[Music]
my day job is messing around with cities
and I’ve been doing it for quite a few
years and over that period what I’ve
learnt is there’s two different things
that happened with cities there’s all
they’re not accidents they happen
because of people but there’s two very
different processes that happen so this
sort of process here is what I would
think of as being organic it’s messy
it’s irregular it happens over time by
individuals collaborating there’s a
different sort of process which we is
also can be beautiful which is this one
but it’s very different which is where
there’s an imposed order on a city and
this doesn’t happen at the same sort of
scale it happens at a much larger scale
and it can only happen when you’ve got
an organization a royalty a government a
corporation that can shape a city to
that extent the reason I’m sort of
giving you these sort of two polls is
because I’ll talk about Birmingham and
for me Birmingham has always been the
first sort of city it’s been organic it
grew not because we’re royalty we never
had a world family that lived here but
what we did from the beginning was grow
incrementally through small businesses
creative companies to the point that by
about 1800 we were the most important
manufacturing city in the world and by
1900 our population had grown 30 fold
over two generations and so it was
astonishing it was a big powerful city
but like powerful cities often do London
at the moment it starts to trip out it
starts to get health problems
overcrowding problems so what was really
I think interesting about Birmingham in
1900
was what Joseph Chamberlain did he did
some planning but it was really
sophisticated keyhole surgery to the
city it didn’t tamper with that sort of
innate quality of the ecosystem that was
there that was manufacturing and small
businesses and small scale what he did
he imitated it with water power systems
education culture and so transformed the
city without
swinging it well I think there’s a great
lesson in that what we need to do today
what then came along and what we see
evidence of today is Urbanists and
planners never waste a good crisis
you’ll notice that so the Second World
War was too good an opportunity to miss
that’s a map of what happened to
Birmingham the red dots are high
explosive the black ones incendiary and
what happened was that government then
for the first time we got to grips with
doing big planning of Birmingham like
we’ve never done before so that coals
coal leaf structure that delicate
structure that ecosystem got chiseled
out and what we did is we stretched it
we pulled it around four motorcars to
the point that people got completely
separated from the fabric of the city
and that’s sort of carving out of that
motorway system did two things it
dislocated people from cars and from
moving around the city but it also made
the city so unattractive that it almost
collapse and combine that with a failure
of the motor industry in the 1970s
Birmingham got to the nearest point
towards death that any city has got to
probably a fall from Detroit Birmingham
City Council then did a really I think a
really interesting thing is they
repurposed the city in the 1980s around
culture business different type of
businesses non manufacturing so service
economy and then sort of also have this
plan of turning into a pedestrian city
where we reconnect parts of the city so
since I’ve been in the city one of the
things I’ve been involved with is how
you then reconnect and glue back the
city to the shape it used to be going
from 80 hectares back up to 800 hectares
and that’s pretty much where we’ve got
to today we’re on this sort of journey
of reconnecting and repairing the city
fabric but just stepping outside of
Birmingham for a moment and looking at
the wider context what you start to see
when you look at what the world’s doing
is two things are happening one is that
the population of the world is getting
more urban seventy percent of the
population now are urban they’re not
rural and this is where I show my age
when I was born in the first circle
there was only three billion people on
the planet today this over seven and a
half if I live to mic
normal life expectancy it’ll be 9
billion that’s in my lifetime a
three-fold increase in world population
that’s never happened before never
happened so what are the implications of
that on cities cities are facing a
really tough job at the moment because
they’re having to deal with a lot more
people and also with climate change
there’s more pressures on cities than
ever before so there’s two options to
outcomes for how cities can accommodate
that growth here’s a slide that shows
two two opportunities one is vote by the
way these are at scale these drawings
the one on the left is Atlanta which has
got exactly pretty much the same
population as the one on the right
Barcelona the difference is huge look
how much space Atlanta takes of now when
I started my career there was still
rumblings that suburban loose separated
communities with access to green meat
was the right thing to do I think pretty
much now we swung round and got come
full circle what we now realize is
there’s all sorts of problems with low
density huge problems with low density
