Project Lifecycle Management and Urban Design.

Title:

__________________ Spatial Designers should be taught to see design problems in four dimensions, instead of just three. __________________

I have ‘borrowed’ this term Project Lifecycle Management, from the world of engineering of vast facilities such as factories and processing plants, because it is useful to make a point, in the context of urban design. Today, here in Ireland, it seems to me, that any designer having created a new urban space, no longer has any duties to, or responsibility associated with the operation of the urban space afterwards. So designers don’t have much of an interest in the ‘aftermath’, it is not part of their whole everyday business. That is, ten years onwards, twenty years after the completition of an urban project. Yet, many of the most important lessons that could be learned by designers about urban space, can only be learned after the last brick has been set in place. Designers should be tasked to try and look at their executed urban designs on a periodic basis, to see if they could offer any suggestions, ten years after its construction for it’s better working in any way. That is sometimes when a designer’s input is even more valuable, than at the very beginning. But designers are encouraged to think as far as the ‘built’ completition of the project and maybe as far as a ‘designer awards ceremony and publication’, after… but not much further than that. There is a ‘hand-over’ that occurs between spatial designer and the local authority, at the end of an urban design project. The nature of this relationship, of handing over a project, when the construction phase of the project has been completed has many terrible consequences for how a designer even begins to think about space and the way we use it.

Many of the skills associated with reviewing a project afterwards, of maintaining the project and criticising their own projects, are lost. Funnily enough, these are skills that are very much alive and well in other areas of design, such as that of industrial projects, where the clients cannot afford to think only about the cost of building, and ignore the facts of maintaining and running a facility long afterwards – many even have to think as far away as de-commissioning of the facility – this poses some interesting questions too, in plants where the waste produced is a real issue, or an even bigger issue, than the actual plant itself. The skills of observation required to analyse why a project was successful or not, have deteriorated down through the years, in the field of urban design. Basically, due to the artificial separation between design of projects and the maintenance and working efficiency of them long afterwards. This should be a big issue in urban design – but alas, it is one often ignored in the design professions. At this stage, I think, much of those skills of observation of space and peoples’ use of space, have vanished altogether from the curriculum in the design schools. Instead designers are encouraged to spend practically all of their time working on the drawing aspect of design, of visualising the ‘thing’ in more and more lavish ways. But the idea of participation in a real built scheme, to try and understand, how the reality works seems almost a dumb thing to do. In other words, the design of space, has now largely become a theoretical exercise, done mainly by academics in design institutions, who struggle to find ‘excellence’ amongst the stream of young people who pass through. I am not altogether certain, that ‘excellence’ in drawing and graphical representation, is one of the most important qualities one should be looking for in designers at a certain young age. But that is what successive generations of spatial design tutors in the schools have been trained to look for. Skill at the speedy generation exciting new proposals, but never the looking at existing designs, to understand how they function or not.

To understand, the way spatial design is made to work, or not work in Ireland today,… I think you have to really look outside of design altogether,… and perhaps look at different fields to observe the interaction of government and theoretical professions, to view how the dynamics of that relationship can manifest themselves. Here, I have found Paul Ormerod’s account of ‘mainstream economics’ theory invaluable, and how Mr. Ormerod feels that mainstream theory has got it wrong. I think if you study the piece quoted down below, you will see how governments are used to interacting with professionals, who offer their services, in terms of predictions and advice,… and how this has become a very profitable industry, but if a helpful one or not, is questionable. The fact that designers like Architects, do not see the entire ‘project lifecycle management’ of urban design, means they are at a great disadvantage in offering any kind of useful advice and guidance. This problem can only be addressed through the design schools, at a grass roots level, and hope that in the future, some things will change. When I was reading the thread about ‘Westmoreland Street’, and the recommendations to ‘ban the car’ from that street,… it really brought to mind, some of the whiz-bang, short-term, silver bullet answers to urban design,… which avoids a larger part of the real design problem. This style of ‘solution-engineering’ is described very well I think, in the quote below.

