Future of the High Street: sharing our findings and reflections

*Blog written by Jenny Elliott, originally published by the Edinburgh Living Lab 26 July 2021.*

The 7th and final in our blog series about project ‘Future of the High Street’ — which have openly shared the evolving project and process, our learnings and findings. This month — as we wrap up the project, we share summary resources and outputs — including Public Life Studies for Gorgie-Dalry and Dalkeith, an overall project report, and personal reflections direct from project team members. We also reveal our summary film about the project, by film-maker Megan Miller:

Project summary film by Megan Miller

Project ‘Future of the High Street’ combined citizen engagement, collaboration and co-design with rapid prototyping, urban data and research. The aim? To better understand key high street challenges and opportunities, and pilot two small-scale ‘tweaks’ with potential to support the high street as a successful, vibrant and liveable place as we emerge from Covid-19.

The project was led by the Edinburgh Futures Institute at the University of Edinburgh in collaboration with New Practice, Edinburgh Living Lab and the Data-Driven Innovation initiative.

Over the course of the project, we used a data and design approach with collaboration at its core, while also sharing learnings through monthly blogs and short films about the project process.

Now, as the main project activity draws to a close, and project partners New Practice continue to work with local organisations including City of Edinburgh Council and One Dalkeith community development trust to finalise project legacy outputs (including a number of permanent benches along Gorgie-Dalry high street, and a Tactical Urbanism Kit in Dalkeith), we wanted to share some of the resources and outputs that have come out of this 6 month project process.

In addition to the summary film about the project above, there are a number of other resources we hope may be of interest or helpful to other interested professionals and high street stakeholders. These are:

A booklet of 6 ideas for High Street Tweaks addressing common high street challenges and opportunities

A booklet of 6 ideas for High Street Tweaks addressing common high street challenges and opportunities

The Toolkit of 6 Prototype Ideas for High Street Tweaks — small-scale ideas that can deliver meaningful change for our high streets, and was developed with high street businesses, residents and organisations through this project.

Illustration by Katie Chappell of project webinar 21 July 2021

Illustration by Katie Chappell of project webinar 21 July 2021

On 21 July 2021, Jenny Elliott (Project Lead at EFI) and Duncan Bain (New Practice) shared their summaries and reflections on the project and its findings via a webinar chaired by Prof Chris Speed and live illustrated by Illustrator Katie Chappell. The full recording is available here.

View the final report compiled by the Edinburgh Futures Institute.

View the final report compiled by the Edinburgh Futures Institute.

The final summary report includes more detailed information about our methods, approach and findings about challenges, opportunities and pilots for the high street, and their ongoing legacy. It includes a number of standalone pages and sections that may be of particular interest to different people or organisations. For example:

Timeline of key questions and our methods used to address these.

A breakdown of the key questions the project team considered in each of the 6 months of the project and the methods and outputs we used to address these.

Backward flow diagram of key project decision-making. Illustration: Victoria Rose Ball

Backward flow diagram of key project decision-making. Illustration: Victoria Rose Ball

‘backward flow diagram’ communicating the different insights, perspectives and project activities that fed into decision-making throughout the project, including how engagement discussions fed into the ‘6 Ideas for High Street Tweaks’ and which two pilots were chosen from these to go ahead (or not) to be prototyped on the two high streets, and the reasons why.

A Public Life Study for Dalkeith — viewable as a standalone document here.

A Public Life Study for Dalkeith — viewable as a standalone document here.

Baseline Public Life Studies were completed for both Dalkeith and Gorgie-Dalry. These included direct observation studies of pedestrian flow, stationary activity, dwell time, footfall, demographic studies, place quality assessment and user and business interviews. These were created as a standalone resource for both locations which we hope may be helpful to local organisations, whilst also providing valuable data for comparison whilst project pilots were in situ in June allowing us to understand pilot impact.

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A Public Life Study for Gorgie-Dalry, Edinburgh — viewable as a standalone document here.

A Public Life Study for Gorgie-Dalry, Edinburgh — viewable as a standalone document here.

In addition the report includes more detail about the two pilots tested on site in Gorgie-Dalry and Dalkeith high streets. This includes information about pilot impact, including findings that showed the use of temporary seating, live window illustration in high street business windows (Gorgie-Dalry) and Tactical Urbanism Kit components and activity (Dalkeith) increased both dwell time and public life in the localised high street areas these were situated. For example, at Dalry Gait (Dalry) where a bench seat was located during the pilot, average dwell time increased from less than 1 minute, to up to 5 minutes, and there was a 100% in stationary activity in this section of high street.

Prototype bench seating was positioned in three locations along Gorgie-Dalry Road, and window illustration in three businesses’ windows.

Prototype bench seating was positioned in three locations along Gorgie-Dalry Road, and window illustration in three businesses’ windows.

Use of a prototype Tactical Urbanism Kit was piloted in Dalkeith

Use of a prototype Tactical Urbanism Kit was piloted in Dalkeith

The report also includes reflections on wider lessons learned, future perspectives, and other findings from the project. These range from our learnings from the testing out of a range of digital tools for community engagement, to reflections on the co-design process and overall summary findings on challenges, opportunities and future demand for the high street based on the wide range of insights and perspectives gathered from the two project locations.

In addition to these reports, the previous 6 blogs and short films are available online, and share more detailed insights into 6 topics core to this project — from digital engagement during a pandemic, to our approach to ‘collaborative evaluation’ — and are available on our Medium.

The project team would like to thank all those who have been involved in this project, for their support, time and sharing their perspectives on this topic.


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Direct from the project team: our thoughts and diaries reflecting on the project process — July 2021.

Each month we have shared insights direct from the project team. As the main activity wraps up, this month the project team focusses on their reflections on this project process.

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Jenny Elliott (Project Lead, EFI):

Leading the Future of the High Street project has been a really rewarding and exciting experience. There has been a huge amount of hard work behind the scenes from all involved, and I feel lucky to have been working with a fantastic team — both within EFI and with key project partners New Practice, as well as local high street stakeholders and an incredible advisory board of experts and professionals who have been so generous with their time and sharing their knowledge on this topic. This collaboration and interdisciplinary approach has been hugely beneficial for the project — bringing different perspectives, professional understandings and lived experiences that have enriched the project and its outputs.

Having originally developed the project funding proposal based on principles of co-design, testing new digital tools, openly sharing findings and being responsive to genuine high street challenges to try to deliver meaningful impact, it has been a hugely valuable experience for me to reflect on how the original project idea — based on this framework of key deliverables and principles with a suggested approach, but with flexibility built in so that approaches, pilots and outcomes could adapt along the way to deliver the best outcomes — has evolved and been shaped and realised as we delivered it in practice. It has been fantastic working with the team at New Practice and within EFI who have embraced this adaptive approach to the project, enabling the project to genuinely respond to learnings and initial findings about key high street challenges and opportunities, and then feed these into a co-design process that led to the ideas for 6 ‘high street tweaks’, two pilots and project outputs. I’ve also learnt a lot from leading the Public Life Studies for this project — building on my previous experience delivering these types of study to work with a brilliant small team of researchers to adapt the methods used and test out new ways to integrate digital and technological approaches.

Throughout the project, we have aimed to openly share our findings and learnings as we went, and I hope these blogs have been of interest and helpful to others working in this area. I would like to thank all those who have been involved in this project — whether on the project team, advisory board or local high street business, resident or organisation— for their time and input.

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Duncan Bain (Associate, New Practice):

Future of the High Street has been a unique opportunity, and a challenge, for New Practice. To work so closely with a team of academic researchers and be supported by such a diverse group of professionals through the advisory board has been unlike any other project we have worked on in the past. It is rare when working in the built environment to have such comprehensive support to inform how to go about shaping a project and developing meaningful outcomes.

One of the most exciting parts of the process has been having such a robust analytical and evaluative framework to help us to test our assumptions and design approaches. Production in the built environment is far from an exact science. Places are a patchwork of intentional and unintentional decision making, vision and contingency. The pandemic has presented local authorities, built environment professionals, and local communities with a critical moment to rethink many of our familiar places. In some cases this has been an opportunity to experiment with new ways to foster outdoor use of space, from cycling to socialising. Having Public Life Street Assessments and other forms of spatial and social evaluation is a huge benefit to the Future of the High Street project, helping to ground decisions on legacy and permanent infrastructure in rich and robust evidence.

The project has also created the sort of genuine openness and space required to foster the opportunity for co-creative experiences with local stakeholders. So often, this sort of well-meaning aspiration on the part of clients is limited by short project durations that do not offer the time required to build meaningful relationships with participants. Similarly, it is very rare to enter in to a project with such an openness to a wide variety of outcomes, and not limit participants ability to shape those through pre-supposing briefs. The project has really helped to shape our understanding of what elements are required to attempt to foster meaningful co-creative opportunities. We’ve started to adopt elements of the evaluative framework embedded in this project in to our work with more traditional clients, using Public Life Street Assessment approaches to help us better understand places. We are excited to take a huge wealth of learning developed across the overall project team, and reflect this in our place shaping work in the future.

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Shawn Bodden (Project Officer — EFI):

For me the project was a valuable opportunity and rewarding challenge to develop ways for connecting the kinds of social theory I usually work with in Human Geography with the practical work of delivering a co-design project. I feel like I leave the project with both a deeper appreciation of the methodological and conceptual approaches of academic fields like ethnomethodology, and a host of ideas about how to use it to contribute to design and community-engagement work in future projects. I’ve learned so much from the other members of the project team as well as the community stakeholders who took part in the project in some way — this project has created a space of exciting debate and exchange, and I’m glad to have been able to take part!

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Megan Miller (Project Film-maker — EFI):

Working on this project helped me to challenge my own preconceptions about how a film ‘should’ be made and consumed. The limitations we faced from Covid forced us to expand, be resourceful, and ultimately become more creative. I think these limitations actually benefited the project outcome. Its success came from both addressing the high street challenges and opportunities, but also achieving this through an unconventional process. I feel lucky to have been part of a project that listened to the needs of its community and ensured they were realised.

The Future of the High Street project has been part of The University of Edinburgh’s ‘Data and Design Lab’ — funded by the Scottish Funding Council. It has acted as a demonstrator project for how a data-and-design approach can be used to address key contemporary challenges and deliver positive impact. The project follows on from the Edinburgh Futures Institute Smart Places series in collaboration with the Edinburgh Living Lab and Data Driven Innovation programme. Find out more here.

Blog written by Jenny Elliott, Project Lead for Future of the High Street, Edinburgh Futures Institute on 26 July 2021.

Future of the High Street: exploring iterative ‘collaborative evaluation’ to reflect on and guide the project, and public life studies to reveal pilot impact.

*Blog written by Jenny Elliott, originally published by the Edinburgh Living Lab 24 June 2021.*

The sixth in our blog series about project ‘Future of the High Street’ — openly sharing the evolving project and process, our learnings and findings. This month — we explore the ‘collaborative evaluation’ approach and 5 indicators of project ‘success’ we’ve developed to guide our on-going project decision-making, as well as how we are using Public Life Studies and interviews to understand pilot impact. Or scroll down for this month’s insights direct from the project team members.

