WMUD

conceptual, strategic and development work in urban design, town making, city planning, urbanism and place-making

engaging communities

Community engagement in Yoker

Beautiful as they may be, the true meaning of special places comes from human experience, interpretation and understanding. Therefore the communities’ sensibilities ought to be reflected in the planning, design and management of old and new places.

We don’t ask communities to design. Rather, through careful facilitation, they provide their knowledge and inform our brief - they are the experts on their locality. We then continue the dialogue of ideas and options to reaching a desirable and deliverable outcome.

The plan-making process can take months, but place-making takes years - that is why it is important to engage with a range of participants of different ages and perspectives. To do this we use a wide range of tools to involve communities and ensure that the delivery agencies are part of that process.

Empowering a community to accept and guide change is a privileged, yet crucial role, for adapting positively to circumstances is one of the key ingredients of successful communities.

July 12th 2008
Tags: cities, comment, research, strategy

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Lewis Mumford on the city

These short film clips featuring Lewis Mumford, author of the City in History, were recently published on the Planum website. Before the end of 1961 the New York publishing company Harcourt, Brace and Co. had the first edition of Lewis Mumford's highly successful book The City In History ready for publication. ...
July 11th 2008
Tags: cities, comment, place making

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Finisterre

FINISTERRE from Plexifilm on Vimeo. London has always been a source of influence, inspiration and curiosity. Paul Kelly and Kieran Evans' FINISTERRE tries to identify the dreams that London holds for so many, and the reality of the city -- the spaces between the landmarks, the spaces Londoners inhabit. Presented and scored ...
June 28th 2008
Tags: cities, comment, place making, strategy

One Comment

Signs and the city

The Spring 2008 edition of JoLA, the excellent peer-reviewed academic Journal of Landscape Architecture established by the European Council of Landscape Architecture Schools, contains an article on the work of Gregor Graf which raises the question, "How do we read a city without signs?". With a mixture of purist ...

Network mapping

by Drew Mackie It has become fashionable to talk of networks of organisations, people, computers, transport and so on. In organisations there is talk of being more “networky” and getting away from the older more hierarchical ways of doing things. Conferences are organised around “networking” both formal and informal. Yet, the more ...

Remarkable Rieselfeld

Much has been written in recent weeks about Rieselfeld and Vauban, both extensions of Freiburg in Breisgau in south west Germany. These areas have been under construction since the 1990s but the current interest in them from a UK perspective comes from the Government's plans to build a number ...