Invitation for 14 May 2024

You are invited to a short event, put on by students of the Bartlett School of Planning to showcase some of the work done in the past year. It will be 1200-1400h including light refreshments and take place in the UCL South Cloisters. This is on street level, immediately beside the Main Quad on Gower Street WC1E 6BT.

The show will mainly feature work done as part of modules but will include a small presence from the BSP/Just Space Knowledge Exchange. That in turn will be the launch for a pamphlet prepared by students about the work done with Just Space in 2022-23. You can download the pamphlet here

final_justspace-2022-2023_march-2024Download

Later this summer term there will be a workshop to which all those who participated in the Knowledge Exchange this year or in previous years will be most welcome, together with the community people who worked with them. Daniel Fitzpatrick will be in touch about a date.

See the previous post for a summary of what we have been doing this year.

Introduction workshops

Two well attended workshops were held in early term 1 for BSP students where they learnt about potential projects they could develop knowledge exchange and support community groups across London with local planning issues. The projects proposed came from wide range of areas from east to west London, covering many issues, and some interesting common themes have been emerging. The discussion which followed ranged from examination of tall buildings and debates on density, the strategic implications of our regional transport infrastructures and how local people’s voices can be articulated, the governance issues of Opportunity Areas, the challenges of developing alternative planning tools and processes, including community audits; and the importance of developing archives for this work through different media. We hope this work will contribute more to these themes and discussions. The projects we hope to run are the following:

1. Just Space and the London Plan:
   • Lifetime Neighbourhoods and the development of a community audit: Working with two community groups in Southall to produce an Community audit, which could then be presented to the London Plan team as an example of what could be learnt, particularly in areas earmarked for significant development eg Opportunity Areas and town centres
   • Tall buildings: Policy changes since 2000s has led to a proliferation of tall buildings across London with planning guidance in terms of townscaping and heritage impacts and assumed density/ efficient use of land. Considerations now should have to include environmental costs, relationship to the driving up real estate values and the blighting of sites. Using a large archive of planning documents from Waterloo, a desk-based piece of research on tall buildings will be useful to feed into London Plan response.
2. Hayes Community Plan: Following de-industrialisation, designation as a Housing Zone, then Opportunity Area, Hayes is facing huge housing and employment pressures. A Community-led plan would be useful to study existing proposals for town centre, housing and employment and develop some serious responses in terms of community facilities, including health, youth, play provision, genuinely affordable housing, open spaces etc
3. Old Oak Common Development Corporation: The corporation which covers the Old Oak and Park Royal Opportunity Area is the site for the new High Speed 2 station and enormous development pressures due to ambitious targets for housing and employment. Two plans have emerged. In Old Oak West the SPD needs a critical analysis in light of Local Plan and wider policies and ambitions. The Old Oak North plan has stalled, but local community would like it revisited and the project will seek to come up with some solutions to the abandoned developments, use of industrial lands and poor connections.
4. Barking Riverside: Thameslife Community Development Trust operate in the Barking Riverside Opportunity Area. Students have been working here for some years. The brief is open but the main issues are a lack of democratic governance which needs more transparency and community ownership, missing services as social infrastructures are lacking, a grim environment with some great possibilities for green infrastructure and some bad land use transitions throughout this site, which sits on the north bank of the Thames.  
5. Convoy’s Wharf, Deptford: This large vacant site has gone to planning but the local community groups Voice4Deptford and Pepys Estate Forum would like work done to allow for some aspects of the proposed development to be revisited, including the historical wall as a heritage asset; how the build out could proceed better with ideas and interventions; conserving the historical Tudor Causeway along the shoreline.
6. Highline Camden: Proposals to turn a section of the overground into a highline has been enthusiastically championed by a local business-led charity; but the implications on local residents are unclear as well as the wider strategic transport implications as more east-west rail infrastructures across north London will be needed in coming years. Is this a good “meanwhile” project, or a strategic mistake in the making?
7. Somers Town, KX film archive: Some old film footage has been found which is an important historical record of a very distinct neighbourhood near UCL. This needs reformatting and archiving/cataloguing properly, with the possibility of organising a film screening with the People’s Museum of Somers Town. https://aspaceforus.club.

The Just Space conference also is coming up, so we hope some of this work can feed into that. We will aim to hold two more workshops – in January 2024 and May 2024 to discuss the work produced and learn about new projects. More on these events soon.

>> Email Daniel Fitzpatrick if you are interested in any of these projects d.fitzpatrick@ucl.ac.uk

>> More about Just Space: JustSpace.org.uk and on X (aka Twitter) @JustSpace7

Welcome, October 2023

Welcome to the Just Space knowledge exchange programme with the UCL Bartlett School of Planning in the academic session 2023/24.

