Tim Stonor

Category: Planning

  • The urban cortex

    The urban cortex

    A talk given at Lombardini22 architects in Milan on 13th May 2025.

    The idea I’d like to explore this evening is that cities serve a higher purpose than we typically credit them with, and this idea is that cities are natural extensions of the human brain. Far from being artificial, alien objects, cities work with us, their users, to help us solve the problems of our times. Cities are extensions of our brains and, just like our brains, cities are sophisticated computers.

    At least they are, if we design them well. 

    Great cities are not just beautiful to look at and stimulating to be in. They are also highly efficient human transactions machines: bringing people together to form relationships and generate outcomes. Cities are the outermost layer of our common existence. Hence the title of this talk: the ‘urban cortex’.  

    One challenge when discussing cities is that urban commentators often begin by describing cities as chaotic, that their street networks are ‘labyrinthine’. This is a lazy approach to urbanism – and not one that we share at Space Syntax. Instead, we’ve spent the last 50 years studying the apparent chaos of cities and discovering regularities within them – of spatial layout, of land use distribution, of density, mobility and the distribution of inequalities. 

    These discoveries help us both to understand cities and to better design them. 

    Cities are not chaotic. We don’t build them by chance. Within their apparently labyrinthine randomness there are structures that organise the ways we move through cities – and interact with each other within them.

    There are regularities that allow us to understand cities – not just as urban scientists might pick them apart but as every day users make sense of the places they’re in:

    • how they feel comfortable in them
    • feel like they want to visit and explore them
    • meet people in them
    • go to work in them
    • invest their time and their money 
    • have fun
    • feel excitement. 

    This is the ‘urban buzz’ that draws people to cities.  

    (more…)
  • 15-minute cities or 15-minute ‘bubbles’?

    15-minute cities or 15-minute ‘bubbles’?

    The motion at today’s Cityscape conference in Riyadh was: The 15-Minute City model will improve quality of life for all communities and can be easily scaled globally. 

    Who would choose to argue against the principles of the 15-Minute City? Walkable. Sociable. Low carbon. 

    Who wouldn’t want any of that?

    But, if not the principles of the 15-Minute City, what we should be deeply concerned about is the experience of translating those principles into practice. 

    My colleague Katya and I are going to argue against the motion from our experience of what many developers and designers are naively promoting in the name of the 15-Minute City. 

    Because what we are seeing in cities all over the world are individualistic, inward-looking, over-localised, gated developments calling themselves 15-Minute Cities. 

    Why do their proponents claim that these are 15-Minute Cities? Well, because they are relatively small, they have a mix of land uses and there’s a varying degree of infrastructure for walking and cycling. 

    But there’s typically very little, if any, public transport and the connections to other so-called 15-Minute Cities usually require the pedestrian or cyclist to cross the major roads and even highways that separate them. So these would-be walkers and cyclists usually end up jumping in a car and driving. 

    We know a lot about this in the UK because the 15-Minute City concept was at the heart of disastrous 20th Century New Town planning, even if we didn’t call them 15-Minute Cities back then.

    Communities – especially women – found themselves unable to walk easily between neighbourhoods because they felt unsafe next to fast cars or having to move through the tunnels that had been built under the highways or up, over and down the bridges that are the visible symbols of civic failure. 

    (more…)
  • World Cities Summit: leveraging the science of cities

    World Cities Summit: leveraging the science of cities

    As an architect & urban planner my principal concern is to make cities work for people. This means understanding how their streets connect to either encourage low carbon transport such as walking and public transport. Or, if they’re disconnected, do they lock in car dependence and its carbon impacts?

    (more…)
  • “7Ls” of urban planning & design

    “7Ls” of urban planning & design

    Location – where is the site and what’s around it

    Linkage – where are the principal ways into the site (can any new ones be established?)

    Layout – the pattern & hierarchy of streets

    Land use – more than housing?