Film by Megan Miller — project film-maker

Most people agree that evaluation is important. But how often is this done on built environment projects? And what value could it bring?

By drawing on the research expertise within the University of Edinburgh in collaboration with New Practice, we have been putting research and practice together through the Future of the High Street project.

In addition to understanding more about the challenges, opportunities and possible small ‘tweaks’ that could support our high streets, we have also incorporated evaluation into the heart of the project. Both in terms of evaluation of the project as a whole — its process and outcomes, as well as the two specific ‘high street tweak’ pilots.

Edinburgh illustrator Victoria Rose Ball creating window illustrations for Gorgie-Dalry high street businesses as part of the June pilot

Edinburgh illustrator Victoria Rose Ball creating window illustrations for Gorgie-Dalry high street businesses as part of the June pilot

How have we been reflecting on the whole project?

Often evaluation just happens retrospectively at the end of a project, or might just skim the surface. We wanted to find a way to embed evaluationthroughout the project process as a way to reflect on and course-correct our decisions while the project developed — with the aim of improving project outcomes and impact as a result. Sort of a mini feedback loop or way to check how we were doing against our collective aims and ambitions for what ‘success’ should look like.

To help us do this, we developed an evaluation framework that included 5 indicators or principles, central to the overarching project aims, that we could use to guide our decisions on a day-to-day basis as the project progressed. We continually refined and applied these collective ‘indicators of success’ over the 6 month project timeframe to feed into active project decision-making.

Our 5 Indicators of Project ‘Success’ for the project are:

  • Open Learning — sharing ideas, the datasets and findings produced via the project, and ‘working out loud’.

  • Local Participation — aiming to use an inclusive approach that invites diverse perspectives and genuinely feeds into decision-making.

  • Professional Exchange — facilitating collaboration and opportunities to learn and share knowledge from this project and others work.

  • Meaningful Contribution — via pilots delivering short-term small-scale high street improvements with potential for longer-term legacy, as well as developing relationships and connection via the project more broadly (e.g via the Advisory Board, workshops and other conversations).

  • Critical Reflection — reflecting on and sharing project learnings and decision-making, with a report summary of the project and its findings/learnings to be shared in July.

But we also wanted to make sure that it wasn’t just us as a project team deciding what success looked like for the project.

Instead we used a collaborative approach to the evaluation that reflected the project’s wider ethos of engagement, and incorporated the perspectives of other stakeholders involved. This also meant that these 5 Indicators weren’t fixed, but evolved with the project to reflect new insights and aspirations as they were shared with us.

By actively listening throughout the project — at the workshops, advisory board meetings and project discussions that went ahead as the project developed, and keeping an ear out for participants’ comments about their view of what ‘success’ would look like for the project, we were able to incorporate these perspectives to refine our 5 indicators above, and the metrics we should measure to see if we were achieving them across all project activities.

Whilst we also needed to incorporate practical and logistical factors into our decision-making — such as what was achievable on a short timeframe and within the available budget, changing Covid restrictions, and ensuring we still delivered the core objectives set out in the original project brief — which together meant we couldn’t always meet every individual expectation — this approach did mean that we could analyse and find common themes of what a shared sense of project ‘success’ would look like for all those involved and use this framework to guide us toward the best achievable project outcomes.

In this way, it helped us to continually cross-check our decisions against our aims throughout the project (not just at the end), as well as acting as a prompt for how extra value might be added into planned project outputs whilst these were still in development, so they could better reflect our 5 indicators of success.

We have called this approach collaborative evaluation.

Example elements of the pilot Tactical Urbanism Kit on site in Jarnac Court in Dalkeith

Example elements of the pilot Tactical Urbanism Kit on site in Jarnac Court in Dalkeith

Evaluating the ‘High Street Tweak’ pilots

As well as the wider project, evaluation is also essential to understand any impact of the two ‘high street tweak’ pilots initially tested in June on Gorgie-Dalry and Dalkeith high streets.

To evaluate the pilots, we used interviews with passers-by and business owners, as well as Public Life Studies — a robust research methodology that helps us to understand how people are moving around and using the high street.

By creating a full Public Life Study in May for Gorgie-Dalry and Dalkeith high streets, and comparing this baseline to when the pilots were in place a few weeks later in June, using the same consistent methodology, we can start to understand any ways that these small-scale interventions and changes to the high street built environment can affect footfall, how long people are stopping and spending time on the high street (dwell time), public life, and the way pedestrians move around.

Public Life Study in Dalkeith: tracing pedestrian flow using Procreate

To do this, our trained Public Life Study research team was positioned at 4 key locations along each high street. We used direct observation techniques at 3 timeslots on each research day to observe pedestrian movement and behaviour, as well as more holistic place quality assessments and interviews to gain a wider understanding of the high street as a place, locals’ lived experience, and how the current built environment might help set the scene (or not) for public life and footfall that can indirectly support high street business success.

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We trialled use of digital software Procreate for these Public Life Studies — an alternative to the traditionally more analogue data collection methods for this research. This worked really well practically on the day, and also brought benefits following each day in the efficiency of data analysis, as well as enabling video exports (as above) showing how data built up.

The two full Public Life Study baseline reports for Gorgie-Dalry and Dalkeith are currently being finalised, and will be made publicly available in July so their data and findings can also be used for other projects and purposes.

Project Officer Shawn Bodden on site as part of the Public Life Study research team evaluating pilot impact

Project Officer Shawn Bodden on site as part of the Public Life Study research team evaluating pilot impact

Evaluating the pilots in this way is important so we know if these ‘high street tweaks’ were successful in improving public life whilst in situ (such as footfall, dwell time or time spent outside) or the appeal and accessibility of the high street more broadly. Both these things indirectly support high street businesses, as well as improving the vibrancy of the high street as a place, social space and desirable destination.

These findings are important so we can share our learnings about whether the two ‘high street tweaks’ tested (from the original 6 prototype ideas co-created with stakeholders) might be a beneficial approach or resource for other high streets elsewhere. Both ‘high street tweaks’ piloted also have potential for a longer legacy incorporated into them, and so understanding and gathering robust data from the pilot to provide learnings for any further refinement or development is also important.

Photo credit: Jenny Elliott

Photo credit: Jenny Elliott

For example, in Gorgie-Dalry on Sat 12 June the project pilot tested out prototype bench seating in a few key spots along the high street (locations chosen via our May baseline Public Life Study and stakeholder workshop input), as well as live illustration by Edinburgh-based illustrators Victoria Rose Ball and Cassandra Harrison of high street business owners and their shop/cafe/premises’ windows. In addition to the benefit to businesses, public life and the accessibility of the high street on the day, we are currently exploring ways to build on the locations piloted and other insights to install several permanent benches along the length of Gorgie-Dalry high street.

Photo credit: Samuel Pickering

Photo credit: Samuel Pickering

In Dalkeith, on Sat 19 June the project pilot tested out a few initial prototype elements of a Tactical Urbanism Kit formed using a WikiHouse/Open Desk CNC plywood approach. This one day weekend event was designed to extend the wider public conversation from the digital workshops in April and May. It focused on explaining how the TUK would function and operate as a kit of parts that could be borrowed by businesses or community, exploring what components local stakeholders felt it would be valuable to include, and how this might offer opportunities to activate the town centre high street space in new ways. In addition, the day included hands-on demonstrations of the assembly/deconstruction process.

Several TUK seating elements were also positioned nearby to busy high street frontages as small-scale examples to test in practice the potential impact and benefit the TUK elements might deliver in terms of public life and dwell time supporting the vibrancy of the high street.

Photo credit: Samuel Pickering

Photo credit: Samuel Pickering

So what next?

With the project activity wrapping up in July we want to continue the ‘working-out-loud’ approach we’ve taken throughout the project via these blogs and short films, to share our key findings and learnings via a report summarising and reflecting on the Future of the High Street project. This will include standalone sections sharing our learnings about key topics relevant to the project process, from the digital engagement tools tried and tested to the decision-making process. We’ll also be sharing more about the pilots and plans for their legacy, and will make publicly available the two Public Life Study reports for Gorgie-Dalry and Dalkeith.

In addition, we hope you can join us for a webinar about project, its findings, and the things we’ve learned along the way from 2–3.30pm on Weds 21 July*.

*The webinar recording is available here

Direct from the project team: our thoughts and diaries from inside the project process — June 2021.

Each month we share insights direct from the project team. This month focuses on what the project team has been working on as the pilots have been refined and tested on site, and the Public Life Studies data collection and analysis work that will form part of how we will understand their impact.

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Jenny Elliott (Project Lead, EFI)

This last month I have been training the research team in Public Life Studies, and together we have completed our on-site data collection and started analysis of our findings. I have led 9 of these studies previously for City of Edinburgh Council, but this time there are a few differences.

Firstly, in addition to the ‘standard’ public life direct observation research activities completed at several standardised time slots throughout each research day by each researcher distributed along the high street (footfall, stationary activity, dwell time, tracing studies of pedestrian flow, age and gender studies) we incorporated and tested out some new ones. These included ‘business activity’ (how busy each high street business appeared, and whether they had outdoor seating/elements) and capture rate (how many people went into high street shops/businesses vs walked past). Whilst we quickly learned that capture rate would only yield reliable results over a far longer time window than we had available, business activity revealed useful insights and is a good addition to our understanding of the link between public life in the public realm and the adjacent businesses and the ways they can both support and benefit from this.

Secondly, having used entirely analogue data collection methods previously, I was keen we test out using Procreate digital drawing software for iPad as an alternative. This worked extremely well and led to efficiencies in reducing required printing of research packs and in time-saving data exports ready for analysis (AirDropping exported files instead of laboriously scanning pages and manually aligning map data).

Thirdly, we not only created a full baseline Public Life Study for Gorgie-Dalry and Dalkeith high streets (which fed into selection of specific pilot locations), but also repeated the same research activities consistently during the June pilot interventions as a way of monitoring and evaluating the impact of small-scale changes to the built environment on footfall, dwell time, public life and user experience. I am excited to finalise our analysis and share these reports next month.

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Shawn Bodden (Project Officer — EFI):

These past few weeks, the rest of the research team and I have been waist (shoulder? neck?) deep in analysis. The data from our first, base-line Public Life Studies gave us a lot to think about — both about the Gorgie-Dalry and Dalkeith high streets and about our own research methods, and we spent considerable time adjusting and tweaking(!) our plans for the second round of Public Life Studies to focus on the methods that we found most useful. Research methods like mapping stationary activity and qualitative interviews proved especially useful for identifying little-used or disliked spaces — ones that would be perfect for trialling a prototype!

