27 October 2014, 3:00 - 7:30 pm

Summit on
Plot-Based Urbanism
Advancing agendas in research, practice and policy
Hosted by: Sponsored by:
Seminar Room 3, Third Floor
James Weir Building,
75 Montrose Street
G1 1XJ - Glasgow
2
There is a drive towards the
creation of more compact
and diverse urban settlement
patterns in new places
and towards the repair of
suburban ones. Likewise there is
increasingly acceptance that in
more fnancially strained times
low-key plot-up approaches
to regeneration of older urban
settlements are likely to become
more relevant than ever before.
J. Tarbatt, The Plot
Summit
on
Plot-Based
Urbanism
Background
With an increasing trend towards single-use, suburban developments
on large plots, we are in the process of losing the diverse, close-
grain urban fabrics that once served as the foundation for our most
beloved streets and fourishing town centres. This has provoked urban
designers and town planners, academics, community organizations
and governments at all levels to rethink how to achieve more
sustainable approaches to contemporary placemaking. Based on
the fundamental importance of the plot in urban development, plot-
based urbanism has recently re-emerged as an updated approach
to compact, sustainable urban design and masterplanning.
Plot-based urbanism is built upon earlier traditions of placemaking
and claims to inform urban planning and design strategies in a way
that is not only conducive to incremental growth and mixture of
land uses and tenures but also minimizes adverse economic risks,
encourages informal participation, and respects local culture. Now
that it is receiving growing attention in academia, practice, and local
governments in the UK and Europe, there is no better time to bring
together leading voices in the discussions surrounding plot-based
urbanism and set new agendas, establish collaborations, and move
towards practical implementation in research, practice and policy.
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Summit
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Plot-Based
Urbanism
Summit Programme
Keynote and Panel Discussion
3:00 Introduction
Keynote Address
3:20
Returning to the frst principles of urbanism
Charles R. Wolfe, Principal, Attorney at Law and author of Urbanism Without Effort
Session 1
3:50
Recalibrating the plot for mixed-use buildings
Jonathan Tarbatt, John Thompson & Partners
4:10
The Popular Home Initiative using plot-based approaches
Kelvin Campbell, Smart Urbanism
4:30 Q & A
4:40 Break
Session 2
5:00
Urban regeneration in Glasgow through plot-based
development: The Botany, Maryhill
Gordon Barbour, Glasgow Housing Association
5:20
Control and Transitional Edges: Towards a socio-spatial
morphology for plot-based urbanism
Kevin Thwaites, University of Sheffeld
5:40
Plot-based urbanism: Experiences in developing countries and
UN-Habitats latest activities
Salvatore Fundar, UN-Habitat
6:00 Q & A
6:10 Break
Session 3
6:30
Town centres and the power of plot-based change
Diarmaid Lawlor, Architecture and Design Scotland
6:50
Grow your own Garden City plot-by-plot
David Rudlin, Urbanism Environment and Design
7:10 Q & A
7:20 Close
4
There is a drive towards the
creation of more compact
and diverse urban settlement
patterns in new places
and towards the repair of
suburban ones. Likewise there is
increasingly acceptance that in
more fnancially strained times
low-key plot-up approaches
to regeneration of older urban
settlements are likely to become
more relevant than ever before.
J. Tarbatt, The Plot
Summit
on
Plot-Based
Urbanism
Abstracts & Bio
Principal of Charles R. Wolfe, Attorney at Law and Author
Chuck provides a unique perspective about cities as both a
long time writer about urbanism worldwide and as an attorney in
Seattle, where he focuses on land use and environmental law. In
particular, his work involves the use of sustainable development
techniques and innovative land use regulatory tools on behalf of
both the private and public sectors.
Returning to the frst principles of urbanism
Charles R. Wolfe, Principal, Attorney at Law and author of Urbanism Without Effort
In order to create vibrant, sustainable urban areas for the long term, we must frst
understand what happens naturally when people congregate in citiesinnate,
unprompted interactions of urban dwellers with each other and their surrounding
urban and physical environment, also known as urbanism without effort.
