Category: Places

The collapse of the House of Cards

by Graham Galpin and Tom Hindmarch

The last few weeks have been some of the worst for retail in my memory, however it was both a disaster and an accident waiting to happen. Arcadia entered Administration on 1 December, and it was not really a surprise to those in the retail industry. What had perhaps passed some of us by was the downstream consequence of this. The house of cards is collapsing.

The cause of the collapse

The collapse of retail chains is nothing new, the arcadia group joins a long list of stores that have suffered a similar fate as traditional retailers struggle with changing market trends and consumer habits. In a recent webinar, Danny Crump (Director of Urbanism at BroadwayMalyan) identified that as recently as 1971, 70% of retail was supplied from 29,000 retailers, in contrast by 2000 this had reduced to 70% from 100. It appears to indicate a top-heavy market with limited choice and towns relying on the same big brands in their centre to compete with other urban clusters. I admit that when I was a senior local authority councillor I encouraged the pursuit of the “big names”, which in hindsight I regret.

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‘Water your neighbourhood’ in Berlin and other place management apps

by Prof Ares Kalandides

Involving residents into the planning and maintenance of the places they live in has been a constant challenge for place management. Digital platforms such as Novoville offer possibilities for citizens to report issues directly to municipal services. There is of course no guarantee that the responsible services will respond to the reports, but cities that have introduced it have a rather good track record in taking care of such information. According to the Novoville site, over 60 local authorities already use the application: some to manage parking (e.g. West Midlands), others to collect information on waste management (e.g. Athens) or to coordinate repairs and maintenance of private tenements (e.g. Edinburgh).

Berlin Giess den Kiez
Trees in Prenzlauer Berg, Berlin. They are all marked yellow as there has been very little rain in the past 30 days.

In Berlin, CityLAB – a project of Technologiestiftung Berlin – has developed the Gieß den Kiez (literally ‘Water your Neighbourhood’) platform that invites citizens to participate in a coordinated irrigation of public trees. An interactive map visualizes 625,000 Berlin street trees with information such as water demand, age, and species. This is information provided by the greenery departments of the Berlin boroughs. The most common species is the linden (‘Tilia’ or ‘lime tree’ as it is mostly known in Britain and Ireland), followed by the maple (‘Acer’), oak (‘Quercus’), plane (‘Platanus’ mostly the ‘acerifocila’ hybrid or ‘London plane’), and horse chestnut (‘Aesculus Hippocastanum’). Information on species, age and estimated required water quantity is stored, so that more can be learned about each tree with the help of search and filter functions. Daily updated data from the German Weather Service, help display how much rainwater each tree has received in the last 30 days. In addition, the platform contains useful information on the existence of public pumps, on correct irrigation (‘how to water properly’) and tree population, as well as relevant links and contact addresses.

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Look around you (If you’re allowed to?)

by Gary Warnaby

A recent post on the IPM Blog has highlighted the importance of urban green space in the time of epidemics (see https://blog.placemanagement.org/2020/04/11/the-importance-of-urban-green-in-times-of-epidemics/#more-2509), in terms of their beneficial effects on the well-being of those city-dwellers able to access them.  Indeed, in the UK, there have been media reports bemoaning the fact that so many people have sought such benefits (especially during sunny weather), that the government’s recommended social distancing protocols have not been observed because of the sheer number of people occupying these spaces.  In such situations, perhaps we have to find alternative, ‘new’ greenspaces?

In my last post on this blog (see https://blog.placemanagement.org/2020/04/10/look-around-you-exploring-your-locality-during-lockdown/#more-2495), I suggested that during the current pandemic, we need to ‘look around’, and explore more extensively the locales in which we live. In doing so, I’ve certainly found new green spaces that I didn’t know existed close to where we live.  More recently, in our local explorations, we’ve investigated another green space that we knew existed only a few hundred metres from our house, but had never ventured on before – namely, the local golf course.

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Eleusis2021 – Planning a European Capital of Culture

Eleusis as seen from the Archaeological Museum. Ancient ruins, chimneys and the harbour mark its landscape. Photo by the author.

by Prof Ares Kalandides

When Eleusis, a small industrial town in the vicinity of Athens, was appointed European Capital of Culture for 2021, people received the decision both with joy and surprise: Joy, because this town, once one of the most important ritual sites in ancient Greece and home to the goddess Demeter, was back on the map; Surprise, because industrialization has clearly left its mark on the town, whose landscape is marked by factory chimneys, large industrial complexes and a commercial harbour. However, the choice of the European Commission is not based on what the city is, but on what it can become according to the bid book. And it was the bid, with its promise of a “passage to EUphoria” that managed to convince the jury.

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