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Contentsintroduction

sustainable development in planning policy

lessons from history to shape the future

future trajectories for development

our approach to sustainable Urban regeneration

the tools

Spatial Economics

Vernacular Economics

Finding the Assets of Place

Attributing Values

Stable Resource Metabolisms

Frontier Economics

Delivery

creating a spatio-temporal economic concept

skillsets for clients

the projects

Cheltenham

Bradford-on-Avon

Ironbridge Gorge

North Somerset Coalfield

Paintworks, Bristol

Bath Spatio-Temporal Economy Model

Hartlebury Castle Estate

the team

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in the second decade of the 21st century we are in a period of uncertainty and caution over the future economy and regeneration of our settlements and their communities. The recovery from the global financial crisis, coupled with the environmental challenges and a rapid pace of policy change being introduced by a new government, are all factors. However, they themselves signify some fundamental shifts in how human settlement will have to work.

The world-wide recession had its roots in a financial crisis that arose as a symptom of an unsustainable economic model, fuelled by cheap and lightly regulated credit, assumptions about increasing consumption and a lack of local accountability for global human impacts.

recent government changes to planning policy can be seen as having roots in a past failure to properly communicate the rationale for development, the bluntness of regional targets and associated policy, the adherence of markets and professionals to institutional investment driven models and, despite some encouraging signs of improved quality, a response to the widespread experience of undesirable development amongst local communities, expressed as a call for ‘localism’.

To enable full recovery from the recession, establish a sustainable and stable economic base for the future and to offset the reduced resources and capability within the public sector as a result of deficit reduction measures, economic activity is vital. But there are new more locally meaningful ways that growth can happen. Built environment change is required to both enable and facilitate this activity, which must be sustainable in all senses. The evidence tells us that this will not be delivered by the accepted conventional approaches.

new models and new tools are required.

Development and the built environment fundamentally affect the wellbeing of people and communities. they impact on the prosperity of the nation and, as has become ever more apparent over recent years, are of vital significance to the health and stability of our planet and the life chances of future generations. the degree to which the built environment is a physical manifestation of society’s needs, or to which it helps shape and direct our quality of life are key questions.

the concept of ‘place shaping’ was central to the seminal report by sir michael Lyons in his ‘Inquiry into Local Government’. It has since become firmly established as a key principle of planning and regeneration policy. the concept recognises that a variety of factors, organisations and actions determine the nature of places and the wellbeing of the communities they accommodate. the tools and strategies for delivery of placemaking are however often lacking in the necessary depth of understanding of how places came to be what they are and what is required for creating places and communities that are successful, distinctive and sustainable.

approaches to place shaping and renewal are often primarily design focused. While good design is vital, this needs to be combined with a future concept model for sustainable local economies. sir michael lyons considered evidence that might suggest that ‘geography is dead’. He concluded however, that the nature of places is and will continue to be extremely important, not least in terms of its role in fostering economic activity and in responding to the challenges and opportunities of climate change.

sustainable development too has been established as an important concept for many years now. it has needed to be taken more seriously following the publication of sir nicholas stern’s report on the economics of climate Change. Addressing the impacts of climate change, resource depletion and environmental degradation will become a central objective of policy. However, development and regeneration strategies and projects routinely fail to deliver what society needs in order to deal with these challenges, often because the focus is on short-term financial return and other barriers rather than the opportunities and long-term benefits. So return of the economy is driven by the growth agenda of competitive global business.

Introduction

Spatial planning policy has for many years now sought to deliver sustainable communities, as is exemplified in Planning Policy Statements 1– Delivering Sustainable Development, and 4 - Planning for Sustainable Economic Growth. However, while the underlying principles are sound, the policy guidance has lacked the necessary depth and refinement to really act as a driver of future sustainable patterns of economic life.

too often the focus on uses rather than the dynamics of places and regions and a simplistic sequential approach, coupled with the conventions of the property investment market, tend to perpetuate the idea that urban centres will continue to be what many have become; a mixture of standard office buildings and retail warehouses around a heartland of multinational shops, leisure and cultural venues. In effect, a pattern of uses rather than an economy that is resilient, adaptable and accountable, providing the underpinning for the heart and soul of distinctive and sustainable communities.

What has been missing has been the necessary depth of understanding of what justifies the existence and secures the health of our urban economies; a set of geographic imperatives, realising assets in minerals, food, natural features, connectivity, accumulated investment and infrastructure, knowledge and skills, social and cultural identity, environmental distinctiveness and adaptability – the things that create an economy at all.

also missing has been any explanation of the spatial principles that historically created the economic diversity and activity of urban settlements. though there is an underlying acknowledgement that having the right uses in the right places is important though the endorsement of the sequential testing model, there has been no paradigm of what models towns or cities have, or should have to constitute success or why, in spatial terms, towns and cities have been successful in the past but might fail to be so now.

A new policy framework is now emerging and, with an enhanced focus on localism, this potentially enables approaches that have a deeper understanding of and response to the geography, assets and economic dynamics of places. There are however, countervailing policy provisions that risk continuation of standardised property investment approaches. the challenge therefore is a cultural one of building knowledge and acceptance of alternative approaches to delivery of long term value – economic, social, cultural, environmental and financial.Su

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Historic settlements show us how past patterns of economic activity worked to achieve stability in buildings and places, many of which survive and are greatly valued. each was a particular product of the unique economy of place and the resources, skills, social and cultural identity that it spawned. Each settlement impacted on its environment in securing water, fuel, resources, and many failed to sustain themselves because these aspects were not kept in a necessary balance.

But those that did last developed a self-fuelling, resourceful and adaptable economy, that thrived long before the present oil-based global transportation infrastructure determined our present way of life.

