Intensification must come with flexibility built in

The word “intensification” is on the lips of anyone working in the built environment today. In work-winning processes, in policy documents and in the architectural press, the idea of spatially accommodating more uses within a given footprint is the goal du jour – with legitimate reason.

The London Plan, which was published by the mayor of London in 2016, defines regions for intensification as those which “have significant potential for increases in residential, employment and other uses through development of sites at higher densities”. Specifically, the description of intensification now often ties to the use of stacked or vertically arranged space, especially when it comes to industrial escalation.

With vast areas of industrial land within cities having been redeveloped for non-industrial uses over the past 20 years, space comes – as ever – at a premium, and requires design solutions to make it deliver on everything that the city needs.

An equilibrium of functionality is the key ingredient to maintaining London’s slickness as a city. For this, we do need intensification. But, more crucially, we need flexibility

Those needs are changing. In 2022, the Centre for London reported that more than 40% of total industrial floor space had been converted to other uses between 2000 and 2020. Indeed, much of London’s floorspace has been released to build housing.

But, because London is such a large and sprawling city, with its dwellers’ demands ever-morphing, it does still need industrial and light industrial uses to be supported across its geography. An equilibrium of functionality is the key ingredient to maintaining London’s slickness as a city. For this, we do need intensification. But, more crucially, we need flexibility.

An easy example to understand how and why intensification efforts cannot be planned in a rigid, homogenous way, is the way that changing retail habits have played out recently. A drastic shift in behaviour has been felt in this space in just half a decade, with online retail having overwhelmingly taken hold during and after the covid-19 pandemic (market researcher Euromonitor reported that global e-commerce sales escalated by 46% during the first two years of the pandemic).

For this, an infrastructure supporting rapid, non-contact, returns-focused delivery has had to develop, with undoubtedly a knock-on effect around waste and postal practices, and generally the “intensified” way in which people now buy the things they need. Although online consumerism had for a while been overtaking in-person shopping, the acceleration of changing shopping behaviours has been drastic. It would be foolhardy to believe that this will not happen again – in any area of city activity.

So, as with all major focus points that surface within development patterns, we need to begin looking at city intensification with greater scrutiny. Invariably, being smart about not creating static temples of industrial activity that might fast become redundant means having the patience and foresight to think long term.

There are so many factors that could introduce sweeping change, similar to the online retail overhaul – not least the trajectory of AI, robotics and other developing technology that will have a very real impact on labour, manufacture and logistics over time.

Production and manufacturing have increasingly returned to the UK, meaning the need for more space for both workforce and storage has amplified. This may well change again

Aside from the unknown parameters that pose a reality of quick change in industrial requirements, there is also a lot of newness around what the city’s land uses must accommodate right now. For example, with socio-economic forces such as Brexit, the pandemic, and international conflicts, national manufacturing has taken on a vastly different shape.

Production and manufacturing have increasingly returned to the UK, meaning the need for more space for both workforce and storage has amplified. This may well change again, as we navigate and negotiate new patterns of efficiency. Spaces must, above anything else, be designed to support this negotiation.

So how can we ensure that we don’t design a city with spaces with too short a shelf-life, while ensuring that we meet the mix of functionality that makes it operate at maximum efficiency and effect? This is the challenge we have at hand, and which urban thinkers, architects, researchers, economists and place-makers are already looking at with focused attention.

But, certainly, the answer should be around creating intensified space that is also easily changeable. For this reason, it seems logical to join up the need for mixed-use spaces with the necessity for low carbon design.

Why? Because, overwhelmingly, design practices tied to the latter are reversible, quick to build, yield less waste and by nature do as little harm to their site as possible.

The conversation around intensification is fertile and ripe for innovation. What is most important, is that in nurturing that conversation we look beyond what intensification means for the city in the present, and remember to also design for its ceaselessly changing future.

Sadie Morgan is a co-founding director of dRMM, chair of the Quality of Life Foundation and a design advocate for the GLA