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).

More than ten years into the 21st century it feels strange to be writing about a new urban motorway but just such an entity was opened to traffic in Glasgow in June 2011. The motorway connects the M74 from Carmyle to Tradeston and Kinning Park then to the M8 heading for Glasgow Airport and the Clyde Estuary.  It skirts the communities of Rutherglen, Polmadie and Gorbals and is not so much a new approach to the city centre as a way of avoiding it.  The contrast between this new stretch of motorway and the well known M8 eastern entrance to the city could hardly be more marked. Where the M8 approach, like the M77, gently unfolds the landmarks and drama of the city, good and bad, the M74 extension is a particularly banal experience.

The debate about the M74 extension passed a long time ago.  It is now perhaps fruitless to discuss questions such as could this money have been better spent, do new motorways actually solve traffic problems, was the blight along the route necessary, what about the environmental pollution from the new road and wouldn’t it have been possible to build a respectable public transport system for the same money?  Instead it is interesting to focus on deeply unfashionable questions around the perception of the city from this enormous piece of infrastructure and how it changes the narrative of Glasgow for residents and visitors.

The classic book ‘The View from the Road’ written by Donald Appleyard, Kevin Lynch and John R Myer in 1965 was one of a number of important publications that focused on the perception of cities from behind the wheel.  This was also the subject of various publications by John Brinckerhoff Jackson and most significantly by Robert Venturi, Steven Izenour and Denise Scott Brown in ‘Learning from Las Vegas‘.  These works still have their place in the world of architecture, landscape and urbanism but they also have parallels in photography and film. Yutaka Takanashi’s ‘Toshi-e‘ (‘Towards the City‘) and Lee Friedlander’s ’America by Car‘ both examined the experience of movement in cities through photography: the windscreen and camera creating a frame within a frame.

Motorway design can reach high points of excellence as demonstrated by many parts of the American Interstates and Parkways and also in the motorway systems of most European mainland countries.  The creators of these roads had skills and insight which are sadly lacking in the design of the M74 Extension. The Transport Scotland website is of course overflowing with the supposed benefits of the M74 Extension and they include economic regeneration, environment, traffic, road safety and community regeneration.  But if we imagine just for a moment that these are all genuine benefits isn’t something else completely missing? If as Mark Cousins says, ‘movies make money as well as meaning’, why can’t projects like the M74 Extension provide meaning as well as other supposed benefits?  Why couldn’t the new motorway create some positive experience of entering the city?  Where are the views, the scenography and drama, the habitats, the communities, the compositions or the evidence of thought?

We can see the lonely landmark tower of Rutherglen Town Hall and Greek Thomson’s Caledonian Road Church but little else.  But most of all, where is the River Clyde?  There is a sign saying we are passing over it but along the entire length of the new road, the barriers, super-elevation, topographical choices, screens and ill-placed railings block views of potentially interesting features that would give some sense of place to the road.

While in the background we still see Glasgow, its tenements its towers and surrounding hills, the foreground is hidden behind what is effectively a 3-dimensional map of cost cutting, negotiation, compensation, risk aversion and managerialism stretching over a six mile corridor.  The banal reality of this new road may have appealed to Yutaka Takanashi’s sharp eye for composition but to most commuters and visitors, it is a poor introduction to the city and reflects a lack of interest in matters that might create genuine long term value for the city and its communities.

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The second part of the study looked at the infrastructure requirements of three city scenarios considered during the City Visioning and Local Development Plan process, to help understand the impact on public sector service provision (and the public purse) of different development planning strategies.

Although the mapping shown here relates solely to healthcare facilities, similar effects might be anticipated in relation to other public service infrastructure.