We also had our second round of Public Life Studies this month, and it was exciting to finally see the prototypes in real life. I’ve never been so excited for people to sit on a bench before! The second Public Life Studies (PLS) presented an unexpected, but exciting challenge too: in our original plans, we had assumed/hoped that the spaces would remain relatively similar between the first and second PLS, allowing us to examine the relative impact (i.e. differences) caused by the prototype. In reality, so much had changed! At one site in Gorgie-Dalry, gorgeous street art had appeared on a utility box. In Dalkeith, an enormous tower of scaffolding now loomed over Jarnac Court. “Well, you can’t help but stare at that”, one woman pointed at the scaffolding with a laugh when I asked about her impression of the high street. It was a nice reminder just how dynamic public life is, and that our project is only one among many animating and reshaping public life on the high street. But it also made clear the value of the kind of in situ, empirical research our team is using: we can document, discuss and respond to these ongoing, unexpected changes. We can make informed decisions to change our plans to respond dynamically to the situation, and we can share our reasoning with others. I mean, you really should see that scaffolding.

This is part of the reason why we’re keen to emphasise that collaborative evaluation — about the prototypes, the research and the high street itself — is an ongoing, interactive and reflective process. Assessments and evaluations aren’t “once and for all” — things change and surprises happen — but these conversations and debates help us get our bearings in a changing landscape and help us find ways to move forward together.

Duncan Bain (Associate, New Practice):

Public spaces evolve in ways that are unpredictable — often piecemeal, sometimes through significant upheaval. Every new addition, subtraction, or modification to public space is contingent on the path of countless decisions made before. It is rare to be able to test and trial changes to public space in a low-cost and low-risk way before embarking on the hard work of making more lasting change stick. As practitioners invested in place-based approaches to development, being able to prototype and trial designs and learn from how people engage with these temporary changes is a fantastic opportunity that is not often afforded by clients.

The emphasis on using robust evaluation frameworks as part of the Future of the High Streets project is an interesting design challenge to us as design professionals. How do we take data and learning and use this to shape the iteration of the ideas that have emerged from the creative process so far? How do we react if this learning challenges our assumptions? It is important to always remember that public space is contested — that one person’s idea of a great place may not be shared by others. Sometimes there are irreconcilable differences in what people want in their neighbourhoods — a street can either offer lots of parking availability or a low-traffic experience. Prototyping, trialing and evaluation does not solve these intractable challenges, but does offer a chance to learn and reflect before making long-term investment.

Juliet Welshman (New Practice — Junior Designer):

In these past few weeks, I have enjoyed seeing ideas and concepts start to take form as potential physical outcomes of High Street Tweak. In April, I worked with Abi to organise and facilitate a Youth Engagement workshop in Dalkeith with Dalkeith Arts. While there, we worked with volunteers from Dalkeith Arts to interview local residents and record these conversations visually. It was great to finally get to engage with the public face-to-face for High Street Tweak, and in fact was my first time doing in-person engagement since joining New Practice!

Later on I helped to facilitate the final round of co-creation workshops, where we heard more from residents about their ideas, and began to discuss them in the context of physical, place-based outcomes. In each workshop, several strong ideas emerged, and residents seemed to reach a consensus about what each location is in need of. This helped to provide a clear steer for our Toolkit of 6 Ideas, which I have been helping Duncan to develop over the past couple of weeks. Having to justify why we have chosen certain ideas has really made me think about the purpose of collaborative design, and helped me to understand how our research will feed into the design realisation stage.

The Future of the High Street project is part of The University of Edinburgh’s ‘Data and Design Lab’ — funded by the Scottish Funding Council. It will act as a demonstrator project for how a data-and-design approach can be used to address key contemporary challenges and deliver positive impact. The project follows on from the Edinburgh Futures Institute Smart Places series in collaboration with the Edinburgh Living Lab and Data Driven Innovation programme. Find out more here.

Blog written by Jenny Elliott, Project Lead for Future of the High Street, Edinburgh Futures Institute.

The Future of the High Street: Challenges, Opportunities and Ideas. Featuring our Toolkit of 6 Ideas for ‘High Street Tweaks’

*Blog written by Jenny Elliott, originally published by the Edinburgh Living Lab 24 May 2021.*

The fifth in our blog series about project ‘Future of the High Street’ — openly sharing the evolving project and process, our learnings and findings. This month — we launch our ‘High Street Tweak’ toolkit of 6 small-scale ideas for creating more liveable and successful high streets. We also share the common challenges and opportunities for the high street emerging from our ongoing project work. Or scroll down for this month’s insights direct from the project team members.

What have we been up to this month?

It’s been all go on the project this month! From 4 more digital co-design workshops with local high street stakeholders and youth engagement using interactive Google Earth walk-throughs, to developing our approach to ‘collaborative evaluation’ for the project, and reaching a turning point of now refining pilots ready to be built and go on-site in June, it’s been a busy few weeks!

In the spirit of openly sharing our project process, scroll down for some insights and diary highlights direct from the project team, as well as a summary of the key challenges and opportunities for the high street that are emerging from our project findings.

But first, we also have something exciting to share with you…

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Available now! A toolkit of 6 ideas for small-scale ‘High Street Tweaks’ that could deliver big positive impact for the high street — based on insights from our co-design process with high street businesses, residents and organisations.

The toolkit includes 6 small-scale ideas — and a practical how-to guide to prototyping and achieving them — as a direct output from the Future of the High Street project’s co-design process with local high street businesses, residents and organisations. Through surveys, workshops, activities and conversations, over the last few months we have been listening to the lived experiences of high street stakeholders to design these 6 ideas that respond to key high street challenges and opportunities.

Core to our project approach is a desire to openly share our learnings and findings as we go, in the hope these might help others working in this field or on similar projects. While each of these ideas were generated in response to the particular challenges and opportunities of two distinct places — Gorgie Dalry and Dalkeith— the hope is that this resource might be helpful to inform decision-making for high streets in new locations too. We hope you will find this toolkit a helpful resource — perhaps to share with colleagues or others wanting to make a positive change in their high street too.

Jenny Elliott _ Dalry Road High Street _ Edinburgh

Challenges and opportunities for the high street: our findings so far

A core part of the Future of the High Street project is about understanding what current challenges for the high street are, and where there might be opportunities to make the high street a more liveable, accessible, vibrant and successful place.

We’ve summarised these below, based on our findings from conversations and listening to businesses, organisations and residents local to an urban linear high street (Gorgie-Dalry Road in Edinburgh) and Dalkeith town centre — a more consolidated high street in a town to the South-East of Edinburgh — over the last 4 months. We’ve also included more general insights on challenges and opportunities for the high street based on these discussions as well as thoughts from our project advisory board. A full breakdown of the specific opportunities and challenges for Gorgie/Dalry and Dalkeith will be included in our project report in July. Below we share some common themes, as well as insights about market demand.

Jenny Elliott _ Gorgie Road High Street _ Edinburgh

In June we will be rapidly prototyping and testing in real life 2 of the small-scale ‘high street tweaks’ from the toolkit shared above. These are tailored and are in response to the specific challenges and opportunities presented by the two specific project locations — Gorgie-Dalry and Dalkeith. These light-touch high street ‘tweaks’ are about small but worthwhile changes that are easily achievable on short timescales through collaboration with local stakeholders, rather than a more resource-intensive larger transformation of the high street’s built environment. More on these next month!

Jenny Elliott _ Dalkeith High Street _ Edinburgh

Common challenges:

So, what have we found to be some common challenges for the high street?

  • Uncertainty due to Covid restrictions, social distancing and consumer behaviour changes relating to the pandemic making it hard for some businesses to remain viable, adapt and/or to plan for the future.

  • Poor place qualities of the public realm built environment itself making the high street less of an attractive, inclusive accessible and vibrant destination or place to spend time. Specifically, challenges relating to litter, maintenance, heavy/noisy traffic, a poor pedestrian environment and a lack of vegetation.

Jenny Elliott _ Gorgie Road High Street _ Edinburgh

Opportunities:

Opportunities for the high street as a more resilient, successful and liveable place where both communities and businesses thrive include:

  • Improving the attractiveness of the high street as a destination and public place in its own right e.g. through more greenery, public seating to enhance accessibility and social meeting, aesthetic improvements.

  • Improving active travel (pedestrian and cyclist priority and infrastructure) to support access to the high street businesses, including bike parking and improved cycle lanes.

  • Alternative business models, community and flexible spaces

  • Building on and strengthening local identity, supporting local makers and independent businesses, and making these more visible.

Jenny Elliott _ Dalry Road High Street _ Edinburgh

Market demand insights

  • People come to the high street for experiences, services or products they can’t get online. This behaviour has been consolidated during Covid lockdowns, during which only essential shops and services have been open.

  • During lockdown there has been an increase in the high street’s function as a place to collect takeaway goods and food. This has required businesses to pivot and create alternative customer experiences / channels for supplying their goods and services. Whilst this trend was particularly apparent in the ways residents reported using the high street during lockdown, hybrid models of takeaway/sit-in hospitality where this was previously sit-in only, goods-collection services, and shops operating online/offline purchasing and local delivery models may be set to continue.

Future market demand was expressed for:

  • More diverse variety of high street shops, services, and experiences, including more varied and independent shops, cafes and restaurants, flexible spaces that could function for community, co-working or multiple business uses, cultural venues including the arts and theatre.

  • A focus on experiences that can’t be found online.

  • More attractive and inclusive pedestrian spaces on the high street that facilitate spending more time outside on the high street. For example, outdoor public seating, more planting and ‘greenery’, and less car traffic (and its associated visual and auditory pollution).

  • A recognition that the high street is a key social connecting place. Demand for social and seating spaces within the public realm that support connection and community.

Something that has been apparent through these conversations about the high street over the last few months, has been the importance of ‘the high street’ as more than just retail.

The high street is often the social and economic heart of a neighbourhood or community — and its health depends on creating and maintaining a place that is liveable, vibrant, successful, accessible and desirable as a destination and place to go to, move through or spend time — both as a public space place, and the activities and businesses that occupy its frontages and adjacent buildings.

Jenny Elliott _ Dalry Road High Street _ Edinburgh

Direct from the project team: our thoughts and diaries from inside the project process — May 2021.

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Each month we share insights direct from the project team. This month focuses on what the project team has been working on as the stakeholder engagement activities and co-design process moves toward refining and selecting pilots, and we further define our collaborative evaluation approach.

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Jenny Elliott (Project Lead, EFI)

The last month has been a really fascinating and busy stage of the project. I’ve been preparing our Public Life Studies researcher materials ready to train the team so we can together start this research about public life on the high street next month. I’ve led 9 of these Public Life Studies previously — based on a methodology adapted from that developed by urbanist Jan Gehl — but this time we are going to be doing something different. Testing out how use of digital graphics software Procreate for iPad might lend itself to this direct observation research of how people are moving around and using the high street. I have a plan for how we can test out this alternative method to traditional pen-and-paper that might both improve and streamline the process and reveal more insightful findings. More on this in next month’s blog!

We’ve also been working hard as a wider team to reflect on the conversations that have been happening via the project’s collaborative engagement process with high street residents, businesses and organisations as well as practical and budgetry considerations to start to design and refine the pilots to go ahead in June. To help this process, we have finalised our ‘indicators of success’ based on a collaborative evaluation model (that synthesises what ‘success’ means for the pilots and project from the perspectives and statements of all those involved in the project in various ways). I’m really excited to share more about this, and the pilots with you next month!

