URBED+

Greater Manchester Spatial Framework

URBED and the MSA worked together on illustrating the second draft of the Greater Manchester Spatial Framework, communicating the future strategy for housing, jobs and infrastructure. Drawing on her research for an upcoming monograph, Dr Lucy Montague reviewed innovative and iconic spatial plans throughout history to the present day, exploring what made them successful. This was used to inform the development of a visual report by URBED who produced a visual narrative to accompany the GMCA’s policy document; a spatial portrait of Greater Manchester and a graphically driven summary of the methodology and strategy behind the plan.

Neighbourhood Retrofit

A high proportion of UK residential stock is terraced housing, a typology that has been incredibly robust over time. But there is a critical challenge with this dominant housing type – how can it adapt to contemporary sustainability targets, to rising energy costs and to the implications of climate change? Building on URBED’s earlier work in the Sustainable Urban Neighbourghood Initiative, this scholarship funds PhD research on ‘Retrofitting Neighbourhoods: Exploring approaches to sustainable residential retrofit at neighbourhood scale’. The successful applicant will be based partly in the MSA and partly in the URBED coop office in a consultant role working directly with practitioners, community organisations and clients engaged in retrofit to actively support the research.

Innovation Towns

As one component of a larger study into tech towns for China Design Centre, researchers at MSA developed a series of international case studies to inform business and public sector decision-making on investment for innovation and growth through this approach to urban development. The final report ‘Smart Cities: Capitalising on the Digital Revolution, authored by Nicholas Falk and Richard Simmons and presented in Hangzhou, reviews the meaning and application of ‘smart growth’ principles to urban development and draws on examples of seven cities that are in the forefront of the digital economy.

Atelier LULU

In 2018 Manchester School of Architecture launched postgraduate Atelier LULU Landscape + Urbanism in partnership with URBED. The aim of the Atelier is to provide architecture students with a greater understanding of masterplanning and urban design by bringing together the research expertise of MSA and the practice experience of URBED. Various members of the URBED team are involved in weekly design and technical tutoring, giving lectures and leading specialist workshops.

100 Year Street

This collaboration between URBED+ and Squash Liverpool will address how research organisations and community partners can best develop knowledge sharing and engagement methods using social and spatial networks so that we can engage communities in long-term planning for sustainability with a focus on food and energy. URBED+ will support Squash through technical workshops and site visits to achieve the 100 Year High Street – their vision to overcome food and health inequalities with self-sustaining, inclusive and harmonious food production by transforming Windsor Street into a productive resource for the local neighbourhood using a series of highly progressive permaculture interventions.

Tales of the High Street

Most initiatives to support high streets in the last 25 years have done little more than slow down the process of decline but there are places that have bucked the trend. The usual implication is that these exceptions are the result of ‘good practice’ which other town centres just need to learn from. But they are more than this, they are personal stories of extraordinary people, local circumstances and years of community action. We will be illustrating the stories of a hundred high streets across the UK, both positive and negative, to inspire and illuminate the diversity and grass-roots nature of high street success.

Funder: 1851 Royal Commission Built Environment Fellowship 2019
Date: 2019 - 2021

4x4 Manchester

4x4 Manchester is an annual series of public urban design debates and occasional specials. It aims to challenge how professionals think about their discipline be that architecture, urban design, planning, sociology, transport engineering, real estate or landscape architecture. Instead of inviting architects to talk about their buildings or authors their new book, we promote real debate about the state of our cities, stimulated by interesting, diverse and provocative speakers who are asked to address different topics. Themes in recent years have included ‘Money, Love, War and Freedom’ and ‘Creation, Destruction, Domination and Resurrection’.

Housing Audit

URBED+ sat on the Advisory Group and contributed fieldwork assessments for the Housing Audit for England, co-ordinated by Prof Matthew Carmona at the Place Alliance (UCL) and CPRE, supported by a professional network of specialist contributors. This is the first national audit of this kind. By studying 100 large-scale developments across England it will provide a crucial baseline against which to measure progress on place-making in new housing developments going forward. The report will be completed in the autumn and will feed into the work of the Government’s Building Better, Building Beautiful commission.