External Research
The following in no particular order is a list of sources of ideas relevant to Archway and similar urban areas.
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Healthy Streets
Lucy Saunders has worked as a consultant with Transport for London to make the best use of our streets, which are the city's biggest public space https://healthystreets.com/home/lucysaunders/. She offers excellent tools to assess whether the street is working for the majority of users.
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British Land Design for Life
Major developers have recognised that successful schemes are about more than just buildings, but also the spaces in between and how they are used. One of these is British Lane - see www.britishland.com/news-and-views/our-blogs/articles/2018/designing-for-life.
Public Space Design
Jane Jacobs' The Death and Life of Great American Cities www.goodreads.com/book/show/30833.The_Death_and_Life_of_Great_American_Cities is the original writing on what makes big cities work (and what doesn't).
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The Danish expert Jan Gehl is the current guru on the subject, particularly praised for his work in Melbourne https://gehlpeople.com/cases/melbourne-australia/. You can get a flavour of him in a talk he gave in Melbourne - www.youtube.com/watch?v=KL_RYm8zs28.
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Street Design: the secret to great cities and towns, by Victor Dover and John Massengale is an (expensive) but authoritative book on the subject -
www.wiley.com/en-gb/Street+Design:+The+Secret+to+Great+Cities+and+Towns-p-9781118066706 which includes ideas for action on the ground.
There is also an analysis of US toolkits at www.planetizen.com/node/40394.
Department for Transport
The government department has produced a useful document which lays out best practice design for streets www.gov.uk/government/publications/manual-for-streets.
Best Practice Transport
A fun compilation of ideas from around the world is at www.streetfilms.org/10-transpo-best-practices/
CABE
Released a report based on 30 schemes around the country which warned that supermarket-led developments in town centres risked becoming a liability rather than an asset to their communities. For more details see www.cabe.org.uk/news/supermarket-led-development.
The Association of Convenience Stores (ACS)
In 2010 revealed that more than 12,000 independent shops closed their doors in town centres in 2009 and that almost 90% of all new shop space given planning approval went to Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury's and Morrisons. The ACS said, 'In too many examples across the country supermarkets are poorly planned, too big and located away from the existing centres, meaning that they destroy choice and close down high streets. High streets are under threat from a 'perfect storm of reduced investment, poorly applied planning rules and aggressive supermarket expansion'.
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