• an analysis of the performance and prospects for the town centre
• an aspirational, long-term vision for the town centre, and
• proposals for short-term action

Background

Glenrothes was constructed in 1948 under the New Towns (Scotland) Act.  It grew and developed through a strong tradition of community and public sector partnership and is now home to approximately 40,000 people. In 2009, Glenrothes town centre “won” Prospect magazine’s Carbuncle award for the most dismal place in Scotland.  Like most of our consultees we think the award was unhelpful and unjustified. The continuing, though declining, commercial vitality of Glenrothes and the high standard of management in the Kingdom Centre is in marked contrast to the depressed state of some failing town centres in Scotland. The town’s large working population, the attractive planting and floral displays, and the year-round popularity of the Rothes Halls for entertainment, community events and business meetings are all positive assets.

In reality, Glenrothes is a sizeable town without a true town centre. There is only limited out of hours activity and nothing that could reasonably be described as an evening economy. The outdoor spaces are grim and cheerless and leisure facilities such as bowling and night clubs have failed. The lack of useable, quality public space means there is no natural venue for outdoor events, farmers’ markets or community celebrations. Glenrothes is a successful place with a strong community spirit, but it is badly let down by its town centre. Many higher income residents of the town and the wider catchment area choose other centres – in Fife and beyond – to shop, and for leisure, entertainment and culture. The town centre’s most loyal customers are from lower income groups, and this is reflected in the retail offer.

The causes of the town centre’s decline are complex and deep-seated. Some are unique to the history and development of Glenrothes, while others reflect the legacy of the New Towns. Above all, the fortunes of the town centre have been shaped by powerful socio-economic forces – choice, competition and mobility – which have given rise to new forms of retail and leisure, and a new geography of consumption. No places are exempt from the pressures arising from these trends and there is no point in wishing for a return to the past.

Focus groups

Four focus groups were held in June and August 2010.  The focus groups revealed almost unanimous dissatisfaction with the condition of Glenrothes town centre. As far as many people are concerned, Glenrothes “doesn’t have a town centre”:

• the quality of the retail offer in the Kingdom Centre has been affected by the recession
• out of shopping hours the town centre is almost deserted and there is a very limited and fragmented evening economy
• the Rothes Halls complex is a valuable facility, but it could contribute more to the vitality of the town centre
• in spite of clear efforts to maintain them to a high standard, parts of the town centre are now regarded as ugly and unwelcoming
• it is a car-dominated environment.  Although pedestrian connections to surrounding neighbourhoods have been improved, these links could be stronger.

We concluded that Glenrothes is a popular, attractive and successful community that is let down in some critical aspects by its town centre. In an age of mobility and choice, only a small proportion of local people (and lower than expected from the rest of Fife) choose Glenrothes town centre.  Further that the town centre is a child of its time and the problems it faces are typical of shopping centres in other former New Towns.  At the same time, Glenrothes is arguably the best kept New Town in Scotland and has many positive attributes.

Issues and options

There are two main groups of issues facing the town centre – its environment and its history.

There is a generally held perception of a bleak and unwelcoming environment and in particular:

• the architecture of the town centre is uninspiring – only St Columba’s church and the 1950s shopping precinct at the east end of the town make a positive contribution to the townscape
• a rich landscape setting, but little public realm in the town centre – although tidy and well maintained, none of it is high quality with significant areas of surface parking and service yards
• being able to find one’s way around and read the layout of the town is particularly difficult and  the bulk of the Kingdom Centre discourages north-south pedestrian movement and is an absolute barrier when the shops are closed

The factors contributing to decline of the town centre are complex and deep-seated:

• development of the town centre lagged behind the construction of new houses: so from the beginning this established the residents’ shopping patterns of going elsewhere and it has never quite recovered
• the Kingdom Centre is an enclosed indoor mall – fashions change and in the past 10 years in particular there has been a strong push to return to traditional streets woven into the urban fabric
• small and medium-sized town centres have been severely squeezed by  profound changes in the way we shop and spend our leisure time: driven by unprecedented levels of consumer choice and personal mobility

Glenrothes town centre is therefore a product of its time and needs to adopt the approach of Harlow, Bracknell and others who are trying to re-invent themselves.  We also cautioned that town centres may not be “the heart of the community” these days due to changing lifestyles, choice, competition, mobility and the “captive” market of low income customers.

