COMMENT In recent years, rapid globalisation has seen the mass migration of populations towards urban centres bringing people closer to the hubs that connect one nation to another. In fact, last year the United Nations predicted that, by 2050, two-thirds of the world’s population will be living in town and cities, consequently increasing the urban population by 2.5bn.
Arguably it is this connectivity that has helped spread Covid-19 across the globe.
Today, over six months since the virus first struck the UK, our cities seem a far cry from their former glory. Gone are the packed workplaces, the busy commuter trains and the heaving shops. With more people now working from home, less willingness to travel and practically no overseas tourists, footfall in some major centres has fallen by more than 50%. With this in mind, some believe there is no going back and that cities have been changed forever. Urbanisation has been replaced by a flight to a more rural existence.
Accelerated change
However, I would have to disagree. Firstly, we will eventually either see a vaccine that largely eradicates Covid-19, or we will all need to learn to live with it. Secondly, rather than dramatically changing the densities of cities, the pandemic has instead accelerated a number of trends that were already underway. The events of 2020 have shone a light upon some aspects of urban life that needed to change sooner rather than later in most cases.
We must now focus on place-shaping: a process that builds and redevelops using a people-centric approach
This is why place-shaping, rather than place-making, will now take centre stage when it comes to future decision making. What’s the difference you ask? Old-style city place-making meant taking a site, funding development primarily through a series of anchor lettings to corporate employers and retailers and punctuating it with a series of grand public spaces. When it came to public transport provision, all too often it was dominated by the need for car access. Many of these places were driven by the motto “if you build it, they will come”, but in a new post-Covid landscape this is no longer the case.
Instead, we must now focus on place-shaping: a process that builds and redevelops using a people-centric approach. If lockdown has shown urbanists anything, it is that people may not “need” cities as much as we first thought. Therefore, we have to make people “want” them.
Prioritising the social aspect
We must want to work in cities by offering better walking and cycling routes and more exciting and flexible workspaces, with shift patterns to suit. We must want to shop in them, by providing a less static offer, with more niche and independent businesses, all of which have new technologies at their core. We must want to live in cities by providing 24-hour hospitals and libraries, better air quality, more varied housing rather than just high-rise apartments and, perhaps most importantly, a feeling of safety. We must also want to socialise in them, attending safe and exciting events, meeting in new and interesting places, with a diverse range of open and green spaces.
The cities of the future will be less about economics and more about socialising, it will involve fewer hours commuting as we’ll live closer to where we work. There will be more freedom to walk and cycle, as journeys become less constrained and the emphasis on shopping transactions will be replaced with more experimentation, allowing us to choose how and when we buy.
For generations, cities have been changed by economic fluctuations and processes of suburbanisation and decentralisation. We may well look back on 2020 less as a year in which the fabric of our cities were destroyed, and instead as another period of accelerated evolution. In fact, I suspect that cities will not only survive, but will thrive as we shift the focus away from place-making and on to place-shaping.
Paul Clement is director, head of place-shaping and marketing at Savills
