Bankside & London Bridge   Locally distinct & globally connected Creating an effective public realm   Tim Stonor Managing Director   SPACE SYNTAX T 020 7400 1320   t.stonor@spacesyntax.com www.spacesyntax.com   I would like to start this talk with a look at the big picture – the wider city that surrounds the Bankside and London Bridge area. After all, it is from here that so many of the people that visit Bankside come. Consider its shape – the shape of the city: it has a clear, circular geometry, focused on the Elephant & Castle. Not unlike a wheel: with radials – Waterloo Road, Blackfriars Road, Southwark Bridge Road, Borough High Street - and a hub: the Thames. This geometry is more than merely a shape – it is a spatial configuration that manages the movement of people on foot, on bikes and in vehicles. It is also an element of design. It has a past, a present and a future.   The main point I wish to make in this presentation is that we need to give as much attention to the design of this network as we do to the design of any individual building.

And I don’t simply mean we need to design the transport network. Cities are about more than transport; more than movement. The spatial network is also the principal engine of social and economic transaction in London; the most important vessel of human interaction. But not only this, the spatial network we see here is London’s most evolved historic object. Some of its parts are largely unchanged since their Roman origins. Others, such as the Thames Path are much more recent.   The wheel-shape of South-Central London – with its centre, radials and edge - looks, at first sight anyway, like a classic case of urban growth: a historic centre that expands outwards along trade routes. But of course we need to remember that, in this part of London, it went the other way round.

Historic growth The growth started not at the centre but at the edge: with trade at the River, which then expanded into the heartland.   I think municipal planning often underplays this key characteristic: that the River is the historic centre. The fact we draw borough boundaries down the centre of the Thames doesn’t help. For a local authority as long and thin as Southwark it is always tempting to think geometrically, in which case the Thames is not just the edge but the distant edge.   The Bankside and London Bridge Plan helps greatly to address this and I believe we will be better off for it. I would like to keep my comments on it to one subject: the Thames.

Riverside Walk The Riverside Walk comes up again and again in the Plan, often drawn as a broad, sweeping arrow to recognise its importance; its high pedestrian flows; its social, cultural and economic prowess. Like the rim of a wheel, it is the part of the Borough that most often touches the world beyond. It is tempting to think that the Riverside Walk is taking care of itself.

Congestion But let’s look a little more closely at the Thames Path. In places it is far from being broad like the diagrammatic arrows in the Plan. Instead, it is narrow, pinching the movement of pedestrians, creating congestion and frustration. Try walking it yourselves on any fine lunchtime throughout the year. It is a victim of its success. Furthermore, consider this: however bad conditions can be today, we need to consider how they are going to be when the various, major new developments come onstream.

Twists and turns And nor is the route of the Thames Path effortlessly sweeping as it is tempting to read into the Plan. In reality the route of the Path twists and turns, forcing people away from the water’s edge when it comes, for example to passing beneath Blackfriars, Southwark and Tower Bridges.

Ups and downs The level change east of London Bridge is perilous, with steep steps set at an angle to the natural line of pedestrian movement. So, if we are going to create a realistic plan for the Bankside and London Bridge area, we need to address the detail as well as the diagram.   My practice, Space Syntax, has been involved in projects across the Bankside and London Bridge area that have contributed to the public space network we find today from the South Bank Centre in the west to More London and Potters Field Park in the east, taking in Coin Street, King’s Reach, Blackfriars Road, the Millennium Footbridge, Tate Modern and the Cannon Street Footbridge – by the way, why is there no mention of the Cannon Street Footbridge in the draft Plan: a bridge that would help over four million people a year cross between Southwark and the City?   Over the last twenty years we have seen movement levels increase dramatically in the area and nowhere more so than on the Thames Path itself. If there is one thing you can seem to count on it is that any improvement to the Thames Path will be rewarded with pedestrian activity.

Perspectives People come to the River to be on the water, to walk beside it, to enjoy the long and broad perspectives that reveal London in ways that only the London Parks can match – but without the trees getting in the way!   These improvements have, in my experience, three key components. First, they add capacity to the Thames Path by creating a wider walking, jogging and cycling surface – as has happened in front of Tate Modern and at More London. Second, they enhance conviviality by creating places, events, facilities along the Path such as the restaurants at Park Street and the kiosks at Potters Field Park. Third, they add continuity by taking out the twists and turns that otherwise interrupt the flow.   The first two – capacity and conviviality - are, I think, fairly uncontentious issues. The third - continuity - needs more of an explanation. Why, after all, should it be so important to keep the route straight enough that it unfolds simply?