Any long term plans for the future of the town centre should:

• embrace a wider area adjacent to the town centre
• make the wider town centre an attractive place to shop, work and spend leisure time
• create a new civic centre and business district
• re-investment to reposition the Kingdom Centre
• develop the non-retail and civic components and the centre and reduce the impact of cars
• improve access within the town centre and with the rest of the town
• potentially develop a new street grid of boulevards, walking and cycling networks

New directions

The problems facing Glenrothes town centre are deep-seated and systemic. The current budgetary constraints and fragility of the economy reinforce the reality that there are no easy answers and no quick fixes. Many people at the focus groups made the point that there is little point in promoting the centre when the product is poor, or in encouraging people to walk where the pedestrian environment is hostile.  At the same time, there is the need to avoid impracticable grand plans.  In current market conditions the prospects of a comprehensive re-development of the Kingdom Centre are remote.  However, Fife Council, the local community and business interests have started a process of taking a fresh look at the town centre together and of looking at more than just physical answers to the town centre’s problems and this is a positive way forward.

La CUB has considerable skills and talent in-house and has produced much excellent work so the task of the INTA Panel was not to reinvent but to explore ideas with the CUB Team and introduce commentary on their current thinking and suggest new themes and directions which chime with their existing strategies. I was part of the international panel which included economists, planners, urbanists and architects from Japan, the United States, Netherlands, Germany, Singapore and the UK.

The background to Métropole 3.1
Consideration of the Bordeaux Metropole 3.1 takes place at an important point in time when long established approaches to urbanism, especially those principally concerned with object-based urbanism, are being superseded by new modes of practice and organisation, not only by established professions but also by citizens, communities and others involved in the transformation of territory.

The past 15 years have seen considerable positive change in the centre of Bordeaux and its riverfront. This transformation has seen the city change from an area of decline with decreasing appeal, limited transport infrastructure and a derelict waterfront into a growing city with a World Heritage Site at its core, with a contemporary tramway system reducing car usage and structuring development, together with a renaissance along the Garonne that has created popular communal spaces and attracted new development.

In contrast, the dispersed landscape of Bordeaux outside the core suggests the outcome of a long process of suburban and extra-urban development in which an easy route to building anew has been taken instead of a more considered approach. The results of this process are not wholly negative however and the complex mosaic of built and un-built that exists today provides many opportunities for positive change.

Models of change
At the same time, there is a need to define a model of change (whether growth, stasis or decline) that relies on intensification and compaction rather than perpetual horizontal expansion. Intensification and compaction suggests the retrofitting of low density suburbs and extra-urban areas with limited and governed centres where public transport is a deterrent for car usage and where walking distance is a key factor in determining development extent. This is not to say that some centres or focal points don’t exist already – they clearly do but the roles and performance of many of them – the retail parks, disconnected business parks, remote factories, and standalone university departments – are suboptimal.

It is worthwhile noting some of the design and structuring principles which are appropriate at a metropolitan scale. These include:

• settlement hierarchy, ratio of built to un-built with an emphasis on intensification around centres
• connections to landscape – natural resources and existing historical assets re-usefood production – local produce, allotments
• energy and smart grid – including live monitoring of grid and energy use
• biodiversity, habitats, productive land and the third landscape
• sustainable transport – emphasis on pedestrians, cycles and smart public transport networks
• role, function and number of centres – governance and citizen involvement, typologies of centres and their specification

Current plans describing the spatial structure of the city already refer to a number of nodes or centres relating to public transport and roads infrastructure. These in turn relate to linear corridor developments linking inwards to the city centre along transport routes. It is entirely positive to define some locations for centres but the actual specification of what these might be remains unknown or underplayed. It would be constructive to regard this specification as part of policy rather than an accidental accompaniment to real estate development.


Towards a centres strategy
It would be appropriate if the 27 municipalities that make up the CUB each had a focus around a multi-functional centre. In this way, governance could be linked to spatial identity and the local town hall. This would help to connect emerging forms of community engagement, user-led innovation and new forms of direct citizen co-investment in change to established municipal arrangements.

