Les Sparks on retail-led regeneration

Les Sparks, former chair of the CABE-English Heritage Urban Panel, discusses his experiences of how the expert panel has considered the design of shopping centres.

Shopping increasingly defines the places we live in. So it is no surprise that from its first visit, the Urban Panel has repeatedly been asked to advise on projects to replace ageing shopping centres built in the 1960s and 70s.

Les Sparks, who has chaired the panel since 2004, has a particular interest in bringing about a new kind of retail development. Sparks joined CABE when the agency was launched in 1999, as a commissioner, later becoming chair of the design review committee. But it is his time in Birmingham, where he was director of planning and architecture during the 1990s, that is most relevant to this story.

At Birmingham he was instrumental in changing the way Britain's second city is seen by outsiders through the regeneration of the Bullring Shopping Centre and the arrival of the new Selfridges. He left his job at Birmingham City Council before the new centre opened and although he would have liked to see a wider mix of uses and separate buildings, he is broadly pleased with the scheme. "In the main it's a vast improvement on the old Bull Ring opened in 1964. There's things I'd like the developer to have done like include housing in the scheme. They haven't got mixed use but the layout and circulation works pretty well."

Unfortunately the picture across the country is not so uplifting. Sparks says that on its travels the panel usually found that developers were approaching retail schemes with an identical set of principles, irrespective of the local characteristics of the host town or city.

Their formulae involved: the development of a single massive building with enclosed two or three storey retail malls, and blank walls on its perimeter; a single use (retail) supported by around 2000 car parking spaces; the absence of public rights of way so that the whole building can be closed outside retailing hours, forcing pedestrians to circumnavigate the site; and large retail units, designed to appeal to high street multiples, with one or two department stores to anchor the scheme.

Often these projects threatened to repeat on a larger scale the urban design failures of their predecessors. They appeared as out-of-town shopping centres on the model of Meadowhall outside Sheffield, dumped on to the town centre. The only concession to higher land values would be the multi-storey car parking in place of sprawling areas of tarmac. "It is an approach that robs the town of its identity and texture, replacing fine-grained networks of architecturally distinctive streets and buildings with plain, monolithic structures totally out of scale with their surroundings," Sparks concludes.

The Urban Panel has consistently objected to this formulaic approach which was in evidence in emerging schemes it saw in Bath, Norwich, Nottingham, Leicester, Peterborough and other historic places. In its place it has advocated a radically different approach that aims to integrate these new developments seamlessly into their historic context, repairing the disconnections that resulted from previous redevelopment, and recognising the distinctive movement patterns of the town centre. The Urban Panel's typical recommendations include:

• Development that reflects an understanding of the history of the place to which it is adding.
• Vertical and horizontal mixed-use development in which residential, office and leisure uses are integrated with the retailing.
• A movement pattern that reconnects surrounding streets and alleyways, re-establishing historic circulation routes.
• Routes that function as traditional streets, open to the elements (or as traditional arcades) with no external doors so that they allow access at all times.
• Development of independent blocks that can be replaced on a phased basis rather than single megastructures.
• Buildings that address the surrounding streets with active uses and entrance doors, and that relate in scale to their neighbouring buildings.

While some major shopping centre developers still fantasise about building huge enclosed retail centres with a department store on each side, Sparks hopes that the Urban Panel message is slowly starting to get through.

"Our journeys around the country and experience of what is driving the retail market puts us in a strong position to persuade other people that there's a better way of doing things," he says.

And the panel saw some evidence that its alternative approach is being adopted. The Liverpool One development by Grosvenor Estates is based on a number of separate buildings designed by different architects and separated by open public streets. Hammersons are following a similar approach in Sheffield.

The development that comes closest to meeting the Urban Panel's recommendations though is Land Securities' Princesshay project in Exeter. The Urban Panel visited Exeter in March 2002 when the project was still on the drawing board. It gave its enthusiastic support to the developer and City Council for their refreshing approach.

Sparks points out that the scheme was, in fact, a replacement for a conventional monolithic proposal that was heading for a public inquiry following strong objections from English Heritage. Land Securities wisely sought a deferment of the inquiry whilst seeking agreement on an alternative scheme - one that would be more in sympathy with Thomas Sharp's post-war Central Development Plan with its human scale and carefully selected view of the Romanesque transeptal towers of the Cathedral.

"We were overjoyed by Princesshay," Sparks recalls. "For the first time it incorporated the thinking that we'd been peddling - a scheme based around traditional street patterns." This in an area that had been heavily bombed by the Luftwaffe in World War II and then redeveloped later with what Sparks terms "rather dull" architecture.

To any councillors doubting whether a new approach to retail is either practicable or desirable, Sparks has a passionate answer: "You must concentrate on the character of your city, what you like about it, such as the quality of the streets. And you must insist that this is sustained rather than swept away by some vast development like you may have seen in many other places. When a developer says to you "this is the best thing on earth", be a bit sceptical. You are the person who knows what is special about your town, don't allow it to become a clone with an identikit shopping centre planted in it." You've been warned.

Les Sparks is an architect planner with substantial local government experience at senior level. In his professional career he has specialised in urban design and conservation and was awarded the OBE in 1997 for his services to Urban Regeneration. He was Director of Planning and Architecture at Birmingham City Council and previously Director of Environmental Services at Bath City Council where he was instrumental in establishing the English Historic Towns Forum. Formerly a Commissioner of English Heritage and Deputy-Chair of the English Heritage Advisory Committee (EHAC). He is one of the founding Commissioners of CABE and now chairs CABE's Design Review Committee.