Former mill buildingas on Bath’s outer riverside

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We can see that much so-called regeneration has achieved physical change only by applying standardised corporate investment-led models of development, yielding supermarkets and business parks but nothing that nurtures the ‘bottom up’ locally relevant economies that that redundant industry had been the final flowering of. These industries themselves had grown out of the geography of place, most significant at a particular point in time.

Something much more deeply rooted in each such place is needed, identifying the building blocks of a new locally relevant, locally accountable pattern of economic life based not only on ‘must have’ consumption but on the ways humankind can interact with the natural world and its resources in a sustainable balance.

What is needed are new ways of analysing and understanding the way human settlements change over time and what forces drive those changes. the impacts of change can be planned for and turned to the good. We need to be able to marry the tangible lessons from history so evident in many human settlements with the realities and benefits that the contemporary geography of places, mobility and emerging technologies bring to create truly impact accountable lifestyles. to achieve this it is very important to understand:

• The spatial dynamics of local and regional economies

• Economic challenges and opportunities related to the geography of place

• Economic frontier trends and what these mean for local investment, resilience and adaptability

• The metabolism of settlements and the resource inputs and outputs they generate

• ‘Mega – trends’ - emergent societal behavioural shifts and changes

Today, the huge daily movements of people, resources, goods, money and ideas around the global economy have many disadvantages, for all their apparent benefits. They make our consumption choices lack impact accountability, dilute local distinctiveness and weaken economic resilience and adaptability. they create huge disparities of wealth and a personal dissatisfaction with the lack of wellbeing or common purpose this brings.

in the last two decades the need to re-energise towns and cities after massive industrial economic decline has led to a broad understanding of multi-modal regeneration goals. But now every human settlement has to re-examine the sustainability and resilience of its economy to make its global impact understood, measurable and accountable in the face of climate change.

Former mill buildingas on Bath’s outer riverside Bath’s outer riverside area today

Starting in the 2009 ‘Review of Economic Development and Regeneration’, HM Treasury used what it called ‘New Geographic Research’ to reaffirm that spatial policy and ‘place’ matter because of the externalities and spill-overs arising from the geographical spread of economic activities. all the most crucial issues it identified were related to Geography: the dominance of growth oriented national economic policy over redistributive spatial policy, multiple and under-specified geographies within government structures and the problematic search for appropriate scales of policy application.

the report ushered in ‘functional economic market areas’ as appropriate scales of analysis for local economic assessments. it also advanced the city region agenda as a new phase of development strategy. In each of these, attention is paid to different scales of development. But both of these approaches threaten to exacerbate spatial inequalities, as marginal places with dysfunctional market areas, without Universities or ineffective city connectivity are left without the scales of analysis or supporting mechanisms needed to compete on the national stage. Importantly, the report looked toward new methods of assessing development which prioritise sustainable, spatially considerate aspects of development over cut-and-dry, short-term concerns for ‘growth value added’. local enterprise partnerships exist to represent Functional Economic Market Areas across administrative boundaries, bringing together businesses and the public sector to drive economic activity.

Undoubtedly the 2010 coalition’s approach to development strategy has been influenced by these imperatives. ‘Localism’ is now heralded as the new dawn, putting development back in the hands of local experts best equipped with the knowledge and access to resources needed to deliver locally accountable development strategy. But as the bite of public spending cuts starts to be felt, Local Authorities are expecting to find themselves lacking the financial resources needed to enact such strategy. In this context, private organisations with a hand in delivering regeneration must take a more proactive role in critically evaluating local economic assessments if they are to assist in directing spatial economies back toward locally impact accountable paths.

Nash Partnership’s Spatio Temporal Economics Toolkit recognises just this, placing the interaction between development, geography, history, scale and iterative (rather than portfolio investment) economy at the heart of regeneration and sustainable urban renewal strategy. it provides the pathways to project delivery via spatial and economic analysis that can grow value, manage risk and so justify investment and incremental change.

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With over two decades of experience delivering complex regeneration projects, Nash Partnership’s approach to sustainable urban renewal recognises the shortcomings of conventional policy and delivery models.

But our approach also takes lessons from history and recognises the simple fact that the settlements of the past that survived and grew did so only because their local and regional impacts were kept in balance. our approach seeks to rediscover this in the context of today’s spatial economy by embracing a toolkit comprising:

• Spatial Economics• Vernacular Economics• Asset Finding• Stable Resource Metabolisms• Frontier Economics

each stage draws upon specialist inputs with professional team knowledge from our in-house multi-disiplinary skillset outlined on the adjoining page.

our experience in such work has allowed us to build strong working relationships with many related consultancies with further specialist experience including:

• Spatial Economy Data Analysis

• Cultural Development

• Infrastructure Engineering

• Ecology

• Applied Economics

• Environmental Impact Assessment

• Valuation & Development Economics

• De-construction/Materials Cycles

Drawing on the broad range of these skillsets, our comprehensive evaluation skills have underwritten both public and private sector investment, showing how ventures can prove effective in the longer term. We identify challenges, create value growth trajectories and steer delivery strategies to a conclusion through multi- agency management. O

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Economic Regeneration Designers who understand how agendas for change need to engage a wide range of established interests and agendas and how change is iterative; how creating fertile ground for positive renewal can unleash hidden energies.

Geographers who understand how the geography of place has determined human settlement patterns, in use of minerals, transportation, markets, food, energy, knowledge, commerce and governance and develop evidence based research disciplines to underwrite future change.

Historians who understand that we can learn from how humankind has lived and related to the world in the past and use this knowledge to contribute to the sustainable renewal agenda now.

Sustainable Construction Designers who understand how sustainable build and resource recycling is important to the wider agendas of long-term sustainability and marry together strategy with bottom-up, lifelong functionality.

