and reminiscing.  Almost everything seems very familiar yet very special too.  The curation is crowded and for some, overcrowded or cramped, lacking space for contemplation or research.

Although it may be a minor work in terms of ZHA buildings, it will surely be an excellent investment for the Council, hugely popular and extremely positive for the marketing of the city.  But despite the merits of the building, it can’t escape its surroundings and disconnection with the city. So it would be unfortunate if any euphoria surrounding the Riverside obscured the fact that this un-crowded stretch of ‘world class waterfront’ is actually a world class failure in terms of the production of contemporary city and certainly one of the worst waterfront developments in Europe.  If landscape articulates a politics as well as an aesthetic then this waterfront is a consummate neo-liberal landscape of public waste, private greed, risk aversion and an environment for ‘customers’ in which communities, their economies and potential are completely ignored.  It’s not that the individual public sector funded developments have not succeeded – indeed they are mostly highly successful in their own terms – but the external environment of each development is a total failure and after adding in the sterile private sector developments and their accompanying over-designed roads infrastructure, the cumulative effect is nothing more than junkspace – the Clyde Corridor’s default urbanism.

Hopefully ZHA’s building will be the final moment of iconicism on the Clyde.  For the creators of this waterfront, the first steps towards a change of approach – involving recognition that there is a problem – will be difficult and painful.  For the private sector, to own so much land yet achieve so little and to be unable to string together any sort of cohesive urbanism whether traditional, Modern, contemporary, futuristic or parametric is a profound failure and would make anyone wonder about the skills at play or what those involved were actually trying to achieve.

The point is reached where there has to be a genuine acknowledgement that a different approach is required:  that doing small things better might be more constructive than more mega-million stones on the shiny metal necklace.  That joining things up with decent infrastructure and good public transport  - rather than stinking noisy buses – might actually start to create a riverside of higher value. That growing existing communities to the river might also work – as a contra-notion to developing laterally along the river.  And that constructive employment and providing the circumstances in which economies and innovation might thrive and in which communities can be involved are more valuable aims than private greed and shareholder satisfaction and that all these things are more important than design as shape-making and object creation.

The galleries below include most of Jon-Marc’s images of the Riverside Museum taken in the late afternoon of 4 July 2011.

Interior views: 

External views: 

A pdf of the original article in the AHSS Magazine is available to download here (125kB).

We held workshops with the Harbour Commissioners and a range of public and private sector bodies and discussed a range of strategic propositions from which we developed some conceptual ideas for the future development of the harbour lands. The broader strategic concept is based on three principles:

a) to position Coleraine within the wider inter-regional maritime context

b) to establish a strategic vision for the Lower River Bann as a major economic and tourism driver for the region
The spatial concepts for the harbour lands themselves indicate how a range of development scenarios might be considered from a largely maritime industrial complex to a more significant reappraisal of the existing Dunne’s site as part of the development mix. The concepts are meant as tools for further consideration of the site’s future, not as development solutions and they provide the basis for further discussion and investigation. From left to right, options A to C – click to enlarge:

Option 1: Develop Marina at Cushowen

The initial site appraisal and financial appraisal looked at a 100 berth marina with the full complement of storage and maintenance facilities situated on and around the Cushowen site at the most northern end of the Harbour
lands. Further discussions, both at the workshop and the board have indicated that this may not be the most suitable location, in terms of operational viability and in commercially realising the assets of the site. (left diagram)

Option 2: Develop Marina beside existing Dunnes site
This option starts to free up more land for leisure-based activity and development options. This option would necessitate agreement on the lease with T-Met or be part of a longer term plan post 2021. This option also allows for additional pontoon berths at the Cushowen site for larger vessels and allows the storage, maintenance and boat lifting facilities to be positioned at the top end of the site, this releasing more land for re-development. It also permits a more strategic approach to the development and the ability to bring in periphery sites in public and private ownership as indicated in he centre diagram.

Option 3: Develop Marina on existing Dunnes site
Option 3 takes the principals of Option 2 another stage further and is the most ambitious of the three. It positions the marina on the existing Dunnes site. Again, this would require a partnership with Dunnes and re-location of the existing store, perhaps to one of the new retail developments in the town centre. The advantages of this option are three fold. Firstly, it further optimises the land for redevelopment, both within the existing site boundary and in the surrounding area. Secondly, it provides a possible solution to the navigation of the old bridge by incorporating a lough gate and thirdly, it goes the furthest in realising the ambition of creating a “River Town” where the harbour lands and the town centre are fully integrated. This will have positive economic benefits for the commercial viability of the harbour itself and the wider town and region. Studies have shown that the most successful marina developments are those which have the best linkages to the town they serve.

