thank you
I wish I could add live like that but I
can’t I gotta do a 10-minute talk that I
did at the bar festival and the talk
that I’m gonna do is actually one of
three talks that were set up as part of
the bar festival to think about the
future of bar and I talked alongside
Peter Clegg who’s an architect and
Andrew grant who’s a landscape architect
and I think I was encouraged to be or to
in a way present a piece of polemic
about the future of bar because I’ve
lived here for 20 years and I have no
political allegiance but I’ve become
frustrated by the lack of vision in the
leaders in both city councils so in a
way take this with a pinch of salt or
take it as you please
first it’s worth reminding ourselves of
the importance of the city
I’ve lost my first slide already but
that doesn’t matter it’s worth reminding
ourselves of the importance of the city
because in a few generations we’ve gone
from a world of 2% urbanized to over 50%
and in my lifetime we might go to 80%
cities are quite literally saving the
planet but only of they’re dense in
simple terms half the world lives on 1%
of the planet and 90% of the world lives
on 10% of the planet if you want to save
the world go easy on the rhetoric and
move to a city the big change in recent
years is the rise of the mega city in
the developing world because they still
offer the best hope for education
conservation of land and decreasing
birth rates but with this the small
compact city such as Bath is still
really important in terms of offering a
sustainable model of how we might live
and in many ways bath could be the model
small city cities now are going through
a kind of Renaissance but 40 years ago
cities were destitute people wanted to
move to the suburbs cities cities like
New York London were hollowed out and
because of that space in city centers
became incredibly cheap which of course
enabled important cultural events to
happen such as punk in London disco in
New York and even bath was cheap and it
was cheap in Bath case because it was
threatened with demolition bath also
couldn’t easily spread because of the
protection by the Greenbelt and the
National Trust which has saved it from
sprawl but it was also saved by Adam
Ferguson
Festo the sack of Bath which I’ll come
back to so those cities have undergone a
kind of renaissance they’re also
worryingly over commercialized much
public spaces commercialized
we’re often tourists in our own cities
you have to pay twenty five pounds to
get the shard and so on and in bath our
library is still one of the only piece
of interior non-commercial public space
and the public realm feels like one of
the primary obligations of any City but
let’s also look at other things that the
other key things need to be addressed in
bar for it to thrive into the future and
the list of things in no particular
order are housing work space green
setting and transport the creation of
baths was an extraordinarily progressive
act bath is not now a progressive place
none of the political leaders we have in
the castle can think big the only model
they have is one that has gone before
the only strategy they have is to
achieve strategic objectives which
amounts to little more than rhetoric
bath was only created because somebody
thought very big other cities and
countries have no problem in thinking
big Cambridge has just completed an
astonishingly in-depth vision for 2065
and think Holland now with all of the
issues they have around housing
transport sustainability they’re being
sold with a number of grown pawns a
showing of course that development can
be a force for good and a progressive
act development Abarth is not now
generally a force for good or a vehicle
for positive change on any significant
level once bath presented a vision of
the future was a really modern piece of
urbanism although recently I did hear
somebody describe it as the best example
of untamed free-market speculative by
wide boy developers when it was built
what path did do survives well what Bath
did well survives in many way it was and
still is a small Democratic low-energy
resilient and contextual city but Barth
is showing no signs it can develop or
adapt in a way that retains what’s good
about its past but looks to the future
bath was democratic because the small
houses were similar to the large houses
they were made from the same low energy
low-tech material locally quarried to
oolitic limestone and typically all
houses address the street understanding
of course that a house has a great
responsibility to its context its
neighbors and the public realm than it
ever does to itself
new housing in bath is not generally
democratic it’s not affordable it’s not
resilient and it’s not good urban ism
think of this new housing a longer look
with the warminster road or the little
communities of executive houses it could
be anywhere and are on the way to
nowhere
adding limestone housing does adding
limestone cladding does not make these
buildings contextual it’s the urban
principles of bath that make it such a
good City one of the delights of Bath is
to walk from one edge to the other
through a set of urban spaces cities are
not about individual buildings and
nowhere demonstrates this better than
bars we’re building as a backdrop often
it seems that any housing is okay and
bath if like this it’s a fake facsimile
of the past and the only thing
considered is whether it has bath stone
or not
johnathan glance see wrote in The
Observer about bath during the whole
band hoo-hah any color you like
as long as it’s beige the challenge for
bath is the 80% of the fabric of many
cities changes every 50 years bath can’t
easily change but it could be denser and
density is the lifeblood of a city
curiously – housing a bath has become