Metropolitan Centre of gravity & International port

Coastal resort & growth hub

Unique asset - international profile, intellectural capital

Urban Designers who understand how the built form of human settlements works at an individual human level, how urban users relate and have different needs, how neighbourhoods are created and how the built environment needs to be managed to make it work for all who use it.

Planners who understand the strategic and detailed policy structures needed to guide and control changes in the built environment, and set in place the agendas and structures to manage that change.

Project Managers who work across boundaries associated with complex, multi-agent schemes to deliver regeneration projects on time, within budget and with essential risk management.

Design Management Leaders through their unusually comprehensive training, architects are skilled in taking each project from a brief, through an understanding of context, formation of vision, testing of options and then crystallising to a deliverable and finite solution.

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Each of the five tools described is a conceptual model, a way of looking at a district, a town or a Local Enterprise Partnership area again in spatio-economic, environmental, temporal and socio-cultural terms. Taken together they provide for our overarching approach, one we call Spatio-Temporal Economic Modelling (STEM). Successful Local and Regional Economies need to be tested against each of these concept tools to work towards a spatial economic model that can deliver and measure the expressed goals of strategic planning policy.

Spatial Economicsspatial economics is an analysis tool that examines how the economic performance of a place is connected to its historical and economic geography.

early settlements only thrived because they created trade out of the minerals, agriculture, applied skills, geography and settlement synergies of their location and region. this happened before the statutory planning system, out of simple practicality. Each activity developed where it would work, where its purpose was best served. Multiple responses generated clusters of knowledge and skill. so towns developed distinct districts around their strengths.

spatial economics examines interrelationships between activities and uses, identifying weaknesses and opportunities. A spatial economic model might, for example, highlight how new business premises clustered around a cultural or research facility can release latent potential for creative and knowledge based businesses, which in turn might enhance opportunities for a new residential community to support the intensification of economic activity. Today, the implications of carbon reduction and the fickleness of global markets are leading to a rapid re-appraisal of the essential dynamism of economic life that historically justified the existence of our towns and cities.

the development of distinct districts around the inherent assets and identity of places is still evident even in today’s most sophisticated and successful economies. In the fertile ground of geographic imperative, past economies have flourished through incremental change, and, in the course of that yielded environments of character and richness, real local distinctiveness and a legacy of social and cultural identity and institutions that make us who we are, and curiously often are places of great beauty.

Lessons can be drawn from such spatial economies, to be applied to guide the economic, social and cultural health of our cities and towns as patterns of consumption of their residents need to be adjusted to create more accountable models on a path to zero carbon living.

Spatial Economics

Vernacular Economics

Asset Finding

Attributing Value

Frontier Economics

Stable Resource Metabolisms

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STEM (spatio-temporal economic modelling) is applied when looking at a site to discover ways in which it can use and enhance geographical attributes to sustainably improve its economic function. this means examining how a place works in relation to other economies and places it is connected to, finding out how this has changed over time and identifying ways of using this knowledge of ‘the bigger picture’ to guide project delivery over future decades.

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Where spatial economics addresses the challenge of sustainable development by putting in place or refocusing the optimum spatial geography of urban settlement, Vernacular Economics is based on understanding the essential strengths and distinctiveness of places and regions.

Settlements were established and grew by virtue of specific advantages of geography – natural resources and power, food supplies, defence and advantages of accessibility for trade. the distinctiveness of the places we value today reflects these specific geographic advantages and the related skills, culture, crafts, styles, financial and other local institutions that developed. Communication, trade and units of governance have also long been factors that can both enhance and dilute the importance of local geography. However, it has been only in recent decades that these factors have led to a globalised economy that, while creating many advantages, tramples over places, identity and impact accountability.

The globalised economy provides many opportunities. However, development that is primarily driven by global factors and standardised institutional criteria often suppresses the inherent energy of places and their communities. in many ways it is a top-down model. vernacular economics strengthens the bottom-up dimension of development proposals and investment decisions.

vernacular economics seeks to ensure that places continue to be both shaped by their local and regional ‘geography’ and respond to opportunities in a globalised economy. it analyses and understands the contemporary geography in physical, economic, social, cultural and temporal terms. This enables us to identify the real assets and advantages of places, their weaknesses and opportunities for well aligned change:

• The assets of a place may lie in its environmental quality, its skills, its connectivity with other places, a relationship to its hinterland.

• By analysing the economics of places, a body of intelligence (a spatio-temporal concept model) is established as the basis for devising future models and strategies for sustainable communities.

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• It enables us to understand what has made settlements the places they are today, what lessons this can provide for the future and what challenges and opportunities arise from the current geography of places.

• It also enables us to identify waves of new economic activity, how these have physically expressed themselves in the past and how settlements can best place themselves to adapt and accommodate new waves of activity - what we call frontier economics.

this intelligence also has a key role in investment decisions. Where once such decisions were essentially local they are now often remote, relying on generalised notions of demand and value. an approach based on vernacular economics restores the link and enables investment decisions that are informed by the needs and opportunities of places as well as the broader patterns in the markets. These more refined investment decisions are less liable to the inflated value expectations and subsequent oversupply of particular types of development that is symptomatic of the top-down corporate investment model. more importantly they tap into many new layers of economic activity and employment currently being closed off.

Understanding the economics of places provides a basis for devising appropriate local strategies for achieving major reductions in carbon use and output. It can show, for example, how sustainable growth in some places will be best achieved through organic growth of the existing urban area while in others it will be more sustainable to utilise transport corridors and nodes as the focus for new development. it can also show how the historic assets of a place will draw in qualified people and can provide the basis for growing knowledge-based economic activities.

At the same time, the contemporary geography of a place may include major transport infrastructure that can enable clustering of a range of activities to recognise and increase the sustainability of modern patterns of living. Similarly, location, transport infrastructure and skills might combine to provide a place with the opportunity for new industries around recycling and production of new materials. In this way, Vernacular Economics learns from the past and looks to the future.