Duncan Bain (New Practice):

April has been the most critical month of the project — a pivot point where work to bring local people into deliberative creative processes reaches its most decisive — and the practical challenges of making tangible some of the fantastic ideas that have been explored so far really starts. 
One of the key internal conversations that I’ve had with Jenny, Shawn and the wider project team is around how we weigh up and assess the huge number of variables across the potential projects that have emerged so far. How do many of the practical challenges we are used to dealing with in production of the built environment (negotiating planning permissions, finding the right manufacturer) work to rein in some of the more imaginative ideas that have emerged. How do we balance the risks and opportunities of bold new ideas which might not have their anticipated impact versus tried-and-trusted approaches which might not tell us anything new about how design can improve experiences of the High Street. 
Any creative project involves a great deal of intuitive decision making. Ideas are generated, iterated, discarded, or progressed all the time — often within a single stroke of a pen or quick chat with a colleague. How we capture both the ideas that proceed and those that fall by the wayside is really critical to understanding the journey of how we got to this point. In a more typical project for a local authority or private client, this story of incremental iteration and moments of assessment and decision can easily be lost in the drive to meet a brief in a tight timescale. 
In this project, these moments are really critical to communicating to the wide range of local people and stakeholders why some ideas have progressed and some have not. They also offer a chance to understand how the specifics of place help to shape aspiration and imagination into a concrete project that has the best chance to succeed.

Juliet Welshman (New Practice — Junior Designer):

Over the past month I have been helping to develop our approach to engagement, particularly with young people. In early April, I helped to facilitate the first round of Digital Co-Creation Workshops. The workshop I joined was with residents of Gorgie Dalry, who provided a fascinating insight into their local area. I enjoyed recording their conversations, which focussed on a range of themes, including Gorgie Dalry’s heritage and character, routes, and creating an environment to sustain local business. Though the number of sign-ups for the session was lower than we originally hoped, it seemed that having a smaller group made for thoughtful discussions, which provided all participants with a chance to speak. Last week I developed the youth surveys, which we will embed in Google Earth to create an interactive tool, to engage young people in both locations. I have enjoyed considering the project from a young person’s perspective, and hope we can use the responses to deliver something meaningful for a demographic that has been so badly affected by the pandemic. This week, I will be working with Abigail to prepare for an engagement event taking place in Dalkeith next week. With volunteers from a local art club, we plan to interview the general public, and through this, and through this continue to generate ideas to shape the ‘tweak’.

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Shawn Bodden (Project Officer — EFI):

Wow, hold on — where did April go? I think I may have gotten lost inside a spreadsheet there for a few weeks: this month, I’ve been doing a lot of work with the feedback and ‘visions of success’ shared with us by the Advisory Board and, excitingly, the community members who took part in New Practice’s first set of workshops. By grouping comments that resonate with one another, I’ve been developing key indicators for a ‘shared’ sense of project success — priorities that participants from local communities, practitioners on the Advisory Board and members of the Project Team have emphasised in our conversations so far. Here’s what we’ve got: Collaboration; Impact; Knowledge; Community Participation; Critical Reflection.

The thing is, listed like that, they just sound like buzzwords! (Looking at you, ‘impact’.) That’s why I haven’t deleted all these other columns of comments, concerns, criteria, notes, quotes, ideas and lessons-learned, though. Rather than seeing the evaluation criteria and key indicators as a finalised-and-flawless checklist of ideals, we’re keen to treat them as part of an ongoing, interactive process — and one that doesn’t simply end with the conclusion of this project. Jenny and I have been talking a lot lately about the project’s final report: what should be in it, and how it can be useful for others. We want our evaluation criteria — but also New Practice’s designs, Megan’s films, the Advisory Board’s recommendations, the workshop participants’ insights and the other contents of the report — not simply to reflect our project’s accomplishments, but also to contribute forward to other projects and efforts to reimagine local high streets and support their communities.

Just now, for instance, I’m drafting a map of the project — what I’ve taken to calling its ‘project ecology’ — and it’s made me realise just how important that final (and perhaps least buzzword-y?) key indicator is for our project. We want the final report to encourage critical reflection, for others to review, adapt, modify, (tweak!), critique and respond to our efforts: we want our project to help create more pleasant and equitable public spaces as part of a much larger, ongoing dialogue and collaboration between local communities, businesses, government and practitioners.

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The Future of the High Street project is part of The University of Edinburgh’s ‘Data and Design Lab’ — funded by the Scottish Funding Council. It will act as a demonstrator project for how a data-and-design approach can be used to address key contemporary challenges and deliver positive impact. The project follows on from the Edinburgh Futures Institute Smart Places series in collaboration with the Edinburgh Living Lab and Data Driven Innovation programme. Find out more here.

Blog written by Jenny Elliott, Project Lead for Future of the High Street, Edinburgh Futures Institute.

Source: https://edilivinglab.medium.com/the-future...

Data and co-design: time for some jargon-busting! Live from project Future of the High Street.

*Blog written by Jenny Elliott, originally published by the Edinburgh Living Lab 14 April 2021.*

The fourth in our blog series about project ‘Future of the High Street’ — openly sharing the evolving project and process, our learnings and findings. This month — we do some jargon busting around co-designand data — and what it means for this project. Or scroll down for this month’s insights direct from the project team members.

Co-design. Engagement. Design thinking. Data-driven. Urban data. Data and design. There’s a lot of jargon out there! And the Future of the High Street project combines aspects from all these things. So, this month, we wanted to focus on jargon busting!

The ‘Future of the High Street’ is a collaborative project led by the Edinburgh Futures Institute and New Practice. We are working with local independent businesses, residents and organisations on two Edinburgh region high streets, to rapidly design, pilot and test two small-scale ideas or ‘high street tweaks’ to address key challenges for the high street. These will go on-site in June for 2 weeks, in two project locations — Gorgie/Dalry Road and Dalkeith. The aim? To test out small, nimble ideas that we hope could deliver a big impact for local independent businesses and the high street as a destination and place (read more here).

Two terms that we often use as a short-hand for the way we are delivering this project are ‘co-design’ and ‘data-driven’. That’s because we are interweaving a co-design approach and data into our design process.

But what do we mean by ‘co-design’ and ‘data’? And how are we using co-design and data for this project? These terms can mean different things to different people, or manifest in different ways on different projects. So let’s use the Future of the High Street as an example of how we are using them.

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Data.

What do you think of if we say ‘data’? What about ‘urban data’? Or ‘data-driven’? Maybe… numbers? Digital 0’s and 1’s? Perhaps sensors and smart technologies? All of those are right, and can be part of the way we gather or analyse data about a place. But data can be gathered in a lot of different ways.

Some methods use digital tools and technology, such as ‘smart’ sensors measuring everything from environmental conditions to tracking traffic movement, GPS phone data or analysing social media datasets. Others involve collecting data in-person by observing how people use or experience the places in our cities, by talking to people and listening to their experiences and perspectives, or finding new ways to use or synthesise existing reports or other information that already exist in the world. (In many ways you could argue this is also a ‘smart’ use of data).

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To explain how we’re using data on this project, perhaps it’s simplest to think of data as ‘information’.

We would like to find, collect, analyse and integrate as much useful information into our decision-making processes throughout the project duration, so we can make more informed decisions that improve project outcomes. From better understanding the most pertinent challenges that the two pilots should respond to, to information about how footfall or people’s perception of the high street changes when the pilots are in place that help us evaluate their impact.

Where we are creating new datasets we are aligning these wherever possible with what information will be helpful to others too as a legacy from this project. From public life street research and interviews with residents about how they currently use the high street and future market demand that can feed into local authorities’ work and planning, to sharing our findings from pilots with other high streets thinking about doing similar.

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We are particularly interested in using data to support 3 different parts of the Future of the High Street project:

  1. Data to understand the background context of these two high streets as a place. We are collecting information through facade, land use and character studies to better understand the current mix of businesses, hours of activity and qualities of the built environment. The project team have also synthesised previous consultation reports that used the Place Standard or other local insights into the challenges, opportunities and perceptions of these high streets more broadly as places. This is important — reducing consultation fatigue by listening to and valuing the input of local people who already generously shared their time previously. It also means that instead of repeating questions, we can then use current participants’ time more productively to fill in any gaps, and focus on the upcoming pilots specific to this project.

  2. Data to inform the design, development and selection of high street ‘tweaks’ or pilots that will deliver most positive impact by addressing key high street challenges. To do this we are listening to the lived experiences and perspectives of the people who know most about the high street’s challenges and opportunities — the local residents, independent businesses and organisations — through conversations, surveys and workshops. We will be working closely with them to shape and refine the 6 ideas we’ll be sharing via a toolkit in May based on their local expertise and knowledge, and which of the two of those ideas should be piloted in June.

  3. Data to evaluate the impact of the two pilots. These findings allow us to share an evidence-base of impact, learnings, and recommendations for any further development of pilots — whether within these two project locations or by other high streets nationwide. We will collect this information using an initial series of on-street research studies in May as a baseline (similar to a Public Life Street Assessment), and then compare our findings with a repeat study in June whilst the pilots are in place. Research activities will include a range of studies — from footfall counts to mapping of pedestrian behaviour and interviews with passers-by. Each carried out at different times of day, simultaneously by a team of 4 researchers in different locations along the high street.

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In this way, the project is ‘data-driven’. In other words — there are a few key ways we are trying to find, collect or analyse ‘data’ on this project that will inform our ‘live’ decision-making, improve project outcomes, and help us share useful findings.

Put another way, data helps drive and inform the design and decision-making process, and helps us share useful evidence-based outputs with others.

This data complements and adds extra information to help shape our decisions — alongside insights from the project team’s design expertise, the local expertise of high street stakeholders and input from our advisory board, as well as practical considerations of time, budget and meeting project deliverables.

Beyond our own internal project decision-making, we are also sharing data in the form of our learnings about the co-design process in practice, challenges and future opportunities identified for the high street, and findings from our two co-created pilots. Through blogs such as this, we hope to share useful information with others to increase this project’s impact.

So that’s data… but what about co-design?

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Co-design.

At its heart, co-design is about designing with people, not for them. It’s about not just listening to and respecting the views, knowledge and contributions of those who have lived experience of a particular place or issue, but ensuring that they can be actively involved in the design process as early as possible. It gives stakeholders a genuine seat at the table alongside those with design expertise to shape and decide together the output of a design process.

Co-design is about the process. It’s about finding ways to work together in an open dialogue and crucially ‘co-decide’ wherever possible too.

Co-design therefore goes beyond just ‘consultation’ — which is typically one-way feedback, often late in the process — and even ‘engagement’ — which involves a more active two-way conversation, to create more of a partnership approach.

When power is shared in this way, and there is mutual trust and respect between the professional design team and local people — each recognising each others’ experience and skills and working together in an open and collaborative way — this diversity of voices, experience and training can lead to more robust, innovative and appropriate design outcomes.

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As Kelly Ann McKercher says in their (excellent) book ‘Beyond Sticky Notes: Co-design for Real’,

“There is no co-designing without co-deciding. […] We need to shift our focus to how we design together (the process), not just what we make (the output).”

