 good evening everybody and thanks for your time tonight. So my name is Riccardo, I am an urbanist, I choose the world very carefully because I'm a designer and a specialised master in master planning but I like the term urbanist because it explains that it's not just when you work on places it's not just about the spatial dimension of it it's also about understanding its economic side, its social side and not just about designing pretty things so I'm always keen to insist on the importance of urbanism rather than just design. This introduction is very timely and very useful to our team because we can introduce ourselves properly, we've been working on the local centre and the enterprise zone since the end of May now. Hopefully I'll see you many times as we go through the process I'm going to show you later a little gantt chart that explains the different stages of what we'll be doing and of course the aim is to start a conversation with you and get as much input as we can in the development of proposals for these parts of Norstow. I work for AR Urbanism which is a studio that specialises in complex urban sites we've been operating since 2007. We are based in Hackney, at least is the right part of London in terms of northeast and it's very straightforward to get to Norstow. We work across the UK and occasionally abroad and we've been appointed as I said in May to provide advice to the council in the preparation of the plans and proposals for the local centre and enterprise zone. In terms of let's see if I can move forward. Yes, so in terms of the brief from a technical point of view we are supposed to assist the district council with the preparation of proposals for RIBA stages zero and two. What it means is what follows on the slide. So we need to help to get to an agreement on a vision to develop the local centre and enterprise zone and therefore develop a master plan. I'd like to insist on the word agree because it's a co-design exercise. It's not the classic consultant that comes in, brings their idea and then hope there you go, you have a nice plan. Places do not really go very far if you try to shape it that way. It needs to be an exercise where there is an agreement between multiple parties and the community is leading that. At least if we're really serious about sustainability in the long term. We will have to look at on the basis of this dialogue with the community at design principles and broad high level options for both enterprise zone and the local centre. Frankly speaking I don't like to distinguish between the enterprise zone and the local centre. It's one place and it's going to be about blending the two so and blending the two within the wider area so I like to call it local centre if you don't mind the rest of the presentation at least. We need to and what we've been doing for the past month and a half try to digest all the wealth of evidence that is available because yes we are joining the team, the wider team also for the district council now but we need to recognise the amount of work that has already been done here. So we're catching up in terms of understanding of the place. We have been already spending time also on site in the previous spell of summer that we had. We have been using our bikes to and and walk around as well quite a lot and we need then to come up with to find solutions to the request and the ambition of that we will register during the process. Now it's not me controlling the screen just to make it clear, thank you. We are reviewing in to respond to the clear aspiration of our brief which is to really have a truly sustainable local centre here. We are doing a review of benchmarks of national international best practice for these type of places and we are starting our consultation with an engagement rather say with stakeholders and the local communities. I will give you later some details on how you can engage with us about this. At the end of this engagement and co-design process we are also preparing an outline business case to explain how this place is going to be delivered because it's as important as design it. There's little point of design something that is really not possible to deliver. Let me see if I can, I need help here because it's not changing slide. John, thank you. So in terms of the site today and in fairness for the first stage of the development it's not really about us coming and talking to you about our ideas it's really a listening exercise that we are we're doing and so I didn't want to present a lot of those slides with design I was just keen on two in particular this is just an initial summary of what's going on on the site and what we observed from our initial understanding and I think the most interesting elements I think are connectivity first of all especially for pedestrians and cyclists. The local center is in an amazing position is on the way between the parkway, the park and ride and the established phases of development and by the B1050 so it's in a really pivotal position and the connectivity from all these development to these locations whether they exist in the neighborhood or the future neighborhood is paramount in order to activate and make sure that that place really serves and is accessible by everyone. There are things on site we're not operating on a blank canvas even if you see a green field there are still things that we should take into account things that you see including mature trees that we're trying to assess right now what it's possible to do with them without having to displace too many things there is ecology there are aspects that relate to flooding and drainage that we need to take into account and there is there are possible areas of contamination so we're working with engineers to understand what the full what is the full picture we're very keen to understand how we can connect really provide a small connection to the station to the to the north to the bus guided bus service and how we can if you like make the most of this connection that is do you see light blue running north south here that runs just outside the local center this is the the proposed busway and there are local other local bus services that touch the central at the local center but we will have to find ways to make sure that we don't miss that opportunity to feed from from these these connections and these are just very early thoughts and another important element I suppose I should mention now is how we can connect and integrate with a wider network of green connections and parts for pedestrian cyclists and and especially how we can enhance and contribute so it makes sense in the bigger picture even if the land use on this location is boy is going to be about community and social infrastructure and employment it doesn't mean that we need to stop all