By Jekaterina Ancane & Chris Wade, The People & Places Partnership
Here we consider the lessons learnt through working across many communities, to refine our approach to transforming public spaces as part of the wider revitalisation of our town and city centres. Our guiding light in this, is to try and bring local expectations and experiences of transforming public spaces, closer together.
Below, we outline four guiding principles for applying with partners that we consider essential in transforming public spaces within town centres.
1. Stakeholder engagement and pride in place
Engaging with stakeholders is a constant in the way we work to plan and deliver the revitalisation of town centres at the People & Places Partnership. It is core to the revitalising town centres toolkit that we developed nationally for the Local Government Association.
We begin our involvement in local revitalisation planning by engaging with key partners, businesses, residents and visitors to understand their perceptions and priorities for a town centre. This helps us understand the importance given to public spaces alongside a wide range of related and unrelated issues. Parking will typically top the concerns for businesses, whilst improving the business mix will often be customers top priority.
As outlined in our recent article on monitoring pride in place, we use the phrase as a new proxy for how we have always sought to track the way our work can help people feel good about where they live and work. Improved public realm can have a role in boosting such local pride. It is, though, important to plan for any redevelopment of public spaces in the context of other known priorities identified through stakeholder engagement.
When it comes to the management and potential redevelopment of public space, we understand that this can seem a threatening and contentious issue for certain stakeholders. We advise careful engagement with key stakeholders including businesses that adjoin the space, event organisers and town centre users with accessibility needs. Through such engagement and involvement, we aim for an improved public realm to contribute positively to people’s wider sentiments about the town either through boosting local pride in place or increasing the appeal for visitors.
2. Use of space and movement around town
In considering the evolution of public spaces, firstly we take a step back. We consider first how the space facilitates and encourages movement around the wider town centre. How does it serve as a focal point for people’s journeys into and around town and how accessible are the surrounding streets? This includes consideration of managing access by car, bus, bike, mobility scooter and of course on foot.
We consider how the use of the space might evolve to complement the role of other public spaces in the town centre including for events, markets, play, hospitality and informal seating. We also consider the current and potential nature of businesses and buildings that adjoin the space and surrounding streetscape.
A big part of how we do this is collecting measurable evidence and understanding of use, experience and movement around the space and wider town centre. Understanding footfall and foot-flow around town is an important part of such planning, managing and monitoring changes to town centre public spaces and their use.
3. Quality of public spaces
Our next step is to take a closer look at the public space itself with local partners and design specialists. We focus on creating a mutual understanding of the visual quality, heritage and design of the space so that it can evolve to strengthen its character and better serve the local needs.
Streetscape and public realm is one of six functions of town centres that we covered in the LGA revitalising town centre toolkit. Our approach to gauging the quality of public realm is to involve place leaders in beginning to assess it against objective qualities that influence the experiences of local users and highlight opportunities where enhancements might be made. We do this using our public realm impressions criteria alongside placemaking design principles such as character, ease of movement, legibility.
Our approach is to work with specialists who can bring stakeholders with them in creating detailed, distinctive and deliverable proposals for transforming public spaces and their use.
4. Deliverable and manageable
We understand that local stakeholders do not operate to the same timeframes as council planners or design consultants. They are necessarily impatient, will also likely feel the ‘bumps in the road’ more and be cynical of delays.
Instead of advocating town-wide masterplans that can leave doubt hanging over a town centre for a decade or more, we advocate site-specific design frameworks and more detailed and deliverable development briefs. Businesses, landlords and potential investors value such clarity. Communities will show less cynicism and take confidence from deliverable schemes developed through close engagement and co-production.
Where planners, politicians and place-makers might see long-term transformation, businesses and customers see pro-longed disruption. It is vital that the enhancement and redevelopment of key public spaces is carefully managed at every stage. Issues such as access to businesses and their temporary or permanent relocation need to be handled with great care. Temporary or permanent changes to the ways users move around a town centre, need to be carefully monitored and managed.
A Spanish City story
The story of the Spanish City in Whitley Bay (pictured above) is an example of the transformation of public realm that brought an iconic building back into use, remodelled the surrounding public space and connected it to the wider refurbishment of the adjoining promenades. As the People & Places Partnership we worked with North Tyneside Council in 2020, to consider the next steps in the recovery and revitalisation of Whitley Bay. This included using Proximity Future’s foot-flow monitoring technology to guide increased movement between the seafront and target enhancements to the public realm in other parts of the popular seaside town.
Tales from a second Spanish city
As a regular visitor to Madrid, I have been able to track a transformative programme of investment in public spaces and streetscape of a second Spanish city! Foremost within this has been the transformation of the city’s Plaza España by making the space more user-friendly and placing it at the centre of new walking routes. As these sketches and video show for the winning proposal, “Welcome to Nature“, extensive consultation resulted in a scheme with 1,000 more trees; improved accessibility; play areas and greatly reduced traffic. The creation of 1.5km of new landscaped footpaths connects the Plaza España to many of the city’s major monuments east and west, including the landmark Parque del Oeste, the Royal Palace and the main city thoroughfare of Gran Via.
Coalescing expectations and experiences
Our hope in clarifying our approach to transforming public spaces in this way, is to play a part in coalescing stakeholders’ expectations and experiences as part of the wider town and city centre revitalisation. We want to counter the cynical calls of “oh no, not another plan” by helping local authorities to bring stakeholders with them in preparing deliverable proposals that target key spaces and enhance users’ experience of the wider town.
More information
Find out more about trends in tackling other town centre issues including the post-pandemic direction of travel and a measurable response to tackling empty shops.
Read our topical tips on putting together a winning Shared Prosperity plan.
The People & Places Partnership are creators of the Local Government Association’s national guidance for local leaders on revitalising town centres toolkit. This toolkit includes practical guidance on approaches to post-COVID 19 recovery planning and levelling up, with a methodology that can be used in Shared Prosperity Fund investment planning and delivery.
