LFA event: Shared Spaces & Learning from Poynton
The London Festival of Architecture is well underway and amongst its many offerings is a discussion that will explore the important idea of shared spaces and how these are created successfully.
Visitors to Amsterdam may have witnessed the streetscape as a space unilaterally shared by pedestrians, cars, bicycles, trams and everything in between, with no specific allocation demarcated on the ground. In London, similar areas of 'shared space' between pedestrians and cars have been trialled around South Kensington's museum quarter. But on a suburban level - that is, looking at how such schemes might work in places where most people really live, as opposed to city centres, the debate is still open. This event proposes to bring lessons from shared spaces in the town of Poynton to bear on London's urban fabric.
Commissioned by Cheshire East Council - from which Cllr Howard Murray will also be speaking - the regeneration of Poynton town centre will be the case study for discussion, allowing interrogation into the effects and benefits of altering the conventions of traditional street-scapes.
Responding to several of the challenges laid out in the recent CABE report, 'A Design led approach to Infrastructure', this discussion will bring together a number of differing perspectives on shared public space, including speakers from CABE, Hamilton Baillie Associates and Stockley engineers, as well as Cllr Murray. The event will be chaired by Blueprint's own assistant editor Shumi Bose; for further details and to register your attendance, please click here http://sharedspaces.eventbrite.co.uk/#
Andrew Herbert
