Postcard from Birmingham July 2015July 2025 MAKING STEP CHANGES Returning to Birmingham for the Academy of Urbanism Congress, where URBED sponsored a workshop on ‘How to lose your ring road and find your city centre’, I reflected on how to achieve urban change on a major scale. A city once known as the ‘Workshop of the world’, and then dominated by…
Postcard from Toulouse June 2015July 2025 With a population of almost 600,000 and 110,000 students Toulouse deserves to be much better known outside France. It is the fourth largest city with a dynamic economy, with 60,000 employed by Airbus alone (though only 200 are needed to assemble the giant planes). Grand streets and squares of tall buildings made of a pink…
Postcard from Little Germany, Bradford June 2015July 2025 SUCCESS OR FAILURE? Walking round Bradford’s historic ‘Merchant Quarter’ some 30 years after URBED first came up with a strategy for regeneration, and listening to some of those who had worked on the area, I was struck by the importance of getting the timing right, and of funding ongoing management. Of course, as David Rudlin’s…
Postcard from Colombo, Sri Lanka May 2015July 2025 A model for urban conservation A change of government after 30 years is a good time to review what is happening in the centre of this tropical island of 25 million, which for many years was notorious for human rights violations during its long civil war, and which is now attracting a lot of investment.…
Postcard from Covent Garden May 2015July 2025 THE FIRST REGENERATION AREA? Celebrating URBED’s 40th anniversary in a stylish meeting place in Dryden Street in the heart of London, the 100 acre area has clearly been transformed. Streets and restaurants now throng with tourists, and everywhere seems full. What were once workplaces for small firms have been converted into luxury apartments. London is…
Postcard from Welwyn May 2015July 2025 GARDEN CITY OR NEW TOWN? Visiting Welwyn Garden City to give the annual lecture to an audience from the WGC Heritage Trust and the WGC Society brought out the key question of what makes a Garden City distinctive. As the place where Sir Ebenezer Howard and Frederick Osborne both lived, not far from their architect…
Postcard from Paros and Athens, Greece January 2015July 2025 HALF TIME ECONOMY? Returning from helping friends pick their olives on a beautiful Greek island, I have been thinking about the model presented by Greece today, and its lessons for other weaker economies. Greece hit the headlines when the government could no longer repay its debts, following a world financial crisis in 2007/8. The figures…
Postcard from Uxcester Garden City: doubling our housing output June 2014July 2025 HOW OUR GARDEN CITIES COULD YIELD SMARTER GROWTH The announcement of the shortlist for the 2014 Wolfson Economics Prize will once more throw the spotlight on garden cities as a way of meeting housing needs. It also raises the issue of why the UK has found it so hard to build good places in recent…
Postcard from East Germany – Just do something! May 2014July 2025 The amazing revival of East German cities such as Leipzig and Dresden in Saxony offers important lessons for towns in Britain that have lost their economic roles and suffered from the resulting physical dereliction and unemployment. After decades of alien rule by the Nazis and then the Soviet Union, reunification in 1990 at an over…
Postcard from King’s Cross: crossing the divide May 2014July 2025 Having spent time as a schoolboy watching steam trains ‘streak’ out of Kings Cross Station, the transformation is truly impressive. Cubitt’s simple station building is no longer black, but has been revealed in all its splendour. It has been matched by John McAslan’s graceful new concourse, which deserves wider recognition as an architectural icon. The…
Postcard from Brussels March 2014July 2025 Valuing ways of improving local connectivity The rare chance to meet Danish liveability guru Jan Gehl over dinner followed by a trip early next day to Brussels for a conference on regional connectivity raised the important issue of how to value and assess the options of improving walking and cycling versus investing in trams and…
Postcard from Marseille and Cote d’Azur January 2014July 2025 [caption id="attachment_379" align="alignnone" width="300"] Vieux Porte, Marseille[/caption] Waterfronts create both connections and barriers. Great waterfronts also link past, present and future with images that no one ever forgets. Marseille as the largest and probably best known city in France after Paris was a good choice as European City of Culture in 2013 and has since…
Postcard from New York August 2013July 2025 Creative destruction or the creative age? As the centre of the world’s financial system, New York is in a pivotal position to act as a model for how many of us are going to work and live in the future. The economist Joseph Schumpeter argued that capitalism progresses through ‘waves of creative destruction’. Now that…
Postcard from Spain June 2013July 2025 Travelling from London to Barcelona by super-fast train offers a good opportunity to consider the relationship between investment in infrastructure and how well cities are doing. Today, thanks to the TGV, the trip takes a little over nine hours, with changes in Paris and the Spanish borders, and offers a relaxing alternative to taking the…
Postcard from Manchester May 2013July 2025 Making the most of your assets... Manchester’s city centre has undergone a renaissance over the last decade, and now compares well with many European cities. Bright yellow trams connect with the main suburbs, and out to Oldham and Rochdale (a project that was being considered in 2003/4 when URBED produced its Oldham Beyond vision). As…
