Game on: rethinking the role of sport in urban design
The name is simple: wallball. The rules are equally simple: you bounce a ball off a wall with your hand and score a point against your opponent when they miss a shot. And one of the walls in question is at the back of a disused shopping centre in south-east London, part of British Land’s massive Canada Water regeneration scheme.
Roger Madelin, joint head of the Canada Water scheme, said the “meanwhile use” of wallball has been “a learning curve” as he has watched growing numbers of visitors come to play. But it has also reinforced a belief that Madelin has had since his days at Argent working on the King’s Cross development: design a mixed-use scheme that helps people get active, whether through the right amount of open space or formal sporting offerings, and tenants and visitors alike will benefit. In turn, so does the business – and the health of the country and its economy.
“I have always been astounded how, when you are at school, you have to stop schoolwork [regularly] and go out. And as soon as you go to work, you just work, work, work,” Madelin said. “Every business goes, ‘How can I make my business more productive? How can I get the most out of my staff?’ We have 2.5m people off work at the moment with mental health issues and stress, and we have 8m people on waiting lists.”
The name is simple: wallball. The rules are equally simple: you bounce a ball off a wall with your hand and score a point against your opponent when they miss a shot. And one of the walls in question is at the back of a disused shopping centre in south-east London, part of British Land’s massive Canada Water regeneration scheme.
Roger Madelin, joint head of the Canada Water scheme, said the “meanwhile use” of wallball has been “a learning curve” as he has watched growing numbers of visitors come to play. But it has also reinforced a belief that Madelin has had since his days at Argent working on the King’s Cross development: design a mixed-use scheme that helps people get active, whether through the right amount of open space or formal sporting offerings, and tenants and visitors alike will benefit. In turn, so does the business – and the health of the country and its economy.
“I have always been astounded how, when you are at school, you have to stop schoolwork [regularly] and go out. And as soon as you go to work, you just work, work, work,” Madelin said. “Every business goes, ‘How can I make my business more productive? How can I get the most out of my staff?’ We have 2.5m people off work at the moment with mental health issues and stress, and we have 8m people on waiting lists.”
Madelin wants the parks, cycle routes and access to water at the docks of Canada Water to inspire workers and residents at the new neighbourhood to leave their desks or sofas and stretch their legs – including at that wallball court while it remains. He spoke at a panel discussion chaired by EG to launch Sport & The City, a report from consultancy Future Places Studio that looks at how urban locations can generate social value via offering everyday access to sport.
For Jack Sallabank, founding director of Future Places Studio, the topic of sport features too infrequently when mixed-use regeneration schemes are discussed. “I think that’s an issue, and I think it’s a challenge,” he said. “There is a need for us to start having a greater conversation about what the role of sport is in the context of our cities.”
A new toolkit
Sallabank cited some stark figures: a third of the global population aged over 15 participates in too little regular physical activity, he said, and in London the figure rises to 38%, the highest in the UK. “The World Health Organisation warns that by 2030, if we don’t remedy this, 500m people will develop heart disease, obesity or diabetes due to physical inactivity,” he added.
There are challenges in addressing this – urban density and design that “pushes sports facilities out”; financial pressures, with many councils closing gyms and parks; climate change – “it’s not very pleasant doing sport at the height of summer any more”; and a lack of inclusivity, with many young people and women feeling unsafe using existing sporting facilities at certain times of day.
The research paper centres on a toolkit for developers and local authorities, encouraging the placing of sport at the heart of placemaking visions on a “blank canvas”, with varied, climate-resilient and inclusive offerings.
Panellist Catherine Rose, cabinet member for neighbourhoods, leisure and parks at Southwark Council, said a focus on sport in the built environment plays into many other goals for the public sector.
“From a local authority’s point of view, if you galvanise yourselves around access to everyday sport, you have this incredible shorthand and proxy for a whole range of things,” she said.
“Implicit in that is car reduction. By prioritising everyday sport and access to it in a casual, ad hoc way – as well as a structured, formal way – you’re including everyone in the community around it.”
The offerings at Canada Water will be “the first threshold for the existing community to get a tangible material benefit” from the area’s regeneration, she added. “It will be one key location where the existing residents that have been living around a massive site of development for years will engage with new residents, new tenants. So it has incredible social importance and significance to make sure that offer serves all of those communities equally and adequately.”
Joining the dots
Adjacent to British Land’s section of the Canada Water scheme, Art-Invest Real Estate is developing its own office-led part of the neighbourhood. Luka Vukotic, partner and head of development, said the goal has been to design assets that capitalise on what already works in the area, rather than roll into town and impose its own vision.
“Every time we come to work in a new place, we try to understand what already exists rather than trying to shoehorn in something new,” he said. “We go grassroots and understand what is already there and how can we help. You can then spend your money and time much more wisely to help those initiatives to the next level. We have a much wider responsibility of actually helping the whole area.”
At Canada Water, that responsibility has been seen most clearly in Art-Invest’s work with sports retailer Decathlon, which has a large store on the site – at which the panel discussion was held. The two companies have teamed up to launch a £200,000 fund to back social and sporting initiatives in the area.
“The vision of Art-Invest and the vision of our company have so many things in common, even though we are not at all from the same sector,” said Delphine Mazillier, Decathlon’s chief purpose officer. “Because we have a shared vision and a shared goal, we thought that it would be nice to work together and use all the opportunities and strengths of a real estate company and all the opportunities and strengths of a retail company in the sports ecosystem in order to support the grassroots organisations that are already in the place.”
Sounds simple, and yet as Sallabank said, too few conversations in real estate are focusing on what can be easy wins to build access to sport into big, mixed-use schemes such as Canada Water. The potential is there and the benefits for business and communities are clear – to quote British Land’s Madelin, real estate players simply need to “join the effing dots”.
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Photo © Tobias Flyckt/Unsplash