In historic towns and cities change and development were mostly incremental, created by individuals and organisations via gradually developing patterns of trade and circumstance. But physical manifestations of change, what we call development, were severely constrained by the restrictions of transportation, before canals, railways and motorways changed the paradigm. those transport restricted settlements needed to be supplied with resources of food, energy and water and this placed a premium on local supplies.

in contemporary economies only marginal advantages of cost in favour of international supplies of food, minerals and consumer goods have proved enough to eliminate the patterns of economic activity that have sustained settlements for decades.

But the low cost carbon fuelled paradigm is changing and these changes will alter economies and their development patterns again, gradually placing a premium on the local, regional and the related locally accountable and measurable impacts of that economic life.

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as globalising and centralising trends have narrowed local economic opportunity it has created large scale commuting in response to a fractured relationship between places to live and places to work. the localising trend will allow new economic patterns and opportunities to be formed. this is clearly happening already in the re-growth of localism in food, renewable energy and in patterns of life that seek to combine living and working in one place once more.

the nash spatial economic modelling toolkit can identify the often endemic economic strengths of a town or region, its marginally favoured advantages and resources, skills, knowledge, density and the connectability of all such things.

our research can show where an incipient economic activity and vigour can be found and how it can be supported through spatial convergence and education. We can show where the symbols of decline in joblessness and redundant property can be the seed beds for economic regeneration, just as they always have.

this will include considering the role of recent investment and how this alters the geography of places. For example, significant public infrastructure assets for example are often dedicated to a single or limited range of uses. such assets can offer the potential for multi- functionality and a greater contribution to the sustainability of places.

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It is obviously a truism but when an aspect of a community or region’s life is degraded it means value is no longer ascribed to it, or has drained away from it. Value is never only economic, it can be environmental, social, cultural, educational. Environments that underperform, whether urban or rural, do so because their values under these headings are not delivering.

an urban environment that does not have social and cultural identity cannot stimulate economic life. a rural environment that is degraded through lack of biodiversity or an agricultural monoculture cannot deliver its true potential of value under any of these categories.

so the ripples of regeneration that a spatial economy approach can bring need values to be ascribed to target areas and sites or cultural mindsets so that strategies can be focused towards outcomes which are more than the sum of their parts.

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Settlements have developed linear metabolisms for the consumption of resources and outputs of emissions and waste with carbon fuels. They need to move to a circular metabolism – reuse, recycling and remanufacture in which the demands that urban living make on the environment are related to its treatment of waste.

the challenges of retaining a viable biosphere for future generations are pointing to the resource management models of the natural world. Nature seems to be able to perpetually renew itself, relating its constructions to a pool of ingredients from which to renew itself each year, decade or millennium. There is no waste or pollution in this system and somehow the results are inspiring and beautiful.

the high consumption lifestyles urban dwellers have become used to offer no reliable ways of measuring our global impacts, yet we know that developing countries expect similar standards of living.

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It will be necessary to account for consumption impacts closer to home – or show that global trading patterns are themselves totally accountable for their environmental impacts.

By recognising the current ‘linear’ patterns of consumption, such as oil based products going to landfill or soil mineral depletion after the felling of tropical rainforest, we can move to more locally accountable economic loops.

This is not a backward step since it brings work, skills and local distinctiveness in identity and cultural life back to regions, towns and communities.

But the process does mean discovering afresh the drivers from which new locally relevant and accountable economies can be formed with the changed trading patterns that will follow.

there will always be emerging different ‘mega-trend’ drivers and shifts in the wider economy that induce change and fuel the economy at any one time, including resource decline, non-carbon energy paradigms and greater equality.

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Whilst spatial economies grew out of physical connections, these have taken on different meanings to communities over time. an economic role that thrived in one century may have declined in the next, bringing a generation or two of underused buildings in need of rebuilding new value.

In towns and cities periodically, buildings and institutions of economic, social and cultural value are given new status and identity, visible economically as investment phases or physically as development frontiers (often encroaching on undeveloped land). re-investment occurred at each stage and brought something of value, often because those responsible for it were confident in what they were doing, or had developed skills through the resilience a first economic wave brought.

This still happens today, but it is evident that the economic energy behind many recent evolutions is not resilient enough, with the benefits of modern waves often being extremely short lived. countless business parks built only decades ago are no longer located where businesses want to be, lack economic density, are too inflexible to adapt, or are unable to incorporate a new dynamic because their investment or ownership model was wrong. these failed phases have left our towns and cities littered with square miles of underperforming commercial estates, each experiencing a steady downward decline without evidence of a new ‘frontier economy’ to intensify their activity, attract investment, or nurture the social and cultural life that the best towns and cities have produced.

In other areas the frontier waves of economy worked better, as residential areas became shopping streets and redundant industrial zones found new life through convenience as a place to live close to emerging sources of employment. these successes are evidence of the importance of effectively managed economic phasing, which spatial economic analysis can provide for. in combining the concepts of spatial and vernacular economics we are able to identify how new economic frontiers can be located, characterised and invested in.

Economic, physical, social and environmental change and cultural regeneration take place within the forces that are acting on a local, regional, national, international economy and need to be aligned. For example, they might include global markets in leading technologies - a revitalised regional food economy, flood management or low carbon transport.

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y An approach that combines Spatial Economics, Vernacular Economics, Frontier Economics and Stable Resources Metabolisms, with good planning and design enables the delivery of sustainable projects and places. delivery needs to be incremental to grow identity and social, economic, cultural, environmental and financial value.

evidence to underpin investment decisions is not always available from the sources traditionally relied upon by the property development market. innovation can be needed to uncover demand. this might involve measures to begin to establish an identity around a project proposal, including events where by bringing people together a demand begins to evidence itself.

