The first urban room was set up by Wayne Hemingway in Blackburn following his lament on the ‘death of the town’ and to reinvigorate conservations about its future, followed by Sheffield and then a wider network.

There are now 15, with a network chaired by Diane Dever, who fronts the centre at Folkestone and said she had even recently been contacted by someone who wanted to set one up in Seville. The perfect scenario, though, is a three-way partnership between decision makers, the public and the people whose work and interest is in building the city. ‘You have end users or facilitators and funders and conceptualisers ,and if any of that is out of balance, your urban room is probably going to sway one way or another’ said Dever.

Croydon is another Urban Room, whose representative, Kate Riggs, Senior Project Officer – Placemaking, LB Croydon said it had begun on the back of the local plan, but can get involved as part of the borough’s post-COVID-19 economic recovery and job creation. 

There was also a network of urban study centres in the 1970s and 80s with similar goals, said Sol Martinez Perez, Researcher, University College London. But the key message was that today’s versions should not serve simply as a consultation vehicle but be places in which to think about civic engagement and involvement in a broader way. ‘It is fundamental to have an interdisciplinary approach where especially, educators, youth workers, and other members of the community take part in the creation of the spaces’, said Perez, ‘and for these spaces to be active and to really involve and engage people in the built environment, across all ages’. There is a clear opportunity here, especially given a perceived decline in democratic involvement in the UK.

Colin Wilson, Head of Regeneration Old Kent Road, LB Southwark spoke about the urban room Southwark created on the Old Kent Road with NLA’s help and the energy of the local community, resulting in big turnouts for workshops and other events, providing WiFi and coffee for local young people after surveying their wishes. Operating costs came from section 106 agreements, with the scheme negotiating what NLA’s project director Amy Till called a ‘bumpy ride at times’ but culminating in an engagement platform, programme of events and exhibition, along with an awareness campaign in the lead-up.  Till said it had been important to show what was already there in terms of value in the local community, that the community was a deep and rich resource full of people who were generous with their time and knowledge, and that simple measures such as stickers on a wall asking people for their thoughts also proved valuable. Setting up a steering group with people from the local authority and representatives from different audience groups in the local area to guide the room’s development was another useful move.

Ed Watson, who described himself as a ‘fanboy’ of Urban Rooms, agreed that urban rooms should be set up in all local town centres in order to have that ‘broader community-led and community-owned place where discussion can take place with the community about the future of their place’, and that there was no shortage of empty shop units at the moment that could fit the bill. ‘As well as a place for engagement and discussion, it can be a place for experimentation and innovation and perhaps can be used as an exemplar of the sort of flexible space where different things can be programmed to happen at different times’, said Watson. ‘As an ex-local authority chief planning officer, it seems to me a good way to invest Section 106 and CIL money as it is a form of infrastructure and form of place where you’re engaging people about the sort of growth that they want. I feel very comfortable that there will be pots of money available in local authorities up and down the country which you can repurpose or use in order to deliver a funding stream’. 

Other points included:

·      Edinburgh is in the process of setting up an architecture centre or room to celebrate the architecture of the city and meet a ‘huge need’. Rab Bennetts has formed a cross-sector working group to this end, but has isolated funding as a key barrier

·      The climate emergency can represent a key issue to explore as the basis of urban rooms, from aspirations and policy to real examples

·      BIDs could play a key role in the development of further Urban Rooms, as ‘connectors’ that own physical spaces

·      Work needs to be done to overcome ‘residents versus developers’ issues in some cases and to provoke ‘sophisticated discussions’ on topics like transport, cycle lanes and so on

·      The Urban Room network is a useful knowledge sharing forum for those considering setting one up

·      The GLA is investigating communicating the London Plan and planning generally through digital means, an including a 3d tool, whilst recognising that people still want face to face contact too

Useful resources emerging from the discussion are below: