Case Study- Borough High Street live project
Background and issues The ECIF-funded Build Up project brings together interdisciplinary teams of built environment professionals, who are out of work due to the economic downturn, to work on “hard to solve” problems in the London area. Borough High Street is one of the important routes into the City of London business district. It suffers high volumes of traffic and is underperforming as a High Street. It includes several historic buildings, and a generally poor level of building maintenance. Additionally, in the short term, infrastructure works for Thames Water and Thameslink are further undermining the trading environment. The focus of the project was to contribute to longer-term thinking about its future as a High Street.
The Build-Up project team worked with Better Bankside Business Improvement District (BID),Transport for London (TFL) and local community group, Living Streets, on a detailed analysis on the area. The nine-week project commenced on 24th November, 2009.
Tensions arising from different priorities amongst the partners and agencies involved in shaping the urban form were taken into consideration, to prioritise the following targets:
Achievements and outcomes
The group focused their efforts on the St George’s area by Borough Station and the alleyways to the east of the High Street. They identified St George’s as an important gateway to Borough High Street. The report suggested:
The Build Up project team’s final report is being used by the Living Streets group to add weight to their lobbying for substantial improvements to the public spaces in the area.
The full report findings are available at http://www.build-up.org.uk/index.php/projects/fullarticle/borough_high_street-_project_end/
Project owners’ perspective
Better Bankside is using the ideas and project findings of the Borough High Street project to shape a number of initiatives.
We are working with Southwark Council and Team London Bridge to stage a Guerilla Lighting event in April, 2010, lighting up a number of spaces around Borough High Street. I’ve had one idea for a meeting to showcase the report document to local residents, businesses and landowners, so we plan to invite them to review where we’re up to and where we’d like to go with some of the ideas put forward.
Valerie Beirne, Better Bankside
Participant perspectives
None of the participants on the Borough High Street project had worked with a Business Improvement District before. The team gained considerable experience of working through a project brief with a client to solve complex issues and insight into what for many of them was a new dimension of urban design.
