Multi-scale approaches to suburban centre life

In our last meeting, we started discussing the idea of transportation data vs accessibility of the local high street. The beginning argument was (on the surface) about the level of accuracy and detail in transportation data sets, and our doubts about if any relative potential of a node in a macro scale network could be related to the buzz on the high-street.

But I believe what should be discussed (the underlying argument basis) is the abundance of scales (and methods) we can use to look into the existence of a successful suburban town centre. I do not see this as a data issue or something to be decided on level of accuracy, nor something related to only transport and accessibility, but as a discussion of a multi directional, relational approach to “place”. If we find a discrepancy in the flow of any urban event between a higher level and a lower level order, this is still something interesting to find out, although working on different levels, they will probably not be totally independent from each other.

Just to give an example, the town centres project approached the existence of centres as a surface of several factors. As far as I understand, it was not looking into “why (a town centre here)?”, but more into “where (a town centre is)?”. Now, I do not see this as a weakness: both macro and micro scale studies may look into “where?” only. This is especially important, when, as with the Town Centres project, the government and other institutions need a framework to answer to “where?” in order to produce effective policies, distribute investments and responsibilities. In the end the TC project did produce, methodologically, some boundaries that people could more or less agree on, which was a success. By contrast our project examines why, but even we need to take a starting point of where. That’s why we have started thinking about some suburban candidates of these resultant centres (to give ourselves an anchor point), and hopefully we will add the “why?” and will probably have different boundaries for our own focus. But by no means is this as a comparison ground between the two projects.

Looking into “why?” can also be done in several scales. Potentials do build up regionally and locally, so do investments. The controlling bodies are separate between these two sides, how they clash with each other, or how they serve each other has not found significant place in policies.

Which brings us to the state of spatial research here. In my limited experience, apart from a small number of people thinking about urban phenomena, in both geographical and configurational terms, these two worlds seem still vastly separated to me, not understanding each other enough, maybe not even giving enough care for what the other one has been coming up with. I have seen the tension between these two worlds on several urban phenomena, including land use, socioeconomic status and crime.

I believe we have a fantastic opportunity in this project, if we seize it, for a fresh comprehensive approach to combine, compare and simply relate what comes from the a) the global centre b)surrounding, and c)self structure of suburban town centres. How we allocate the amount of effort into these parts is negotiable, and depends on what we see as the main value and difference of our expected results.