Clearly there are a number of delivery issues which the Harbour Commissioners are well aware of including clarity and certainty about future ownership of the harbour lands, the future direction of the Port’s maritime activities, future land use directions and the necessity of partnership working. Nevertheless, we hope this short strategic exercise has helped to raise awareness of the broader issues around the future of the harbour.

• baseline information on current developments in the town together with the aspirations of the business and residential communities
• public and voluntary sector aspirations and resources
• design options addressing technical constraints and local planning policy
• an appraisal of local market conditions and commercial viability together with an assessment of public and third sector funding
• an appraisal of local community aspirations for the site and building these into the final design proposals
• visual presentations of what could be possible on the site, how this will fit with the town and consideration of sustainability, access and energy use in the design process

It was envisaged by the Forum that the Shared Vision would be a framework for regeneration of the site, providing a blueprint for future development and a context for the consideration of planning applications. It was anticipated that there would have to be a careful balance between the interests of local residents, the aspirations of the business community and the expectations of visitors.

The findings of the workshops held in August and October pointed towards a number of preferred approaches to Harbour Square ranging from adopting a town wide strategic approach to improvements, through a range of expensive and hard to achieve options to a more measured and prosaic approach to the treatment of the square.

The need to take a strategic approach to proposals for the square and this matched the team’s preferred strategic and structural approach to urban design. The idea that the Harbour Square consisted solely of the existing car park and the depot buildings and TIC was not considered to be taking an appropriately comprehensive view of the issues. Harbour Square is in many ways the centre of the town – it is obviously a car park and an events space but it is also a place for the community, part of the town centre, a place for business and work and a place for art and culture. In addition to this, Harbour Square is also the hub of a network of footpaths that link to music and arts venues, to shops, museums, countryside and monuments as well as along the waterfront. Many of these are within five minutes walking distance of the Square, emphasising the walkability of the town. Broadening the immediate study area to include the harbour itself, Mote Brae and critically, the full width of the streets and pavements of St Cuthbert’s Street and St Cuthbert’s Place opens up many possibilities for more comprehensive change.

This study is currently ongoing and we are finalising the proposals with the Steering Group.

KEY ISSUES AND FINDINGS

We noted in our proposal for this work that there was a striking contrast between the centre of the town and its peripheral areas – almost as if the centre mattered but the rest didn’t. We had a strong feeling in Stromness that there was a need to re-learn how to build places – not so much in terms of architecture but in relation to the basic components of the external environment, the siting of development and the overall form of settlement. Our anticipated headline issues were:

• the presence of the past
• a distinctive sense of place
• learning how to build anew
• localising urban design
• traffic by design
• sustainability – a fundamental theme

These are the basic foundations of the urban design framework. If anything the contrast between the old town and the surrounding areas was more marked than we thought. There is a strong sense that the old town is regarded, like the library, as unfit for purpose in the 21st century. The decanting of uses to Hamnavoe and Garson is evidence of this while the Pier Arts Centre seems to represent the very opposite view – a well received triumph of careful design and function in constrained circumstances.

At the same time, the quality of the old town deteriorates in a myriad of small ways – vinyl street signs replacing old painted versions, unnecessary parking restrictions, inappropriate ‘heritage’ street lighting, vacant property and insensitive repairs to buildings and the public realm.

In parallel with this is the sense that Garson is used as a convenient place to site things that can no longer be accommodated in the old centre. So the town has no real structure or cohesion. This was recognised in the brief for this work which stated that the purpose of the study ‘is to establish a strategic framework and vision which would direct future proposals towards a coordinated and legible urban form’.

