URBAN DESIGN 120 Autumn 2011
This issue has been kindly sponsored by Urban Initiatives
This issue of URBAN DESIGN journal looks at TRANSPORT INTERCHANGES with examples from London and Europe, and guest edited by Sir Peter Hall and Christopher Martin, and generously sponsored by Urban Initiatives. It examines how the design process can produce excellent interchanges between buses, cycles, trains, trams and the surrounding streets.
Yet this process is not easy; Brian Edwards sets out the features and principles of good interchange design for urban designers. John Dales describes three case studies which when implemented, will transform local areas and daily lives through simple but hard-won changes to old infrastructure and patterns of transport management. Anton Valk, Chief Executive of Abellio, the Dutch transport group now running services in Britain, describes the very model of interchanges: Amsterdam’s Bijlmer ArenA Station, which combines many transport modes and efficiently links major Dutch cities.
June Taylor reports back from visits undertaken for the Sintropher research project, on interchanges in north western Europe, and finds that smaller interchanges are often most attractive but equally hard to deliver. Kate Pasquale and John McNulty describe Transport for London’s Interchange team and their interventions at Stratford Station, supporting the Olympics and major Stratford City development.
This issue also features articles remembering the work of two urban designers Steve Tiesdell and John Seed, who each made a great contribution to the field. UDG Patron Sir Richard MacCormac sets out his current design research work on creating more appropriate residential densities in London’s outer suburbs. Lee Pugalis explores how urban design can help to set economic development in a local context in Durham.
This year’s shortlisted Francis Tibbalds Practice Awards are shown here for readers to judge their merits, with projects from John Thompson and Partners, URBED, Richards Partington Architects, studio REAL, NJA+U and NEW Masterplanning; the breadth and scale of ideas explored are as good as ever. The annual Publisher Award book reviews are also reviewed by the UDG’s judging panel, who will reveal the winner in February 2012 at the UDG’s Awards evening.
Regular features include the classic texts Urban Design Library looking at ‘Non-plan: an Experiment in Freedom’ by Paul Barker, Cedric Price, Peter Hall and Reyner Banham, revisited here by Karl Kropf. There is a report on the UDG’s AGM and recent talks, plus the Urban Design Interview talking to urban designer Riccardo Bobisse, and an Endpiece by Joe Holyoak.
URBAN DESIGN is the leading journal in its field. Each issue provides in-depth analysis of topical themes, with contributions from leading practitioners, policymakers and academics from the UK and abroad. This extended issue of 56 pages offers a mix of articles, short reports and listings that reflect the diversity of urban design today. This is a journal that no urban design professional or student should be without.