something to be feared rather than
something that can add vibrancy young
people and life getting rid of existing
social housing certainly isn’t helping
Fox Hill is described by the developer
Kuro as a pocket of deprivation in an
otherwise affluent Ward their answer is
to socially cleanse Fox Hill by
replacing hundreds of is extinct how
homes with private market there were
luxurious poa townhouses if you have to
ask you probably can’t afford it
the critical question though is how
should and could bars take new housing
and the choices are you go out you go up
or you infill I would argue that you
should infill until you really can’t
anymore and this is still a long way off
if you look at really dense cities and
then go up and I would argue a few
taller buildings and baths would be fine
importantly I think the bar should never
spread the green hinterland is
non-negotiable
although pockets of density within and
separated by its green hinterland would
be fine this is what both Eastern
Barford both Hampton are part of the
metropolitan district of bath but
separated by open landscape workspace is
the next critical issue bath prides
itself on its gray day workspace which
is the tired me
Heelys expression for stagnant
overpriced middle-ranking outmoded
office space this is not the space that
the 21st century creative industries and
startups need what they need is spaces
like this almost all you need for
interesting things to happen is space
that is cheap central and flexible all
the things that bath doesn’t offer in
terms of its workspace small cellular
Georgian townhouses don’t offer
workspace that’s good for creative
industries who need informal open
planned spaces to share ideas with
others but of course the biggest problem
is not the physical aspect of the
existing office space but instead a
counsel who won’t subsidize workspace
while many of its buildings stand empty
creative workspace can’t happen unless
there’s a political will for it to
happen I was part of a group that
attempted to get the mixed use crane
works off the ground and the old
Stardust and pit buildings on the river
where there will be some creative work
space but it isn’t subsidized and we
need three or four or four or five crane
works in bath to supply creative work
space and capitalize on younger people
moving out of London as
commercialization and loss of freedom
and freedom of movement kills it London
has a specific policy on subsidizing
artist studios which bath doesn’t
there’s a universal rule for any city
which is that if you subsidize creative
work space interesting people move in
interesting things happen if you’re
interested in money money follows
creativity creativity never follows
money and also a bigger big problem for
me as that bath has no significant Art
Centre in the center of town which
supports Fringe activities and finally
on to transport clearly the one big
issue is to Park and Ride or not it has
been established on equivocally that the
introduction of a park-and-ride won’t
reduce carbon emissions or improve air
quality or reduced congestion and will
inflict significant harm on the world
heritage site by compromising the
relationship between the city and its
open green landscape setting the
councilmember responsible for Transport
has claimed that the site of the
park-and-ride
can’t be seen unless he has alternative
facts these are the facts of how the
park and ride will look from Bana down
row so the savior of Bart’s traffic or a
white elephant designed for nothing more
than short-term political gain
you can decide the biggest threat to
bartend is not one thing it’s not
individually the lack of housing or work
space or major cultural the lack of
a cultural facility or the lack of
joined up thinking about transport it is
in fact politics bath is hamstrung by an
inept council and out-of-date business
leaders all of whom reporters appear to
support council cuts in arts and
education any change needs political
will although I’m a designer design is
90% politics it’s worth turning back to
Adam Ferguson who wrote the sack of Bath
for an objective view of bath Adam has
never lived here he’s nothing to gain
he’s not a Koran he’s not a radical
lefty in fact he’s a Tory MEP how
strange it is to hear those two things
together now and a journalist Adam came
back to Bath relatively recently on the
40th anniversary of the sack of Bath to
comment on the 2009 Baynes core spatial
strategy options consultation he called
the council statement weasel words he
said a great fund of these weasel words
came in that now diff’ent mostly written
in the tautological impenetrable mind
numbing planning speak which persuades
the most diligent lay reader it has
something to hide
Adam continued it was long and words
like visioning locational place-based
and vibrancy and parameters it had plans
or worthy strategies for delivering the
vision to deliver strategy objectives
and even once to facilitate delivery of
facilities one typical flourish in that
vapid under uneducated bombast declared
that meeting the special objectives of
the sustainable community strategy for
the district as well as the council’s
corporate vision and its eight
priorities will be the key objective of
the core strategy so the objective was
to meet objectives who writes that kind
of drivel who accepts it why more than
anything else though what bath needs to
secure its future is incredibly simple
it’s not cable cars Park and rides
executive housing in these cheap work
space urbanism joined up thinking on
transport protection of the green spaces
around the city as vision as good as
Cambridge’s for 50 years hence not the
next election cycle and most importantly
the academic and political will for
these things to happen
you
I wish I could add live like that but I
