Backward thinking in municipal strategy

This article was written for the Municipal Journal, and is kindly reproduced here. James Woudhuysen argues that until Research and Development, not architectural icons, becomes the focus, municipal strategy will remain not genuinely creative, but entirely backward. Until then there will be no end to the mythologising of iconic architecture.

The Southampton conference on 18 March 2004, called City Identity: does it matter?, looked timely. With the enlargement of the European Union on 1 May 2004, Britain's cities will be confronted with further rivals from the East. A city like Southampton is now in more direct contest with a city like Ljlubljana than ever it was in the past.

Of course, different cities in Europe have always been blessed with different kinds of 'factor endowments'. One might think, then, that the inherent differences between the world's cities would ensure that rivalry between them took the form of further distinctive innovations. But that is not the case.

Too many municipal managers believe that they hold, in the quality of their buildings, one of the principal sources of inter-urban competitiveness.

To their mind, ingenious construction can bring social cohesion and bigger revenues from tourists. The Barcelona model, in which space and architecture are seen as fundamental ingredients of culturally-led urban revival, is taken seriously by mayors, speculators, leisure operators, arts administrators, geographers, town planners, architects and the broad mass of the citizenry.

Equally, professor Ricky Burdett, director of the cities programme at the London School of Economics, has pluckily pronounced Bilbao's 'Guggenheim effect' - the millions of visitors brought to the town since Frank Gehry's museum opened in 1997 - 'absolutely duplicable'.

Indeed it is so duplicable that, in 2003, Gehry was hired by the British seaside town of Hove to design four towers for residential and leisure use there. The aim, said the Financial Times, was '... to make the city look a little more like Bilbao'. The developer, Karis ING, said that its own aim was to turn Hove into Britain's architectural capital.

Crowing that it is the historic birthplace of great men and women, nowadays every city has its own cultural strategy. Through brilliant salesmanship by its founder, Charles Landry, the consultancy Comedia has cornered the market for such strategies. It has convinced everyone that iconic architecture can indeed revive lost identities and improve distinctiveness.

The upshot of the cultural approach, however, is that every city now seeks both to monumentalise its architectural heritage, and to confirm its modernity by commissioning new buildings designed by architects of international renown. The growing demand for culture among citizens, tourists and companies alike makes this gambit seem respectable.

Yet it is precisely around the panacea of bespoke, landmark architectural developments - buildings that are visited by international tourists, nationals and locals- that thinking in municipal strategy is least innovative.

Large-scale architectural icons, which have enjoyed a vogue as attempts to unify the identity of cities in a grandiose and self-consciously cultural way, have now become a market that is commoditised. Their claim was distinctiveness, but every minor city in Europe boasts or has plans for such an icon. And each costs a lot of money, because each is a one-off.

Of course the styles of these buildings are highly differentiated. However, when every city tries more noisily than others to stand out from the crowd with such constructions, their functional impact, both on competitive advantage and on overall urban prosperity, is limited.

At the Wharton school of the University of Pennsylvania, Witold Rybczynski says that the formula Eye-popping architecture + cultural attractions = more tourists has produced a sort of architectural fatigue.

As Rybczynski notes, not just museums, but also sports facilities are part of the samey premises of urban cultural strategy. From Bolton's 28,000-seat Reebok Stadium through to Southampton own plans for a 5,000 seat multi purpose arena, everyone is at it.

These ventures are no more innovative than museums designed by branded international architects. Both kinds of initiatives are largely unquestioned - for who can be against culture, museums or sport? But they can and must be questioned.

Over the past three decades, tendencies toward atrophy in Western capitalism have got the better of tendencies toward innovation. Thus have communitarian cultural spectacles in architecture become the main motif in official urban competitive strategy. The new, expensive, one-off cultural buildings boast a sparkling appearance. But they also reveal wider problems of sluggish innovation.

It is hard to transform the substance of a city's apparatus for creating wealth in general and transport or housing in particular.

Instead of a transformation of substance capitalism veers toward changes in form.

Through congestion charges and the architectural cosmetics of bespoke, landmark developments, the typical Western city takes the soft option. Like bids to attract tourists, attempts at social inclusion and social engineering through architecture are preferred to the real works of engineering - in construction, manufacturing, services and government - that need to be undertaken if cities are truly to be revived.

Yet even on their own terms, a succession of New Labour attempts to provoke working class interest in museums has proved fruitless. There is a similar tale to tell in British sport. There, the minister in charge, Tessa Jowell, has admitted that, after allowing more than £1.5 billion of taxpayer and National Lottery cash to be spent on sport in England, Her Majesty's Government has seen an increase in popular participation so small, it is 'statistically irrelevant'.

Behind every bespoke, eye-catching architectural initiative in visitor attractions, the same old problems of urban decay and limited urban productivity remain unsolved. Indeed in Britain the gap between appearance and reality has now grown so great that, in June 2003, it had to be acknowledged at Britain's Core Cities Summit. At the summit held in Newcastle, with the participation of Birmingham, Bristol, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Nottingham and Sheffield, details of which are on www.corecities.com, the Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott launched a report that finally talked up old-fashioned research and development.

It admonished cities: 'In the UK there is a strong statistical correlation between the regional pattern of R&D (both public and private sector) and regional economic performance.'

It is a brilliant but belated insight. Until R&D, not architectural icons, becomes the focus, municipal strategy will remain not genuinely creative, but entirely backward. James Woudhuysen 1 July 2004

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