first of all it uses lots of fuel you
need a car to go everywhere the second
one is that it’s socially disconnected
people from other people that’s the only
graph I’m going to show today you’ll be
relieved to hear but what it shows is
any just been published and the vertical
Skelly’s your waist circumference in
centimeters and along the bottom is
residential density so what it proves is
actually the further you push people
apart up to a point the further they are
living apart from each other from shops
and from the city and from the city core
the more unhealthy and obese they can
become because quite it’s very simple
there’s more reliance on cars and so
people don’t walk and cycle in the same
way so it would of course be a massive
oversimplification to say dense is good
low density is bad and the certain
densities we don’t want to go anywhere
near but when you start and that’s
another density that you don’t I don’t
think would be anywhere near what we
should be aspiring to because it causes
huge amounts of waste but the sort of
densities that I’m interested in are
these sort of Goldilocks densities and I
look at how it said that’s about 7,000
people per kilometer 10 New York’s
ten almost eleven and then what’s really
surprising is Barcelona’s a lot lower
but actually more dense so just coming
back to Birmingham what is what is our
density at the moment well that’s what
it is it’s half of Copenhagen it’s it’s
getting on for a third of New York and
actually if you on your journey in here
and your journey out you can see why
it’s not because actually our buildings
are too low we just got too much space
between the buildings and what my sort
of suggestion is that what we ought to
be heading towards is redefining the
city but also taking advantage of
something that we haven’t lost in
visioning our future which is this DNA
of the city which is still about
innovation creativity
entrepreneurialship is what drove the
city forward I see I still experience it
in spades this is a great city so I
think the opportunity for the city is
how you harness both of those things
together the capacity to become denser
more interesting coupled with that
creative drive so I think there’s sort
of three things that I would urge people
who’ve got a hand in shaping the city
which includes everyone in this room to
do one is to think about what that
density thing is dense because I’m an
architect maybe people think I just want
to put more buildings on every site and
fill up every site that’s not actually
the case
I also not a fan of hugely tall
buildings because they create all sorts
of problems at low level but density can
be amazing and especially when it’s
dense and messy Messi’s great I’d
imagine 19th century Birmingham was very
messy that people would live work play
in the same buildings we don’t
necessarily have the opportunity to that
because we’re regulated I think the
other one is big and small we get lots
of big planning we’ve got the big city
plan we’ve got the big railway set hs2
we’ve got we’ve always done big things
very well in Birmingham even hs1 the
canal system was pretty good but I do
think that um this small thing is so
important in what I do it’s so important
by small it’s the granular messy
stuff that you can’t really plan but
actually makes a city worth living in
going to so what are the sort of things
that are small that would make a
difference well whilst we’ve got sort of
the big city plan I think we critically
need a cycle Network which means it’s
safe to move around the city the other
thing I think we need to do is to stop
regulating people who occupy a house or
a small building and saying you can only
live in it you can’t work in it you
certainly can’t have a party in it I
mean this amount of regulation that we
face in this country which we don’t
realize exists you look at other cities
and they don’t do that I mean I think
you do need planning to stop huge bad
things happening but my goodness when
you get to small scale just let it
happen
we need to deregulate the other thing of
sorry just on that big and small thing I
will say one thing and this is a trade
secret doing big stuff is easy big
master plans big buildings have a lot
easier small stuff to do at that sort of
granular interesting messy stuff to
happen is far more tricky and that’s why
it’s very hard to achieve but when he
does it makes a bigger impact on the
city the third one is this thing called
leadership and I’m not gonna call it
government I’m not going to call it
local authorities I’m just good because
leadership is bigger than any of that
and it’s the hottest topic in what I’m
doing at the moment nobody’s really
having a heated debate about the shape
of cities or where they’re gonna get
bigger that’s inevitable what is a hot
topic is who shapes them and what sort
of governance we have I’ve got a few
thoughts on that one is to get the best
out of cities in the future I think we
need more agile ways of decision making
at the moment you talk to a planner from
elope any local authority quietly and
they’ll tell you how dull and slow and
miserable the planning process is
because it’s about legislation it’s
about stopping things happening what is
great incident should do more this is be