The keynote will compare the basic similarities between urbanism without effort and
plot-based urbanism. Through an illustrated tour of Urbanism Without Effort (Island
Press, 2013), the keynote will argue that underlying rationales for urban policy,
planning and regulation are best understood from a historical perspective and in a
better understanding of the everyday uses of urban space. Charles Wolfe will draw
upon his years of writing about urbanism as well as his professional experiences as
a land use and environmental lawyer, and will provide case study vignettes from
everyday urban life. Wolfe will argue that successful community is among the frst
principles of what makes humans feel happy, and therefore city dwellers invariably
celebrate environments where and when they can coexist safely, in a mutually
supportive way.
Wolfe will also explain how such community is often most interesting when it occurs
spontaneouslyseemingly without effort. He will conclude with suggestions of how
to frst isolate these spontaneous and latent examples of successful urban land use,
before applying any prescriptive government policies or initiatives.
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Plot-Based
Urbanism
Urban Designer and Author
Jonathan is a qualifed urban designer with 20 years of experience
in the public and private sectors in the UK, Australia and Ireland.
The depth and breadth of his experience and education in the
feld, together with his academic background in urban geography
and sociology, has given him a multi-disciplinary perspective and
a unique level of expertise in the built environment.
Recalibrating the plot for mixed-use buildings
Jonathan Tarbatt, John Thompson & Partners
Plots are the smallest increment of land holding. This means they can be developed
differently from one another, and at different times, providing a substrate for
generating diversity of building form that can support other forms of diversity in the
built environment, including variety and a close grain of mixed-use buildings and
mixed communities. This is the key to understanding their place-making potential.
But how small is too small, and how big is big enough?
The presentation explains the relevance of traditional close-grain vertically mixed-
use building typologies (living over the shop) to plot-based urbanism, and why plot-
size matters. It argues that to be viable in todays market, new mixed-use plots must
be confgured so that the resultant buildings are able to meet modern standards
and expectations. This is more complicated for mixed-use plots than it is for single
uses, because in order to design something with no detail a plot it is necessary to
know, or at least anticipate, all the detail.
Following a review of how design coding for plots is currently approached in the
Netherlands and Germany, the presentation suggests how an alternative approach
that focusses on the performance of key syntactic relationships - between
buildings, plots, streets and land-uses could help to revive the fortunes of this
endangered building typology, bringing with it the potential to regenerate the
positive characteristics of traditional mixed-use centres in new places. It concludes
by questioning how new mixed-use local centres are currently procured in the UK,
suggesting a development model that makes the provision of mixed-use plots more
attractive to stakeholders, is the key to unlocking this potential.
6
There is a drive towards the
creation of more compact
and diverse urban settlement
patterns in new places
and towards the repair of
suburban ones. Likewise there is
increasingly acceptance that in
more fnancially strained times
low-key plot-up approaches
to regeneration of older urban
settlements are likely to become
more relevant than ever before.
J. Tarbatt, The Plot
Summit
on
Plot-Based
Urbanism
Urban Designer and Co-Founder of Urban Initiatives
Kelvin was the founder of Urban Initiatives, an internationally
recognised urban design practice based in London. Formerly
Visiting Professor in Urban Design at the University of Westminster
and now a Visiting Professor at the Centre for Advanced Spatial
Analysis at the Bartlett, University College London, he is known as
one of the leading fgures in his feld.
The Popular Home Initiative using plot-based approaches
Kelvin Campbell, Smart Urbanism
How did housing become so diffcult? Our basic instinct is to create shelter, but today
we seem unable to do so. We have a massive problem and things are not getting
better. 325,000 new homes are needed for London alone by 2025, but construction
costs for housing are 40% higher than our mainland European counterparts and
there has been a 50% loss in housing capacity in recent years. Our construction
industry is also now 20% less effcient than it was 20 years ago. Put these facts together
with a lack of fnance and new ideas to solve the problem, and we have a serious
challenge one than cannot be solved by using our old models. Housing is not
about the products of high design; it is about the good normal, and we have lost
sight of what this means and urgently need to discover our new urban vernacular.