Of course there may well be more than 27 centres and some will not have an administrative function. So a positive area of endeavour might be to develop typologies of typical centre components. At this strategic level, the architecture itself is unimportant but local centres could and should have many different roles and characteristics. These could be positive combinations of:

• transport hubs as a basic requirement – tram stops, cycle hire and storage, car club/parking, local governance and civic administration, town hall – including places of worship, civil and humanist weddings, civic spaces
• business space, shared offices, micro-industries
• food production – shared allotments, vineyards, food markets and farm outlets
• waste – recycling points
• social spaces – play areas and sports facilities + passive greenspace and gardens
• places to live – with shops, residential, special needs housing, community centres
• existing areas – airport, business space, transport hub, shared offices, research and science
• education – schools, redefined college campus, university departments
• connection to greenspace – parks and gardens, natural areas, water-space
• digitally ready – free wi-fi zones, digital information on transport, energy use and more

Design principles at a metropolitan scale
In addition to this, it will be useful to think about some of the design principles as well as some of the ambitions of a centres strategy. The design principles would certainly include:

• the idea of enabling process rather than fixed outcomes
• development based on performance and investment criteria
• performance rather than aesthetics, content over form
• relations rather than objects – building interfaces with the public realm, adjacencies instead of wasted space, landscape experience linked to food and energy
• embracing energy, biodiversity, food, waste and water

The benefits of expressing a new model of change through a specific centres strategy will relate to the economy, the environment and the quality of life for residents of La CUB:

• economy: innovation, talent attraction, start-ups, localisation, resilience and diversity
• environment: energy hierarchy, sustainable lifestyles, broad but light environmental footprint, food, waste, water, transport and biodiversity
• quality of life: low cost of living, landscape, heritage, community cohesion, leisure, health care and well being

Part of this definition of a new model of change should also deal with agriculture, greenspace and the third landscape.

The value of greenspace
The dispersed nature of much of Bordeaux outside the World Heritage Site means that the city already contains much greenspace in the form of agricultural land, woodland, designed landscapes (such as parks and gardens) or simple as space left over after development has taken place or is otherwise undevelopable land in flood plains. A greenspace strategy could be a critical element of planning for Bordeaux at a metropolitan scale with significant positive implications for the economy, environment and quality of life.

In terms of the economy at a metropolitan scale, greenspaces are important as they support the local economy through food production and fuel crops. They retain skills in agriculture, wine growing and production, forestry, woodland management and related countryside activities. Greenspaces are also instrumental in defining the character of the Bordeaux area.

As a conspicuous element of the environment, greenspaces are central to enhancing the diverse character of the landscape, improving opportunities for outdoor recreation close to home and therefore decreasing the need to drive. They are also critical elements in enriching biodiversity by providing, maintaining or enhancing a complex mosaic of natural and manmade habitats.

In terms of quality of life, greenspace networks encourage involvement with the landscape either actively through care and production or passively through recreation. They can provide a canvas for engagement by individuals and families through community projects and create opportunities for public occupation and a process-driven greenspace development.

For these reasons, greenspace networks should be expressed through metropolitan strategy and planned rather than occurring as the almost accidental bi-product or leftover from real estate development. Also, as development in the metropolitan area starts to intensify around centres and transport infrastructure, there will be opportunities for the creation of new elements of the greenspace network. In this way, it is possible to develop typologies of void (greenspace) as well as typologies of built (housing, business and education) which come together critically at local centres.

