On Covid and the future of cities When I moved to London in 1979 the population was 6.75 million. England’s capital city had experienced a decline from 8.9 million over 4 decades (see graph here). A heady cocktail of air pollution (there was even a song called A Foggy Day (In London Town), by Gershwin […]

The lockdown got us thinking about some big stuff like globalisation. Prior to Covid-19 rearing its ugly head, there had already been much discussion about issues with globalisation. The seemingly unstoppable march of national economies, coming together as one global economy, for the ultimate benefit of the world. Globalisation appeared to tick boxes on all […]

Musings on the first lockdown, creativity and the future of public space.  It’s now almost 40 years since we started our design business and perceptions of the creative industries have changed hugely over that time. I grew up in a household where my mum and my nan were always making clothes and my pop was […]

The definitive history of Blackburn is Open and the build up to The National Festival of Making. In 2012, we had the idea to take what Blackburn had – empty shops in prime town centre locations, an open minded Council, unused evocative buildings, strong industrial heritage, successful diaspora – and embrace these assets to start […]

Our town centre thinking continues… This week it’s the turn of another so called “retail institution” the House of Fraser to announce a significant store closure following a shrinking of Mothercare and the demise of the likes of Maplin’s, Toys R Us and a whole raft of retail “brands” (that often actually has done the […]

We can tend to be utopian but a divided society serves no-one. Britain is divided in a number of ways and if it continues then everybody will suffer. Between Remainers and Leavers, environmentalists and climate change-deniers, misogynists and feminists, the curious and the ignorant and the haves and have-nots, we’re at risk of tearing ourselves […]

Improving equality and life chances for the younger generations have always been hugely important to us. Growing up in the 60s and the 70s my guess is that most young people in normal working class communities like the ones Gerardine and I came from in North East Lancashire had the belief that if they rolled […]

Improving equality and life chances for the younger generations have always been hugely important to us. I like many have been seeing the signs over the past few years that there is a generation, that, for the first time is worse off than their parents. It was the norm for people of my generation to […]

I was asked to film a polemic for the This Week programme to go on the BBC tonight but it has been subsequently dropped because of Boris Johnson’s announcement that he will now not stand for PM. Even though it does have some of the content from the EU referendum blog that we published last […]

Wayne shares his post European Union referendum blues. Three days after the announcement of the EU Referendum result, I still feel totally and utterly down. The only other time in my life that I have felt like this was when my dear mum died. However I was prepared for that, I had had time to […]

Brexit and building the right kind of homes get an airing here. Its 7 am and I have just come back from running with my dog Minnie in my local London park and am feeling conflicted. Over the past few months the numbers of rough sleepers in the park has increased substantially. They are not […]

We did our bit for the remain in the EU campaign and are still saddened by the result. I honestly didn’t imagine that the UK would get to a position where it is possible that we pull away from Europe. But this weekend’s polls show the “Leave” campaign 3 percentage points ahead. It makes no […]

In 2015 we continued to discuss and document our positivity about the evolution of town centres, as a more indie and experiential spirit started to replace the dinosaurs that continued to fail and cease trading.  I have “mouthed off” pretty regularly these last few years about the future of our high streets – one recurrent […]

We have been known to dream… There are have been some wonderful life enhancing tech start-ups over the past few years. Airbnb and Uber have changed, for the better, the way I consume travel and getting about. But there is one that every time I go running in a town or city gets me thinking. […]

I keep seeing those “rent to own” shops selling boring furniture and sparkly electronics on our High Streets and am intrigued and worried by this return to a retail concept led by Radio Rentals and Granada (sing along now, “Great service, great sets, that what you get…at Granada” that seemed to suffer a slow death in the […]

I’ve had an interesting few weeks sitting on the Eco Towns Challenge Panel. The proposed Eco Town programme has naturally caused a major outbreak (nay plague)  of “nimbyism”. Many of the new towns and settlements the Britain commissioned since the successes of Letchworth and Welwyn Garden City are having to have regeneration money lavished on […]