Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by H Lowson on January 30, 2012 at 17:03

Our city has many assets that people think of when considering York such as The Minster, The Shambles and its open Strays. Now I have spent most of my life looking after the cities green public assets and yet most sadly take them for granted. They give benefits to our planet, our city and our neighbourhoods not to mention encouraging new business to an attractive location. Sadly, although I'm talking about public assets I rarely hear good things about them as a small minority tend to have a dislike for them when in reality I'm sure most wouldn’t be without them.

I'm taking about our Trees or York’s Urban Forest!

Development often threatens or fails to allow adequate space for existing or new trees and our stock is constantly under threat from natural attack too. So its quite a battle to sustain our trees and keep them safe in the public spaces we all benefit from.

Some will campaign to save one tree they may like but few campaign or help us look after the rest that we enjoy every day when we travel around York.

I recognise the great work of the volunteers in York Tree Warden Group

http://yorktreewardens.org.uk/ and our recently set up project Treemendous York to plant trees and raise tree awarness http://www.york.gov.uk/environment/Parks_and_open_spaces/treemendous/.

I hope this will see more businesses recognising the importance of trees in York and where possible planting or sponsoring more tree related projects.

Over the years I have protected, surveyed and mapped many thousands of York’s trees which can now be seen on the councils web site along with many of our other assets thanks to Yorks excellent map system http://localview.york.gov.uk/Sites/EnvPlanParks/# . GIS Maps are one of the best ways to show distribution of linked assets and you’ll be amazed at just how many trees we have in York!

H Lowson

Arboricultural Manager

Permalink Reply by H Lowson on January 31, 2012 at 9:16

Sorry my blog above was meant to be added as a new thread regarding HIDDEN GEMS and public ASSETS separate from the Maltings discusion. Trees also have a massive influence on combatting and offsetting air pollution which is another thread on here.

H Lowson

Permalink Reply by Ray Hallam on February 7, 2012 at 21:47

A hackspace.

A space in which technophiles can meet, discuss and develop ideas and / or access resources. A space in which members of the public can go to get impartial answers to their technical questions. A space in which people can learn and develop, thus enhancing the technical skill set of the region. A space in which (say) young, unemployed people can gain work experience whilst attaining industry standard qualifications in IT. A space that is filled with redundant IT kit from regional businesses, this kit being refurbished and donated to regional, national and international causes by the above young people.

Permalink Reply by Guy Hanson on February 8, 2012 at 11:58

Nothing to add about the Maltings but would comment against...

Getting the best value from our assets

I am interested in council owned or run markets (a bit of a long comment, but please bear with me).

York has two main markets: the temporary specialist themed markets that run on Parliament St (on and off) throughout the year and the permanent Newgate Market open seven days a week. Both offer a variety of retail and food but Newgate Market is struggling whereas the specialist markets are perceived to be thriving. This is a great shame because I believe both have different identities and should be able to thrive side by side.
One of the arguments put forward to why Newgate Market is struggling is that the environment (& stalls) are simply in terrible physical condition and that with investment this will raise the popularity of the market and drive an increase in uptake of stalls by traders and push up the quality of the products. This is certainly partly true, but not the complete picture.
Another reason why the market is struggling is that all of it isn’t in a great area of footfall. The main entrance off parliament St and the route through to King’s Square is popular but beyond this towards the back of M&S it is deadly quiet and this is clearly matched by a deterioration in the quality of the market in this area. There is not a lot you can do about this beyond either general uplift in attractiveness and to create a stronger reason draw people in (other than because they are en route to something else).
Finally, another main problem with the market is that the empty stalls stay-put when the activity of the market leaves in late afternoon. This creates a dead environment during these times and encourages anti social behaviour which itself deteriorates the environment further.

Here comes the idea....

Newgate market needs a shot in the arm- Some of the existing stalls would simply be removed (some of these either don’t trade or trade at such a low rent that it simply isn’t worth it) The space that would be created would be partly occupied by a new type of secure stall that reconfigures at night time into a piece of sculpture. The stalls would be movable and could also pop up (guerrilla style) in other parts of the city from time to time. The stalls would have such a strong identity that they have the potential to drive the desirability of trading out of them. The council would forge links with a range of underrepresented business’ and individuals - this includes creative student work from York St John, studio artists, start up business etc... who would normally not positively associate with the current identity of Newgate Market. The existing Newgate Market would continue to trade around this and would benefit from this new activity.

I have developed a proof of concept idea for these stalls- not a definitive solution, but an idea that is reasonably developed so that a local metalwork fabricator has progressed technical aspects to estimate the scale of costs. I have presented this to a council scrutiny group and they were interested in the idea, but to date have not been able to fund any further development. It works out at around £5k a stall for the main components, the design is based on a minimum group of four to create each night time sculpture so £20k a group plus £5k subcontractor design element. Fit out is yet to be determined, but could be minimal.

I attach a concept image of the stalls and their configuration options. Comments welcome!

Guy

Permalink Reply by Dave Atkinson on February 8, 2012 at 15:10

Please see my latest Blog post for further details on the Clementhorpe Maltings - Clementhorpe Maltings - the inside story

Permalink Reply by Antony Powell on February 14, 2012 at 12:21

It is difficult building an innovation community within the timescales that GeniUS has to meet. Looking back, my first reaction to this Challenge was that we precisely need to improve the way that we do challenges like this here in York. By that, I mean that there must be dozens of community groups and other interested parties that haven't yet heard about this challenge or are aware of the possible availability of Clementhorpe Maltings.

