Going Digital

Digital has done much to keep the built environment industry ticking along during a time when face-to-face meetings have been impossible, but there is still a place for drawing and modelling traditionally and no real substitute for meeting communities ‘over a cup of tea’.

This was ‘Going Digital’, a zoom session run by NLA last Friday that sought to investigate the pros and cons of shifting to a much more digitally-based world.

Woods Bagot’s Julian Cross said that with 16 studios globally the practice was used to forming digital design teams and can boast a strong virtual network. It had proved a good creative tool, often using software to make changes in real time, with recording sessions also proving fruitful in honing presentation techniques as screen rather than stage actors and establishing how ideas happen. But it was ‘incredibly hard to replace’ the ‘campfire in the centre of the room’ that is the model or during consultation. ‘There's still nothing like you know being in the room having a cup of tea with a local resident yet’, he said.

Brick by Brick’s Colm Lacey said that, although they too had found adapting to the digital world relatively straight forward and without losing too much time during the virtual planning system, the key challenge was in keeping ‘joy’ and ‘personality’ in schemes and the public’s expectation of meeting someone in person to ask questions. The public, though, don’t like CGIs in the main, said Lacey. Peter Barbalov of Farrells said the practice always starts its schemes with a sketch and that people ‘should come out into the real world and do real things like draw, cut paper and put bricks on bricks’. But the ‘virtual world is catching up with the real’ in terms of accuracy and technology used for consultation can be a democratising force. ‘Maybe a real urban room can hold access to a virtual one’, he said.  

 
Real Estate Live

Tuesday brought the opening of Real Estate Live, at which Tamsie Thomson of NLA and the London Festival of Architecture suggested that now is the ideal time to launch a kind of guerrilla operation in changing the city and its public space in favour of walking and cycling. ‘There is a real opportunity to deploy what we refer to as tactical urbanism’, she said. ‘Sort of try before you buy’. The major fear, though, is that in the move away from mass transit, that people will be pushed back into their cars, and that the biggest challenge may yet be in impacting health- and social inequality. ‘We haven’t all got equal access to public space and good public realm at the moment, she said.

Other speakers at the opening event of the conference included Professor Tony Travers, who suggested that the London economy matters even more than before now but that – controversially – perhaps moves towards more cycling as a solution may not hold in the winter months or for longer commutes, where mass rapid bus transit may be one answer. The City’s Alastair Moss felt that people need to be allowed ‘to reimagine their journey in’, and Croydon’s Jo Negrini that now might be the time for outer London boroughs offering alternative office accommodation to travelling into the centre, the borough actively encouraging people onto bikes too. Certainly, she added, Covid offers the chance to ‘reframe’ conversations with residents about development.

Wednesday brought another opportunity to look at how digital is affecting or can affect London, particularly as it relates to green initiatives. The webinar on Smart Cities: Engaging with citizens to accelerate green solutions’ was timed to coincide with Circular Economy week and is viewablehere. Chaired by Lucette Demets of London and Partners, it focused on the idea of incentivising people to make changes to their energy use or transport patterns for the good of the planet. Nathan Pierce sketched the background of trying to bring boroughs to do more in making London ‘the smartest city in the world’, looking at user-centred design to engage citizens and increasing their digital skills as well as provide smart streets that are as connected as possible. The Sharing Cities programme Pierce chairs links up Greenwich in London with Milan in Italy and Lisbon in Portugal, as well as others including Bordeaux and Warsaw, testing innovative technology on issues like retrofitting buildings and energy management. While Greenwich’s Sharing Cities Community Engagament Officer Jemma Hoare showed how its software was helping citizens to convert points it collected for using energy out of peak hours into shopping vouchers or charity donations, Milan’s Giuliana Gemini showed how a similar tool enabled citizens in a pilot district to share stories of their sustainable actions. But perhaps the strongest example came from Singapore, where authorities had offered incentives again to people who travelled outside of peak hours, resulting in a rise of 12% in doing so, said Arup’s senior planner Ritu Garg. There were some clear lessons for London to learn here, not least that often solutions can come from stakeholders out of the obvious few connected with transport planning and engineers. ‘We need to widen the door a bit’, said Garg.

Digital Communications

And finally yesterday (Thursday) Benjamin O’Connor of NLA and One City contributed to a lively discussion about digital communications, suggesting that if this period has taught us anything it has been that we can do more in terms of outputs, but also that the City of London must still attend to changing its perception from being just a ‘mecca’ for glass and concrete and much more than just a place for business. London more generally must do more to avoid resting on its laurels, said ING Media’s Leanne Tritton, especially given how second-tier cities have done better in their health responses. But one of the great things about the city was its ‘chaos’ and ‘craziness’, she said, which it must not lose and her advice to businesses is to relax and loosen up, using Twitter, LinkedIn, even Tik Tok to get their messages across, boosted by proper marketing budgets. ‘Let’s get everybody on this call about how we get people back into cities’. One way is forthcoming. Rose Wangen-Jones, Managing Director, Marketing, at London & Partners said it is set to launch an Alliance for London consumer recovery campaign - a collective response from businesses, organisations and authorities. ‘Getting the message right has always been important’, she said, ‘but I think it’s more important than ever now’.