I recently returned from the urban designer’s dream long weekend in the Netherlands. I’d been keen to visit Rotterdam for years and had eventually sold the idea of the trip to my long suffering (non-urban designer) husband after agreeing to run the Rotterdam marathon. My theory was, in a country synonymous with being flat, how hard could a marathon be? Turns out: pretty difficult, but more of that later…
Historic England recently published a consultation draft of their revised conservation principles. The impetus behind this revision was the desire to realign the heritage ‘values’ in their 2008 policy more closely with heritage ‘interest’ as laid out in governmental legislation and listing criteria. This has resulted in the redefinition of Historic England’s heritage significance to encompass ‘historic’, ‘archaeological’, artistic’ and ‘architectural’ interest.
In some late night and early morning downtime from my recent visit to Derwenthorpe, I was very keen to see York, a city that my Node colleagues were surprised to learn that I have never visited! As such, I left the office with a long and detailed running route devised by the team, with plenty of planned stops to take in the city’s unique historic environment. I was also keen to consider what could be learnt from York as an historic, riverfront, university city that shares many characteristics with Worcester, where Node is currently undertaking a city centre masterplan.
As someone with a passion for housing design, I was hugely excited to have the opportunity to visit Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s Derwenthorpe development in York.