    Landscape – the look and feel of the place (covers a lot eg materials, blue/green)

    Lining – how the buildings meet the street (active or blank frontages)

    Longevity – quality construction & operational expectations

  • What will cities look like 30 years from now?

    What will cities look like 30 years from now?

    I joined a carbon reduction event yesterday where, by way of introducing ourselves, we were each asked to predict the future: what did we think we would see more of in 2050 – in terms of objects, experiences and services. A neat little ice-breaker if ever there was one.

    Here are my top-of-the-head responses:

    1. Object

    Green, shaded main streets

    ⁃ fronted by shops at ground level with people living above them

    ⁃ lined by trees that provide shade, lower air temperatures, disperse strong winds and encourage walking

    ⁃ forming the centres of local neighbourhoods that are built relatively densely but that are also intensely green (green walls, green roofs, green verges

    ⁃ connected into a secondary network of slow streets that people can walk, cycle and drive along.

    2. Experience

    Conviviality: the “Urban Buzz”

    – people standing, sitting, talking and generally being present with one another, forming local communities.

    3. Service

    Data-driven urban planning & design

    – harnessing machine learning and AI-driven algorithms to create future plans and predict their impacts.

    The first two will help address the Climate Emergency by reducing transport emissions. The third will threaten the established authority of the architectural and urban planning professions, which will need to adapt to survive by accelerating their uptake of digital tools.

  • Is physical distancing possible on city streets?

    Is physical distancing possible on city streets?

    Until a vaccine is found for COVID-19, and perhaps beyond, it will be important to practise physical distancing in towns and cities.

    Whether this is possible will come down to the “carrying capacity” of the urban infrastructure: in particular, the relationship between Pedestrian Supply in the form of sufficiently wide footways and Pedestrian Demand in terms of the need for people to walk, whether that is to work, home, school, the shops or for leisure and pleasure.

    Both supply and demand are calculable using tools from tape measures to multi-variable modelling algorithms.

    Screenshot 2020-04-28 at 17.40.49

    Much well-deserved attention has been paid to the Sidewalk Widths NYC project, a digital map that “is intended to give an impression of how sidewalk widths impact the ability of pedestrians to practice social distancing.” By measuring the available width of footways, the map indicates which footways may or may not be suitable for physical distancing.

    Sidewalk width provides an important piece of the “Pedestrian Supply” equation. However, it is not on its own capable of answering the central question: is physical distancing possible?

    First because it is a one-dimensional measure and physical distancing is at least two-dimensional: it may be possible to keep 6 feet to the side of someone else, but is it possible to keep 6 feet in front and 6 feet behind? Given the length of many streets in New York City it may seem apparent that there is plenty of space to go around but the generously wide sidewalks of Times Square demonstrate that, under normal circumstances it is possible for these to be swamped with human activity and, as a result unsuitable for physical distancing under the new normal. Furthermore, it may be possible to observe distancing while walking mid-block but what happens at street intersections? Is there space to queue? Are the street lights synchronised to let one “platoon” of users cross before the next arrives behind them? Is flow predominantly one-directional (which it may often, but not always, be in the rush hour) or two-directional (as it can be at lunchtime)? One-way flows may have less of the “ordered chaos”, the urban ballet of two-way flows and so one-way flows may be more efficient.  (more…)

  • Silver linings: how design can exploit the virus

    Silver linings: how design can exploit the virus

    A “to do” list for urban planners, architects & interior designers, in response to the coronavirus.

    In towns & cities:

    • reduce traffic speeds to 20mph/30kph to discourage speeding on empty streets during lockdown & to keep the air clean, the sound low & the accidents down after the “return”.

    On wide streets:

    • broaden footways to improve physical distancing in the short term & encourage pedestrian flow in the long
    • then narrow roadways further with cycle lanes to support physical activity during lockdown & active commuting on the return.

