We help build better cities through knowledge, networks and leadership
Drawing on research carried out for Public Practice during a year-long placement in LB Havering, Rachel Hearn reflects on the role pre-apps can play in securing good design, the challenges local authorities and applicants face when it comes to pre-apps, and how these services could be improved for all.
LB Redbridge Chief Exec Andy Donald argues that councils need to redefine their role as leaders of placemaking. At November’s breakfast briefing, he invited alumni to think of councils as conveners: providing a platform to bring stakeholders together and establishing a ‘low floor, high ceiling’ that sets the tone for collaboration and co-production in shaping our neighbourhoods.
Spotlight by Leaders Plus alumna Rebecca Lee of PTE, whose growing obsession with better, more collaborative digital mapping led her and FoL’s Lisa Taylor to organise the 9th Dec #MapLondon conference.
How do we measure the success of a place when compared to its surrounding neighbourhood or city-wide economy? FoL Alumni and invited guests came together to explore this question and consider how some of London’s most high-profile regeneration projects perform against a more holistic view of placemaking.
London’s intensifying needs, budget constraints and charged public mood are driving increasingly defined requirements for social value within the procurement process. Seven years on from the Social Value Act, there’s significant variance in the approaches to and strength of uptake, with authorities in the Midlands and the North leading the … Read more
Following our field trip to the Lower Lea Valley in May, which looked at how the CRT maintains, funds and manages uses along their sections of London’s waterways, FoL invited the CRT to facilitate a workshop exploring some of the challenges – and opportunities – that arise when designing with water.
In October 2018, Future of London launched the Council-Led Housing Forum. One year on, we reflect on what the Forum has achieved and find out what’s next on its agenda. In response to ambitious housing targets from both the Mayor and central government, local authorities are, once again, building homes. … Read more
Our latest Spotlight is a guest post from Poplar HARCA’s Nicola Rushton. Inspired by the suffragette centenary, Nicola started Women East in Stroudley Walk, Bow, where Sylvia Pankhurst gave her first speech on the back of a cart. November 2018 marked the centenary of female suffrage, 100 years since the … Read more
The first of three roundtables in FoL’s ‘Paying for Public Projects’ programme convened cross-sector experts to discuss the merits and risks of current public sources of funding and financing for delivering regeneration, housing, and local-scale infrastructure schemes.
It’s not just what you say in a presentation that matters; how you say it is just as important. FoL’s Speaker Showcase is a great way for participants to learn how to get their message across, how to win over an audience, and, perhaps most importantly, how to do this with confidence