agile and have a vision and lead things
rather than controlling them the other
one is open I think the best governments
and the best organizations cities such
as Amsterdam Vancouver engage
universities citizens businesses and so
they work to the power of those other
businesses and they multiply their
capacity because they’re not doing on
their own the other thing is despite
mobile phones despite our ability to
text and communicate immediately to the
people running this thing today we seem
prevented or impossible to effect
planning in the same way we should be
able to do that and then the third one
is brave I think we do our leadership
whoever it is and I it will include us
needs to be braver in doing two things
one is being brave enough to set a long
distance course for where our cities
ought to go a really bold vision don’t
be brave about saying we want to be
carbon zero we wanted to this and have
some ambition about what we’re going to
do with our cities without ambition we
wouldn’t do anything Chamberlain had
ambition the other thing we need to do
is be brave enough not to control he’s
embrace uncertainty because our cities
are getting too big to try and manage
them like an unruly child I think what
we got to do is actually let it let the
city actually get its own momentum and
energy so just bringing all that to some
sort of conclusion really going back to
the first point what is this might what
is the right balance between planned and
unplanned between the organic and the
master plan well I think our cities are
certainly gonna get over the next 30
years a lot more complex a lot more
interesting and so to sort of impose
1940s rigid planning on them seems to be
completely the wrong thing to do my
recommendation is that what we would do
is have clear direction of travel travel
at the same time deregulate and release
the potential of cities by not actually
trying to cage energy but to release the
potential within cities and so just to
finish off I mean people say what are
your favorite set what are your favorite
cities Glen and I think I’m not going to
name any of my favorite cities because
we’re in one but my favorite cities
exhibit these things so all when you go
into a great city
you can tell it’s alive there’s
something about the connection between
the people and the place which means
it’s vibrant it feels alive I think the
second thing about great cities is they
are not perfect yeah this idea that
you’ve got this perfect utopian
city’s never going to happen and so the
other thing I like about cities is they
are never finished thank you very much
[Applause]
my day job is messing around with cities
and I’ve been doing it for quite a few
years and over that period what I’ve
learnt is there’s two different things
that happened with cities there’s all
they’re not accidents they happen
because of people but there’s two very
different processes that happen so this
sort of process here is what I would
think of as being organic it’s messy
it’s irregular it happens over time by
individuals collaborating there’s a
different sort of process which we is
also can be beautiful which is this one
but it’s very different which is where
there’s an imposed order on a city and
this doesn’t happen at the same sort of
scale it happens at a much larger scale
and it can only happen when you’ve got
an organization a royalty a government a
corporation that can shape a city to
that extent the reason I’m sort of
giving you these sort of two polls is
because I’ll talk about Birmingham and
for me Birmingham has always been the
first sort of city it’s been organic it
grew not because we’re royalty we never
had a world family that lived here but
what we did from the beginning was grow
incrementally through small businesses
creative companies to the point that by
about 1800 we were the most important
manufacturing city in the world and by
1900 our population had grown 30 fold
over two generations and so it was
astonishing it was a big powerful city
but like powerful cities often do London
at the moment it starts to trip out it
starts to get health problems
overcrowding problems so what was really
I think interesting about Birmingham in
1900
was what Joseph Chamberlain did he did
some planning but it was really
sophisticated keyhole surgery to the
city it didn’t tamper with that sort of
innate quality of the ecosystem that was
there that was manufacturing and small
businesses and small scale what he did
he imitated it with water power systems
education culture and so transformed the
city without
swinging it well I think there’s a great
lesson in that what we need to do today
what then came along and what we see
evidence of today is Urbanists and
planners never waste a good crisis
you’ll notice that so the Second World
War was too good an opportunity to miss
that’s a map of what happened to
Birmingham the red dots are high
explosive the black ones incendiary and
what happened was that government then
for the first time we got to grips with
doing big planning of Birmingham like
we’ve never done before so that coals
coal leaf structure that delicate
structure that ecosystem got chiseled
out and what we did is we stretched it
we pulled it around four motorcars to
the point that people got completely
