Cities need to adapt to accommodate sustainable growth.

Where are the optimal places to do it with maximum benefit?

Where should we focus to grow well?

We have developed an integrated multi disciplinary approach to strategic urban planning which focuses on the suitability of existing urban structure to accommodate sustainable grow through new transit line extensions and upgrades. This is a coordinated approach to identifying opportunity through transport links within the context of a metropolitan spatial strategy.

An extensive exercise along these lines was carried for Transport for London. Through applying these tactics London wide at a range of scales across a series of potential transits upgrades from new and extended rail lines, to service upgrades and “metroisation” of existing lines, a theoretical quantum of up to 650,000 new homes was identified. This was only on typical fraction of the available network.

Central to this was a responsible approach to landscape and amenity to provide neighbourhoods that are uplifting to live in and responsive to their settings.

Growth

Strategically extending and improving public transit and working with and reinterpreting the urban structure to define new forms of development derived from their setting, offers significant new possibilities for the future development of cities and their regions.

This includes intensification around key nodes and lines and reinterpretations of elements of the current city model from centre to middle to edge and outer limits.

It informs a new appreciation of the relationships and use of open space and wider models of urban transformation. This ranges from direct to gradual implementation and shows how considerable quantum can be generated, by a range of interventions sensitive to context.

This identifies appropriate site based strategies, testing through transport, planning, urban design and market viability appraisals. It looks at current and potential future policy, allied to potential income generation streams to identify solutions and strategy, towards an emerging model for sustainable urban growth to meet the needs of the 21st Century.

Expertise

The team have the in-house expertise, bring extensive insight and have the capability to provide similar exercises, national and internationally, and are currently developing this as an approach to be tested in a variety of urban locations and scales.

Key roles and disciplines:

MICA – Three-dimensional planning, urban design and architectural strategy

Quod – Planning policy and strategy, site options appraisal

Steer – Public transport and network strategy

Carter Jonas – Viability

Up to 650,000 new homes

MICA Director, Gavin Miller, spoke about the practices strategic approach to growth via London’s transport infrastructure at New London Architecture’s ‘Joined-up London: infrastructure and development’ half day conference.