The High Street is Dead, Long Live the High Street. Lockdown – March 2020. This mandate single-handedly halved footfall across UK High Streets (Enoch et al, 2021). However, the decline of our High Streets was a reality that predated the pandemic. The ‘death of the high street’ is a notion being used by many experts Read the full article…

Photograph by Luke Leung In the recent decade, community planning has been rising in popularity as planners and local authorities, architects and other practitioners can all benefit from social discussion into shaping their local environment. Wates (2014) suggested, growing numbers of residents and communities are getting involved with professionals in shaping their environment. These involvements Read the full article…

Think of a city and what comes to mind? Its Streets. -Jacobs, 1961:39   © Copyright- Photo by Lisa Fotios from Pexels: https://www.pexels.com/photo/people-walking-on-sidewalk-3703738/ Streets are an important part of city life. They serve as the foundation for the complex interactions that exist between the architectural fabric and human organisation. A “high street” is one such Read the full article…

  Our existence acts in a space. we are always moving away or towards, or being still in a space. Our own experience of finding ourselves depends on the space. Shape and re-shape space can reveal and define a great many of our values, aspirations, insecurities, and concerns. As broadly acknowledged, place identity was initially Read the full article…

Published 6 January 2022 by Quitterie d’Harcourt Smart cities have been given all sorts of definitions. Generally, they are defined as holistic urban systems that have various technological systems installed at their citizens’ disposal to provide new services (e.g., healthcare, transportation, commerce) to their users and improve the efficiency of public services (Chin, 2015). Smart Read the full article…

This week’s lecture explored four main points with us： 1.Understanding the relationship between health and the environment 2.Exploring contemporary issues of health and well-being 3.Exploring theoretically viable approaches (how the built environment can support more active lifestyles) 4.Evidence to check which interventions really work and interesting future developments As it happens, this fits in well Read the full article…

Published 28 November 2021 by Quitterie d’Harcourt “If in 2015 we had parked all the passenger cars in circulation in a single line, one after the other, the line would have covered approximately 11 times the distance between the Moon and the Earth, or 106 times the circumference of the Earth.” (Bobisse & Pavia, 2019, Read the full article…

  A Nation of Luddites: Active Travel as a UK Crises Solution   We are experiencing the aftermath of the modernist era. The complex, concrete networks we call roads comprise the cities we experience today. Cities were built around automobiles. The urban thread is therefore largely disconnected from human form, scale and need. The craze Read the full article…

The Cycle Boom During the national lockdowns, we saw a huge increase in people taking the initiative to stay physically healthy. Being either their daily walks or short bicycle rides around their neighbourhood. One thing I noticed during the lockdown was the demand for bicycles was extraordinary, and suppliers struggled to meet the UK demands Read the full article…

Published 29 October 2021 by Quitterie d’Harcourt The problematic pollution levels in Paris are a matter that is commonly mentioned.  Every year, pollution levels reach hazardous levels, necessitating action, particularly in transportation. According to studies, air pollution kills between 48,000 and 67,000 people prematurely in France each year (Blondeau, 2019, pp.68). Air pollution has thus Read the full article…