can’t I gotta do a 10-minute talk that I
did at the bar festival and the talk
that I’m gonna do is actually one of
three talks that were set up as part of
the bar festival to think about the
future of bar and I talked alongside
Peter Clegg who’s an architect and
Andrew grant who’s a landscape architect
and I think I was encouraged to be or to
in a way present a piece of polemic
about the future of bar because I’ve
lived here for 20 years and I have no
political allegiance but I’ve become
frustrated by the lack of vision in the
leaders in both city councils so in a
way take this with a pinch of salt or
take it as you please
first it’s worth reminding ourselves of
the importance of the city
I’ve lost my first slide already but
that doesn’t matter it’s worth reminding
ourselves of the importance of the city
because in a few generations we’ve gone
from a world of 2% urbanized to over 50%
and in my lifetime we might go to 80%
cities are quite literally saving the
planet but only of they’re dense in
simple terms half the world lives on 1%
of the planet and 90% of the world lives
on 10% of the planet if you want to save
the world go easy on the rhetoric and
move to a city the big change in recent
years is the rise of the mega city in
the developing world because they still
offer the best hope for education
conservation of land and decreasing
birth rates but with this the small
compact city such as Bath is still
really important in terms of offering a
sustainable model of how we might live
and in many ways bath could be the model
small city cities now are going through
a kind of Renaissance but 40 years ago
cities were destitute people wanted to
move to the suburbs cities cities like
New York London were hollowed out and
because of that space in city centers
became incredibly cheap which of course
enabled important cultural events to
happen such as punk in London disco in
New York and even bath was cheap and it
was cheap in Bath case because it was
threatened with demolition bath also
couldn’t easily spread because of the
protection by the Greenbelt and the
National Trust which has saved it from
sprawl but it was also saved by Adam
Ferguson
Festo the sack of Bath which I’ll come
back to so those cities have undergone a
kind of renaissance they’re also
worryingly over commercialized much
public spaces commercialized
we’re often tourists in our own cities
you have to pay twenty five pounds to
get the shard and so on and in bath our
library is still one of the only piece
of interior non-commercial public space
and the public realm feels like one of
the primary obligations of any City but
let’s also look at other things that the
other key things need to be addressed in
bar for it to thrive into the future and
the list of things in no particular
order are housing work space green
setting and transport the creation of
baths was an extraordinarily progressive
act bath is not now a progressive place
none of the political leaders we have in
the castle can think big the only model
they have is one that has gone before
the only strategy they have is to
achieve strategic objectives which
amounts to little more than rhetoric
bath was only created because somebody
thought very big other cities and
countries have no problem in thinking
big Cambridge has just completed an
astonishingly in-depth vision for 2065
and think Holland now with all of the
issues they have around housing
transport sustainability they’re being
sold with a number of grown pawns a
showing of course that development can
be a force for good and a progressive
act development Abarth is not now
generally a force for good or a vehicle
for positive change on any significant
level once bath presented a vision of
the future was a really modern piece of
urbanism although recently I did hear
somebody describe it as the best example
of untamed free-market speculative by
wide boy developers when it was built
what path did do survives well what Bath
did well survives in many way it was and
still is a small Democratic low-energy
resilient and contextual city but Barth
is showing no signs it can develop or
adapt in a way that retains what’s good
about its past but looks to the future
bath was democratic because the small
houses were similar to the large houses
they were made from the same low energy
low-tech material locally quarried to
oolitic limestone and typically all
houses address the street understanding
of course that a house has a great
responsibility to its context its
neighbors and the public realm than it
ever does to itself
new housing in bath is not generally
democratic it’s not affordable it’s not
resilient and it’s not good urban ism
think of this new housing a longer look
with the warminster road or the little
communities of executive houses it could
be anywhere and are on the way to
nowhere
adding limestone housing does adding
limestone cladding does not make these
buildings contextual it’s the urban
principles of bath that make it such a
good City one of the delights of Bath is
to walk from one edge to the other
through a set of urban spaces cities are
not about individual buildings and
nowhere demonstrates this better than
bars we’re building as a backdrop often
it seems that any housing is okay and
bath if like this it’s a fake facsimile
of the past and the only thing
considered is whether it has bath stone
or not
johnathan glance see wrote in The
Observer about bath during the whole
band hoo-hah any color you like
as long as it’s beige the challenge for
bath is the 80% of the fabric of many
cities changes every 50 years bath can’t
easily change but it could be denser and
density is the lifeblood of a city
curiously – housing a bath has become
something to be feared rather than