Southwark Bridge To address this, let’s look at just one instance along the Path, at Southwark Bridge, where the route kicks inland in order to pass beneath the bridge. Not long ago I watched a group of schoolchildren, approaching the bridge from the west. When they reached it, one or two took a look into the relatively dark passageway that takes the Thames Path beneath the bridge. Since it’s not immediately obvious that this is where they should go next, there was then a bit of discussion and a decision was taken not to explore any further into this tunnel but instead to take the steps that lead up to the surface of the bridge itself. They literally went over the top.   And, when they get there, they were confronted with Southwark Bridge, its traffic and parked buses. And it is not just these schoolchildren but other visitors who, unsure of where to go, take longer, more convoluted and risk-laden journeys than they would have to do were the way clear.   This is a lesson we learned at Trafalgar Square, where over 99% of Londoners used to take the long route around the edge of the square because the route across the space required them to use the convoluted, dog-leg corner staircases there. The new, central staircase changed all of that – but not before we had, quite reasonably, to overcome heritage concerns since the construction of the staircase required the demolition of Grade 1-listed ballustrading. In that case, the greater good prevailed - supported by the evidence of our observations and the vision of the proposition - and the demolition was allowed.   I raise the discussion of the greater good because I suspect its consideration will inform the negotiation of many of the ideas we hear about in the Bankside and London Bridge Plan, as well as in the discussions today. The area is layered in history, flavoured by different local community identities and bedded in environmental riches, not least the River Thames and its tidal foreshore.  

But the Bankside and London Bridge area is also burdened by pressure of human interest: by the attention of private and public sector development agencies; by the presence of people on the ground: walking, cycling, sitting, driving, trading. And nowhere more so than at the water’s edge.   Despite the clear success of the Thames Path, what concerns me more than anything else in the area is that the Riverside Walk is already at capacity. With the additional loading that it will undoubtedly get as a result of the numerous, very large scale developments to come, my fear – and I use the word carefully – is that something will go wrong.  

Indeed things are already going wrong; jostling for space between runners and walkers at lunchtime is, I believe, only the beginnings of a much more serious problem of congestion. Holding events on the river is fraught with the danger of overcrowding and surge. So what can be done to mitigate this risk? One obvious line of thinking is to displace the crowds away from the Riverside Walk and onto the streets behind: Southwark Street, Union Street and so on. However laudable this is, I think it is unrealistic to believe that the improvement of these streets for pedestrians will solve the problem. Of course there will benefits to doing so, benefits for the streets and spaces that are created but not a benefit for the Riverside Walk, which is – and will continue to be – the main draw. Bring more people to Southwark Street and you will bring more people to the water’s edge.  

Linking the heartland The Bankside Urban Forest is an important and welcome contribution. So too are ideas like this to promote radial connections between the River and the heartlands of Borough and the Elephant & Castle. We developed this idea at Space Syntax five years ago, when Southwark Council asked us to think about the future of Borough Road and the communities between the River and the Elephant.

But, when projects like this are implemented, pedestrian movement doesn’t simply displace from one street to the next. The lesson we have learned is that movement grows – indeed there are such high levels, we believe, of suppressed demand for pedestrian and cycling movement in London that we should expect ever more and more pedestrian and cycling movement to occur. And this is London’s great opportunity – to create a new movement culture of decent pavements, cycle lanes and junction designs where the non-carbon modes have genuine precedence.   So what is needed for the Riverside Walk is more capacity, more conviviality and more convenience – not just in the surrounding streets – but on the Riverwalk itself.

The London Promenade About four years ago I was introduced to a project that proposes such a transformation: the London Promenade. It is the idea of Michael Davis, a local Bermondsey resident and long-time campaigner for improvement in the area. Developed in association with Conybeare Morrison architects in Sydney, the London Promenade proposes the broadening out and straightening up of the Thames Path, adding capacity where it is needed and removing the twists and turns by continuing the path under the riverside arches of the bridges. It would be constructed in sections, using the river to bring components in and take spoil away.   The London Promenade would create a continuous walking, jogging and cycling edge without disrupting the movement of a single vehicle.

Forecast uplift What is unique about this project is that it creates such an extraordinary uplift in pedestrian activity – we estimate an additional 30 million users a year - without any change to the road traffic infrastructure of London. I don’t know of any other project with such a massive, beneficial impact.

The ripple effect We have analysed the local movement impacts of the London Promenade. Forecasting how these benefits flow back into the heartland of the Borough.

New riverbus piers In addition to all its public realm advantages, the London Promenade proposes five new riverbus piers which, for the first time in recent history, create a network of stops that is dense enough, and of sufficient capacity, to make riverbus operations viable. This isn’t our opinion, it’s the judgment of riverbus operators, who are convinced they can carry more passengers on the Thames if only they have more places to pick up and set down.

London policy vision In conclusion, we think London should be interested in the London Promenade. After all, the River Thames features at the heart of the London Plan. Great world cities should, we believe, have great waterfronts – and this means having not only great new buildings on the water but also a generous and welcoming public realm. Throughout the world, post-industrial transformations are today gracing the banks of the Hudson in New York, the Seine in Paris, the Yarra in Melbourne, Sydney Harbour, Singapore. Why not the waterfront of Bankside and London Bridge?   When will London’s time come? And, given the pressure from development and the expectation of the public, can we afford to wait? I will be interested in this conference’s response.   Thank you.