The School of Planning has collaborated for many years with Just Space, the network of London community and grassroots organisations which support each other on planning issues. These relationships enrich both research and teaching in the School. Just Space contributes to various UCL modules and helps to run this knowledge exchange programme.

In the knowledge exchange programme students and staff contribute to the work of Just Space or one of its member-groups, as well as engaging with community responses to the London Plan and other Plans and consultations. This activity is coordinated by Dr Daniel Fitzpatrick. The current London Plan came into force in 2021 but started its life in 2016 when Sadiq Khan was elected mayor. The process of developing a new Plan is due to start in 2024 so this is a crucial period.

More about Just Space: JustSpace.org.uk and on X (aka Twitter) @JustSpace7

More about the knowledge exchange programme UCLjustspace.wordpress.com

Briefing sessions will be on the 12th and 18th October for those who may be thinking of taking part. 12^th Thursday 5-7pm and 18^th Wednesday 3-5pm. Watch this space for final details.

Meanwhile email Dr Daniel Fitzpatrick d.fitzpatrick@ucl.ac.uk if you want to express an interest.

Many talks in this induction week may have mentioned Just Space. The talk by Michael Edwards on the London Plan this Friday 29th September, which incorporated a lot of GLA material, will be available on YouTube and linked here. In the mean time the slides from this talk are a download here. There are links and reading suggestions on the final slides. Later: here is the video recording:

https://ucl.zoom.us/rec/share/SPtL5LuCR5UWh_YtWFfgUw7SOm7gjq5ElIFtMSQRe9r_wmCCdiXYXQ20z8axFaE.iVQycSX1m_VZJfXf
Passcode: L$ei5.1K

Another, and more polemical, talk by him from earlier in the week is a download here but there is no video.

Last year we invited some colleagues to a panel discussion on the London Plan and they made some further suggestions of links and readings.

Briefings in May 2023

There are two final briefings in this session, where students report on their work in the knowledge exchange programme between Just Space and the Bartlett School of Planning. The next session in the knowledge exchange programe will begin in September 2023.

Opportunity areas: 12 May

During 2022 and 2023 Just Space has been engaging with the Planning and Regeneration Committee of the London Assembly on a whole range of matters. One major issue – on which Just Space has been a consistent critic all this century – is the ongoing use of Opportunity Areas as a planning mechanism. 

This briefing follows the publication of a draft of a new report authored by Jason Katz and Michael Edwards on Opportunity Areas. Following the long-standing tradition of collaborative research at Just Space, the draft of the report is now published here and is open for community comments, which will be taken into consideration in the editing process. The report joins up the narratives of community criticisms of OA policies and implementation, summarises the small gains which have been made through engagement with the GLA, and prepares the ground for Just Space to consider how it will engage with the preparation of the next London Plan.

A video recording of this (hybrid) event will be posted here. About 40 people took part: students and Just Space members.

The slide presentation from the meeting (linked) includes references to published research and resources on Opportunity Areas.

The Just Space web site has the up-to-date story about Opportunity Areas and other engagements with the London Assembly.

Final briefing: 26 May 1500h-1700h

The final briefing will bring together short presentations from groups of students who have been working with Just Space member organisations, together with representatives of some of the organisations. If you wish to take part please book and come along. If your student group would like to present your work let Daniel Fitzpatrick know as we are building up the programme. d.fitzpatrick@ucl.ac.uk

Register on Eventbrite

Update

This is a temporary post and will soon be replaced with a proper update.

Students have been working n a number assignments with Just Space organisations this session and a number of workshops have been held to discuss the work in progress. A fourth one is taking place on 8 February Just Space BSP students knowledge exchange – Workshop #4 (2022-23)eventbrite.com

UCL & Just Space 2022/3

1 October 2022. Within the induction week for new students of planning at UCL a lecture on the London Plan was followed by a panel of academic and community commentators and then by open discussion in which successive community challenges to GLA Plans took centre stage and the new Community-led Recovery Plan for London was briefly explained – much as it had been presented to the London Assembly earlier this month.

The slides from the event are available here as a PDF and a video is on the BSP YouTube channel. The video version includes the panel and plenary discussions.

Celebrating UCL student work with Just Space

June 8 2022 zoom meeting with UCL staff and students and some community group representatives.

Watch the recording of the meeting here.