While preserving and enhancing the historic core has been an objective of the Council for some time, changes in land use patterns, changes in the type and location of housing, the relocation of important community institutions and the growing rate of vacancies in the historic core suggest a need to ask some very basic questions about the future of the town. Some of these are:

• What is the purpose and role of the town?
• What is the future of the historic core and what function might it perform?
• What are the roles of the various other parts of the town and can these areas work in an integrated and holistic manner?
• Are there too many proposals competing for scarce resources and might fewer stronger proposals help to fulfil more integrated spatial objectives?
• Should the unrelenting drift to the north be channelled into a new spatial structure for North Hamnavoe?
• Is there a positive future for Garson other than as a home for things that can’t be accommodated elsewhere?
• What can be done about the low quality of design of new buildings on the edges of the town and in the surrounding countryside?
• What size should Stromness be? Is building 140 houses by 2010 (as per the Local Plan) sensible or just very un-ambitious?
• How do we build urban form in such a low demand environment – is low density a realistic option?
• Each of the character areas described needs attention of some kind – the 4th and 5th tier areas have the most potential for change but how should these be improved?
• Can the town put its energy and sustainability research credentials to work for the Stromness environment?

These questions are answered to a greater or lesser degree in the report below. The culture of Orkney and Stromness is very project orientated and there was significantly more interest in implementing these rather than addressing strategy and policy which would in turn produce more appropriate projects than the current batch. There is also enormous resistance to change on the part of the local community and widely differing opinions about what should actually happen in the town.

The inevitable result of this is compromise and our report reflects that. However it has opened up wide ranging discussions about the form and function of the town and set out some new thinking, especially in relation to the form of peripheral development in the stunning Orkney landscape. The final report is shown below:

The study team comprised WMUD (lead), Yellow Book (economic strategy), Drew Mackie Associates (consultation), Hamilton-Baillie Associates (traffic and movement), Jacobs (Strategic Environmental Assessment and Strategic Flood Risk Assessment) and Leslie Burgher(architecture).

• to enrich the quality of life of people who live and work in Rotherham, and to improve the experience of visitors
• to promote nature conservation and biodiversity
• to stimulate investment and regeneration

The policy context

Rotherham’s rivers and waterways figure prominently in regional and local planning policy, and across a wide range of other policy areas. However, while the waterways are generally deemed to be valuable assets, there is little evidence that the poor quality and condition of many of the borough’s rivers, canals and waterspaces has been acknowledged. This confirms the clients’ perception that a strategy is required to focus attention on the waterways and to devise a cohesive strategy and plan for action.

Although the potential of Rotherham’s waterways remains unfulfilled, it is clear that they can make an important contribution to the quality of life in the borough, to biodiversity and to regeneration.

Waterways in the landscape

Rotherham’s waterways have played a pivotal role in the Borough’s rich and fascinating, determining the location of settlements and sites of industry. The canalisation of the river Don in the mid 18th century made Rotherham an important inland port, and encouraged the growth of industry, even though the waterway was soon superseded by the railways. Though the borough only covers a small area, it is surprisingly diverse: while the Don and the Rother became archetypal industrial rivers, the attractive streams in the limestone country to the east feed into the Trent catchment. Ancient ponds are a feature of Rotherham, as are planned landscapes with water features, as at Wentworth.

This diversity is still reflected in the condition of Rotherham’s waterways today, which present a challenging mix of assets and liabilities. The consultant team has analysed the waterways and waterspaces by type, function and context, and we have also identified a series of distinct character areas.

Rotherham’s waterways appraised

We tested and developed our analysis in a series of consultations and at a stakeholder workshop. These events confirmed the mixed “report card” on our site visits and research. There was unanimous recognition of the potential of Rotherham’s waterways, and a broad consensus that recent successes (Rother Valley Country Park, Blackburn Meadows, Chesterfield Canal improved water quality etc) had raised public awareness of the value of water and its potential to contribute to a better quality of life. The Cuckoo Way and Roche Abbey are examples of little known delights in the borough. At the same time, the urban Don and the lower Rother still appear to be neglected and under-used places, and recent events have highlighted the threat of flooding and the presumed effects of climate change. The potential is unmistakable, but the problems are big and structural and the barriers to progress sometime appear formidable.

Developing the strategy

The report draws on this analysis to map out a vision and strategy for Rotherham’s waterways. Achieving the vision will require action to nurture, restore, celebrate and care for Rotherham’s unique network of rivers, canals and water spaces.

The report frames a series of strategic objectives and identifies six broad priorities for action: river restoration, major regeneration projects, the Chesterfield Canal, nature reserves, the access network and community projects.

Given the sheer scale and diversity of the challenges, it is not possible or desirable to draw up a detailed blueprint at this stage, but the consultant team has drawn up a set of 11 guiding principles, to be applied as appropriate as new projects are brought forward.