But adopting a co-design approach can be hard in practice, for a number of different reasons. Not only does it take considerable time and resources to do well, but it also can provide logistical challenges as the exact end result or outcome should not be pre-defined from the start, but shaped by the local people and design experts working together throughout the process.

The High Street Tweak website is our ‘shop front’ for our engagement and co-design activities.

The High Street Tweak website is our ‘shop front’ for our engagement and co-design activities.


So what does ‘co-design’ look like for the Future of the High Street project?

We are using stakeholder engagement and a co-design approach as much as possible within the project timeframe and budget. This includes a mix of initial conversations with key local organisations and high street businesses, online public surveys to better understand high street challenges and opportunities, and a series of community digital co-creation workshops to help shape, develop and refine pilots. Given the recent lockdown, we have been using digital tools from Miro, Whereby and Google Earth walk-throughs, as well as in-person activities with youth clubs as Covid restrictions start to ease. (You can read more about our engagement and co-design activities in last month’s blog: Digital Engagement During a Pandemic.)

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Throughout all these activities, our principles and aims are based on a co-design approach. They include:

  • Not pre-defining what the two ‘high street tweak’ pilots will look like ahead of time, but designing, developing and deciding on these with local stakeholders at digital workshops to understand what will work best, is most feasible and will deliver most impact for the high street and its businesses in June.

  • Aiming for genuine collaboration from as early in the project as possible. For example, through conversations and co-creation workshops with local people to together develop, design and decide pilots.

  • Respecting the experiences, time and input of local stakeholders. For example, by providing local businesses taking part in workshops with incentives recognising their time (including photography, illustration or digital marketing packages), and by summarising and synthesising previous local consultation reports so we avoid perpetuating consultation fatigue and respect the time and input already provided by the community, and can better use the time they have for project-specific discussions that help shape and develop the pilots.

  • An open inclusive approach that allows diverse voices as part of these conversations. For example, by asking via initial surveys which time slots would suit different people best, and any digital support required to attend online workshops. We are also deliberately targeting project resources toward engaging with young people who often do not have a voice in shaping their local places.

We hope that by sharing the ways that we are using data and co-design in the Future of the High Street project we can help clarify both what these terms mean, and what they might look like in practice.

By using this data-driven and co-design approach, we aim to combine the strengths and knowledge of design expertslocal experts and place data to deliver a project with improved outcomes, that fosters collaboration, and that respects the many different types of information and insights that enrich and can add value to any project.

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Join us for next month’s blog which will share insights from initial project findings around the challenges and opportunities for the high street. Or keep reading for the inside track on our work over the last few weeks, direct from the project team.


Direct from the project team: our thoughts and diaries from inside the project process — April 2021.

Each month we share insights direct from the project team. This month focuses on what the project team has been working on as the stakeholder engagement activities and co-design process gets underway and we refine our evaluation approach.

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Jenny Elliott (Project Lead, EFI):

“It’s been really exciting to see the project really taking shape the last few weeks, and I feel lucky to be working with such a fantastic project team. It’s been particularly exciting seeing conversations getting underway following the High Street Tweak website launch. Alongside the engagement work led by New Practice, I’ve been working with Project Officer Shawn Bodden on the evaluation and research aspects of this project. In particular, we have been refining the project’s ‘indicators of success’ — for both the pilots and the project as a whole — and if there are ways we can usefully feed our real-time learnings, reflections and findings back into the live project process, rather than the evaluation/research focussing retrospectively on the impact of the pilots at the end as is typically the case. I’ve found it really interesting thinking about ‘what does success look like?’ for this project — beyond the core project deliverables — and the ways we can extend our co-design approach to the evaluation too, by synthesising a shared vision of success from the perspectives of all those involved in the project, and where particular groups have overlapping interests. From the project team and Advisory Board, to the local stakeholders involved.”

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Abi (New Practice — Community Engagement):

“Keeping eyes on youth engagement, I have found that over this time of transition, engaging young people has been particularly tricky. Having previously worked with young people digitally over the height of lockdown and with a blended approach using physical toolkits aided by digital instruction, we were confident that this project would be easily accommodated, however, we have found that building trust in times of transitions has been the element that has been time consuming. Understandably the priority of schools at this time are not the priority of education spaces therefore we have had to take a more sensitive approach to contacting and following up with schools, proving youth engagement to be a tricky element of the project to navigate. Currently, I have been looking at alternative routes through which we can allow young people to participate to ensure that the voice of local young people are heard and influence the project’s outcomes.”

Juliet (New Practice — Junior Designer):

“Over the past month, I have worked predominantly on the public engagement aspect of the project. It has been really exciting to see High Street Tweak launched into the world! In February, I helped to build the online survey for residents of Dalkeith and Gorgie-Dalry. It was a challenge to create a survey long enough to produce meaningful data, but not so long that participants wouldn’t have time to complete it. After a few drafts I feel we have found this balance. In February I also helped to develop a Miro board to be used in the online interactive sessions. The aim for the Miro board was to create a sense that participants are moving through real physical spaces, to try to emulate the feeling of an ‘in-person’ workshop online. More recently, I have been trying to contact as many businesses in Dalkeith and Gorgie-Dalry as possible, via phone, email and social media, to spread the word about High Street Tweak! Though at times it has been challenging to explain the project briefly to those who are very busy, the conversations over the phone have been informative and positive. Business owners in both locations seem to be eager to have their voices heard, and I am excited to hear people’s thoughts and ideas over the coming weeks.”

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Shawn Bodden (Project Officer, EFI):

“I’ve been making lots of lists lately. It’s been a busy few weeks for the project, and it can be tough to keep up: the launch of the survey, a trial-run of online workshop resources, new ideas and feedback from Advisory Board members — and in between, the planning, conversation, double-checking, revising and adjusting that makes it all happen. Everyone’s working on different pieces of the project, and our meetings, emails and chats are opportunities — well, and challenges — to work out how it’ll all fit together. That New Practice have dubbed their prototypes-to-be ‘tweaks’ makes a lot of sense to me, since we’re continuously tweaking our plans as we encounter new ideas, concerns, obstacles and opportunities. School holidays, community-engagement reports, new gadgets. All sorts of things come up as we try to work out what we want the outcome of the project to look like — and what we should do (now, next, ASAP!) to get there.

A couple weeks back, I led a small workshop for the project team to think about the sorts of things we think would make the project successful: if community members feel a sense of authorship; if participants get excited about the project; if we learn more about what residents and visitors want from their High Street as a place. I’m finishing up a report just now following off the workshop and our other conversations as a Team to describe what our Team’s vision of success looks like together. Community input, making connections, best practice, feeling less alone. It’s another list of sorts — and like most lists, it has a purpose. By bringing as many of the Team’s priorities and ideas as possible onto the same page, we don’t just get a description of the project’s successful conclusion, but also insight into the ways we work out — here and now, as we go — how to work on the project well. It’s an inventory of concepts to work with and questions to keep in mind as we try to find a successful project together. The list will keep growing, and soon we’ll be able to add in opinions and suggestions from local stakeholders — creating new opportunities and new challenges. The task ahead, then, will be working out how to keep all these perspectives, ideas and concerns working together on a shared and shareable project.”

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The Future of the High Street project is part of The University of Edinburgh’s ‘Data and Design Lab’ — funded by the Scottish Funding Council. It will act as a demonstrator project for how a data-and-design approach can be used to address key contemporary challenges and deliver positive impact. The project follows on from the Edinburgh Futures Institute Smart Places series in collaboration with the Edinburgh Living Lab and Data Driven Innovation programme. Find out more here.

Blog written by Jenny Elliott, Project Lead for Future of the High Street, and Smart Places Lead at Edinburgh Futures Institute.

Source: https://edilivinglab.medium.com/live-from-...

Digital Engagement During a Pandemic: how can you bring people together when you can’t bring people together?

*Blog written by Jenny Elliott, originally published by the Edinburgh Living Lab 16 March 2021.*

The third in our blog series about project ‘Future of the High Street’ — openly sharing the evolving project and process, our learnings and findings. This month — we reveal insights into live project decision-making and thought processes around digital engagement.

This month a critical question for us has been something that many built environment and placemaking professionals have needed to consider over the last year, as they pivot their previously established stakeholder engagement, placemaking and even day-to-day team working methods to adapt to what has become the ‘new normal’ with Covid.

How can you bring people together, when you can’t physically bringpeople together?

This question is increasingly important as the team finalise the preparatory work and initial studies for the two project locations of Gorgie/Dalry and Dalkeith (including character, facade, land use and activity studies of the high street and its businesses) and we begin actively engaging with local businesses, organisations and residents.

Thinking about ‘how to bring people together despite a pandemic’, is crucial at this project stage. It affects our decisions about the methods chosen to collaborate, engage and work with others to deliver this project. Not just as a project team and with our advisory board, but how digital tools or other strategies can be used to bring together local stakeholders and the project team throughout the engagement and co-design threads of this shared project journey.

But before we think about ‘how’ to bring people together, it’s important to think about ‘why’ this is important.

Engagement in built environment and place-based projects like this one, allow us to understand the lived experiences of those who know their local places best. Crucially, it ideally also gives local people a voice and seat at the table in shaping an outcome for the places they care about. From experience, this inevitably makes the outcome better.

Through the Future of the High Street project’s ongoing engagement with local businesses, residents and organisations in Gorgie/Dalry and Dalkeith, we hope to understand the current challenges and future opportunities for these high streets as a place and destination, as well as the high street’s financial viability for businesses.

The upcoming digital co-creation workshops planned for late March/early April will then involve working together to develop 6 ideas for small interventions or ‘tweaks’ to address these challenges — two of which will be piloted in June 2021 with a budget of £20k to design, develop and deliver them. By the project’s end in July, we will have piloted, tested and evaluated the potential of two of these ideas ‘on the ground’ to deliver impact in addressing these high streets’ immediate needs, and/or to help the high street pilot ways to adapt and evolve longer-term into a more successful and liveable place. We have not predefined what these pilots will be, as it is important to us that these are responsive and genuinely shaped by those local businesses, residents and organisations collaborating with us.

Stakeholder engagement is therefore vital to this project and the activities above. It will help ensure the ideas and pilots are shaped together, that they address the most pertinent challenges for the high street and its businesses, that they are feasible in practice locally and designed to maximise impact.

Testing out WhereBy as a digital engagement tool with the project’s Advisory Board

Testing out WhereBy as a digital engagement tool with the project’s Advisory Board

How do you decide what methods to use? Engagement principles, project goals and the constraints of a pandemic.

Helping us choose and refine the project’s engagement approach and methods are parameters in terms of the project goals and desired outputs (described above), our engagement principles as a team, and also the Covid-19 and other constraints within which the project operates.

For example, key to the engagement-focused project activities, conversations and workshops will be principles and goals of:

  • genuine collaboration,

  • respecting the time and input of those involved, including creating two-way reciprocal processes wherever possible (such the prize draw for professional photography, illustration or sign-writing packages for participating businesses),

  • and an open inclusive approach that allows diverse voices as part of these conversations.