    In public spaces:

    • provide more shade, more seats, more WiFi
    • place more seats on broadened footways so calls can be answered & people can convert from moving to sitting down…
    • …and so “I’ll call you back” becomes “Just give me a second to sit down.”

    (more…)

  • Reflecting ourselves in the city

    Reflecting ourselves in the city

    What can the form of cities tell us about the structure of the brain? And what can the structure of the brain tell us about the form of cities? These are questions that I’d like to address in this talk. In summary, I believe we can learn a good deal about the interaction between the mind and the urban places in which the global majority of people now lives.

    After all, the city is the largest intentional product of the human species. We’ve had them for millennia and, in them, we’ve manifested our societies, created our industries and developed our cultures. They are the product of our imaginations, the places where we take decisions – and they are the inspiration for new thought. The link, I want to suggest though, is not just contextual. It’s much deeper than that. (more…)

  • Cities from scratch – Astana Economic Forum

    Cities from scratch – Astana Economic Forum

    Good afternoon. I’m delighted to be a member of this panel today.

    Let me start by describing my organisation’s approach to the creation of cities from scratch.

    Space Syntax is an international urban planning and design studio and has been involved in plans for new cities and new city extensions throughout the world, including here in Kazakhstan.

    Our approach is built on three key ingredients: (more…)

  • The return of the impossible – Astana Economic Forum

    The return of the impossible – Astana Economic Forum

    Good afternoon. It’s an honour and a pleasure to be here in Astana today with this distinguished panel.

    In speaking about the cities of the future I’d like to speak about three technologies that I think are not only exciting but are also capable of genuinely addressing the “Global Challenges” theme of this Forum.

    The first is a mobility technology. The second is a physical transaction technology. The third is a digital technology.

    As an architect involved in the design of everything from new buildings and public spaces to entirely new cities, these are three technologies that I’m particularly invested in. (more…)

  • Intense relationships: measuring urban intensity

    Enriching design practice by the mapping of human behaviour patterns could transform urban space

    An article published in the Architectural Review on 30th April 2018.

    There’s much debate about how to measure density – dwellings per hectare, bedrooms per hectare or people per hectare; including or excluding major highways, parks and open spaces; the permanent population only or the transient one too? 

    While this gives urban planners something to disagree about, it risks missing the point: great urban places are not created by density; they’re created by intensity. The difference matters. When people describe the buzz of a market they don’t say, ‘Wow – it was so dense’. They’re much more likely to say how intense it was. Density is a word used by planners. Intensity is a word that real people use, and perhaps because it describes the outcomes that people experience rather than the inputs that have gone into creating them. It’s the outcomes that are ultimately more important.

    But planning professionals like density. Even though density doesn’t capture the essence of what it feels like to be somewhere, the term appeals to professional instincts. It describes the raw ingredients that planners have to handle and, once you choose which version of the formula to use, density is easy to measure. It involves a simple calculation of straightforward urban quantities such as the number of people, of houses or of bedrooms, all divided by the geographic area over which those ingredients occur. Easy.

    By contrast, intensity seems more difficult to pin down, not least because it appears to have a subjectively emotional dimension; it speaks of feelings, responses, stimuli; raising problems about how it can be measured. But intensity is also a response to context, to place and above all to people – and here we find clues to its measurement.

    (more…)

  • Intelligent mobility: risks & rewards

    第一页   技术就是答案
    Slide 1       Technology is the answer

    Slide01

    1966年，塞德里克·普莱斯说，我喜欢一开始就对新技术进行一点质疑。当然，“技术就是答案”。他也强调：“不过问题是什么？”。
    I’d like to begin with a little scepticism about new technology. Of course “Technology is the answer“, said Cedric Price in 1966. He also said, “But what is the question?”

    这些问题就是我们试图去获得无人驾驶技术。
    What are the questions that we are trying to answer in the pursuit of autonomous vehicle technologies?