References

Links mentioned during the meeting in chat or slides

Link to short DPU News post on Covid Sound Map project: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/development/news/2021/mar/msc-udp-and-just-space-audio-map-launched-tool-amplify-diverse-community-voices-london

          Link to Audio Map: https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=107p1NdUf6HN9u7qQSCnTLhWWLMtAPLdT&ll=51.54620490000001%2C-0.0729375999999915&z=12

Bartlett Network of Engagement is here: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/research/impact-bartlett/bartlett-community-engagers and the email is  publicengagement@ucl.ac.uk

See here on JS submission to London Assembly on OAs and Mayoral Development Corporations: https://justspace.org.uk/MDC

• JustSpace.org.uk
• UCL BSP housekeeping on collaboration UCLjustspace.wordpress.com
• London Plan and Mayor’s Recovery material at London.gov.uk
• Jennifer Robinson & Kattya Attuyer, OPDC capturing value, London style, in International Journal of Urban and Regional Research IJURR 2020 https://bit.ly/39hx4il
• Barbara Lipietz, Tim Wickson, Dana Sousa-Limbu and Richard Lee introduce the project on community impacts of Covid-19 done by staff and students at the DPU, UCL with Just Space. https://www.thebartlettreview.com/features/mapping-lockdown’s-impact-on-community-planning-groups
• Email Michael Edwards M.Edwards@ucl.ac.uk
• Or contact@JustSpace.org.uk about the recovery plan

Celebrating work with Just Space 21/22

UCL staff and students are invited on 8 June 1100-1300h BST to join us for a virtual celebration of Bartlett work with community & activist groups in London’s Just Space network. This activity has been supported over the years by successive departmental heads in Bartlett Planning and from time to time by grants and awards from UCL Public Engagement. This is a change of date.

It has been very challenging during the pandemic for communities to maintain their activity and for us to maintain the long tradition of UCL students and staff working with them to support their actions in neighbourhoods and London-wide.

This year groups from the Bartlett School of Planning have been working in Barking and Dagenham where the Thames Ward Community Project is supporting residents of council estates and new “affordable” and market housing in the biggest Opportunity Area programme in London. Others have been supporting the MOPS campaign in central Hackney, exploring alternatives to a purely commercial redevelopment of Tescos. A few have also been helping Just Space groups prepare evidence for the London Assembly Planning Committee on Opportunity Areas and on Mayoral Development Corporations. 

And when Covid-19 hit, community organisations were unable to meet face to face and the large cluster of such groups in the Just Space network resolved to cooperate through virtual meetings to elaborate a set of proposals and demands from the grass roots which respond to the emergency. The process was managed through a large number of small zoom workshops in which UCL student volunteers played important roles in briefing, recording and synthesising, mentored by the Just Space co-ordinator. Some DPU and Urban Studies students have also contributed valuably. Bartlett Hon Prof Michael Edwards was involved in the final editorial stage and other Bartlett staff at various points in generating the Community-led Recovery Plan for London.

It’s a great innovation in method and a remarkable document in content, capturing some of the injuries and inequalities experienced by contributors, but also solidarity and creative energy.  You can read it at JustSpace.org.uk/recovery where you will also find an annex substantially due to our student Sion Lee.

What we are arranging is for some of the students and community people to present what they did and follow with a panel discussion with reactions from UCL guests, including the office of the Pro-Provost (london), UCL Public Engagement people and from students and staff.

The event is, of course, free. A zoom link will be sent to those who register at eventbrite:
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/celebrating-ucl-work-with-just-space-tickets-344682413377

While this particular event is aimed at UCL people before some disappear for a summer break or for research, other meetings centred on the Recovery Plan will be held, both here and at JustSpace, aimed at discussion among community and wider participants. Follow @JustSpace7 on Twitter or look at JustSpace.org.uk/events

Earlier posts on this site contain links to the content of some of these projects.

New plans in Hackney, Barking and for London’s recovery

16 February 2022 Update

Bartlett students have been playing a crucial role in the production of the 

JustSpace Recovery Plan for London – an innovation in plan-making by the network of community groups through the Covid-19 pandemic. Unable to have face to face meetings, the network has put together a completely new kind of planning document through a large number of small workshops, some thematic, some cross-cutting, and all facilitated with support from volunteer Planning School students. This work draws on earlier interview work by students at the Bartlett Development Planning Unit (DPU) in 2020 which is now written up in the Faculty magazine, along with audio extracts.
The Just Space work began in 2020 and continues through to the publication of the Recovery Plan in March 2022 and after that to implementation and dissemination. In the first of a series of meetings in the School of Planning, six students presented summaries of their work and reflections on the process in January and more such meetings will follow, with details posted here. The thrust of the Recovery Plan is that London planning has to change from being led by developer interests to being led by the concept of the caring city to rectify the major injustices caused or revealed by the pandemic while also addressing the crises of climate and nature. Enquiries to m.edwards@ucl.ac.uk or follow @JustSpace7 on twitter.

