URBED :: Urban Scrawl

About Urban Scrawl

The urban environment is something that affects all of us. The environments in which we live, where we go to work, meet friends and spend time with family affect who we are. Do we really want to live in some far-flung suburban cul-de-sac where we will meet no one except people like ourselves? Do we want to drive two hours in traffic to a soulless business park on a motorway junction? Do we want to shop in some fantasy of a shopping mall or a vast hypermarket where our every need can be met in a sanitised safe environment? We must want this stuff because until recently it was pretty much all we built.

Well not everyone wants to live like this! Some of us want to live and work in lively mixed-use, multi-cultural cities, bustling with life, full of independent businesses and creative people. Somewhere that has an authenticity that comes from its history rather than from the brush of a set designer. Somewhere that isn’t always spotlessly clean and locked outside shopping hours. Somewhere where you can meet people from every corner of the world and walk of life but where you can be anonymous if you wish. This is called urbanism. It is something that was assumed for much of the 20th century to be alien to the English. The last decade has shown this not to be the case. Of course not everyone wants to live in cities and we must never make the mistake of forcing our personal utopia on others as the planners did for much of the last century. However, the revival of the UK’s cities means that there is now an alternative to the cul-de-sac, business park and mall. The revival of Britain’s cities means that
urbanism can now be found outside London, something that was last true in the 1930s.

This is an urban renaissance born out of often heated argument and debate. The concept is simple but its realisation is complicated and involves jettisoning many of the principles that we have come to accept as given. Urban Scrawl is devoted to continuing this discussion and debate.

Issue 3

The world financial system, the economy, the coalition government, the budget (or lack of it), the public sector cutbacks, the architects and planners at the job centre, the developers in administration, the projects shelved, the masterplans left gathering dust, the sites left unfinished and the World Cup... Its has been rough recently.

Is there anything more than years of penny pinching and wound licking to look forward to? Well yes we think there is This Urban Scrawl is dedicated to the threads of hope still out there in this fractured, turbulent and fragile world of the built environment.

It may seem strange to talk about happiness at the moment, but many people are. Researchers, developers, social thinkers and politicians are all wondering why we didn’t get happier in the years of plenty. Indeed research shows that levels of happiness were lower in the boom years than they were in the years of austerity after the war. So maybe we should be planning for happiness rather than prosperity? If so, what does this mean in practice and how can the built environment be designed to promote wellbeing.

In the spirit of enquiry Urban Scrawl set out to ask.

Issue 2

In the second edition of Urban Scrawl we put the illuminating Manchester neighbourhood of Hulme under the microscope. Members of the URBED Coop are uniquely qualified to do this, having lived and worked in the various incarnations of this “mundane and radical” place from the 1970s to the present day.

We hope you will feel inspired to join in the debate, or to let us know about other issues that you would like to see discussed in future editions. We plan to cover topics that range across all of URBED’s interests - urban design, regeneration, sustainability and community involvement – and also our own interests outside of the office. Please email us at scrawl@urbed.com.