    我认为仅仅从驾驶员的角度去谈论智慧出行，并不充分。 我喜欢从整个城市的角度去考虑收益。如果我们过度关注车辆而不是城市，那么风险也是需要考虑的。
    I don’t think it’s enough to talk about intelligent mobility from the perspective of the driver alone. I’d like us to think about its benefits for cities as a whole. And the risks too, if we focus too much on the vehicle and not enough on what’s around it: the city. (more…)

  • Notes from first ULI UK Tech Forum

    1. We need to have a clear definition of technology. Physical as well as digital technology. Users and uses as well as creators and providers. Pre-construction, construction, post-construction. 

    2. Because we’ve always had technology:

    a. Writing (wooden stylus & wax tablet) movement

    b. Air conditioning – occupancy

    c. Underfloor heating – occupancy

    d. The shower – personal

    e. Bicycle – movement

    f. Revolving door – occupancy

    g. The elevator – occupancy

    h. The car – movement

    i. Solar panels – occupancy

    j. The Internet – movement & occupancy

    k. Autonomous vehicles – movement

    l. Drones – movement

    m. Photofungal trees – place
    We’ve always had technology. It’s always changed. Perhaps the pace is accelerating globally (but we shouldn’t forget the industrial revolution). 

    3. What hasn’t changed is the fundamental purpose of cities: social and economic trade. 

    4. In the future, autonomous vehicles will change the nature of movement. They will permit people to be far more productive while they drive. 
    5. Another key, and consequential, change will be in the nature of physical connections, transformed from highways to streets. Connectivity (as Chris Choa suggested) as an asset. 

    6. Therefore the street as an asset. The piazza as an asset. Not just the buildings that line them. The suburban business park will go the way of the dinosaurs. 

    7. The nature of online interaction is a further area of significant new change. 

  • We don’t guess the structural performance of individual buildings so why do we guess the human performance of entire cities?

    We don’t guess the structural performance of individual buildings so why do we guess the human performance of entire cities?

    The structural steelwork of a large and complex building would not be designed without running engineering calculations. Even the smallest of buildings is subject to objective structural analysis. No client and professional team would rely on guesswork, no matter how famous or experienced the architect or engineer.

    So why do we leave the human performance of places to the whim of architects who run no calculations and rely only on their instinct and ego? Why is the science of human behaviour so poorly developed? Why is chronic failure still tolerated?

    In the early sixteenth century, William Harvey challenged the medical profession to take a more objective, more observation-driven approach to the understanding of the circulation of blood. At the time, medical thinking was largely based on the beliefs of Galen of Pergamon, who had set these out in the second century. Harvey challenged a medical mindset that hadn’t changed in one and a half millennia. And he encouraged his peers to embrace advances in science that allowed new forms of investigation.

    We can see a similar state of affairs in the prevalence of, and institutional inertia around, twentieth century planning. Based on belief, not observation-based science, a doctrinal approach to urban planning and design pervades the professions. This is the case, whether the specific approach is Modernism, the Garden City movement or (and especially) Landscape Urbanism. Each is to some degree unscientific.

    These approaches propose different kinds of urban outcomes but what unites them is a belief that the future should look fundamentally different to the form of continuously connected, dense and mixed-use urbanism found in cities for as long as there have been cities – the kind of urbanism that architects and town planners visit on their holidays.

    The kind of urbanism – and here’s the irony – that Galen would have recognised. If only architecture and town planning were stuck in a fifteen hundred-year-old mindset. We would still have vehicles on the road but we wouldn’t have vehicle dominance. We wouldn’t have land use zoning that generates long-distance commuting, traffic congestion and negative health impacts. We wouldn’t be encroaching on the rural landscape with semi-detached, density-fearing dwellings.

    Fundamental change in our professions is needed and science has an important part to play. In the spirit of Harvey’s observation-based approach, we need to embrace the new capabilities offered by sensing, analytics and modelling. We need to understand how cities truly work before we then form ideas about how to change them. We must move beyond the beliefs of twentieth century practice. The evidence is there to demonstrate that practice based on belief hasn’t delivered great places with the consistency required either by the investors in them or the users of them.

    We can learn from Harvey, even if our end goal is the urbanism of Galen.

  • Space Syntax in China

    How has Space Syntax been applied in China and are the findings different to those outside China? 

    Space Syntax is not a prescriptive planning and design methodology. Instead it is a culturally responsive planning methodology. It begins by analysing the spatial layout of urban and rural areas and studying patterns of human behaviour, land use and land value. It then shows how spatial layouts influence these patterns. And it allows planners and designers to predict the outcomes of their proposals with greater accuracy than they could before. But it doesn’t prescribe a particular solution. Instead it responds to local cultural differences.

    For this reason I am keen that Space Syntax is used by Chinese people to study and to plan Chinese cities, towns and villages. Only Chinese people fully understand Chinese life. We can train Chinese practitioners how to use Space Syntax tools, but how the findings of the research are interpreted is a different problem. It is a problem best answered by Chinese planners and designers.

  • Sustainability & resilience – a SMART approach

    Sustainability & resilience – a SMART approach

    1. Aspects of sustainability/resilience: SMART outcomes
    Social – improvements in formation & retention of social connections

    Environmental – increases in renewable energy production and reductions in energy demand

    Economic – increases in land value creation

    Health – improvements in public health outcomes

    Education – improvements in achievements/qualifications

    Safety – reductions in offending & reoffending.

    Environmental
    Urban carbon footprint is made up of:
    1. Building carbon.
    2. Transport carbon.

    Urban carbon reduction can be achieved by:
    1. Building carbon reduction – intelligent building services: heating/cooling, lighting.
    2. Transport carbon reduction – walking, cycling, public transport & less private vehicle use.

    2. Process specification: SMART inputs
    1. Integrated Urban Modelling of existing building performance and transport performance.
    2. Predictive Urban Modelling of expected development impacts.

    3. Asset requirements for SMART approach
    1. Pervasive data sensing
    2. Data mapping – centrally coordinated & then distributed eg open platform distribution
    3. Data analysis – undertaken by city, academia & industry then shared
    4. Planning & design response – use of data to create development proposals
    5. Development proposal testing – using the Integrated Urban Model.

  • Sustainable cities of the future – sketch

    Notes for keynote at UK Green Building Council Annual City Summit, Birmingham.

    1. Spatial planning & human behaviour implications of sustainability – reduction of transport carbon through shift towards walking, cycling & public transport

    2. A massive shift needed in transport + land use planning, urban + landscape design, architecture. Professional inertia. Turning the supertanker.

    3. A massive opportunity. Reason to turn.

    4. Lessons from the past eg Pompeii, Brindley Place.

    5. Examples from the present eg Darwin, London SkyCycle, Birmingham Charette.

    6. UK government: Smart & Future cities agenda is a sustainability agenda.

    7. Social inequalities dimension of sustainability.

    8. Need to act at all scales simultaneously ie there’s work for all of us to do.

    9. Challenge for modelling.

    10. Challenge for research.

    11. Challenge for practice: design, development & real estate investment.

    12. Already being acted on. The supertanker is turning.

  • Integrated Urban Planning – balancing the multiple flows of the city

    Notes for the UK-China Sustainable Urbanisation Conference in Chengdu, China on 24th September 2015

      

    My job as an architect and urban planner is to design new towns and cities – as well as new parts of existing urban settlements. This means designing the multiple systems that make up a city. We often think about towns and cities in terms of their physical stuff: their buildings. Perhaps also in terms of their roads and rails. But for me the success of any city can be seen and measured in terms of its flows, the flows of:

    • energy
    • water
    • data

    and, most important of all, the flows of:

    • people: in cars, on public transport, on bicycles and on foot.

