Lowri on Market Towns
Next up in our meet the edge team series is our Urban Designer Lowri! Here she talks about being an urban design thoroughbred, the benefits of robust urban design principals and fighting the decline of our high streets.
An urban design thoroughbred!
I stumbled upon Urban Design in my first year of Uni and haven’t looked back since! I always joke that I’m an ‘urban design thoroughbred’, because unlike the rest of the edge team I studied Urban Design for both my Undergrad and Masters degree. This week I’ll be sharing some of the exciting things I did at Uni, as well as an insight into my final dissertation which focused on the design principles required to create successful outdoor markets and high streets – specifically within market towns.
I love wandering around local markets and market towns (especially in the run up to Christmas!), which was probably a subconscious contributing factor when choosing to move over to the edge team, who are based in Thame… the market town!
The benefits of urban design principles
In April 2019, under the hot Brazilian sun, I, along with my university peers had the amazing opportunity to travel to Rio de Janeiro to work with the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janerio’s architecture students and lecturers to develop urban design guidance for large social housing projects in the city. Rio is well known for its vibrant culture, outstanding beaches and breath-taking natural beauty, as well as its infamous favelas; where life pulses to a different beat (quite literally the beat of Samba). These informal settlements which climb the hills of Rio, stretch as far as the eye can see, turning the city’s landscape into a colourful patchwork of haphazard shanties lying above the glitz and glamour of the new city.
We worked alongside the ‘Minha casa Minha vida’ project (My House My Life) which works throughout the country in many cities to provide affordable housing to low-income families.
In the old port of Rio de Janeiro (Porto Maravilha) large areas have already been regenerated, with the government designating the port for a further 10,000 new social housing units, but there were limited urban design principles in place. After experiencing the city’s culture, its generous and kind people, and the incredible cocktails, we set out urban design guidelines for both the government and developers and tested these principles on the Porto Maravilha site. This experience showcased first-hand the positive effect that urban design principles and a focused vision has on communities.
Fighting the decline of the high street
Most people like a market (especially in the festive period), and for about 6 months in 2021, I visited quite a few to complete my dissertation research project as part of my Master’s degree. Markets have been considered a tool in the fight against the continued decline of town high streets, as they provide a service to local communities, encourage tourism and can support local enterprise, and are therefore undervalued assets in UK market towns.
For my dissertation I concluded by producing a guide that promotes best practice for the design and management of markets, specifically within market towns. It recommended both management tools, urban design, and spatial organisation to maximise the potential for public markets, in order to bring more people and businesses into town centres within the UK.
In Thame, we have a weekly market held every Tuesday, so this week I went out and did a light touch analysis of some its positive features and some of the things that could be addressed to maximise the benefit of the market on the high street.
Written by Lowri