something that can add vibrancy young
people and life getting rid of existing
social housing certainly isn’t helping
Fox Hill is described by the developer
Kuro as a pocket of deprivation in an
otherwise affluent Ward their answer is
to socially cleanse Fox Hill by
replacing hundreds of is extinct how
homes with private market there were
luxurious poa townhouses if you have to
ask you probably can’t afford it
the critical question though is how
should and could bars take new housing
and the choices are you go out you go up
or you infill I would argue that you
should infill until you really can’t
anymore and this is still a long way off
if you look at really dense cities and
then go up and I would argue a few
taller buildings and baths would be fine
importantly I think the bar should never
spread the green hinterland is
non-negotiable
although pockets of density within and
separated by its green hinterland would
be fine this is what both Eastern
Barford both Hampton are part of the
metropolitan district of bath but
separated by open landscape workspace is
the next critical issue bath prides
itself on its gray day workspace which
is the tired me
Heelys expression for stagnant
overpriced middle-ranking outmoded
office space this is not the space that
the 21st century creative industries and
startups need what they need is spaces
like this almost all you need for
interesting things to happen is space
that is cheap central and flexible all
the things that bath doesn’t offer in
terms of its workspace small cellular
Georgian townhouses don’t offer
workspace that’s good for creative
industries who need informal open
planned spaces to share ideas with
others but of course the biggest problem
is not the physical aspect of the
existing office space but instead a
counsel who won’t subsidize workspace
while many of its buildings stand empty
creative workspace can’t happen unless
there’s a political will for it to
happen I was part of a group that
attempted to get the mixed use crane
works off the ground and the old
Stardust and pit buildings on the river
where there will be some creative work
space but it isn’t subsidized and we
need three or four or four or five crane
works in bath to supply creative work
space and capitalize on younger people
moving out of London as
commercialization and loss of freedom
and freedom of movement kills it London
has a specific policy on subsidizing
artist studios which bath doesn’t
there’s a universal rule for any city
which is that if you subsidize creative
work space interesting people move in
interesting things happen if you’re
interested in money money follows
creativity creativity never follows
money and also a bigger big problem for
me as that bath has no significant Art
Centre in the center of town which
supports Fringe activities and finally
on to transport clearly the one big
issue is to Park and Ride or not it has
been established on equivocally that the
introduction of a park-and-ride won’t
reduce carbon emissions or improve air
quality or reduced congestion and will
inflict significant harm on the world
heritage site by compromising the
relationship between the city and its
open green landscape setting the
councilmember responsible for Transport
has claimed that the site of the
park-and-ride
can’t be seen unless he has alternative
facts these are the facts of how the
park and ride will look from Bana down
row so the savior of Bart’s traffic or a
white elephant designed for nothing more
than short-term political gain
you can decide the biggest threat to
bartend is not one thing it’s not
individually the lack of housing or work
space or major cultural the lack of
a cultural facility or the lack of
joined up thinking about transport it is
in fact politics bath is hamstrung by an
inept council and out-of-date business
leaders all of whom reporters appear to
support council cuts in arts and
education any change needs political
will although I’m a designer design is
90% politics it’s worth turning back to
Adam Ferguson who wrote the sack of Bath
for an objective view of bath Adam has
never lived here he’s nothing to gain
he’s not a Koran he’s not a radical
lefty in fact he’s a Tory MEP how
strange it is to hear those two things
together now and a journalist Adam came
back to Bath relatively recently on the
40th anniversary of the sack of Bath to
comment on the 2009 Baynes core spatial
strategy options consultation he called
the council statement weasel words he
said a great fund of these weasel words
came in that now diff’ent mostly written
in the tautological impenetrable mind
numbing planning speak which persuades
the most diligent lay reader it has
something to hide
Adam continued it was long and words
like visioning locational place-based
and vibrancy and parameters it had plans
or worthy strategies for delivering the
vision to deliver strategy objectives
and even once to facilitate delivery of
facilities one typical flourish in that
vapid under uneducated bombast declared
that meeting the special objectives of
the sustainable community strategy for
the district as well as the council’s
corporate vision and its eight
priorities will be the key objective of
the core strategy so the objective was
to meet objectives who writes that kind
of drivel who accepts it why more than
anything else though what bath needs to
secure its future is incredibly simple
it’s not cable cars Park and rides
executive housing in these cheap work
space urbanism joined up thinking on
transport protection of the green spaces
around the city as vision as good as
Cambridge’s for 50 years hence not the
next election cycle and most importantly
the academic and political will for
these things to happen
you
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