separated from the fabric of the city
and that’s sort of carving out of that
motorway system did two things it
dislocated people from cars and from
moving around the city but it also made
the city so unattractive that it almost
collapse and combine that with a failure
of the motor industry in the 1970s
Birmingham got to the nearest point
towards death that any city has got to
probably a fall from Detroit Birmingham
City Council then did a really I think a
really interesting thing is they
repurposed the city in the 1980s around
culture business different type of
businesses non manufacturing so service
economy and then sort of also have this
plan of turning into a pedestrian city
where we reconnect parts of the city so
since I’ve been in the city one of the
things I’ve been involved with is how
you then reconnect and glue back the
city to the shape it used to be going
from 80 hectares back up to 800 hectares
and that’s pretty much where we’ve got
to today we’re on this sort of journey
of reconnecting and repairing the city
fabric but just stepping outside of
Birmingham for a moment and looking at
the wider context what you start to see
when you look at what the world’s doing
is two things are happening one is that
the population of the world is getting
more urban seventy percent of the
population now are urban they’re not
rural and this is where I show my age
when I was born in the first circle
there was only three billion people on
the planet today this over seven and a
half if I live to mic
normal life expectancy it’ll be 9
billion that’s in my lifetime a
three-fold increase in world population
that’s never happened before never
happened so what are the implications of
that on cities cities are facing a
really tough job at the moment because
they’re having to deal with a lot more
people and also with climate change
there’s more pressures on cities than
ever before so there’s two options to
outcomes for how cities can accommodate
that growth here’s a slide that shows
two two opportunities one is vote by the
way these are at scale these drawings
the one on the left is Atlanta which has
got exactly pretty much the same
population as the one on the right
Barcelona the difference is huge look
how much space Atlanta takes of now when
I started my career there was still
rumblings that suburban loose separated
communities with access to green meat
was the right thing to do I think pretty
much now we swung round and got come
full circle what we now realize is
there’s all sorts of problems with low
density huge problems with low density
first of all it uses lots of fuel you
need a car to go everywhere the second
one is that it’s socially disconnected
people from other people that’s the only
graph I’m going to show today you’ll be
relieved to hear but what it shows is
any just been published and the vertical
Skelly’s your waist circumference in
centimeters and along the bottom is
residential density so what it proves is
actually the further you push people
apart up to a point the further they are
living apart from each other from shops
and from the city and from the city core
the more unhealthy and obese they can
become because quite it’s very simple
there’s more reliance on cars and so
people don’t walk and cycle in the same
way so it would of course be a massive
oversimplification to say dense is good
low density is bad and the certain
densities we don’t want to go anywhere
near but when you start and that’s
another density that you don’t I don’t
think would be anywhere near what we
should be aspiring to because it causes
huge amounts of waste but the sort of
densities that I’m interested in are
these sort of Goldilocks densities and I
look at how it said that’s about 7,000
people per kilometer 10 New York’s
ten almost eleven and then what’s really
surprising is Barcelona’s a lot lower
but actually more dense so just coming
back to Birmingham what is what is our
density at the moment well that’s what
it is it’s half of Copenhagen it’s it’s
getting on for a third of New York and
actually if you on your journey in here
and your journey out you can see why
it’s not because actually our buildings
are too low we just got too much space
between the buildings and what my sort
of suggestion is that what we ought to
be heading towards is redefining the
city but also taking advantage of
something that we haven’t lost in
visioning our future which is this DNA
of the city which is still about
innovation creativity
entrepreneurialship is what drove the
city forward I see I still experience it
in spades this is a great city so I
think the opportunity for the city is
how you harness both of those things
together the capacity to become denser
more interesting coupled with that
creative drive so I think there’s sort
of three things that I would urge people
who’ve got a hand in shaping the city
which includes everyone in this room to
do one is to think about what that
density thing is dense because I’m an
architect maybe people think I just want
to put more buildings on every site and
fill up every site that’s not actually
the case
I also not a fan of hugely tall
buildings because they create all sorts
of problems at low level but density can
be amazing and especially when it’s