There are also project restrictions. Beyond the usual project constraints of time and budget, during a pandemic we also have the complication of social distancing, inability to gather indoors or in groups, closed shops and hospitality, and travel restrictions whilst we all ‘stay at home’. This means we can’t create the in-person connections we usually would through popping in to high street shops or places, having conversations face-to-face, or delivering workshops around the same table inside — at least in the first couple of months of this 6 month project.

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So how can we best deliver this project’s engagement activities in a genuinely collaborative, inclusive and successful way, despitelockdown restrictions during a pandemic?

This question has been central to our thinking over the last few weeks. It has also led to a reflection as a project team of what does success look like’? Both as a project centred around collaboration and co-design, and also for the evaluation research of the two pilots or ‘tweak’ interventions that will be designed, built and ready to go on-site for June.

Digital engagement tools were a logical place to start when thinking about suitable engagement approaches during lockdown. Many on the project team have expertise in digital engagement tools or approaches. From creative use of social media, or Minecraft schools workshops reimagining the built environment, to use of proprietary platforms like Commonplace or Delib to facilitate conversation or share spatial insights or feedback. The crucial difference is that instead of using a blend of bothdigital and in-person methods to collaborate and work together with stakeholders and each other (as we may ideally have wished), we are instead — for now at least — relying more heavily on digital engagementtools and approaches that we can deliver remotely. This gives us scope to be creative, reconsider, question and adapt our previous ‘go to’ engagement approaches.

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What digital engagement tools and other remote methods will we be using?

Alongside good old-fashioned phone calls and contact via social media and emails, the team are using digital methods to contact and collaborate with stakeholders including:

  • A dedicated engagement-focussed ‘High Street Tweak’ website and branding, created by New Practice and tailored toward local stakeholders as the ‘storefront’ for the project and ways they can be actively involved. This complements the overall Future of the High Street website which includes more detailed information about the project process and approach that may be of more interest to a professional industry/academic audience.

  • An online survey created using SurveyLab. This is available for local businesses, residents and organisations in Gorgie/Dalry or Dalkeith to fill in via the High Street Tweak website. To respect the time and input many local people had already contributed to previous consultations, rather than repeating Place Standard questions or things that had already been discussed at length for other projects in these locations, we instead summarised previous engagement/consultation reports and asked respondents to rank these by priority or add in others of their own.

  • Participatory mapping as part of the online survey allows the easy communication of the spatial location of participants’ ideas or challenges for their high street. This will be helpful to identify potential locations where a pilot might be most beneficial to address a certain challenge or deliver most impact.

  • Whereby and Miro alongside live digital sketching — the upcoming co-creation workshops at the end of March will be interactive sessions with local businesses, residents and young people, where potential pilot ideas will be explored and then refined with the team of designers and architects. To allow individual voices to be heard, and to facilitate this process, the team will be using Miro as an online whiteboard for sharing thoughts and ideas during the structured workshop, and WhereBy as a web-browser based online meeting tool. In addition, we are currently planning to incorporate live design sketching of ideas to help participants see their ideas come to life and to aid discussion.

  • A blended model for young people — where we mix the best of digitally delivered tools and workshops with physical activity packs. This creates a safe environment for young people to be able to easily engage with the project without having to compromise the tangible, creative making that young people respond to so well.

We’ll be covering some more about how the engagement process and co-creation workshops develop in our next blog. In the meantime — below we share thoughts and diaries direct from the project team:

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Direct from the project team: our thoughts and diaries from inside the project process — March 2021.

Each month we share insights direct from the project team. This month focuses on how can we make digital engagement and placemaking a success during a pandemic?

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Jenny Elliott, Project Lead, Edinburgh Futures Institute:

The Future of the High Street project is happening at a unique time in history. Covid-19 has influenced the ways that we can meet, engage, and talk with other people. This dynamic and constantly changing set of rules and regulations for the ways that we can interact with others inevitably has a profound effect on a project with collaboration, engagement and participation at its core.

Blended ‘in-person’ and ‘digital’ approaches have been around for a while, and — in my opinion — this mixed method approach is ideal in helping reach diverse groups of stakeholders. However, when traditional in-person methods are not possible due to ‘stay-at-home’ orders, the increasing use of digital tools and platforms in placemaking, co-design and stakeholder engagement for built environment projects offers a distanced and safe way to allow as many of the conversations that would have previously happened in person to still go ahead. This can be particularly interesting when delivered alongside complementary remote physical resources such as activity packs.

There are a huge range of possible digital tools now available — from AR and VR to help us imagine what designs might look like, to participatory mapping via Commonplace, to Delib’s digital conversation platforms, from Minecraft to Miro-based workshops. Whilst I’m looking forward to a world where both digital and in-person engagement methods are possible again, in the meantime, the use of digital tools and technologies can add huge value in supporting collaboration and communication. But with the focus on digital, how can this be done in a way that recognises challenges around digital inclusion and accessibility, so that everyone who wishes to be, can be a part of the conversation? How do we choose which tools and methods to use? And how can we make sure we don’t lose that personal touch of going to speak to someone in person?

These types of questions are central to the Future of the High Street project — particularly important at this early project phase, which is centred around speaking with the local businesses, residents, young people and others who all have an interest in the future of their high street as both a place, and as often the social and economic heart to the community. We don’t have all the answers, but we hope that by opening up our project process to others through these blogs and films, we can help share our learnings and findings with those involved in or thinking about similar projects.

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Duncan Bain, New Practice (Digital Approach and Technology):

Nearly one year into the Covid-19 pandemic, we are still figuring out what community engagement and participation in a world of lockdowns and remote working looks like. As a practice, we are well-used to the messy, creative environment of a workshop or public event — the small and unpredictable interactions and activities that shape the relationship between the local community experts and the facilitator. So often, it is these small moments of interpretation and chance conversations that inform the final outcome.

A key ambition in planning for co-creative events in March is finding ways to capture those creative moments in a remote format. We have been experimenting with a host of digital and remote tools since the pandemic began, and are excited to bring this learning to this project. We see a hybrid of tools as critical to fostering a co-creative space. Some of these, like Miro, are novel platforms that have come into their own during Covid-19, while others, like hand-sketching as a means to capture ideas are tools that we would use as part of in-person workshops, that we think are still very important to developing a shared vision. The key challenge is marrying these tools together in an experience where everyone involved finds their voice and has fun.

Abigail, New Practice (Community Engagement):

I have been focussing on the youth-focussed aspect of the community engagement programme. I enjoy working with young people because they are the most likely age group to give you something completely novel and unexpected. When working with this age-group you are likely to get ideas and design suggestions that perhaps are a little more outlandish. Where the opportunities and creativity lie within these workshops is in the needs and desires hidden within these creative solutions. If a young person suggests a 5 storey climbing-frame, the need may be for more play space or for a space where young people can come together, rather than a realised version of their exact suggestion.

For this project, I am looking forward to understanding how local young people currently view the high street in each area and excited to develop a design task that aids the visualisation of a young-person-friendly high street. What are the real needs hidden within these creative designs?

Juliet (New Practice — Junior Designer, Site Analysis):

“I have been working at New Practice, and a part of the Future of High Streets team, for just over two weeks. Over this time, I have been investigating the two sites of Dalkeith and Gorgie Dalry, to better understand each area’s individual character. I first located OS Maps of the two areas, and formatted them to make them easily readable, maintaining features such as rivers and parks. I identified the ‘key high streets’ and then, using the building databases compiled by Kleanthis Kyriakou, created diagrams of the two sites. I colour-coded buildings based on six different categories: shops, eating, assembly and leisure, professional services, non-residential institutions and vacant buildings.

This helped to visualise the different zones of the street: where are eateries focussed, which areas are most active? Where are there most vacant buildings, or establishments closed due to the pandemic? Where might pedestrians spend most time, which areas do people tend to drive through? I plan to further build on this information, using these two case studies to better understand the current state of Scottish High Streets. By understanding how these spaces are used, I hope to inform the development of our design concept over the coming weeks.”

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Shawn Bodden, Project Officer, Edinburgh Futures Institute:

Things are changing fast these days. This past Sunday I went for a walk and discovered that, when I wasn’t looking, Spring had started. The local park was flush with budding crocuses and overflowing with strolling, cycling, chatting, bird-watching, croissant-nibbling, sun-soaking visitors from surrounding neighbourhoods. For me, it was a much-appreciated reminder that, despite the many ongoing and unpredictable challenges of the pandemic, people are still finding ways to care for one another and to enjoy life — and that something simple like a sunny day can really help.

At this point in the Future of the High Street project, I’m mainly working on how to understand and evaluate the project’s success. As our Team discussed in its first meeting earlier this month, the unpredictable and frequent changes due to the pandemic and varying restrictions can make it difficult to work out ‘what success looks like’. One team member put it succinctly: ‘how will we know that the pilots that we tried really worked?’.

As I see it, the great opportunity — and challenge — of the project’s community-engaged approach to co-design is that other members of the community, in addition to the Project Team and Advisory Board, will help decide what success looks like — their input will shape how New Practice’s small ‘tweaks’ work. Thus, rather than coming up with my own criteria to evaluate success, I’m trying to think of ways to observe and document how members of our Team and local communities alike evaluate the success of the project for them, throughout the entire process of designing, experimenting with and installing the new ‘tweaks’.

Our team isn’t in a position to solve any of the major problems our communities are facing with this lone project, but we can look for ways to help — and we can look together with those affected. I’m hoping that the project becomes a space for local communities to find ways even small ‘tweaks’ might help, and that I’ll be able to facilitate communication of these different visions between the project’s numerous participants.

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Megan Miller, Visual Communication Intern, Edinburgh Futures Institute

Covid-19 has drastically changed industry as a whole, and one of the most notable is film. The amount of people required for a single production is immense, and the additional mandates caused by the pandemic has made filmmaking a difficult pursuit. It has certainly given weight to the necessity of physical human connection.

For my role as the Visual Communication Project Intern, my main focus has been to answer the question of: how to create video content when access to filming is limited? I’ve been trying to challenge myself to think differently about my approach to producing visual content and what that means. I think that we limit ourselves by viewing a solution only in relation to the problem — in my case, the absence of film caused by restrictions. I’ve been trying to view the solution not as it relates to how film and visual content was viewed before, but how it has the potential to be viewed without previous expectations. Instead of telling myself what I would have done if it was possible, I’m better able to focus on what can be done now.

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The Future of the High Street project is part of The University of Edinburgh’s ‘Data and Design Lab’ — funded by the Scottish Funding Council. It will act as a demonstrator project for how a data-and-design approach can be used to address key contemporary challenges and deliver positive impact. The project follows on from the Edinburgh Futures Institute Smart Places series in collaboration with the Edinburgh Living Lab and Data Driven Innovation programme. Find out more here.

How can we improve the design, monitoring and evaluation of temporary changes to public realm spaces? Can novel uses of urban data help us do this better?

These were the questions we first asked during a conversation between the Edinburgh Futures Institute and Edinburgh Living Lab at the University of Edinburgh, Jacobs, the City of Edinburgh and Sustrans in late 2019. This conversation evolved into a project around the Open Streets programme in Edinburgh, and subsequently the Spaces for People temporary street interventions. Both project phases explored how urban data could potentially provide valuable insights to inform city decision-making.

Read More

The Future of the High Street: insights and aspirations from our project team and advisory board

*Blog written by Jenny Elliott, originally published by the Edinburgh Living Lab 16 Feb 2021.*

The second in our blog series about project ‘Future of the High Street’ — openly sharing the evolving project and process, our learnings and findings. This month — meet the project team and advisory board, as they reveal their insights and aspirations for the ‘Future of the High Street’ as both a key contemporary topic and live project.

The last month has seen the kick-off of ‘The Future of the High Street’ — a 6-month project using digital engagement, co-design with local businesses and stakeholders, rapid small-scale prototyping and robust evaluation research.

The aim?

To understand the key challenges local high street businesses and communities are facing just now, and explore opportunities for small-scale pilots or ‘tweaks’ that might help. Two of these will be tested during June 2021 — one on Gorgie/Dalry Road high street in Edinburgh and one on Dalkeith town centre, and evaluated to see what impact they have in addressing one or more of these challenges.

In the words of the Scottish Government’s ‘A New Future for Scotland’s Town Centres’ report, town centres offer a social, cultural and economic heart to a community. It is this heart to our local neighbourhoods — vital for community connection, the viability of local businesses and as a built environment and place that this project hopes to help support.

Through this project process, we aim to have an immediate positive impact on the resilience of two specific local high streets, whilst sharing ideas, opportunities and findings that could be further developed or relevant to other high streets nationwide longer term. You can read more about the project here.

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Meet the project team:

Each month to July 2021 — the project team — led by the University of Edinburgh’s Futures Institute alongside delivery partner New Practice architects — will be sharing the project process via a monthly blog. We hope you’ll join us on this project journey, and that by sharing our project process and findings along the way, we help inform others’ work and the wider discussion around themes of high streets, resilience, digital engagement, and placemaking during a pandemic and beyond.

This month, we wanted to introduce you to the project team, and our fantastic advisory board members. Here they share some of their aspirations for the project and why they feel this is an important topic just now.

The Project Team:

Edinburgh Futures Institute: “The Edinburgh Futures Institute (EFI) is leading the Future of the High Street project as part of their ‘Smart Places’ workstream. The project is one of a suite of projects under the current Scottish Funding Council supported ‘Design Lab’ at the University of Edinburgh. EFI aims to pursue knowledge and understanding that supports the navigation of complex futures. Working with industry, government and communities EFI is building a challenge-led and data-rich portfolio of activity that demonstrates ethical, social, cultural, economic and environmental impacts. The Future of the High Street project supports these aims, and EFI’s collaborative and data-driven approach to helping address contemporary challenges and deliver real impact.”

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Jenny Elliott (Project Lead, EFI): “As the Smart Places Lead at the Edinburgh Futures Institute, I work closely with the Edinburgh Living Lab and Data-Driven Innovation programme at the University of Edinburgh. A Chartered Landscape Architect and multi-disciplinary designer, I have particular experience in leading and delivering projects focussed on urban design and research, user experience, co-design, and visual communication (graphic design, illustration, photography, film).

When originally designing the project proposal it was important to combine a participatory approach, with novel digital engagement tools that would help us reach people and navigate the challenges of placemaking safely during a pandemic, whilst ensuring an inclusive and accessible co-design approach to working together with local high street businesses and stakeholders.

I am excited that a key project aim is to collaboratively develop two small-scale prototypes to ‘tweak’ the built environment or digital ‘place’ of two Edinburgh region high streets. These will be in situ during June 2021. They will be evaluated for their immediate impact in enhancing these two high streets’ desirability as a place to visit, shop or spend time, with a focus on supporting local independent businesses and the high street’s important role in a community. Through blogs such as this one, and a webinar in July, I wanted to design a project plan that openly shared the project process, co-produced ideas, and other project findings to impact wider ongoing work to help imagine a brighter future for the high street as a key neighbourhood place, social connector and centre of economic activity.”

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Shawn Bodden (Project Officer, EFI): I’m a cultural geographer and researcher with a broad interest in the many projects that individuals and communities get up to while trying to make their world a better place. Specifically, I have studied how activist groups decide how to pursue political change; how groups try to create tolerant community spaces; and how pedestrians and pigeons make room for each other in city streets. I combine long-term, participatory ethnographic methods with detailed micro-analysis of social interactions to understand how people solve problems, make trouble, and work on better possible futures.

The Covid-19 pandemic has caused major disruptions to all of our lives — but in many different, often unpredictable ways. I’m interested in working on the Future of the High Street project because it asks important questions about the ways that specific communities might respond to the situation. In a sense, I’m interested in the many different futures of the High Street — the projects that people want to use the High Street for.

Megan Miller (Visual Communication Project Intern and Film-maker, EFI): Megan is an award-winning videographer and editor with four years of professional experience in the New York metro area, producing and editing short documentary, hard news, lifestyle, and marketing content. She is currently pursuing her MFA in Documentary Film Directing at University of Edinburgh, but resides in Glasgow.

The consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic have affected our lives in unique and difficult ways, bringing to the fore a necessity to adapt. I believe a human’s adaptive capacity is found within their creative ability, and I’m excited to play a role in this project precisely because of its goal to elicit positive change through creativity and innovation. It presents a challenge to all those involved — how to negotiate being with people without being with them, or (in my case) how to create moving images without moving images — but the very pursuit of a solution suggests one exists.

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New Practice: New Practice is an architecture practice. We exist to develop the creative capacity of places and to connect people with the decision making processes that underpin their lived experience. New Practice is committed to the design and delivery of beautiful, practical places which offer social and environmental sustainability for healthier and happier neighbourhoods.

The pandemic has compounded long running challenges for local economies and radically changed how we all relate to local places. As a practice committed to place-based development, it is critical that post-Covid recovery focusses not only on economic outcomes, but also on revitalising high streets as critical spaces for the generation of local identity and connection.

Over the course of the pandemic, we’ve worked hard to ensure that the voices of communities and local stakeholders remain central to decision making processes. This has meant developing new skills and tools for delivering the sorts of creative engagement that in the past would have taken place primarily in workshops, classrooms and at local events. Translating these fun, collaborative and messy experiences into meaningful and effective remote engagement is a huge challenge, and through the Future of the High Street project we are excited to share our experience and curiosity with a wider team of practitioners, advisors, and researchers and learn more about how innovation and research can play a role in revitalising high streets.”

Duncan Bain (New Practice — Digital approach and technology): “The focus on research and learning through this engagement programme means that we are encouraged to try out new ways of working, use new tools and embrace experimentation. For me, the chance to experiment with new technology and novel approaches to working collaboratively with local stakeholders is really exciting. We have spent the last year trying to find ways to promote the voices and agency of communities in really challenging circumstances, when other concerns are very obviously more pressing. What we have learned is that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to remote engagement. We are excited to get to know the communities of Gorgie/Dalry and Dalkeith and build bespoke approaches to co-creation that meet their needs, abilities and interests.”

Abi (New Practice — Community Engagement): “The Future of High Streets project provides a lengthy opportunity for relationship-building with each community before the commencement of the creative engagement programme. This creates an opportunity to generate a truly tailored experience to both communities which will likely strengthen the outputs for each of these locations.”

Juliet (New Practice — Junior Designer): ‘What excites me about this project is the cross-disciplinary nature of the team, and I am interested to see how remote working might lead us to more creative ways of collaborating. I hope to learn more about the issues business owners have faced over the past year, and to create a meaningful output, responding to local residents’ ideas and opinions.’

Meet our Advisory Board:

In addition to the project delivery team, we are lucky to have the support and insight of a fantastic advisory board. Here they share a little about themselves and their perspectives on the project and this topic.

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Gemma Cassells, Data Driven Innovation Programme, University of Edinburgh: “I am interested in the Future of the High Street project as it builds on previous work I’ve developed with Jenny Elliott and other colleagues in EFI, looking at how data can be used to support communities, and how community-sourced data can be used to inform policy and drive social change. This project will provide tangible insights into our changing relationships to place and place-making, and help local businesses survive the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.”

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Dr Jo Morrison, Director of Digital Innovation and Research at Calvium, ‘Expert’ at High Streets Task Force and co-Director of the Association of Collaborative Design: “As digital technologies play an increasing role in how people act in and upon the world, it’s vital that their voices influence the architecture and experience of emergent hybrid public spaces. I am pleased and intrigued to be part of this project as it has the potential to significantly shift the ways in which places are envisioned, approached and valued.”

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Phil Prentice, Chief Officer, Scotland’s Towns Partnership, National Programme Director of Scotland’s Improvement Districts and Director of UK High Streets Task Force. “With 25 years economic development experience across the public and private sectors, my role is to drive sustainable change through collaboration and partnership. Town and City Centres are clearly back on the political agenda. High Streets and Town Centres are places of creativity and enterprise, where social and cultural interaction drives innovation and wealth-creation. They provide a sustainable core where all parts of society can come together and share resources and services. Their density means that shops, workplaces, leisure, culture and public services are near, they are still where public transport goes, and are accessible to the whole community. These long-established places are our true eco-towns, resources whose health is critical to a sustainable future. Our towns and high streets are critical to Scotland’s future social, environmental and economic success which is why this project can create key learning and resources for others to use.”

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Andy Edwards, Transport and Environment Manager, City of Edinburgh Council: “Andy Edwards is the Transport and Environment Manager for the South West Locality. Andy is a Civil Engineer with over 25 years of experience in both the construction industry and leading local authority service teams. He joined the City of Edinburgh Council in 2005 managing local transport and environment functions across the city. Currently, he is working on the delivery of the Spaces for People Programme and project managing the regeneration of Westside Plaza.

I am interested in this project because [through my work] I have seen local town centres with a high turnover of businesses, [and a] lack of proper investment that has resulted in them looking tired and dated. Improvements identified through Public Life Street Assessments and community engagement have not materialised due to other aspects being prioritised. The current circumstances have shown that local town centres are needed so that people can shop local.”

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Andrew Ralton — Economic Development Officer, Midlothian Council: “I have worked in Economic Development for 16 years. First with East Lothian Council for two years, and after that with Midlothian Council ever since. The main focus of economic development is to facilitate economic growth, and ultimately bring jobs and an improvement in residents’ standard of living in an area. The Economic Development team currently plays a critical role in the response to the current Covid 19 pandemic.

It is clear that the way people shop and socialise has changed and that the traditional model of the high street as the retail and social centre of the town is becoming less dominant, as it competes with online and out of town shopping for custom and footfall. Yet the high street is a key part of the identity of a town, and the unique story of each town can play a very important role in encouraging civic pride and community cohesion. […] The High Street still has, and could continue to have, significant economic importance at the local and regional level.”