Given that this challenge is closing, perhaps a solution is to devise an ongoing mechanism by which interested parties could receive similar opportunities. For example, RSS feeds and Twitter account that all community groups in York should subscribe in order to avoid missing any announcements or opportunities like this one. This includes an ongoing GeniUS+ community but also might require a registry of community groups in York (if one doesn't already exist?).

A quick win, for example, would be to standardise some twitter hashtags used by the Council and other service providers so that communities of interest could evolve around these sorts of topics - e.g. #yorkgenius, #yorksocialcare, #yorkcharities. I'm no Twitter expert and it has a small and specific userbase, but adding some organisation is better than none. 

Taking the idea wider, I think the Council has a great opportunity to help York to 'coalesce' in digital terms by classifying resources, data sources, conversations, etc in a way that helps the community to integrate it's ideas as opposed to them being fragmented across the web. I've got some ideas here but will hit 'send' now as this challenge is ending shortly! 

  

Permalink Reply by Dave Atkinson on February 15, 2012 at 22:43

Hi Tony

For the purposes of the short-term project we are closing this challenge today. The reason is that we need to take the challenges end to end to analyse the process and demonstrate taking a concept/idea from the platform through to implementation. This is part of our commitment to the NESTA process.

It is the intention that the platform will stay up and discussions can continue to take place on any subject. As we move forward and are able to develop the platform further our intention is to focus more on the development of the communities and the functionality, process and information on the platform.

The Twitter ideas are good and we'll certainly use approaches like this as we look at how we engage and develop the communities moving forward.

Permalink Reply by caseymorrison on February 18, 2012 at 23:24

On community groups - some of this work has been going on, but a real link between community & technology sectors would help it along.. 

1. So YorkCVS has open communication methods - anything of genuine use to community groups can go out in their newsletter, just email their newsletter http://www.yorkcvs.org.uk/voluntary-voice.
2. There's a google map of voluntary orgs in York http://g.co/maps/4wa58. 
3. They also has the most followed charity support org in the UK on twitter- and there have been been social media surgeries in the city since 2009.
4. There are charity forums on all sorts of topics that run, so if you have something for them get it on the agenda.. http://www.yorkcvs.org.uk/ycvs-groups
5. There's also a map (connected york) that is supposed to show the relationship between the statutory and third sectors http://www.connectedyork.org.uk/style/networkMap.png but will need changing when the LSP changes..

Maybe some of the stuff you're suggesting Anthony (sounds great) could be done through the York digital divide strategy..? (and btw - I used to work at yorkcvs..!)

Permalink Reply by Antony Powell on February 20, 2012 at 10:35

Casey - I saw the great work you have done at YorkCVS. I was wondering if we can scale that and other ideas to be City-wide and beyond the voluntary sector. I will take a look at the Digital Divide strategy.

Permalink Reply by Annette Clark on February 15, 2012 at 9:53

How about setting up a Community Development Investment Fund to bring back the Bonding Warehouse into re-use as a community arts and entertainment centre? Like the one for Unity Hall in Wakefield?

Permalink Reply by david warburton on February 15, 2012 at 14:48

There are -as highlighted many examples elsewhere of successful ways of bringing empty / derelict / listed buildings back into beneficial use - building preservation trusts are another model - see the Eagle Building in Sunderland as an example http://bdaily.co.uk/news/business/03-05-2011/1304436302-eagle-build...- or Richmond station http://www.richmondstation.com/ as a cooperative model. Howerver the real challemge here is all council land and property not just the example given.  For me the key is not to see the land and property as 'council' land and property - the legal ownership entity is applied selectively to those assets with higher value.  The principle of 'public' ownership is fine for assetss with a low commercial value eg parks / opens spaces but where there is a commercial return to be made - a rather different management regime applies.  We need to ensure that management of publicly owned land and property is for the public benefit where the council is effectively a 'trustee' - and where all council objectives are ocnsidered in the asset management process including place making.  The changes happening through organisational review should be used to ensure a change in the property management ethos.

 

Permalink Reply by Gwen Swinburn on February 15, 2012 at 18:44

David, you raise an important point, al the assets should be considered as being held in trust for us the citizens- the difficulty for those outside the system is there is no real sense of undstandng about what the asset management process is, was or will be. I was in a meeting a few weeks ago and one staff member said the was a committee looking at assets, but it had only public sector and voluntary sector reps on it (guessing, owners and users) - a suggestion was made to invite some private sector asset managers into the group to bring in their skills sets, if they were willing. The problem for all buildings and ideas for using buildings is the expense- having had responsibility for industrial and commercial units, developed managed workspaces and so on- it is fine talking about these great ideas but with no no financial envelope- or demand study- I am not sure how far we can go. Perhaps I am being too old fashioned, but in my experience we need to truly understand where there are specific shortages of premises, then see if the private sector can step up before public resources, with all their overheads are brought to bear. Very good to hear your perspective especially on the place making dynamic. I often think of the industrial estate by the river and the Rowntree Park, thinking what a valuable site this would be for higher value activities.

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