Project Centre hosted a webinar last week, featuring speakers from Dartford Borough Council, The Place Bureau and Sustrans. It comprised three presentations, each with their own focus and expertise.
Watch the webinar here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGAfCjcIUdk
Dartford Town Regenerations – a webinar talk
Keith Longley, Project Manager at Dartford Borough Council, spoke about the Dartford Town Centre Regeneration (DTCR) project. This project seeks to transform Dartford Town Centre and improve its economic performance. Through the delivery of high-quality public realm and environmental enhancement. It will facilitate better accessibility and movement. whilst supporting the redevelopment of the town.
The project design commenced in late 2018 and construction commenced in May 2019 before finally completing in February 2021. The project has received widespread praise both for the design and workmanship. The hope is that by late 2023, Dartford will be almost unrecognisable from the previous dated and congested traffic-centric environment.
Making connections
João Toscano, Technical Director of Landscape and Public Realm at Project Centre spoke on Making Connections and Unlocking Potential.
Town centres are constantly evolving. So how can they adapt to break old constraints and overcome future challenges? How can placemaking unlock the potential for healthier, safer, more flexible town centres? How can they promote a distinct identity, social inclusiveness, environmental values and economic growth? João shared examples of where the approach of placemaking and the positive dialog between people, place and use have created spaces that better serve and energize the community. He also discussed the importance of the town centre experience in the era of smart technology.
Our relationship with cities
Rosanna Vitiello, co-founder and Bureau Chief at The Place Bureau and Marcus Willcocks, Senior Urban Designer at Sustrans jointly presented on ‘How the City Speaks to Us, How We Speak Back: Rewriting Our Relationship with Place’.
They discussed how placemaking practices can establish a ‘call and response’. That is both listening to the city, and encouraging greater opportunities for local people to speak back and express identity. Their presentation explored how diverse and active voices in placemaking can become long-term norms rather than sporadic opportunities. Delving into how the world emerging after the pandemic could encourage us to rewrite our relationships with our local neighbourhoods and town centres as markers of collective identity, to shape more responsive streets and public spaces.
What are the ways you understand a city speaks to people through its streets and public spaces? How can individuals and communities best speak back, to take an active role in how they relate to their local environments, at neighbourhood or city level? If you could do one thing to support better ‘dialogue’ in the relations between people and cities in the future, what would you do?
The entire webinar was chaired by Project Centre’s Associate Director Bharati Ghodke.