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Kyle Drummond, Programme Development Officer, City of Edinburgh: “I am part of the Council’s Commercial Development & Investment service, which supports development and regeneration in Edinburgh, ranging from strategic brownfield redevelopments to historic building refurbishments. His background is in economic development and project management. The Commercial Development & Investment team supports town centre regeneration activity, including administering the national Town Centre Fund in Edinburgh. Gorgie/Dalry town centre — one of nine town centres within the city — has enormous potential to help drive future sustainable economic growth in Edinburgh.”

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Stephen McConnachie, Social Researcher, Connected Places Catapult: “Stephen is a qualitative research specialist based in Edinburgh with a PhD in social anthropology. He most enjoys using tailored research methods to bring deep insights about people and society to projects, and does so by balancing academic rigour with the pragmatism required in time-bound public and private sector projects. His subject specialisms include wellbeing, greenspace, place, mobility, and values.

People’s relationships with the places in which they live and travel are bound up with the social and cultural meanings embedded in the built and natural environment. The pandemic has precipitated changes in the ways in which we engage with our surroundings, in some cases accelerating existing changes. With signs of a growing appreciation and desire for localism, it’s important places adapt to ensure they offer viable, valued spaces rich in social meaning which allow local people to feel a sense of belonging. This necessitates a holistic approach which recognises and draws on the rich tapestry of ways that different people and groups understand the (specific) high street. As an Edinburgh (and Gorgie) resident, this project offers an opportunity to help shape how local high streets are configured.”

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Niamh Webster, Policy Advisor (UK Government secondment from Scottish Government): “Niamh specialises in open government and digital engagement, and is currently on secondment to the UK Government policy profession unit advising on policymaking reform. She previously led on public engagement using digital technology in her role as Digital Engagement manager at the Scottish Government. She joined the government in 2018 to coordinate open government policy. Connecting all her work to date has been a focus on strengthening democracy, as she previously worked at non-profit Democratic Society and at the Scottish Parliament. She is an active contributor to global community of practitioners in the field of open government.

I’m pleased to be part of this work, following on from my involvement in ‘SmartPlaces’, and now looking at the future of local spaces and places. A lot of my work is internationally focussed, but really, it all starts at home. We’ve all spent more time than ever in our local area this year and immediate surroundings. It couldn’t be better timing to re-open the conversation about making great places to live. It’s timely to bring the learning from digital engagement and opportunities of new technology, and I’m delighted to be working alongside experts in placemaking, design and communities.”

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Lindsey Sibbald, Business Growth and Talent Development Lead, Business Gateway Growth Adviser: “With over 25 years’ of experience in economic development, Lindsey is currently a Business Gateway Growth Adviser (Edinburgh). Lindsey created Edinburgh’s Town Centre Strategy; managing a team of 5 Town Centre Co-ordinators. She assisted in the creation of Edinburgh’s first central Business Improvement District, “Essential Edinburgh“ and 3 further BIDs. Lindsey has advised and supported several Boards including: The Edinburgh International Conference Centre; Waterfront Edinburgh; & The City Centre Management Company.

Participation in the advisory board is of particular interest as I am currently spearheading the “Shop Here This Year” (shop local) campaign across Edinburgh’s 11 town centres (including Gorgie/ Dalry). This will promote resilience, improve access to business support services and encourage collaboration between Edinburgh’s local business communities during and through the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.”

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Cat Magill, Senior Advisor, Edinburgh Living Lab and Data and Design Lab: “Cat has broad expertise in the integration of data and design to catalyse innovation and social change. She works to connect people and perspectives across research, industry, civil society and communities, designing and leading initiatives that prototype and test data-informed and human-centred solutions to complex challenges. Cat spent many years working and travelling around the world before coming to Edinburgh, giving her unique insight and ability to understand different perspectives and bring people together.

This project develops and builds on Edinburgh Living Lab’s work on integrating data-driven innovation and human-centred design to improve places for people. Future of the High Street is also a demonstrator project for the Data and Design Lab, a new initiative that I am advising on in the University’s Covid Beacon programme.”

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Gerard O’Brien — Senior Design Officer, Architecture & Design Scotland: “[A] Chartered Member of the Landscape Institute, I have practiced in the private and public sector for fifteen years. Most of my work involved community based landscape design but I worked on a range of projects at a range of scales. I then became a lecturer in landscape design. I am currently a Senior Design Officer with Architecture & Design Scotland (A&DS).

[…] I am interested in the creation of meaningful places. The lives of spaces built or unbuilt and the lives of people in equal measure. I have been working within a team at A&DS looking at place planning for decarbonisation. I am therefore interested to learn more about the digital element of engagement and placemaking to see how these can enrich and be blended into design of resilient places. Moreover, I wish to observe and be part of the process and group which aligns with the Place Principle approach of working together.

It can only be hoped by looking at creating a resilient high street during the current situation we can create resilient places in the face of environmental and associated changes. The high street forms an important part of our towns and cities and is crucial in the 20 minute neighbourhood. We should not be talking about the preservation of our high streets but the flourishing of them.”

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Douglas Strachan — Founder and Chairperson, One Dalkeith Development Trust: “Douglas Strachan is the founder and chair person of the One Dalkeith Development Trust, which is a vehicle for self-empowered community-led regeneration. One Dalkeith was formed by the town’s two community councils bringing the community together with a shared vision of improving the town centre and enhancing the provision of community facilities. It has pursued this vision by taking on large premises in the town centre to form a community facility, as well as through projects such as the Dalkeith Loves Local campaign and a wide range events and activities. Douglas is also Managing Director of Camerons Strachan Yuill Architects, a community-focussed Architectural practice operating across South East Scotland. Douglas’s membership of the advisory board is through his voluntary role as a community representative, but he is keen to participate in the broader conversation around town centres in both capacities. I am delighted to participate in the Future of the High Street project, both because of the direct benefit to Dalkeith and because of the potential for a much wider contribution to the national conversation on this subject.”

The Future of the High Street project is part of The University of Edinburgh’s ‘Design Lab’ — funded by the Scottish Funding Council, and will act as a demonstrator project for how a data-and-design approach can be used to address key contemporary challenges and deliver positive impact. The project follows on from our Edinburgh Futures Institute Smart Places series in collaboration with the Edinburgh Living Lab and Data Driven Innovation programme.

Source: https://edilivinglab.medium.com/the-future...

Introducing the ‘Future of the High Street’ — a collaborative project involving digital engagement, rapid prototyping and robust evaluation on two Edinburgh region high streets.

*Blog written by Jenny Elliott, originally published by the Edinburgh Living Lab 14 Jan 2021.*

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Introducing the ‘Future of the High Street’ — a collaborative project involving digital engagement, placemaking and rapid prototyping on two Edinburgh region high streets, to test ideas addressing local business and built environment challenges. The first in our blog series about project ‘Future of the High Street’ — openly sharing the project and process, our learnings and findings.

The high street is the heart of many communities. Not just a local centre ofeconomic activity and hustle and bustle, it is also a social connector, a local landmark and often vibrant destination, both a movement route and place we spend time, meet friends, pop to the shop, or bump into neighbours. With a recent increased focus on the ’20 minute neighbourhood’ — having all the services you need within a 20 minute walk of your house — and with the high street providing many of these services to residents nearby, its role is also especially important just now given the more local way we are living our lives.

Future of the High Street_Jenny Elliott_Dalry Road

But there are challenges for the high street. Some of these are long-standing — such as changes in consumer behaviour, market demand and the move to online. Some of these are more recent — such as the impact of Covid, requiring social distancing on narrow pavements, maximum customer capacity in shops and hospitality, reduced operating hours or services and even required temporary closures that have transformed active shopfronts to dormant dark windows. These challenges are particularly pressing as we enter the third national lockdown in a year, most notably for local independent businesses, but also in the way our everyday built environments adapt.

This leads to two crucial questions.

  1. How can we identify and understand what the most pressing short and long-term challenges for the high street as a place and for its businesses are?

  2. How can we work together to explore and quickly test possible solutions, adaptations or tweaks to the high street’s physical built environment and public realm, its business models and services or digital offer, to create opportunities out of these challenges, or at least mitigate them in some way? Are there ways to work together with people from diverse different perspectives and experiences of these challenges to rapidly prototype ideas and deliver some much needed immediate positive impact whilst also sharing learnings more broadly or setting the scene for longer-term change?

From a professional built environment and placemaking perspective, if we view the high street as a place or system that brings together different stakeholders — local businesses, residents, and organisations — how can we answer these questions about challenges and opportunities in a participatory way that recognises lived experience and local expertise, so that we really understand the problems and possibilities? What design tools, approaches and digital techniques can we use to genuinely work together with these diverse stakeholders to deliver the most impact and value, whilst also being required to ‘stay at home’ during lockdown periods, adhere to social distancing and other factors than traditional in-person methods?

These are questions being faced by many working in placemaking, design and planning professions just now, and which were highlighted — along with the challenges facing the high street and public realm spaces — through the Edinburgh Futures Institute and Edinburgh Living Lab’s Smart Places’ series of events, discussions and work during 2020. You can read the summary booklet or more about the Smart Places series here.

The Smart Places series of articles, events and discussion.

The Smart Places series of articles, events and discussion.

It is these questions that our Future of the High Street project will aim to address. This 6-month project to July 2021 will use a data-and-design approach — combining citizen engagement and co-design with data and technology — to address key challenges for high streets and the public realm emerging from the Covid-19 pandemic. The project is funded by the Scottish Funding Council, and delivered by the Edinburgh Futures Instituteand Edinburgh Living Lab in collaboration with the Data-Driven Innovationprogramme and New Practice architects. The project builds on Edinburgh Living Lab’s work on integrating data-driven innovation and human-centred design to improve places for people, and will be a demonstrator project for the Data and Design Lab, a new initiative under the University of Edinburgh’s ‘Covid Beacon’ programme.

The ‘Future of the High Street’ project will take a deliberately collaborative approach, working closely with local businesses and stakeholders on two Edinburgh city region high streets — Gorgie/Dalry Road and Dalkeith town centre. Through this active listening, participatory and increasingly collaborative approach — we will identify key current and ongoing real impacts and challenges for local businesses and the high street as a place in the short-term due to Covid-19, as well as longer-term for the future of the high street.

The project will use a co-design process including digital engagement, design and modelling workshops and rapid prototyping to together explore, design, and define a shareable toolkit of at least 6 small-scale ideas that could help address these challenges in the short term. Two of these ideas will be prototyped and have project budget for piloting ‘in real life’ in collaboration with businesses on site on Gorgie/Dalry Road and Dalkeith high streets during June 2021 to deliver some immediate small-scale real positive impact in the short-term.

All project resources, including the toolkit of 6 co-produced ideas, visual documentation and robust evaluation and research data about the pilots, and summary of professional lessons learned will be shared on project completion in July 2021.

In the meantime, follow us here on Medium or via Twitter for monthly blogs by the project team.

Jenny Elliott

Article by: Jenny Elliott, Project Lead

Jenny Elliott is Project Lead for ‘The Future of the High Street’, and Smart Places Lead at Edinburgh Futures Institute. A Chartered Landscape Architect and Urban Designer, Jenny is passionate about using design and data-driven processes to improve places and the built environment for the people that experience it.

Source: https://edilivinglab.medium.com/introducin...