Congratulations to the London Festival of Architecture and the NLA on this 20th birthday and to everyone in the room and out in the city who make these projects happen. I am going to talk to you about partnership working...and a very short overview of some recent history.

 

What do all these great case studies tell us about the way we design and plan for the public realm, creativity, and civic amenity in London? 

 

We are connected, spatially, socially, culturally and economically through a shared collective use of the street and spaces of this amazing city. This event is about the care that goes into our public realm and we should all be very proud of it. 

 

I have built my professional life around the notion that the public realm holds symbolic as well as functional value: that the social and spatial infrastructure that we all share is what makes our neighbourhoods vital and inclusive. And that with ambition, partnership working, strategic civic urbanism, good design and leadership we can completely change the city. 

 

Some in the room as old as me, will remember 40 years ago. In 1984 when I came to London there were huge tracts of land sitting fallow and the population of London was still falling. Everywhere you could see the neglect of streets, parks, open spaces and garden squares with dereliction and decay. The palpable frustration of Londoners, asking who was in charge, why things didn’t work, was heard daily.

 

To give an example, The South Bank wasn’t deemed safe to walk on and astoundingly the workers in the IPC tower had to take a daily minibus to Covent Garden to get their lunch. 

Fast forward 20 years, the date of the last NLA public realm publication, and it is hard to imagine but London’s government had only recently been reinstated after 13 years of us being the only capital city in the western world without any city-wide government.

 

Many of us argued and lobbied why London’s streets and spaces deserved attention – that this collective project on the dignity of everyday life should be elevated and taken really seriously.   That our streets and spaces shouldn’t be places of hostility and endangerment, but of care and connectedness, beauty and life.

 

At that time, Oxford Street was three times higher than the legal limit for air pollution, with annual limits breached within the first few days of each new year. Road safety and pedestrian and cyclist fatalities and collisions were devastating families and communities; and an inadequate, poor quality public realm embarrassed everybody and infuriated citizens and property owners alike. 

 

Every street and journey should be accessible, safe, and a place shared by many, where strangers meet, and that we are proud of. We argued the city could be welcoming and connected – a place of inclusion. It could symbolically and functionally offer dignity to all citizens, make an equitable and fair city. 

 

So what has happened…partnership working.

 

In the past two decades with many hands and creativity and civic leadership, the resetting of the public realm is thriving in London as evidenced by this publication.

 

There are so many people to be credited and mentioned, and many here in the room tonight, but I wanted to shout out a few very important players.

 

 

Throughout my own professional life and the work we have delivered at Publica, we have seen first hand the appetite, impact and success of cross-sector collaborations and partnerships. 

 

 

There are so many excellent officers and members in many boroughs in inner and outer London  - but to mention a few: 

 

These are all big issues and big demonstration projects only possible because of the public, private and third sector’s confidence that London can be inclusive and we can make it work for all. 

 

This book shows a story of an incredible step-change in public realm design. London is unrecognisable from 20 years ago and even ten years ago. 

 

The strategic design behind this revolution is down to a partnership working: a shared belief and confidence that every street and space can connect us, address climate and biodiversity, social isolation, and inequality. And the next big ideas? - to deliver this agenda, to understand that community wealth building and care is needed for every community and every neighbourhood. 

 

We should recognise that by collaborating with communities and with people who have different lived experience, we can set the right brief and build a more inclusive city. 

 

Many congratulations again to the LFA and NLA!