With pressures to boost growth and cut pollution, but with limited resources, how can cities use their resources better? Only a few places such as Nottingham have been able to build trams to match comparable cities in Europe, and in much of England the car is the norm. So, are there other options? The Welsh government is developing the South Wales Metro and electrifying the old freight lines up the valleys as well as creating an integrated system through Cardiff. Their Future Generations Act may be key. Passenger Transport Executives like Midlands Connect also seem to be taking a more holistic and long-sighted approach. The largely unrecognised success of the London Overground is bringing forgotten areas to life with dense new housing around stations in East and Southeast London may show the value of regional government.
The conversation will explore the transport aspects of sustainable development. We will discuss among other issues:
- Why is transport and housing development so disconnected in the UK?
- What could we learn from Wales and London?
- How can spatial planning and GIS create better connected cities?
As with all these Conversations we would recommend you view or review the recording to get the full benefit of the panel contributions. We provide a short summary of the topics covered below.
Dr. Nigel Moor has for many years been active in local politics and has experienced both successful and less successful outcomes for transport and development. He felt that Didcot Garden Town had generated a successful business area. By contrast in his own Gloucestershire the district councils had followed their own priorities and a strategic plan for the region had proved elusive. In the Western Gateway (which stretches from Cheltenham to Weymouth) they looked at corridors, not administrative boundaries. In his view, the main obstacles to good development were (1) the dysfunctional planning system caused by frequent changes to the planning system and law; (2) inadequate funding for planners, and (3) tinkering by successive governments, most recently the proposal to ‘abolish the need for local planning authorities to collaborate’. There had been an ‘avoidance to deal with the real issues’ in particular increasing the contribution of landowner/developers to infrastructure. This he sets out in his book England’s Future. Brian Love added that the “call for schemes” approach in England did not favour proactive planning and diverted valuable resources.
Mark Barry felt that too many transport planning decisions were concentrated with a handful of people in Westminster. In Wales they have a £1bn transformational programme to use the old coal railways in Cardiff and the Valleys to create a modern transport network. It had taken more than 10 years to get from idea to construction: key was political support and getting it written into local manifestos. Long-term policy stimulated by Welsh legislation such as the Future Generations Act had underpinned the political backing. They have ambitious targets for public transport and growth around the programme. They are now using it as a catalyst, of growth and regenerating town centres having identified out-of-town shopping sheds as one of the barriers to high-street sustainability.
Julian Ware (Transport for London) summarised recent new transport infrastructure in London: Crossrail (even if a bit late and over budget), the Northern Line extension to Battersea and a new station at Barking Riverside. As well as being many years in planning Julian pointed out the cyclical nature of these investments. Battersea and Barking funding was more developer related linked to Enterprise Zone funds. The London Overground had used conventional funding and had revealed unrealised demand for orbital travel which justified Investment in better rolling stock, branding and frequency of service. Currently under discussion is another orbital line – The west London Orbital, using old freight lines centred around Brentford and linking into Old Oak Common. These are essentially suburban areas where between 25 – 50% development contributions were being sought.
Nick Falk contrasted this with a lack of ambition in places such as Oxford where studies had shown similar funding could be found for transport schemes. Julian Ware felt that ‘Land value sharing’ might be a better term and that people should be aware that the biggest gains require significant changes to the landscape such as green belt and people should accept that rather than leave it to the speculators.
In reviewing what had contributed to London successes Camilla Ween said that the GLA Act had given clear powers for the London Mayor, and TfL which had brought together 22 separate transport organisations. The was no policy guidance at the outset but the London Plan as it became bolder, made it clear what developers had to do, giving the example of bicycle parking. Background planning was important, as was an integrated transport system underpinned by crisscross-cutting themes such as air pollution which were introduced in later versions of the Plan.
Brian Love (www.connectedcities.co.uk) introduced the concept of connected cities, particularly in terms of upgrading existing railway infrastructure as rail is shown to have the lowest pollution of all transport modes. He referred to a study of the effects of the London Overground which produced 100% increases in land value in some places. Using Ebenezer Howards concept of a social city and UN data for sustainable densities he showed how this might be replicated elsewhere. He discusses how the analysis can be generated by the latest generation of software – modelling and negotiation. Their Co-plan approach focusses on using these tools to produce low-emission plans including the following stakeholders:
- Elected representatives
- Local Government Officers
- County bodies
- Transport Providers
- The Construction Industry
The principal speakers were asked for their recommendations for an incoming Government manifesto to achieve the objectives:
Should we reintroduce the original plan for the National Infrastructure Commission to produced a fully costed plan every 5 years on a statutory basis? This along with other proposals for sub-national transport planning authorities were put forward as ways of getting similar benefits to London in regional centres.