    Each of these flows is impacted by urban development: how much of which land uses are placed where, and how they are then connected to each other. Flows impact on other flows.

    Sometimes these impacts are positive, sometimes negative. They have enormous social and economic implications.

    Urban planning is as much about designing flows as it is designing buildings.

    We live in an age of unprecedented computing power – this gives us the ability to better predict the nature of these impacts.

    This is especially important to avoid the unwanted effects of urban development: congestion, air pollution, social isolation and unsustainable stresses on natural resources.

    And computing can help create the positive impacts that are needed to support the essential purpose of cities: to be:

    • machines for human interaction
    • crucibles of invention
    • factories for cultural creation.

    The last decade has seen the emergence of Integrated Urban Modelling. My company, Space Syntax, is a leader in the field: one of the UK companies referred to by the Chancellor as contributing to China’s growth and development. Working, for example, with the China Academy of Urban Planning and Design across China in Suzhou and Beijing.

    Integrated Urban Models link the data generated by the multiple flows and reveal the interactions that help architects and urban planners create sustainable plans. Space Syntax has identified the essential role of spatial layout as the principal influence on urban performance. Spatial analytics are at the heart of our approach to Integrated Urban Modelling and we have made our discovery open source and openly available so that others can benefit too.

    The Space Syntax Online Training Platform is a freely available, web-based resource through which urban practitioners, policymakers and local residents can equip themselves with information and skills to create more sustainable urban futures.

    I’m pleased to announce that this platform is currently being translated into Chinese so that the Space Syntax’s discoveries and experiences can be more readily disseminated here in China.
    _____________

    Integration, balance, glue, pivot: space
    In many ways, urban planning is the integration and balancing of multiple flows. Integration needs glue and balance needs a pivot. Spatial layout provides both.

     

  • The future of Faversham Creek

    Address to the Faversham Creek Trust event on board SB Repertor – speaking notes

    Tim Stonor
    2nd September 2015

    Good evening. It is an honour to have been asked to speak this evening and I’m grateful to Lady Sondes, Sir David Melville and Chris Wright for their invitation. As I prepared for this evening I wondered if I had ever given a talk on the water. I thought I hadn’t and then I remembered I once spoke at a conference on board a cruise ship between Genoa and Marseille. I’m pleased to say I’d trade the crystal waters of the Côte D’Azur for the muds of the Côte de North Kent any day. 

    We are lucky to be here and lucky to be part of Faversham. Simon Foster mentioned the work I’m involved in that’s looking at the UK 50 years from now. This may seem like a long time but it’s a drop in the ocean/Creek for Faversham. Here we have at least 9,000 years of continuous human habitation. There aren’t many other places in the UK that can claim this. In fact we don’t yet know of any that can.

    And why did people first come here and then stick around for so long? It’s the Creek. First for the hunting: its game, its fish and its fowl. Then for its waterborne trade. We are one tide from London, where merchants could poise offshore, like greyhounds in the trap, waiting for fire signals from London to tell them their stock prices were high enough to catch the next tide in.

    This place is important. This water is important. Many of us feel this viscerally. Others still need persuading. How can we do that?

    I have seven thoughts. (more…)

  • Designing Resilient Cities – creating a future Avalon

    Designing Resilient Cities – notes from Day 1
    A note from the Vice-Mayor for Infrastructure to the Mayor

    cc
    Vice-Mayor for Sustainability
    Vice-Mayor for Engagement
    Vice-Mayor for Disruption
    The Public

    Avalon faces the risk of functional failure. The only way forward is to change.

    Our infrastructure is inefficient. It needs to become efficient. This is not just a question of maintenance. There won’t be enough money to run the transport network, supply water, remove waste, provide broadband. Unless the city either shrinks to a size its current economic structures can afford; or grows to create a larger tax base – so long as the city can retain control over how that tax is spent.