There are stumbling blocks to housing recovery that are well known. How can we
open up the housing market to a wider set of players? How can we get the benefts
of replicability without sacrifcing design quality? How can we speed up delivery
through the planning system? These are just a few questions that our work on the
Popular Home Initiative seeks to address as we explore inroads into the delivery of
medium density family housing based on a plot-based urbanism approach. There is
no better time like now to get things moving.
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Urbanism
Gordon is the Development Manager for Wheatley Group, where
he is responsible for Glasgow Housing Associations new build
housing programme in the city, which has completed over 1,100
houses since 2003 and which currently has an annual budget
of around 25 million. Before his career in housing he was an
architect in private practice.
Urban regeneration in Glasgow through plot-based
development: The Botany, Maryhill
Gordon Barbour, Glasgow Housing Association
Glasgows population is expected to grow signifcantly in the next 25 years, after
decades of decline. At the same time it has, as a legacy of population loss and
economic change, a large amount of well-located urban land lying vacant or
derelict, most of which is publicly owned. With limitations on the construction of both
subsidised social housing, and housing for sale by private enterprise, conventional
methods themselves will not be suffcient to prevent displacement of future housing
development to green-feld sites on the urban periphery. A plot-based approach
might therefore offer an appropriate means to unlock the housing development
potential of much of this vacant land in the city.
The plot-based approach to tackling the regeneration of vacant sites in Glasgow will
be considered from the perspective of housing development, moving away from
conventional large-scale master planning which has been shown to lack resilience
in the face of changing economic conditions. This might be replaced by more
open-ended and organic master planning, providing greater access to housing
development through individual participation and small-scale investment, while
setting clear and coherent planning parameters for regenerated neighbourhoods.
The potential for such an approach in the case of Maryhill is investigated, with
thoughts on how it might be presented, as a viable option, to support new housing
environments for people in the city.
8
There is a drive towards the
creation of more compact
and diverse urban settlement
patterns in new places
and towards the repair of
suburban ones. Likewise there is
increasingly acceptance that in
more fnancially strained times
low-key plot-up approaches
to regeneration of older urban
settlements are likely to become
more relevant than ever before.
J. Tarbatt, The Plot
Summit
on
Plot-Based
Urbanism
Senior Lecturer
Dr. Thwaites researches and teaches in the Faculty of Social
Sciences (University of Sheffeld), where his work focuses on the
development of theory and practice in Experiential Landscape
and Socially Restorative Urbanism. He was the former Course
Leader for Undergraduate Programmes in the Landscape
Architecture Department at Leeds Metropolitan University and has
also worked in private practice.
Control and Transitional Edges: Towards a socio-spatial
morphology for plot-based urbanism
Kevin Thwaites, University of Sheffeld
This presentation will outline a new urban spatial structure called the transitional
edge, which connects social sustainability and human well-being. John Habrakens
discussion about the structure of the ordinary built environment is combined with spatial
concepts from Experiential Landscape research to form an analytical framework. The
resultant transitional edge spatial structure provides an important conceptual thread
reconnecting social and spatial dimensions of urban form to inform planning and design
decision making for urban sustainable living.
Active edges have broad recognition for their relevance to the encouragement of social
life in urban realms. Nevertheless, the practical application of this remains hindered by a
paucity of focused design guidance that can draw together urban spatial organisation
with human well-being. The transitional edge concept addresses this limitation through
an anatomical structure representing different elements of socio-spatial building blocks
for urban settings. This forms the basis for demonstrating the importance to human well-
being of providing edge settings with a wider range of spatial extent than is currently
evident.
The presentation will illustrate examples of the social benefts that can accrue from its
application, emphasising in particular: the signifcance to human well-being and self-
esteem of adaptable spatial structures; how spatial structure and material arrangement
can give inhabitants better control over the balance of privacy and social interaction;
and how soft green margins in transitional edges can deliver eco-system services
and restorative benefts in urban environments.
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Plot-Based
Urbanism
City Planner
Mr. Fundaro is an experienced architect and city planner
currently working as a consultant at the United Nations Human
Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) Urban Planning and Design
Branch (UPDB) in Nairobi, Kenya. He has worked on several
projects in Nairobi and around the world, helping to design, plan
and coordinate more sustainable planned city extensions and
infll developments.