Governments of all ideological persuasions spend a great deal of time worrying about how the economy will develop in the short term, over the next couple of years. If the anxiety levels of politicians were the only issue, few would be concerned. But our representatives do not merely contemplate the short-term future, they seek to influence it. Elaborate forecasts are prepared, not just by governments but by academic institutions and commercial companies. Advice is freely offered as to how the prospects for the economy can be improved, by the alteration to income-tax rates here, or a touch of pubic expenditure there. But the control which governments believe they have – in their ability to make reasonbably accurate forecasts and to understand the consequences of policy changes designed to alter the outcome – is largely illusory.

As we have seen, in the world of our ants consistently accurate short-term predictability is inherently impossible. Given that many economists persist in seeing the world as a machine, a different analogy may help to illuminate the theme. Real scientists can actually land a spacecraft on the moon, because they have a very good knowledge of where the rocket is going and of what will happen if they adjust the controls. But economics lacks this understanding. Forecasters have a pretty good grasp of where the rocket is at any point in time,* but have little idea of the direction in which it is heading. Further, if they shift the controls, some of them say it will move the spaceship to the left, and others say it will move to the right. In such cirrumstances, it would be absolutely amazing if a successful moon landing were achieved. Yet this is exactly the situation in which conventional economics modellers find themselves and, truly remarkably, politicians continue to believe them.

* Strictly speaking, this many not always be true. Unlike data in the natural sciences, a great deal of economic data is subject to revision over time as more information comes to light. So forecasaters may sometimes not even know exactly where the rocket has been in the recent past.

In Grafton Street today, you have you have a perfect working example, of the lack of ability to maintain and manage open public space in this country. You can actively witness the mis-use of open space, by the service industry, by flower sellers, and just about everyone – including the throngs of people who come in search of commercial ‘instant gratification’. However, in the radio programme on planning earlier this week, it was very encouraging to listen to the Dublin City Planner, Dick Glesson, talking of how in other European countries the annual 6,000 Euro fee for maintaining and looking after the apartment development, is built-into the morgages people buy right from the beginning. It does seem like a lot of areas of spatial design, require thought in four dimensions – not only the physical 3-Dimensional building construction completition,… but the continual management of the facility long after the building completition. Again, it is the phrase in the above quote,…

‘forecasters may sometimes not even know exactly where the rocket has been in the recent past’

…is the important phrase for me. Because if you were to substitute ‘Urban Design’ for ‘Economics’ in the above quote,… you would certainly get a good idea where I am coming from in relation to Westmoreland Street thread:

https://archiseek.com/content/showthread.php?t=3522&page=2

I think, Paul Ormerod’s argument in relation to economics, and the desparate need for economics to integrate the notion of ‘Time’ into its definition, is exactly the same for Urban Design. We must attempt to look at where we have come from, we have to look at the management of our urban design projects, throughout their entire lifecycle,… and the theoretical designers and academics should be a part of this process,… rather than separated from it, as they currently are. Otherwise, you are left at the end of ten years, with places like Meeting House Square, New Square, Temple Bar, and Cow’s Lane, The Millenium Bridge, Wolfe Tone Square,… which have become ‘Orphaned’ Projects rather than ‘Urban Projects’. Public Open Space requires much more than a few guys walking along with brushes and wheely bins. Seriously, would it have made more sense to have spent ‘half-a-million’ on Wolfe Tone Square, and spend another ‘half-a-million’ later on, paying spatial designers to observe the reaction and behaviour of the public to the space they have created? To me, this would offer much better information on the design and use of public space,… and at the end of the day, much, much better value for spending of public money. Than the current situation, where you hand out one very large and ‘exciting’ commission, and then watch the young spatial designers ‘fight’ over who is going to be standing on the awards ceremony podium next year, as the ‘winner of the competition’, for innovative young design. This goes for other projects which mis-fired badly too, like the four retail boxes placed now on Capel Street bridge. Because the spatial designers and planners in that instance, failed to see the project beyond it’s completed construction,… they failed to leave themselves an opportunity to view the design problem in four dimensions, with the leaving of some money in the budget, to refine the concept later on,… perhaps a couple of years down the road, if it became clear, the original concept was not going to prove a success.

Brian O’ Hanlon.