• green and blue networks containing
• crop areas for food, (wine) and fuel
• diverse habitats
• gardens and other designed landscapes
• open land not in agriculture or forestry use
• social spaces and their connections with built areas

The Third Landscape
This is very much in keeping with the work of the French landscape designer Gilles Clément who has asserted for years that there should be an acknowledgement of a third landscape – or areas in which nature has gradually reasserted itself. Le Tiers-Paysage is a terrain classification describing abandoned spaces such as former industrial areas or nature reserves which are prime areas for accumulating bio-diversity and because these landscapes are places of indecision, bio-diversity thrives, giving ecological value to otherwise neglected areas. This seems to be an appropriate and inclusive way of looking at the landscape of Bordeaux which allows for the creation of a range of greenspace typologies through citizen involvement and co-design.
Summary
Bordeaux has taken remarkable steps over the past fifteen years to change perceptions, especially in the historic core. Now the time is right to focus attention on the peripheral areas and bring more structure and meaning to them, creating a balance between built and un-built and optimising the city with fewer grand projets and greater attention to concentration and intensification of the peripheral fabric.

The final report and documentation of INTA’s week in Bordeaux is available in French as a pdf here.

• the current policy context for Strathaven town centre
• our appraisal of the town centre’s physical environment
• discussions with the local community – including young people, community groups, businesses and residents – to identify local concerns, aspirations and ideas for change

The key issues relating to the physical environment of Strathaven are firstly a historic environment that is appreciated and well liked but that is in need of considerable maintenance and repair. Coupled with this, public spaces and streetscape are dominated by traffic and fall well below contemporary expectations for comfort and usability. It is a relatively heavily trafficked environment in which large goods vehicles penetrate the historic core at the expense of a comfortable pedestrian environment. Although the built environment of Strathaven town centre is attractive, interesting and largely intact, it requires some major interventions. It is dispersed over a relatively wide area and is diverse and multi-faceted but requires better social infrastructure. There is also a need to link up greenspace into a cohesive network of facilities.

From the analysis, a set of guiding principles and a programme of proposals were established which act as a framework for the action programme and act as a test for any new projects or proposals that might emerge:

• think LOCAL: Does the idea strengthen the local community and support locally-owned businesses?
• think YOUNG: Does it improve the quality of young people’s lives?
• think ENTERPRISE: Does it promote the town centre as a place to trade and exchange goods and ideas?
• think TOGETHER: Does it help local people, businesses and public services to work better together for the good of the town centre?
• think CHARACTER: Does it enhance the town centre’s charm and character?
• think OUT OF HOURS: Does it attract people to the town centre at evenings and weekends?

The programme of proposals consists of thirteen prioritised action themes. Although emerging from the local community, these have also been informed by the consultant team’s experience elsewhere. Themes which were considered to be essential by the local community included culture and heritage, the built environment, maintenance and repair, marketing and promotion, public spaces, and traffic and parking.

The recommended next steps include:

1. Identify roles and responsibilities – the Council, the Town Centre Steering Group and local organisations need to agree who will be responsible for taking forward the action themes identified in this report and then review these roles regularly
2. Input and influence strategies – successful implementation of the action programme will depend on integration with other strategies and plans, particularly future reviews of the Local Development Plan and Local Transport Strategy. We recommend that the study’s guiding themes and action programme are incorporated into supplementary planning guidance for Strathaven town centre.
3. Develop, refine and fund projects for delivery – prepare a delivery programme with outline costs, timescales and responsibilities, taking account of varying amounts of preparatory work required for different projects.
4. Ongoing promotion and PR – to ensure that the action programme takes root.
5. Further survey work – particularly on the impact of the new Sainsbury’s store on town centre businesses, we suggest around 12-18 months after its opening (i.e. mid-late 2011).
6. Monitor progress – regular review of progress using existing governance and monitoring systems.
7. Maintain dialogue – between the local community and Council officers, particularly those involved in the transport and planning functions. Successful implementation will rest upon trusting relationships and good communication between all concerned

The programme of action proposals and next steps emerging from the study will be used to inform the medium term of the local Adam’s Community Trust, as well as other stakeholders’ activities in the town including South Lanarkshire Council.

Imagine a country with around the same population as Scotland that builds Metro lines and high speed rail links, that has the ambition to build a 50 mile undersea tunnel link to another country and is built around an extensive welfare state.

Imagine the same country regularly topping international comparisons of national performance in health, education and quality of life, as well as being the seventh most competitive country in the world.