dense and messy Messi’s great I’d
imagine 19th century Birmingham was very
messy that people would live work play
in the same buildings we don’t
necessarily have the opportunity to that
because we’re regulated I think the
other one is big and small we get lots
of big planning we’ve got the big city
plan we’ve got the big railway set hs2
we’ve got we’ve always done big things
very well in Birmingham even hs1 the
canal system was pretty good but I do
think that um this small thing is so
important in what I do it’s so important
by small it’s the granular messy
stuff that you can’t really plan but
actually makes a city worth living in
going to so what are the sort of things
that are small that would make a
difference well whilst we’ve got sort of
the big city plan I think we critically
need a cycle Network which means it’s
safe to move around the city the other
thing I think we need to do is to stop
regulating people who occupy a house or
a small building and saying you can only
live in it you can’t work in it you
certainly can’t have a party in it I
mean this amount of regulation that we
face in this country which we don’t
realize exists you look at other cities
and they don’t do that I mean I think
you do need planning to stop huge bad
things happening but my goodness when
you get to small scale just let it
happen
we need to deregulate the other thing of
sorry just on that big and small thing I
will say one thing and this is a trade
secret doing big stuff is easy big
master plans big buildings have a lot
easier small stuff to do at that sort of
granular interesting messy stuff to
happen is far more tricky and that’s why
it’s very hard to achieve but when he
does it makes a bigger impact on the
city the third one is this thing called
leadership and I’m not gonna call it
government I’m not going to call it
local authorities I’m just good because
leadership is bigger than any of that
and it’s the hottest topic in what I’m
doing at the moment nobody’s really
having a heated debate about the shape
of cities or where they’re gonna get
bigger that’s inevitable what is a hot
topic is who shapes them and what sort
of governance we have I’ve got a few
thoughts on that one is to get the best
out of cities in the future I think we
need more agile ways of decision making
at the moment you talk to a planner from
elope any local authority quietly and
they’ll tell you how dull and slow and
miserable the planning process is
because it’s about legislation it’s
about stopping things happening what is
great incident should do more this is be
agile and have a vision and lead things
rather than controlling them the other
one is open I think the best governments
and the best organizations cities such
as Amsterdam Vancouver engage
universities citizens businesses and so
they work to the power of those other
businesses and they multiply their
capacity because they’re not doing on
their own the other thing is despite
mobile phones despite our ability to
text and communicate immediately to the
people running this thing today we seem
prevented or impossible to effect
planning in the same way we should be
able to do that and then the third one
is brave I think we do our leadership
whoever it is and I it will include us
needs to be braver in doing two things
one is being brave enough to set a long
distance course for where our cities
ought to go a really bold vision don’t
be brave about saying we want to be
carbon zero we wanted to this and have
some ambition about what we’re going to
do with our cities without ambition we
wouldn’t do anything Chamberlain had
ambition the other thing we need to do
is be brave enough not to control he’s
embrace uncertainty because our cities
are getting too big to try and manage
them like an unruly child I think what
we got to do is actually let it let the
city actually get its own momentum and
energy so just bringing all that to some
sort of conclusion really going back to
the first point what is this might what
is the right balance between planned and
unplanned between the organic and the
master plan well I think our cities are
certainly gonna get over the next 30
years a lot more complex a lot more
interesting and so to sort of impose
1940s rigid planning on them seems to be
completely the wrong thing to do my
recommendation is that what we would do
is have clear direction of travel travel
at the same time deregulate and release
the potential of cities by not actually
trying to cage energy but to release the
potential within cities and so just to
finish off I mean people say what are
your favorite set what are your favorite
cities Glen and I think I’m not going to
name any of my favorite cities because
we’re in one but my favorite cities
exhibit these things so all when you go
into a great city
you can tell it’s alive there’s
something about the connection between
the people and the place which means
it’s vibrant it feels alive I think the
second thing about great cities is they
are not perfect yeah this idea that
you’ve got this perfect utopian
city’s never going to happen and so the
other thing I like about cities is they
are never finished thank you very much
[Applause]
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