    The view of the infrastructure team is that Avalon should grow. But not off the back of its existing industries. These are running out of steam. The industrial infrastructure of the city needs to expand and to reinvigorate. Creative industries will be central to this.

    A new population will come to Avalon. A younger population, joining the older, wiser and more experienced population that built the city’s wealth in the 20th century. Joining young people who, having grown up in Avalon have chosen to stay there rather than take the increasingly well-trodden path elsewhere. The city has seen too much of this. Its infrastructure of talent must be rebuilt.

    And these people will need somewhere to live. Houses that are affordable. We need to build.

    But this does not mean ever further sprawl into our precious countryside – which is too beautiful and too productive to become a building site. No, it means building on our existing urban footprint. We need to find space within the city, not outside. Some of our redundant industrial sites will provide excellent places for new housing: close to transport infrastructure, with excellent, ready-made supplies of water and power. We need to look hard at the vast city parks that were built many years ago and have simply not worked as they were intended – they have harboured crime rather than nurtured culture.

    And culture is central to what we must do. Avalon needs to recapture the spirit in which it was first built: a pioneering spirit where anything was possible. Music, art, sculpture, performance: song and dance – we were good at it when we tried. The future memories of Avalon will be built on the strength of the cultural infrastructure that we put in place in the next few years.

    And to achieve all of this we need to change the way that we make decisions in the city. No more top down dictats. We need a governance infrastructure that involves everyone: participatory planning, budgeting and decision-taking. An elected mayor for a start.
    _____________

    Components of infrastructure
    Demographics
    Life satisfaction.

    Transportation
    – on ground
    – above ground
    – below ground.

    Health
    Not just
    – physical buildings

    but also
    – insurance.

    Security
    – police
    – building protection
    – wellbeing.

    Equality

    Utilities
    – water
    – gas
    – waste
    – digital.

    Green environment

    Culture
    – facilities.

    Place
    – connections.

    Diagnosis
    Avalon is…

    Set in its ways.

    Boring.

    No desire to change.

    Reliant on the public sector.

    Declining core industry.

    Few common places.

    Weak cultural identity.

    Car-reliant.

    Running out of time.

    Risks
    Functional failure
    – not enough revenue to run the city.

    Fragmentation
    – in governance, leading to rivalry and underperformance.

    Disenchantment
    – no sense of belonging.

    Disconnection
    – of people from planning
    – reinforced by physical remoteness of outlying centres.

    Civic unrest
    – class distinctions, unintegrated, breeding distrust.

    Poverty
    – when older population retire.

    Complacency

    Cultural sterility
    – no fun
    – no stimulation
    – no sense of belonging.

    Industrial stagnation
    – no innovation.

    Objectives
    Governance
    – committees to reflect areas
    – directly elected mayor
    – participatory planning
    – devolved management of infrastructure.

    Identity
    – common vision
    – campaign
    – slogan.

    Industry
    – built around the creative industries
    – attracting people from outside, not only serving existing population
    – business development area
    – enhance links to surrounding agriculture.

    Public realm
    – enhanced

    Consumption
    – reduce
    – reuse
    – recycle
    – multiple uses of each infrastructure asset e.g. reservoir is boating lake.

    Housing
    – more affordable.

    Density
    – intensify existing urban footprint rather than further sprawl.

    Connectivity
    – revitalise the centre.

    Transport
    – integrate existing modes.
    _____________

    Designing City Resilience is a two-day summit at the RIBA, 17-18th June 2015. Avalon is one of four imaginary cities being looked at during the event in a creative approach that breaks the mould of typical, presentation-only conference agendas. By engaging in a rapid prototyping exercise, delegates immediately test the ideas they have heard in the keynote presentations and on-stage discussions. They also bring to the event their own international experiences.

    The result is a two-way, creative conversation that produces a richer outcome: a set of designs for the transformation of the physical, spatial, environmental, industrial, educational, healthcare and governmental structures of the four cities.