Glasgow City Council have appointed a multi-disciplinary team of local and international consultants to prepare pioneering planning frameworks for the future of four City Centre Districts.
 
Urban Movement is part of the team, led by Glasgow-based Austin-Smith:Lord, that have recently been appointed by Glasgow City Council to prepare the next round of District Regeneration Frameworks (DRFs) for Cowcaddens, Townhead, the ‘Learning Quarter’ and the Merchant City districts.
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The team also includes Rotterdam-based urbanists Studio for New Realties led by Jeroen Zuidgeest who was involved in previous (Y)our City Centre DRFs as Partner at MVRDV, as well as Civic Engineers - who UM are working with on the Glasgow City Region City Deal ‘Avenues’ project - and local artist-led organistion, WAVEparticle who recently represented Scotland at the Venice Biennale and have undertaken community-led projects on High Street-Saltmarket and in Laurieston. 
 
The next DRFs will be prepared in consultation with local communities across all four Districts to respond to and enhance their distinctive local character. Working in collaboration with residents, businesses, community, civic and cultural organisations alongside major institutions including the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow Caledonian University and City of Glasgow College it is intended to develop forward-thinking plans to help shape the future of these vital city centre districts.

Like so many of us, I’ve been working from home for well over a month now; and it was on the second day of this period – while enjoying a state-sanctioned stroll around the neighbourhood – that it struck me that I’d also be doing a lot of walking from home in the coming weeks. From that thought to a hashtag was the work (or walk) of a moment; and I put out a tweet to encourage others to use #WalkingFromHome if, like me, they were posting photos of what they encountered as they did the rounds.

A couple of months ago, our friends at the London Cycling Campaign asked us to help them prepare a report to identify a package of fully-evidenced actions designed to enable the decarbonisation of the capital’s streets over the next decade. The report – Climate Safe Streets – was published yesterday, and I commend it to you. Before diving in, you might want to read the press release.

The report lays out in detail the specific decisions that the next Mayor of London must take to meet the demands of the Climate Emergency; and it also sets out what London’s boroughs will need to do in response to the Climate Emergencies they have declared. It’s the result of considerable desktop research (section 11 refers to numerous reports and articles to help you explore further) and was informed by conversations with a range of experts and practitioners having different perspectives.

Although the Mayoral and local authority elections have been postponed, the need to reduce carbon emissions remains urgent. My latest article in Local Transport Today is entitled ‘When is an emergency not an emergency?’ and I’m glad to say it doesn’t seem to be behind the usual paywall. The answer, of course, is ‘When it’s a climate emergency’ – an answer, I should clarify, that’s based on observation and experience of what climate emergency declarers have so far done, not on actual need.

LCC’s Climate Safe Streets report focuses on action in eight priority areas where the Mayor of London and Borough Councils must work together to radically change the way Londoners move about the capital, for the better. As I say in my LTT article, there either is a Climate Emergency or there is not. Those who have declared that there is must rise to the challenge, and this report is a menu from which all items need to be chosen.

I’ll close with this from LCC’s press release:
“Right now, we face a global health crisis that risks derailing action to rapidly decarbonise our transport systems, which is an absolute necessity if we’re to avoid an even more terrifying future and even larger global crises. However, the same current pandemic also represents an opportunity to reimagine how London works, shift away from our most unsustainable habits and reshape the capital to be healthier and more sustainable going forward.”

A friend recently alerted me to the presence of a Freeview channel that I’d not come across before – Talking Pictures TV (Channel 81). I was attracted to it principally because its chief output is old British films that, for some reason, I’m rather partial to. However, as a genuine bonus, it also shows a lot of old documentaries and newsreels that show aspects of British life now long past. The synopsis of one of these particularly caught my eye – “A stunningly prophetic old news feature on the motor car and its place in the world” – so I recorded it.

It’s called ‘The Motor Car’ and is seemingly one episode from a series of ten-minute documentaries that went under the title ‘Echo’. Made in 1972, I’ve been able to find out precious little more about it other than that it’s now distributed Renown Films. I found what it had to say fascinating, and thought others might, too. So, I transcribed it, as follows.

Once upon a time, just one lifespan ago, the motor car was born [ Image 1]

At first, it was a mere toddler in a world full of horses. They even measured its potential in terms of horse-power, confident it could never outpace the quadruped. But it did. And, from that moment, the car was king of the road.

Intrepid men began racing them. Other reshaped them, built more powerful engines, and made them reliable. And the process continues.

Hypnotised by the most universally practical invention since the wheel, men still seek ways of making it go faster; not that it really matters anymore.

The car has already attained a position of importance almost grotesquely out of proportion to its original purpose.
In this issue, Echo examines the monster in our midst: The Motor Car.
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[Title sequence – Image 2]

The ownership of a new, fast car is either the summit of a man’s ambition or a contribution to the world’s biggest singe disaster. It’s either a tangible piece of personal luxury or a potential killer. It depends whether you’re at the wheel or reading statistics about road accidents and the even greater menace of air pollution.

The motor car is the great status symbol, tied closely to individual masculinity and social prowess in the imagery of advertising. ‘Own a car like this and move up in the world’. 

Or, rather, come to a grinding halt.

The 500 million cars on our roads have long since begun to strangle movement in the cities, to pollute the air, and to cost untold millions in money, time and ruined lives.