This section concludes by highlighting some of the places and ideas that have helped to shape the Rotherham Waterways Strategy, and which should act as sources of inspiration in the future. In particular, we acknowledge our debt to Emscher Landscape Park in Germany’s Ruhr region, which is the best example in Europe of the transformation of a polluted and semi-derelict post-industrial landscape.

The action plan

The themes of the strategy are drawn together in Section 6 which begins by recommending that the key themes of the action plan should be: New Life for the Urban River valleys, the Chesterfield Canal, the urban waterfront, riverside communities, Rotherham’s Hidden Gems, caring for the waterways, and celebrating them.

We also recommend the formation of a Rotherham Waterways Partnership (with a maximum 5 years’ life) to drive forward the initiative, and the appointment of a project manager.

We have drawn up an illustrative 3-5 year action plan, which distinguishes between project development activities (where the partnership should take a lead role) and influencing the work of others to ensure that benefits for the rivers and waterways are achieved. We have estimated that the partnership would require a budget of around £850,000 over 3 years to take forward this work programme.

The success of the partnership will be determined largely by its ability to engage effectively with other partners, locally and at the sub-regional, catchment and regional levels. We have identified some key connections, including with Sheffield which is also developing proposals for reviving its urban rivers.

Finally, we have stressed the importance of knowing what success looks like. A simple performance management framework is required for the partnership, which should be the subject of an independent review after three years.

Positive strategic role

There is definite potential to undertake significant development on the study area – and to influence regeneration in the surrounding areas in the northern part of the Borough and in adjoining boroughs, and possibly even at a London level and beyond. The full scope and scale of transformation is dependent on a number of factors, including the ability to capitalise upon opportunities and address some very real constraints.

Constraints

There are a number of key constraints affecting development of the site particularly:

• The rail and canal corridors form barriers to north-south movement within and beyond the site. Whilst development could possibly be built over the railway, this is unlikely to be viable for the canal.
• Safety concerns around the gasholders are likely to prevent residential development on portions of the site as long as the gasholders are in place (until at least 2016).
• The single vehicular connection to the site makes it isolated, both in terms of public and private transport. It also places significant physical constraints on the quantum of development.
• The existing Sainsbury’s store may or may not wish to move from its current site – it could possibly be redeveloped as part of a larger, denser development.
• Crossrail are seeking to use part of the southern portion of the site as a temporary bus garage during construction works, to 2017.

Recommendation

The recommendation is to pursue as ambitious an option as possible in partnership with the key landowners, and to continue to build up the parallel case for a station. We see this option being represented as a composite of C and D at this stage, beginning in the eastern part of the site, and extending westwards over time as the gas holders are decommissioned. This composite is more ambitious than options A and B, but is more feasible than option E. It could also provide a basis for including part of option F if the opportunity presents itself.

Scenario development
Given that this stage in the process was upstream of generating any real development proposals, it was necessary to explore a wide range of possibilities in an open, value free way. Therefore, rather than ‘design’ a selection of alternative indicative schemes, the method at this stage was to explore and develop a range of scenarios (future circumstances) with associated development typologies (physical place outcomes). At this stage of feasibility testing we considered it important not to prejudge any outcome, nor to have premature preferences that may preclude creative options be explored. Also, we found it particularly important to be open-minded about both cost-value parameters (these changed even in the short time of the study) and about a potential Crossrail station – even though this has been a desired outcome of the Council – because it is not in itself a ‘given’ component.



The scenario approach used enabled different kinds of future circumstances and outcomes to be constructed, explored and developed, then further reviewed and tested for feasibility and desirability. This method was wide-ranging including scenarios various people acknowledged were more or less desirable. It was not simply a wish list of a few idealised end-states. These scenarios were explored in a future situation (2025) well beyond the limits of current policy, and also without community involvement at this ‘upstream’ stage.

Our view is that this open, relatively creative approach demonstrates a wide range of possibilities. Importantly, it generated a wide range of relevant issues for further testing, review and, where appropriate, policy action and dialogue with landowners and statutory bodies.

The study team comprised Kevin Murray Associates (lead), Willie Miller Urban Design (WMUD), Alan Baxter Associates, Battle McCarthy, Colliers CRE and Gardiner & Theobald.