Plot-based urbanism: Experiences in developing countries and
UN-Habitats latest activities
Salvatore Fundar, UN-Habitat
United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) supports countries in
developing urban planning methods and systems that address the current challenges
of urbanization. It promotes urban planning and environmental management
approaches to address climate change mitigation and adaptation in urban areas,
as well as urban biodiversity, urban mobility and energy in the context of sustainable
urban development.
Cities face an enormous backlog of services and housing. There is indeed an urban
planning crisis: the unplanned city is largely ineffcient and requires increasing
resources to make it more functional and liveable. In order to further advance
innovations, UN-Habitat proposes: (1) planning in advance of population increase
and leveraging plans for revenue creation through value capture; (2) planning at the
scale of the problem, particularly the projected growth of the urban population; (3)
planning incrementally, starting with streets and following with water and sanitation,
drainage, energy and lighting, transport, etc.; (4) planning for density and mixed
land use; (5) providing urban networks for sustainable mobility and sustainable
energy. In addition, the UN-Habitat Urban Planning & Design Branch (UPDB) has
established a planning laboratory to provide direct support to projects in the feld
through the development of plans and designs. This presentation will share two of
the latest UPDB planning laboratory experiences in developing countries based on
the Planned City Extensions & Infll model.
10
There is a drive towards the
creation of more compact
and diverse urban settlement
patterns in new places
and towards the repair of
suburban ones. Likewise there is
increasingly acceptance that in
more fnancially strained times
low-key plot-up approaches
to regeneration of older urban
settlements are likely to become
more relevant than ever before.
J. Tarbatt, The Plot
Summit
on
Plot-Based
Urbanism
Diarmaid is Head of Urbanism with Architecture + Design
Scotland. An urbanist, with a multi disciplinary background, he
has worked for almost 20 years on projects involving the shaping
and implementation of change for clients in Ireland, the UK and
Europe, for the public, private and tertiary sectors.
Town centres and the power of plot-based change
Diarmaid Lawlor, Architecture and Design Scotland
Town centres ft the too hard box: too hard to understand, too complex to manage,
too small to matter. The big economic narrative of place is about cities, and their
regions. In this, towns are part of the story of other places.
Imagine though, the town centre as a set of fxed spaces which can be re-purposed,
plot by plot, in clusters, and along streets. A massive civic estate, a place with its own
story. Imagine the town centre as a place for public service collaboration, small and
medium enterprise, new forms of participation, creative uses of space, new reasons
to be. Imagine town centres as the best way to deliver collaborative public services,
in places people want to be, in ways that matter.
Imagine the only challenge was to tackle the art of the possible. Imagine we failed
to deliver this potential because we imagined the route was too hard.
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Summit
on
Plot-Based
Urbanism
David Rudlin manages URBED (Urbanism Environment and Design)
and is also a director of the URBED Trust. He is a planner by training,
a founder Academician of the Academy for Urbanism and the
winner of the 2014 Wolfson Economics Prize.
Grow your own Garden City plot-by-plot
David Rudlin, Urbanism Environment and Design
URBED has been interested in the plot based urbanism since the late 1970s when
we developed the idea of balanced incremental development. In our book,
Sustainable Urban Neighbourhood, frst published in 1999, we explored the idea of
the trellis and vine. The trellis is the masterplan and the vine is the city that grows onto
the framework created by the plan. We even postulated in the book that the way
to create a good place was to draw a plan, divide it into small plots, auction the
plots and allow them to be developed with no rules whatsoever. This of course was
a ridiculous idea that could never happen, except that it is the way that most of the
urban areas that we love were built.
It is only recently that we have had the opportunity to explore these ideas in practice
and I will talk about three projects currently in our studio. The frst is work on Custom
build with the developer igloo, the second is our Wolfson Prize winning essay, and
the third is a competition entry in Germany where we are exploring a continental
approach to plot based development at much higher densities. This work is at an
early stage but already it is throwing up a series of issues with the level of regulation,
construction and the interaction with the planning system. These I will explore in my
contribution.
Department of Architecture
James Weir Building
75 Montrose Street,
Glasgow - G1 1XJ
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Summit
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