Imagine its capital city, with a similar population to Edinburgh, with an extensive district heating system, the foresight to introduce a vacuum powered district waste disposal scheme that eliminates bin collections and which is extending its tram based public transport system with six major new lines over the next few years.

Helsinki is a city of 480,000 people with a surrounding metropolitan area of around 1.3 million people. It is very similar in size to Edinburgh (478,000) and it also the capital of its country with a population slightly less than that of Scotland at 5.3 million.

It is a remarkable and beautiful city with big plans for the future which include a fast rail link to St Petersburg, promoting and developing its airport as a European hub to China and investigating a 50 mile tunnel link to Tallinn in Estonia. This is a city in which seventy percent of the land area and almost all development land is owned by the City Council. This is a city with big plans and the ability to implement them.

The city also has ambitious plans for its own expansion, particularly on to waterfront areas previously occupied by docklands and inner harbours which have moved out to a new complex at Vuosaaric on the eastern edge of the conurbation. It is expected that an additional 100,000 people will be accommodated in these new developments. A key factor in planning these new development areas is integrated public transport by Metro in part but mainly by tram.

Helsinki’s tram network is one of the oldest electrified tram networks in the world. It forms part of the city public transport system organised by Helsinki Regional Transport Authority and operated by Helsinki City Transport. The trams are the main means of transport within the city centre and 56.6 million trips were made back in 2004, which is more than those made with the Helsinki Metro.

The Finnish capital has 12 tram lines and six more on the way | pic: Creative Commons

The first tram network was established in 1890 and electrification took place in 1900. In common with many other European cities, the tram system was under threat from buses in the mid 20th century and the city decided to close the system in the early 1960s. However this decision was reversed during the early 1970s and by 1976 the network was being expanded again. Today the tram is a key part of the city’s infrastructure.

The city has a current total of twelve lines with a further six lines planned over the next few years. As well as owning almost 70% of the land area of the city, the Helsinki authorities also own the public transport system and critically, the energy company that supplies power for the tram network. This degree of ownership of the core elements of the system means that it is relatively easy to extend the network and guarantee connections to new housing areas without having to haggle with different land owners, developers, public utility owners and contractors.

Another aspect of infrastructure provision in Helsinki is the way in which it seems to happen efficiently and painlessly. Not for them the contractual disputes, delays in implementation or flaws in construction which are leapt upon by a triumphant public and trumpeted in the media elsewhere.

Perhaps it is in the dour uncomplaining Finnish character to just let other people get on with things in the knowledge that they will eventually be successful. Or perhaps they are just used to doing infrastructure provision really well.

Original article and comments

This short article was originally published in the Guardian Edinburgh under the title ‘Spotlight on trams: Bordeaux’. The Guardian has given up its local experiment so this post, together with a similar article on infrastructure in Helsinki may disappear at any time from the Guardian’s pages – hence they are republished here.

In the first of an occasional series looking at the experience of trams in other world cities, guest blogger Willie Miller finds that Bordeaux’s trams haven’t just moved people around, the ‘mobile social structures’ have changed the very development of the place.  Bordeaux is a vibrant city of 250,000 people serving a metropolitan catchment area with a population of 1.1 million and is one of the largest urban areas in France.  The city and its region are of course well known for wine but this is also a city that makes things: optical and laser research and production, aeronautical and defence industries as well as pharmaceuticals, food and electronics.

It is also a significant administrative centre and a city attractive to tourists on the basis of the wine industry, the adjacent seaside resort of Arcachon and the city centre which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The built-up area has grown swiftly in the past decade and urban sprawl was considered to be a significant problem. In common with many other European cities, as Bordeaux expanded its periphery, industries around the core of the city declined most significantly along the banks of the Garonne.

The first Bordeaux tramway dated back to 1880. In 1946 the public transportation system had 38 tram lines with a total length of 124 miles carrying 160,000 passengers per day.