This [tag]animation[/tag] of the [tag]historical development[/tag] of the beautiful Channel Islands town of [tag]St Helier[/tag] was part of our study for the States of Jersey in 2005.

The study was commissioned by the Planning and Environment Department of the States of Jersey and originated in the Island Plan which was approved in July 2002. In particular, Policy BE1 stated that:

“The Planning and Environment Committee will initiate an appraisal of the [tag]urban character[/tag] and [tag]townscape[/tag] of the town of St. Helier as an aid to the process of preserving and enhancing its character and in guiding policy formulation and the assessment of planning applications”.

The appraisal of the urban character of the town coupled with [tag]design guidance[/tag] for each character area forms the core of the study. The guidance is set in a strategic policy context which identifies potential change in each area and makes proposals for conservation and physical intervention. The design guidance could enable the States of Jersey to take a new approach to assessing and processing planning applications.

The complete Final Report is available to download from the States of Jersey website (in chapters). and includes sections on the methodology, the key findings, issues from urban design perspective and proposition for the content of future planning guidance. Alternatively it can be downloaded from here (15.89 MB).

Our co-consultants were Drew Mackie Associates (consultation), Yellow Book Ltd (strategic vision), Gordon Urquhart (historical research and conservation) and Malcolm Fraser Architects (interventions).

See also our companion study of the Local Distinctiveness of Bolton Town Centre.

There is a image gallery of St Helier here.

In association with lead consultant Roger Tym and Partners, we have been commissioned by Argyll and Bute Council to produce a Regeneration Masterplan which will provide a framework for the future development of Ardrishaig, highlighting the relationship of key projects to the objectives of the masterplan partners, other key stakeholders and the community. The brief highlights the key issues which will need to be addressed in developing the Masterplan – addressing the decline of the town’s economic and commercial role in the face of a changed economic reality and shifts in residential, travel and work patterns is at its heart.

Ardrishaig’s appeal is adversely affected by restricted access to and promotion of the foreshore, the low profile of the Crinan Canal and the harbour, the limited supporting facilities and services for boat users and other recreational visitors to Ardrishaig as well as conflicts between leisure uses and existing uses such as Gleaner Oils, Scottish Water and the timber harvesting and freight operations.
Ardrishaig Gallery

The character of the town is the result of this combination of different styles and ages of building and street level activity. As part of the urban design framework, we will devise a spatial concept that draws together these disparate components into a more cohesive whole whilst creating new opportunities for change through new building, external spaces and a new landscape framework for the settlement.
Ardrishaig Details

Ardrishaig Proposals

We have been commissioned by South Lakeland District Council to produce a regeneration strategy for this striking resort town. The overall aim of the work is to improve Grange over Sands as a key service centre and to increase its attractiveness to the local community and to visitors. The proposals will be part of the South Lakeland Development Framework Core Strategy.

The main objectives of the Regeneration Strategy are to prepare an analysis of the relevant background documents, assess the development potential of the Berners Pool/Lido site including the preparation of a financial appraisal indicating the costs and values and the capital receipt available for improvements to the promenade based on a number of land use options. In addition, we have been asked to consider development opportunities in the town centre for new community and retail facilities.

The lead consultants for this work are Douglas Wheeler Associates. Property advice is supplied by Carigiet Cowan

Powerful socio-economic and market forces have transformed the roles and functions of small towns; the effects on some seaside resorts have been particularly severe. Increasing personal wealth and mobility have helped to smooth the transition for some more favoured places – like Dawlish – by fuelling an influx of commuters and retired people.

These driving forces generate threats and opportunities for communities like Dawlish. Whether we like it or not they reflect the way we live in the early 21st century, and it is not within the gift of the Community Trust or the consultant team to resist them. Instead the challenge is to enable Dawlish to adapt successfully to a changing world, to seize the opportunities that are being created and to tackle the negative effects.

While the forces shaping Dawlish are being felt throughout Europe and the rest of the developed world, they are filtered through the specific characteristics and circumstances of a distinctive town with its own unique set of assets and liabilities. For example, the town’s natural setting and its unusual urban form are among its most notable attributes, but topography and built heritage are also constraints on development and contribute to traffic congestion.

Our approach to this assignment will combine a robust appraisal of the implications for Dawlish of social, economic, technological, political and environmental driving forces, with a sensitive, place-specific assessment of the town’s assets and capacity for change.