Mark Barry suggested Sub-national Transport needed ‘beefing up in terms of powers and money. Distribution and of decision-making and infrastructure investment should be devolved away from Whitehall.
Great British Railways needs to shift its remit from long distance travel to short to medium length journeys to make a serious impact on emissions.
Get all 3 tiers of government need to collaborate and contribute and to think more than 18 months ahead.
The decision process needs to give more weight to quality of life and less to finance.
Nick Falk added to these:
- More decisions needed to be made locally with different criteria
- Planning needed to be more consensual and less legalistic
- Look at European cities for examples to follow
This Conversation took place in September 2023. There is much to learn from a very experienced panel on this important and pressing topic.
Clockwise from top left clockwise – Nicholas Falk, Nigel Moor, Julian Ware, Mark Barry, Brian Love, Camilla Ween
Dr Nicholas Falk, Executive Director, The URBED Trust (chairing)
Dr Nigel Moor, former Cabinet Member Gloucs CC & author of England’s Future
Professor Mark Barry, Cardiff University
Camilla Ween Goldstein Ween Architects – Cities and Transportation
Julian Ware, Corporate Finance, Transport for London
Brian Love, Architect and founder ConnectedCities
Mark has over thirty years’ international experience in multiple industries including management consultancy, biotech, IT, finance, economic development & transport. After graduating in Physics at Manchester in 1985, Mark’s early career was in software design, development & implementation. From 1997 to 2002 he worked for the PA Consulting Group in London leading major projects for clients in Europe and North America. In 2003 he founded and was until 2009, CEO of biotech company Q Chip Ltd. Mark is the author of a number of influential reports, including “A Metro for Wales’ Capital City Region – Connecting Cardiff, Newport and the Valleys”, “A Cardiff City Region Metro: transform | regenerate | connect” and “A Cardiff Capital Region Metro: Impact Study”. In 2016, Mark also took up a role as Professor of Practice in Connectivity at Cardiff University where he is helping develop research, impact & engagement opportunities related to The South Wales Metro. Mark has his own consultancy business and provides support and advice in the fields of economic development and transport strategy to public and private bodies; he has also assisted start-up and early stage technology companies.
Camilla Ween
Camilla is an architect-urbanist and a Harvard University Loeb Fellow. She focusses on the delivery of sustainable cites, working at the intersection of transport and urban design the delivery of the UN Sustainable Development Goals as part of global urban growth. She is currently working with colleagues on the establishment of a global Peace Cities network. Previously she worked for Transport for London for 11 years advising the mayor of London on land use planning and regeneration. She is a UK Design Council Expert-Associate, member of the High Street Task Force, Board member of the Urban Economy Forum, Head of Communications for ConnectedCities, as well as member of several design review panels.
Dr Nigel Moor
Nigel represented Moreton and Stow on Gloucestershire County Council for a number of years. He was a member of the cabinet having the Planning and Environment portfolio. He has had a career in town planning for more than fifty years as an academic and consultant working throughout the United Kingdom and abroad. In tandem with this, he has been a councillor serving on town, district and county councils in Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire. A mayor of Wallingford he has both an affection for market towns and a desire to help. He is a Trustee of Cotswold Friends and chairs the Cycling Advisory Group at Gloucestershire County Council. In addition he chairs the Stow Community Land Trust. Now retired he writes regularly on planning and environmental issues for Planning in London and has published a number of books. His latest England’s Future examines the impact of politics on shaping the environment.
Julian Ware
Julian Ware is Head of Corporate Finance Funding at Transport for London.
Since 2007 Julian has worked on the Crossrail 1 project (£16 billion) seeing new funding streams through to implementation, including the Business Rate Supplement and the Mayoral Community Infrastructure Levy. He also helped put together the funding for the Northern Line to Battersea Power Station (£1 billion) and the rail extension at Barking (£200 million) and led TfL’s work on land value capture. He chaired the International Public Transport Union’s Transport Economics Committee until this summer, and now chairs the overall policy committee. Julian worked at KPMG between 2001 and 2007 mainly on international rail projects – having started his career in the UK Department of Transport.
Brian Love
Brian Q Love is a Registered and Chartered Architect, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a Member of the Policy Committee of the Town and Country Planning Association and an Associate of the Chartered Institute of Highways and Transport. He is CEO of ConnectedCities, which aims to put public transport at the heart of all new development using the ConnectedCity model based on Ebenezer Howard’s Social City