I attended a hugely enjoyable event held by Westminster Briefing in respect of the Portas Report yesterday morning. Yet again I wasn't very clear why I'd been invited to speak (sometimes I think I'm just the court jester) but I felt it was probably safe to do so, given that I was following David Morris of CLG, who actually knows something about the Portas Report; and that I was to be followed by Michael Weedon, of the British Independent Retailers Association, who actually knows something about independent retailers.
This simply allowed me to be, as the press office of Tower Hamlets would have it "sweeping and opinionated" and "bilious" in respect of the future of our town centres and high streets.
Wednesday is Nottingham day for UKR (most weeks anyway). Gill Marshall (UKR Head of Love and Laughter) and I clambered aboard the East Midlands line as usual yesterday morning for an action-packed field trip.
It started with a cup of tea and a Twix, as usual (sold to us by Beverley) and culminated in a bottle of wine with the Sheriff of Nottingham (I kid you not. I have photographic evidence, just as soon as I work out how to retrieve same from my wretched iPhone) at the Via Fosse.
I was just THRILLED to be asked to speak at the WIMPS (Women in Metropolitan Planning Services) Dinner last night. Gosh. How lovely it was! The chosen name for their group is clearly wholly ironic, for a less wimpy gathering would be rather hard to imagine! In fact, I'd have categorised these ladies as a doughty and feisty force to be reckoned with. Actually they are quite terrifying really and, I would imagine, rather proud of that fact. Under the skilled leadership of Pippa Aitken of Colliers CRE and Alison Blom-Cooper of Fortismore Associates, there was more brain power mustered in that room in Victoria than you could shake an Article 14 Direction at!
These ladies give town planning a good name. I was so impressed with them all, felt so very reinforced, felt so much that - ahem - lead had been put back in my pencil (do forgive totally inappropriate sexist expression), that I Tweeted on the tube on the way home that the "brainy birds" should be "put in charge of running the country". Whereupon that well known wag, Richard Aylwin, in a reference to the nursery rhyme, responded to say they might "swoop down and peck off your nose"! Well, he's a surveyor and a journalist, and he's ambivalent about planners (although rather keen on women I'd have said).
If I say so myself, we are on a serious roll in UKR now. We have had good news on funding for our pilot project in Nottingham, and we can now turn our attention to the pipeline, which is rather a nice problem to have. But it means we are now massively spreading the word. UKR is collaborating with a host of like-minded organisations to hold a series of events that are doing nothing short of rebuilding the cause of regeneration in the UK. And to great effect.
It's been a busy couple of days in UKR circles, with a lot going on. We had a great outing at the first Place East London conference on Wednesday, which showed the immense opportunity that still exists in the patch, and set out some key challenges for the East London regeneration community (several hundred of the blighters) who had assembled for the event and marauding on to the wine reception after.
As we gear up for the Place East London conference over in Stratford Town Hall later today, the forces of goodness and light begin to coalesce over in London E15. We will find new paradigms for East Enders, I promise, and we will forge a new path for wealth creation for all.
But I am reminded that it isn't always all a hotbed of positivity over on the east side. There is, of course, that very special vortex of madness, that place which sensible people would all do well to avoid; that borough of which only the brave dare speak the name, a little like that of Lord Voldemort. It is the rightful heir to the shenanigans at Liverpool and Lambeth of the 1980s. I speak, but of course, of... Tower Hamlets.
We are a bit hoist by our own petard with our up-coming Place East London conference, which is being supported by the UKR Forum. This event, which I am privileged to be chairing, is being held on 20 June at Stratford Town Hall (yikes! I've just realised that's tomorrow!).
It is a half-day conference, starting at 2pm and finishing (with drinks) at 5.15pm. And we find we are a little in demand. I wrote to the target audience promising "energetic and pacy" content, with some quick fire sessions, to provide a thoroughly focused opportunity to discuss East London, not just in the run-up to the Olympics but also - and more crucially really - in this strange new economy in which we find ourselves!
The UKR Forum held a great breakfast briefing yesterday, courtesy of our good mates at Nabarro, with the craggy and charismatic Kelvin Campbell, director and founding partner of Urban Initiatives, presenting on the theme of Rising to the capital's housing challenge.
Kelvin famously has a passionate interest in the future of towns and cities and is indefatigable really, having written government policy, published numerous books and articles on the subject and regularly speaking at conferences and advising a number of cities on design matters.
I was immeasurably saddened by last night's (truly excellent) television programme on BBC2, "The Secret History of our Streets", which laid out the background to the so-called "slum clearance" of Deptford High Street. It was the age-old story. Row after row of perfectly serviceable terraced houses, in a legible street pattern giving space to a successful and prosperous community, had been CPO-ed and cleared, to make way for systems-built blocks of flats; destroying readily improvable houses in favour of these flats (notoriously incapable of being gentrified) and scattering families and communities to the four winds (in the main, the outer reaches of the new towns of Essex but - and this is key - with no regard to keeping folk together). Nicholas Taylor, a former Lewisham councillor of some 31 years standing (and clearly a very well meaning individual) attempted to make sense of it all for the viewer. He was defending the indefensible really. There was some charming footage of him as a young man bounding about the streets of Deptford, with reforming evangelistic zeal shining out of him. But his defence really fell right away when he recollected how a fellow councillor, who lived "in a big Victorian house up the hill, had been utterly bewildered that nobody wanted to live in these flats".