This system was abandoned in 1958 as a result of anti-tram arguments including the notion that trams hindered the flow of cars through the city.
Political change

In 1995 the city elected Alain Juppé as its new mayor. He recognised the need for action to counter the strangulation of the city by transport problems and, together with a number of other initiatives, the city adopted the tramway plan in 1997 with the support of Central Government in 2000 as a Public Interest Project. This is a very European example of a politician supporting a major project rather than disowning it. The tramway network currently consists of three lines built at a cost of EURO 800,000.

The first new line was opened in December 2003 and further extensions have increased the route length to just over 27 miles with more routes planned. The system is notable for using a ground-level power supply system in the city centre to placate the views of conservationists who considered that overhead wires would threaten the integrity of the World Heritage Site. The system is operated at the moment under a five year contract by Keolis, the largest private sector transport group in France.

The overall transport system (bus-tram-rail) sees some 300,000 passenger journeys daily of which 165,000 are on trams. On average, 45% of journeys on the combined bus and tram network of the TBC are by tram. In 2008 the trams carried 54.7 million passengers. The Bordeaux tramway is one of 16 towns or cities in France running a tram system integrated with bus and rail.

Wide impact on structure
The impact of the tram on the city should not be seen just in terms of moving people around. It has had a much wider impact on the structure of the city and the way in which new development is allowed to take place. On the periphery of the city, the three tram routes define growth corridors along which development can take place. The new routes have defined new parts of the city where people live and work.

Tram stops become the focal points of new squares, the centres of new mixed use areas where employment and living space are co-located or the best way of getting to some of the city’s remarkable new spaces such as Michel Corajoud’s breathtaking Mirior d’eau opposite the Place de la Bourse on the banks of the Garonne. The tram has also allowed many traditional city squares to become areas of calm like the spaces around the Cathédrale Saint-André de Bordeaux or around Richard Roger’s Palais de Justice. Many of these spaces sit atop underground car parks so while the car can still penetrate the inner historic core, there is precious little evidence of its presence.

In Bordeaux the tram infrastructure enables easier orientation within the city. The tracks, overhead cables and stops are now permanent features of the city’s streets – predictable and stable unlike bus routes. So the tram informs and helps people to formulate a clearer image of the structure of their city. It is a feature of their communal public space.

Tram stops in the city are typically focal points in the urban fabric where local shops, bars and cafes cluster or where students meet on the way to university. This perhaps sounds like UK Regeneration speak – and it probably is – but the defining of city spaces by public transport is a part of European urbanism that predates Lord Rogers and his Urban Renaissance by a century or more.

Mobile social spaces
Bordeaux’s trams are also mobile social spaces in a way that buses can never be – the arrangement of seats and standing space seems to encourage conversation. The tram is smooth running so that café au lait need not be spilled and the discussion started at the tram stop can continue without interruption.

Trams in Bordeaux have also created more walkable streets. There is little if any evidence of a city centre traffic problem whereas before their reintroduction, there was traffic chaos. Generally, trams attract heavier usage than buses so their introduction and development has created a virtuous circle of improved diesel-free environments for pedestrians, more walking and increased use of public transport.

The brave steps that Bordeaux took at the end of the 20th century to reconfigure its transport system have effectively restructured the city and provided a new network of communal public spaces and a pedestrian priority city centre of which it can be justifiably proud. It is an excellent example which many UK cities should follow.

Original article in Guardian Edinburgh

Our starting point was that tourism development is no longer simply a case of increasing visitor numbers and footfall figures in particular locales. It is concerned with ensuring that the Council is able to improve opportunities for bringing direct economic and other benefits to local communities, raising awareness about important global environmental issues (particularly in the case of a World Heritage Site) and managing sensitive built and natural environments.

Also the Council can contribute in the widest sense to the future well-being of the area by nurturing local traditions and culture as well as being responsive to an ever more discerning traveller whose choices are increasingly boundless and whose tastes and expectations are ever more diverse and demanding.

The scope of the commission included research and audit, consultation, policy appraisal, activities and product review, funding appraisal, strategic theme development as well as management and implementation.

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.