But the balance sheet of the motor car’s worth to mankind has always, until now anyway, come out on the profit side. After all, the making of cars is an important part of the national economies of many countries; the ownership of cars is a barometer of national wealth in nearly all nations; and the revenue from motor taxes and petrol duty provides a big percentage of government income in industrialised states.

In short, the motor car has, until now, been too valuable a property to question.

But scenes like these [Image 3] do raise questions. Can we afford a machine which annually kills and maims hundreds of thousands of people? Has the car become a bigger menace than we can handle?

In the face of pictures like this, the answers would, reasonably, be negative. It’s not worth dying prematurely in any circumstances. But the fact remains that the car is here to stay. The advantages of the car, the truck, the bus and other automotive as a method of transport for people and things are enormous. And they’re only as big a menace as the people who drive them.

The tragedy is that, as with so many other human inventions, they can become lethal in the wrong hands. That won’t change until human nature changes.

On the other hand, this [Image 4] is controllable.

The internal combustion engine hasn’t basically altered since it was first invented nearly a century ago. It still works by drawing a mix of air and petrol vapour into a cylinder, igniting it, and harnessing the explosive force. But the fallout from this simple device is this: a gigantic cloud of water vapour, carbon and lead.

If it is allowed to build up, as it does in every city in the world, it’s a killer. Plants die and trees won’t grow; and it’s a sorry reflection on the impact of the motor car on our lives, than the best we appear able to do is plant plastic substitutes for living things; and resort to gas masks in order to live with the automobile.

Now, 70 years after the motor car caught the popular imagination, people are beginning to protest about its effect on our lives. In Stockholm, Sweden, where the United Nations recently held a conference on the environment, pedestrians have taken to the road to draw attention to the pollution hazard.

Popular demonstrations in many countries [Image 5] have put pressure on governments and, in turn, have forced automobile makers to think again about the internal combustion engine.

A clean-up campaign has been launched in many countries, aimed at reducing the volume of poisonous effluent pumped into the atmosphere. Random tests are part of it. But, so far, only the United States has laid down hard and fast regulations about exhaust content, and they won’t be effective until 1975.

Foreseeing the coming of more international regulations, nearly all the world’s major car manufacturers are now engaged in urgent research to find ways of cutting down potentially lethal exhaust emissions.
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American authorities have ruled that the toxic content of exhaust gases must be reduced by no less than 90% by the time the new law comes into force in 1975

One of the alternatives to the internal combustion engine is the electric battery. This Japanese bus [Image 6] is powered by electricity and has proved a viable commercial proposition.

But even though science and technology can produce all-electric cars like this, the idea is not popular. We all seem so committed to the petrol-driven automobile that electric cars and computerised robot transport systems like this [Image 7 of a model automated city] seem doomed to extinction before they get into production. This way, you can plug in a computer card and get driven home. But people prefer to take their own risks.

And that’s really the point. Whatever other forms of transport may have been devised by man, no-one has yet come up with a more mobile, convenient, effortless and simple method of getting from A to B than the motor car. And until someone does, the car seems likely to remain what it is: man’s magic carpet.

That being so, it is quite certain that even countries that still look like this [Image 8] will eventually modernise. Modernisation will mean mobility and mobility means the motor car. The question is not if, but how.

That will depend on those who invented a society of wheels finding a way for us all to live with its by-products. When we have controlled it and made it less poisonous, then the motor car will be what it was intended to be: the servant of the genius of man.

Although it aired last July, it was only last week that I came across a short segment from an issue of a  weekday evening news programme on 9News in Denver, Colorado. The programme is called ‘Next with Kyle Clark’ and, although I’d not heard of Kyle previously, I’ve seen him described as “a welcome breath of humility, honesty and directness”. This certainly seems to ring true from the segment in question, which I thought worth transcribing for the benefit of others.

You can also watch the segment, if you wish.

Since it almost literally speaks for itself, that’s quite enough from me.
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“If we’re going to make Denver’s streets safer for everyone – whether you drive, bike or walk – we need to acknowledge something that is both obvious and uncomfortable.
You don’t own the street in front of your home. 
We, the public, own the street in front of your home; and my home.
‘Our Streets’ is more than just a protest cry; that’s a factual statement. Our streets belong to everyone, so that everyone can get from here to there with as little fear of being killed as possible. 
I get that people like living on pretty streets. Arguing for aesthetic appeal while bodies are being lifted off the pavement is a bad look. And it’s a worse argument.
I also love Denver’s history. But not more than your life, or mine. The people arguing that making our streets safer ruins our history need to be honest. They’re not really arguing for historical preservation. They’re asking for the preservation of the present.
Because this (see historic photo above) is the history of South Marion Street Parkway. A dirt street; a horse and a carriage; a drainage ditch down the centre. I don’t hear the people fighting the protected bike lanes there calling for cars to be banned, or calling for parking to be eliminated, all in the name of history.
No. They just don’t want any more accommodations for cyclists. 
These preservationists of the present want the status quo, not history.
The status quo that makes it all too easy for drivers to kill our neighbours.”

At this years' National Urban Design Summit in Birmingham, organised by the Urban Design Group, Christopher Martin presents his ideas for better urban lives - focusing on how we should design to influence behaviour first and foremost - leading with our natural desire for fun.