these connections and things are happening around just at the boundary of the site we need to bring them in and try to find a way to continue that language that is I think very successful then will be even more successful in the future but we need to provide that bridge now in the previous slide I think we skipped one sorry John I'll ask you to go back one and this is just a very abstract probably picture it shows the catchment area of the local center so the local center is at the in the middle of the picture here where my cursor is and it shows different you know catchment areas of 400 meters 800 meters typically walkable distances now at the moment we already have about 1500 units within this area so it means that it's already quite a crucial amount in a critical amount of people that rely and will rely even more on this location in the future and if we are able to provide these nice walking routes we probably also limit traffic to the development and of course is going to be about accessing from elsewhere also the employment zone and part of that will be on vehicles although we really will try our best to stimulate and enhance access via sustainable means and this is going to be even more a compelling case once all the different plots for residents are developed in terms of the amount of people that we rely on the look on these local center now I will try to go to slide down it's working this is our program so as I mentioned we're starting now the dialogue with you with everybody all the stakeholders the business community the residents and we have we envisaged that we are we're going to remain in this listening phase and early thinking until the end of the summer effectively so you see in green here in this picture these two numbers one and two at the basically now from next week and then at the early at the beginning of september we're going to have dedicated workshops with residents and with local businesses we have also launched a online survey later I will put in the chat in the chat the links for these events at least for the first event that is going to take place in the second half of july the first step as I mentioned is going to be us listening to to you and also explaining what we're finding through our analysis and try to validate our understanding as I said we try to catch up you are the best source of information and understanding of the place and we are going to do the technical side the diligence on the technical side but we need to converse these two things to be able to produce later proposals that are meaningful so we're going to do this and then at the beginning of september and at the beginning of october we will start testing early ideas based on those discussions that we had so far so in phase two we're going to start testing ideas and in phase three in in october we will start and try to bring things together into a coherent plan and and of course test it with testing with you and how well we're doing and the level of support for these type of proposals it's going to be an important testing ground for us and we will then amend plans and seek cabinet approval and then developed a more detailed level of design we'd like to keep it at conceptual level not drilling too much detail get an agreement between all the different parties on the approach and then develop a more detailed design that could support the council and help the council to submit a planning application in outline so again not detailed design but in principle in at the beginning of next year in 2022 um let me see if I'm lucky with the slide changing yes so we are taking a look at different levels I'm a master planner so my role is if you like the gel to bring the different disciplines together and try to find the synthesis from a spatial point of view but and so we as a our urbanism we have the matter we have the master planners but we have planners we have a very good clinical and the black we have okra who are a dutch landscape design company who has already worked in the uk i really like the work for their attention for the sustainability side that the integration of walking and cycling to the landscape proposal and streetscape proposal we have civil engineers expedition and we are which are part of a useful useful project I think the the full name of the company the mother company is we have an important role for prd who are regeneration specialists and they are looking already at delivering and viability we want to be realistic on what is achievable and we want them to find ways to get it delivered we're not interested in the design that is just nice on the drawing board and then it doesn't really deliver on the ground um we're looking again utilities we have architects as well supporting us taking a look at briam so it's a sustainability standard that you use is using the industry but they also are if you like critical friends in terms of architecture that will challenge us as a designer as an internal critical friends steer or transport specialist to try to help us to push the uh movement and access strategy and uh yeah and then of course we're looking at heritage as the council's before me mentioned it this is not a place that comes out of nowhere there is a local history and we need to reflect that in the proposals as well and of course there are other technical elements to be taken into account in this let me see so these are the first two dates for the residents and the business workshops that we have organized i'm going to copy now these information in the chat so you can click and subscribe please please take part in this the more we are here from you the more we can uh respond to your uh challenges i always like to say you know we uh with specialists specialists on these things our job is to listen elaborate and then get back to you i know already that we're not gonna say yes to every single things that you're gonna say but if we say no to something we'll definitely provide an explanation for that and we're really keen to um bring bring you in the journey to explain fully why we're doing certain things and not others and of course we give plenty of opportunities to challenge us on that it happens that we have done silly things in the past i'm not trying to say but because of these co-design process then we can act and amend we don't expect to be always right or anything like that and we normally get interesting insights and ideas from from the community and local businesses i rather probably shut up because i think i've used my time i hope i uh i can i've transmitted my passion for the project we're very all very excited and we really now that we finish in the due diligence and reading a lot of what's has been done so far really move to the next stage which is interacting with you and discussing ideas thank you