Other Planning students are supporting community activity in Barking Riverside Opportunity Area where an important community development project is under way to help empower long-standing residents of two council estates, now being joined by new residents in one of London’s largest new housing developments. This is located on reclaimed industrial riverside and being developed by the GLA and a housing association L&Q in a joint company. Previous posts on this blog have some material from past years and some of this year’s students are reporting on their work shortly: helping to establish a nature reserve and evaluating some housing schemes.

A third group are preparing alternative plans for Hackney Central where the council’s agreement with a development company lapses at the end of March and a great debate is under way about how the site of a big Tesco and its car park should be used, triggered by a very effective community group. This activity got under way in late 2021 and is now being pursued by an entire module;

Others again have been helping Just Space groups across London marshall their experiences to feed in to a scrutiny by the London Assembly. The product of their work will be submitted to the Planning and Regeneration comittee of the Assembly in late February.

Supporting community planning 21/22

19 October 2021: This post is announcing meetings for students wanting to hear about the work of the Just Space network of London community and activist groups and/or who may want to volunteer to help in the coming session.

Our first meeting of the session will be on Wednesday 3 November 2021 on zoom. Please register if you plan to attend. Use a UCL email to register, please. https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/just-space-volunteering-opportunities-2021-tickets-194663713407

This meeting will offer a short overview of the activity of Just Space and its member organisations since its foundation, 14 years ago. It will then outline the topics on which there may be scope for us (staff and students) to make inputs in the coming months. Some of the opportunities arise now and would benefit from some immediate uptake; others are not yet confirmed or ready. The meeting on 3 November will span all these briefly. Later sessions will expand on individual options.

Just Space is re-working the Community-led plan for London (2016) for the new situation of the pandemic and (eventually) a post-Covid recovery and for a future in which justice, global warming and ecological damage are centre stage. It will be a Recovery Plan. Bartlett students have made substantial contributions to this work, through research, drafting briefings and supporting small-group community workshops. This has been an innovative process, aiming to mobilise large numbers of community voices despite not being able to hold any face-to-face meetings. There will be further opportunities for us (staff and students) to support this process in practical ways as the Recovery Plan approaches publication and is discussed and presented across the city (virtually, and perhaps later in physical events).

2. There will be opportunities this session for students to continue the work we have been doing with the Thames Ward Community Partnership (TWCP) in Barking Riverside, one of the biggest Opportunity Areas in the London Plan where many thousands of new homes are being added to a partly de-industrialised working class area with distinct council estates and a lot of reclaimed land. Those interested are invited to join an on-site meeting in Barking on Friday afternoon 5 November. Further details and sign-up at . Topics on which we hope to work and full info on the meeting are on this page

3. We may also be able to give further support to action groups in Hackney, principally the MOPS campaign (Morning Lane People’s Space) which has been campaigning for the redevelopment of a large Tesco and its car park to meet identified local housing needs. Hackney Council has just acknowledged that an earlier, unbuilt, scheme which MOPS has been opposing may now be dead so opportunities to make progress may now exist. Parallel battles to defend local working class people’s needs in the development of Dalston are also under way. Watch this space.

4. Just Space has long been very critical of the Opportunity Areas, the main implementation mechanism of the London Plans: they are initiated without any transparent (let alone democratic) process or criteria; their employment and housing targets are typically high and adopted without much scrutiny; they often trample over and ignore the interests of existing populations and businesses in their implementation. The Mayor’s office may now be open to a review of experience so far and the London Assembly will be scrutinising them soon. Just Space plans to intervene and we shall be able to help marshal evidence.

5. Implementation of the Recovery Plan. The Just Space Recovery Plan (that’s a provisional working title) contains many innovative ideas but more work will be needed to think through how each might best be implemented in a bottom-up way, co-produced by citizens and public bodies. Scouring international sources on community review panels, assemblies, a wildlife charter, grassroots initiatives on heating systems, fuel and energy issues, care networks…

6. People’s Plans. There is a national research project under way, documenting the history of popular plans. So far London seems to be represented only by some 20th century classic events and Just Space hopes to be able to augment this with student help so that current and recent community initiatives in building alternatives are better represented.

And, as we said before, people are welcome to these sessions even if they do not have time or intention to volunteer.