Wider societal trends – mega-trends - can be brought together with an understanding of places, their geography and economy, to create opportunities for value creation. such a mega-trend might for example revolve around the way we work and do business - new businesses and changing business models, a shift in working patterns, blurring of the boundary between work and social life and the need to reduce carbon output. A trend such as this, combined with the characteristics of a place, can create the opportunity for delivering new forms of flexible business space where viability is underpinned both by the identification of the need and a new model which sees revenue generated by multiple users of the same space throughout the day and evening. in this way adaptability becomes a tool for creating value and enabling delivery.

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• Geographic and spatial opportunities from which new economies can be built. Even places without obvious assets, or in decline, might offer lower premises, labour and housing costs, or a greater ability to receive change. Through research geographic opportunity is identified, an economic model devised and delivery mechanisms based on the iterative growth of value set in place.

• Complex geographies are affected by transport, centres of emergent human knowledge and units of political and administrative power. analysing these allows us to understand how places work now – are they dormitories, powerhouses, or backwaters? We must determine how these mechanisms contribute to the function of place and what their role is in the regenerative spatial economic model.

• Ways to bring lifestyle and consumption impacts closer to home. International trade has been a fundamental aspect of economic life for several millennia, but today’s world has become overwhelmed by the information exchange and economic activity brought by new technology and global transportation without significant regard for environmental and wellbeing costs. We can only gain understanding and rediscover sustainable modes of living if we can more easily trace the impacts of our decisions as consumers of resources, knowledge and space.

• Ways of delivering the social goals and infrastructure that are important to a good and responsible society. Uncovering these needs focused and skilled interventions by delivery agencies that are receptive and reactive to community ambitions and needs. this is vital to meeting targets for new homes and jobs and intervening before markets fail. We use spatial economics to test and underwrite the merits of investment programmes in challenged areas, discovering routes to make housing genuinely more affordable and communities more integrated and sustainable.

As a result of the failures of recently evolved forms of spatial economies, many towns and cities are suffering a lack of economic distinctiveness and decline in investment. The result has been a free-for-all of replacement uses, a lowering of economic density and replacement activities that lack inherent economic strength or identity.

a spatio temporal economic model (stem) combines the tools of spatial and Vernacular Economics, the Frontier Economy and Resource recycling in any one place, city, town, district or region with innovative planning and design to enable the sustainable delivery of projects and the creation of new economic futures.

it invariably works by studying and researching geographically distinctive strengths of places and regions, often evident in their history, and then points a spotlight on where they are heading, the nature of their decline or the challenge of unlocking their special potential in future. evidence of these strengths cannot solely be sourced from the property development market or defined by conventional investment led delivery, which have all too often proved to be an inadequate indicator of future demand and killed diversity.

By supplementing research into spatial economies with community engagement, sustainable economic models will begin to evidence themselves. We are then able to provide the necessary infrastructure and urban forms to allow them to flourish. Specifically, we look for:

By bringing this stream of understanding together we can provide a sound evidence base to inform investment decisions by both public and private sector, by government, developers and lenders, but, crucially by emergent business and concerned communities too. The incipient generation of new employment, locally relevant ideas and needs that stay below the radar, are conventionally pushed to the margins of location or cannot be celebrated and helped..

• We have applied our environmental, social and cultural experience and skills as designers to present visions for towns and regions of where future economic health can lie. We identify the extent to which the statutory planning framework both supports and hinders these goals.

• We show our individual landowner clients where and how their assets can be aligned to these ends and how synergy can be created between businesses, communities, Universities and skilled regions.

• Working with local authorities, we can show how land uses and regeneration strategies for individual sites need to be aligned to produce a balanced spatial conceptual model that can clear blockages in investment confidence, generate value growth trajectories and prioritise focus on getting economic density back from a fragmented spatial reality.

We do this by combining knowledge and skills across a range of disciplines and topics.

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Nash partnership have worked extensively in the regency spa town of cheltenham for two decades.

cheltenham is interesting in the way it grew so rapidly during the early decades of the 19th century and lies below the heights of the cotswold escarpment, like a true garden city.

the town brought forth an extraordinarily simple but sophisticated pattern of buildings amongst an effective urban landscape and public realm strategy that still characterises cheltenham so well almost two centuries later. from its beginnings as a spa, the town has grown to establish itself as a centre of education, a home for the families of the military and more recently in the late 20th century offered a base for a large number of companies and organisations in education, insurance, manufacturing and finance.

our knowledge of cheltenham’s economic vernacular has been used to inform an integrated understanding of the town across a number of projects. Following the redevelopment of the former College of Arts, we designed a long term development masterplan for the prestigious and prominent cheltenham college and redevelopment of the large headquarters site of Gloucester Constabulary. Complementing our work here, in recent years we have been regenerating cheltenham’s major area of urban deprivation in st pauls and prepared two areas of urban expansion to the north of the city at midwinter’s and prestbury under the sustainable communities programme.

in each of these projects we have been able to use our unusual combination of analytical policy and design skills to consider how reinvestment can capitalize on the unique geography of place of each site. through long term involvement we have been able to help consolidate cheltenham as a settlement within a region, using spatial design to rediscover value growth and attract public and private sector investment.

nash partnership’s approach to regeneration in cheltenham has showed an acute understanding of investment risk in light of demographic imperatives and social need and controlled it to meet the objectives of the sustainable communities programme.

throughout our cheltenham projects we have sought to preserve the economic and social distinctiveness of the town and to complement efforts to synergise its economy with gloucester and tewkesbury.

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starvehall farmSustainable Communities Urban Expansion

midwinters170 new dwellings, to code level 4 for sustainable homes st pauls

Affordable & shared ownership dwellings

gloucester hQReleasing value to fund new constabulary projects

the parkCreating a well structured environment

cheltenham collegeSpatial Development Masterplan

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Nash has worked in the Wiltshire town of Bradford-on-avon since the mid 1990’s. It is a town with 700 years of physical history, much associated with the woollen and rubber processing industries, dramatised by its escarpment topography. Bradford displays a pattern of incremental development with considerable clarity through a wide range of building typologies and scales and an equal diversity of display of wealth and utility.

Our work has regenerated the entire industrial river corridor of the town, represented by the two large flood plain sites of Greenland Mills and Kingston Mill. In restructuring Bradford-on-Avon’s spatial economy over many years, ensuring it no longer merely served as a dormitory to Bath, Bristol and swindon has been fundamental.

We complemented our work on spatial economics with an engagement with Bradford-on-Avon’s economic vernacular, which involved working with many of this historic town’s guardians; its Town Council, its Preservation Trust, its Community Development Trust, the Moulton Estate, The Prince of Wales foundation and several of its community organisations. through this engagement we have become part of how the town is planning for a more sustainable future, so that is nurturing economic activity of its own that represents the skills of its residents arising from a unique geography of place.

In a comprehensive display of built environment resources recycling, our most recent project at Kingston Mills has involved the restoration of several listed buildings as a literal gateway into the newly extended town. in combining all elements of our urban renewal toolkit, Nash Partnership’s work in Bradford-on-avon has pointed the town toward a rooted and sustainable economic future after two decades of failed attempts to regenerate it’s town centre - and in doing so spanned many new initiatives including a new water turbine at its heart.

Nash began work at Kingston Mills in 2003 after being selected from a national shortlist. it is a good illustration of the breadth of our approach to regeneration and has been recognised in awards at both regional and national level by the Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI), most recently as national winner in the regeneration and renewal category. it was also significant in the selection of Nash as Architects Practice of the Year 2010 at the south West insider property awards.

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our most ambitious project here has been the economic renewal of Blists Hill, the largest of the ten museums at 50 acres. Forty years ago several surviving industrial monuments were used as the backdrop to create a living Industrial Heritage Museum, gathering several industrial structures from the region threatened by demolition. our conservation architects carefully crafted replacement buildings populated by viable working businesses and costumed actors, living out for visitors the pattern of life of a Gorge town at the turn of the 19th century.

We showed how the critical mass and the effectiveness of the museum could be enhanced by giving it a new role as an orientation centre and gateway facility for all the attractions of the gorge. this has allowed the site to be much more widely used for regional and neighbourhood events important to the area’s social and cultural identity. We have provided new open air event spaces, new site transportation infrastructure and expanded the victorian town. this scheme, completed in 2009 now has many awards for its contribution to museums and the regional tourism economy including shortlisting for the national art prize and winner of the rtpi West midlands regional award for planning achievement.

all the seven major projects of these phases (costing £9 million) have been funded through the european regional development fund and praised by the Government Office for their value in boosting the economic, social and cultural identity of the West midlands region. it is through that identity and pride that ventures to grow new high skill enterprise can be contemplated, building on our experience of the Bristol paintworks scheme.

Nash partnership began working in the ironbridge gorge World heritage Site in 1997, on the first of several commissions for the Ironbridge Gorge museums trust. responsible for most of the site’s historic building assets and valued landscape, the IGMT now manage the ten museums of Industrial history contained in the site.

To fulfil these onerous responsibilities IGMT need to raise substantial revenues from a high level of entrepreneurship in the management of their heritage assets. our approach to urban renewal recognises that heritage is never static, and needs constantly to refresh a location’s economic, social and cultural purpose. through the industrial decline of the West midlands in the decades since, the heritage of the gorge has become an important symbol of the regions’ historic, economic, social and cultural identity through continuing change, justifying high levels of public funding.

Our work with the Trust, Telford and Wrekin Council and English Heritage has focused on doing this through exploring the unique qualities of its industrial heritage. By applying our toolkit, we were able to harness strength rooted in the coincidence of geography that exposed seams of iron ore and coal alongside a navigable river. the severn took processes and manufacturers far and wide from factories that (for a few decades of the 18th century) saw the industrial revolution begin and led to the West midlands becoming known in the 19th century as the Workplace of the World.

Our first project for the Trust showed how capital funds could be generated through housing development value by creating a new dense urban setting for the famous Coalport China Factory. This scheme, which funded the creation of a new public realm setting for the surviving factories and kilns of the 18th century factory, has gone on to support a new enterprise hub, as part of a series of enterprise ventures growing out of established new cultural heritage values.

Few who know the World heritage city of Bath are aware that until the mid 1970’s, only a few miles away to the South, the North Somerset coalfield was a major mining area centred around the towns of midsomer norton and radstock.

the closure of the areas’ many deep mines generated the blight and lack of economic direction that are more commonly associated with the coal mining towns of South Wales, Nottingham and the North East counties. But midsomer norton and radstock existed long before the arrival of miners. Following closure of the mines, the area established itself as a national centre for large scale printing and packaging which remains strong in the locality today but is well past it’s peak.

For several years Mel Clinton, now Head of Planning and Economic Regeneration at Nash, ran the Norton Radstock Regeneration Partnership, gaining intimate knowledge of the challenges and opportunities existing in the area. nash’s work at the former alcan factory site is coming to fruition and the long term future of the wider area is being analysed once again, focusing on the contribution a number of large redundant 20th century industrial sites can make to its regeneration.

Part of the problem for the Midsomer Norton/Radstock area is that its mining and industrial history has diminished perceptions of its actual potential and property values. it enjoys a remarkably attractive setting among wooded hills, has a fine historic core of considerable character and is only ten miles from Bath. By applying spatial economics and identifying the role of the town’s industrial history in today’s economy, Nash Partnership is planning a regeneration strategy that can turn its assets into value, raise the aspirational level of new housing and introduce higher income employment opportunities that will elevate the quality of its high street businesses and enrich its social and cultural institutions.

We have analysed all strands of the town economy – core, declining, emergent, spatial and climate-change led. We consider their spatial representation across the towns, the inherent entrepreneurial energy of the community, opportunities for clustering and networks and the potential for synergies with Bath and Bristol. from this we have created a spatial economic model showing how a stronger local economy could be fashioned to create social, cultural, environmental and economic value – if supported by policy initiatives and spatial changes over time. rather than being led by standard property investment models, it helps local communities and major landowners see how they can act together to create a more sustainable future economy in an organic, iterative way.

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Over the last 60 years Bristol’s spatial economy has been continually challenged. after wartime bombing the city witnessed the transformation of its port, changing political leadership, and a massive suburban expansion that has now lost its economic temperature and caused the neutering of many of its urban villages. the result has been large estates of under-performing brownfield land too large to create a regeneration frontier without a comprehensive conceptual model. But paintworks has shown how economic frontier zones can work in the most unpromising places.

The Paintworks project, two miles from Bristol’s City Centre, is a remarkable illustration of how a new urban economy has been grown by it’s owners and promoters applying the principles now reflected in our urban renewal toolkit.

Beyond the edge of the straggling warehouse sites of St Phillip’s Marsh, it really should not have worked at all, being completely unconnected with established economic activity and lacking road frontage. But in 5 years it has turned 130,000sq feet of mid 20th century factories and warehouses into creative workspace and live/work for 70 diverse tenants. Its developers - ashley nicolson and tim paine of verve - have grown values from £1.50 to £17 a sq foot by meeting the needs of such business in ways the conventional investor driven property industry has not attempted.

Both are energised by their own experience of the northern industrial manufacturing towns, where a high concentration of factories and streets created a diverse and vital economy and busy pavements. through many other projects in london and the West midlands verve realised that the investment-led, risk-averse mainstream commercial property sector was excluding young emergent businesses from what have historically been the dynamic centres of towns, instead favouring international retail and office tenants offering good covenants and long leases.

Before this imbalance could be addressed, Verve needed to put their isolated site on the map. By investing half a million pounds in converting a 6000sq foot building they first created the all day Bocabar above a 3000 sq foot event and performance venue. they then welcomed the community of nearby Totterdown to see these facilities as their own, offering the community organisations of the area use of these spaces on generous terms.

As workspace was converted and offered on flexible terms around this, a venue was created. The bar/event space started attracting city wide events and the combination of cultural identity and relevant workspace rapidly put paintworks on the creative map. through the careful selection of tenants through interview and many measures to assist promising new businesses, in 5 years paintworks has grown to support 70 varied businesses from 1-man-bands to 50 staff. These are mainly in arts and media, but others involve healthcare, education, design and elements of live/work. It is the critical mass of the project, and its helpful attitude to its occupants that has made it work.

Nash have been working since 2008 to design the project’s 3rd phase, to be all new build comprising 380,000 sq feet of mixed commercial workspace, live/work mews, apartments around a strong hub of local shops, restaurants and bars. the new scheme will support reinvestment in two much neglected public open spaces, one a redundant cemetery. Paintworks has achieved a remarkable result showing how, through goodwill, enterprise and hard work a new urban marketplace can be created, recognising the difference between investment and regeneration and allowing the incremental economic renewal that many challenged element of the built environment greatly need.

planning permission for this has now been granted.

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As part of building the funding case for a creative workspace hub, Nash have prepared a conceptual spatial economic model for the World heritage City of Bath, where the practice have been based for the last 20 years. Our model identifies the geographic constraints that have dictated the pattern of Bath’s past and future development and identified where its existing physical form, present uses and regeneration potential supports activity of particular kinds.

Bath’s hot springs were revered in pre Christian times, becoming the focus of a Roman garrison town. As the power and influence of the church grew it prospered as a monastic market town and continued to do so from the reformation to the 18th century. then the coincidence of its hot water springs and the attractions of a summer seasons’ social centre out of london created the phenomenon of 18th century urban design we now see. through the 19th century grand housing attracted the families of the military.

River access to Bristol via the navigable Avon and to London via the Kennet and avon canal and Brunel’s railway stimulated a phase of industrial economic activity that spawned the high density terraces of the southern city.

industry and a strong ministry of defence employment base characterised the city through three quarters of the 20th century alongside low key tourism, but tourism and associated retail activity has expanded considerably in recent decades.

But now, once again, Bath is at a crossroads, needing to identify where its best prospects of economic, social and cultural health lie and how to plan for delivering this. Its two universities have grown considerably, and it has a higher percentage of engagement in the creative and cultural arts than in Bristol. it is necessary to use this extraordinary urban attraction as a springboard for new business activity with a strong research and creative streak needing the civilised urban living for which it is such an elegant showcase.

The model shows how the growing influence of the city’s two modern universities needs to be reflected in spatially connected terms, and how their activity can be used to give Bath and north east somerset the integrated region economy and cultural identity that it lacks. it puts the role of the historically recent river corridor in a new light, showing how it might best be put to sustainable infrastructure uses with less focus on conventional property-led paradigms.

from this spatial study we have shown how critical particular sites are to maximising the economic health of the city over the next three decades and for creating the new employment models it needs in a high density mixed commercial model. By bringing this focus and planning new infrastructure for it, it is possible to direct the future of more peripheral semi-redundant 20th century industrial land along its river corridor so that the prospects of regenerating one part of the city are not undermined by competing interest or uncertainty in another.

the work done on this project has led to us applying the same spatio temporal Economic Modelling principles to the city estate of St. John’s Trust, the city’s largest historic landowners with responsibility for the care of several blocks of the city.

