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The Land Is Ours

a landrights campaign for Britain

Cities for a Small Planet
Richard Rogers 1997
ISBN 0-571-17993-2 Faber & Faber £9.99

This book is so hip it hurts! It is square, with a pink cover, lime green title text with artsy black and white photographs. Based on his 1995 Reith lectures - Richard 'Dome' Rogers uses this little book to promote his ideas for global urban sustainability and in doing so promoting his architectural practice and his prospects for Mayorship of London.

Rogers is one of those rare breed of architects that has a social conscience and understands that their buildings must serve the needs of the city as well as the client; believing that buildings and public spaces can add to the quality of urban life.

The River Thames is promoted as a possible medium for I believe we should be investing in the idea of a 'Compact City'­ a dense and socially diverse city where economic and social activities overlap and where communities are focused around neighbourhoodsthe regRogers has close connections to the Labour administration, he co-wrote 'A New London' with Mark Fisher in 1986. Now in 1998 he gushes new-Labour speak, key words are 'inclusive', 'holistic' and 'decent':eneration of inner London boroughs. At present this strategy is in its chrysalis stage. Rogers is involved with several projects directly including the Millennium site at North Greenwich and proposals to glaze the entire South Bank with an undulating canopy.

This is encouraging to a point. However as with so many architects it is a blueprint view of urban sustainability; Rogers offers design led solutions to complex question of urban living and casually ignores the potential of input and experimentation from local groups of people. Big projects are big and sexy but they represent top down administration and trickle down economics, Londoners deserve better from their first Mayor.

The Connected City: A New Approach to Making Cities work
Robert Cowan 1997
ISBN 1-902193008 £10 Urban Initiatives

Connections are what makes successful cities. Unsuccessful cities are unconnected. The Connected City describes practical ways of:

Connecting the city's fabric. Wherever it is divided by retail parks and shopping malls, business parks and industrial estates, leisure centres, enclaves for the various sections of the housing market and other isolated and unsustainable parts.

Connecting the people who shape the city, wherever it is managed, planned and designed by outdated, over-speculative and inflexible structures of government, law, professions and agencies which operate in isolation from each other.

'The Connected City' valiantly attempts to put theory into practice, it is unusual in that it seeks to improve both the sustainability of urban society, its buildings and spaces in equal measure; ie the social and the spatial.

At the outset of most urban regeneration projects, there are often highly publicised and reported public consultation exercises such as 'Planning for Real' or Action Planning/Design, where planners, consultants, business interests and members of the public meet face to face to thrash out frameworks for change. Such events have their pro's and con's, but are a welcome change to the usual inertia or exclusivity of urban development. 'The Connected City' goes further by suggesting that such action planning should be city-wide, meaningful and permanent. Some Local Agenda 21 initiatives have intended to educate and empower city dwellers, however the uptake of interest has been low, often due to lack of faith in such consultation exercises.

This booklet is excellent for brainstorming if you are thinking of putting together an medium to long term urban based campaign, but it rhetoric doesn't equal results.

Collaborative Planning-Shaping Places in Fragmented Societies
Patsy Healey 1997
ISBN 0333 49574-8 #163;14.99

This text forms a commentary concerning the intersection of everyday urban life and the factors directing urban change. Much of this work is theoretical, and highly charged with rhetorical arguments for change, but it is useful for its explanation of why cities are the way they are. For assistance in nuts and bolts planning matters read the excellent TLIO guide to the planning system by Richard Moyse et al. Nevertheless it is an admirable work as it explains the necessity of greater input into the planning and development system from all sectors, in its operation and implementation processes.

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