Edward Nash, Senior Partner has been appointed by Bath and North East somerset council to chair the river avon corridor economy advisory group to prepare a conceptual framework for a river regeneration model.

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ate For 400 years this large estate in north Worcestershire served as the Palace

of the Bishops of Worcester, rebuilt after the English Civil War following the surrender of the estates medieval castle.

We act for the trust (set up in 2008) to secure a new future for hartlebury through arrangements with the church commissioners. this is a typical project of Social, Cultural, Environmental and Economic renewal, that seeks to use this historic site’s many centuries of social and cultural capital to re-invigorate the identity of the county of Worcestershire under several strands of new activity.

• By opening up the estates fields, lakes, footpaths and making Hartlebury meaningful for a multitude of user constituencies in the rural and urban life of the county.

• By merging the castle’s cultural significance with that of the County Museum, which has a fine collection of rural life and the Arts and Crafts skills of the area in the late 19th and early 20th century.

• By building on its heritage status to create an emergent Business Enterprise Centre, to identify and bring together indigenous new business activity presently pushed to the margins by the conventional commercial property industry.

• By developing commercial offerings in education and conservation skills training that blend new value with the site’s key assets.

• By developing the Castle’s role as a heritage attraction and developing it as a centre of new cultural activity.

• By linking the new activity and social and cultural identity of the project around new employment to initiate new sources of employment in the nearby towns of Kidderminster, Stourport and Bewdley, currently on the periphery of the West midlands manufacturing economy.

our conceptual model for the estate has secured enthusiastic support from the Trust, local business community and Church commissioners alike.

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Edward Nashsenior partner

BA, DIP ARCH, RIBA, AABC

edward has steered the development of the practice which he leads with Partner, Robert Locke, through our Management Board, Executive Team and project sector team leaders.

his wide range of experience has been behind our many projects in the regeneration sphere where understanding, analysis, project design management and delivery strategy have been essential ingredients.

edward shows how drivers of built environment change can be better understood and used to align policy and design concepts towards zero carbon and impact accountable goals, through our approaches to spatial economic modelling.

he sits on the West of england lep planning and infrastructure panel. From 2010, he has Chaired the river avon economy group which Bath and north east somerset on the Economical, Social, Cultural and environmental regeneration of the 30km of river corridor through the district.

Mel Clintonhead of planning & regeneration

Ba (hons) mrtpi

A qualified MRTPI planner, Mel joined nash partnership as director of planning and regeneration in 2009.

previously heading-up economic regeneration and development at Bath and North East Somerset, he has extensive experience in planning, economic development and regeneration.

Mel leads a team that, working closely with our design professionals, provides a service founded on core planning capabilities, with added value through research skills, understanding of regeneration and a focus on achieving delivery.

Key to this is developing an understanding of places, their communities and future potential, as the basis for generating and unlocking the long-term value that enables delivery of high quality, resilient development.

Duncan Powellsenior strategic planner

Bsc (hons)

as part of the planning and economic Regeneration team, strategic planning, LDFs, site appraisals, applications and appeals are key aspects of duncan’s role. Critically, he also works closely with our in-house architects and masterplanners to ensure a cohesive approach to our projects.

duncan also has a wealth of commercial knowledge and is able to advise on the risk and viability elements of potential sites. in the current economic climate, such an attribute is invaluable to clients seeking to maximise value.

duncan ensures that planning need not be a painful process, as he can provide strategies for projects that engage key stakeholders at an early stage.

The

Team

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Justine LeachUrban design

& landscape directorBa hons dip la maUd cmli

Justine has worked in international urban design and landscape design consultancies and understands the links between strategic considerations, quality and the everyday practicalities of the built or modified natural environment.

her experience has embraced several large infrastructure commissions that have major Spatio, Economic and temporal effects including work in several UK main cities, ports and airports.

as a design enabler for caBe she has supported communities in the enhancing of public realm and civic spaces, in improving the health of market towns and in addressing the challenges of rural areas. she is used to absorbing wide cultural influences and the valued technical and data inputs of large projects.

Bruce Clarkhead of sustainable

practice & conservationBSc, BArch, RIBA

Bruce has a very broad range of experience, having worked for both private practice and Local Authorities, including large scale commercial and leisure projects, retail, schools, churches, police stations, village halls and bespoke housing. as such he is well versed in resolving various conflicting brief, site and legislative criteria with financial reality.

Bruce leads our historic buildings team and is particularly interested in the challenges of managing reducing the environmental impacts of that come with the use existing buildings; in the framework of current and developing environmental legislation. This is reflected in his work with re-using historic buildings and developing new sustainable uses for existing structures whether grade 1 listed, or of more modest stock.

Katherine Macdonaldplanner

BA(Hons) MA, MRTPI

Katherine project manages the submission of applications and appeals, undertakes site appraisals and research, and writes submission reports. she has worked on a wide variety of projects in different sectors such as housing, rural, industrial, commercial, retail and conservation. her particular interests are housing and the historic environment.

previous work on complex cases has meant that she has developed a good understanding of planning procedures, case law and legislation.

she is also involved in strategic planning at nash partnership and developing her skills in the regeneration aspects of the planning process.

Leigh Dennissenior researcher

msci

as nash partnership’s research and information manager leigh is re-sponsible for co-ordinating and dis-seminating the vast array of technical, social, economic and numerical re-search information required by our teams and clients for the production of sustainable and socially sensitive designs and project proposals.

With a broad knowledge base span-ning economic, cultural, environmen-tal, political and historical geography, leigh has a holistic and critical un-derstanding of the development of places and spatial systems, which he uses to inform and strengthen projects undertaken by nash part-nership’s planning and economic re-generation team.

www.nashpartnership.commail@nashpartnership.com

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