Planning for Rapid Urbanisation: Introducing the Rapid Planning Toolkit

The CAA’s Survey of the Built Environment Professions in the Commonwealth identified a critical lack of professional capacity in many of the Commonwealth countries which are urbanising most rapidly and are among the most vulnerable. Much of this growth is being experienced in secondary cities in which there may be no professional built environment expertise at all.

In this lecture, Ben Bolgar from The Prince’s Foundation describes a simple four step process, which can be used by communities anywhere to help produce a ‘bare bones plan’ that can be adopted as a guiding framework for future development. The process outlined by Ben has since been formalised into the Rapid Planning Toolkit, a copy of which can be found here.

This lecture was first broadcast on 09 July 2020 and was watched by over 255 participants from over 46 countries. The live recording of this lecture is available to watch here, with the pre-recorded version at the top of this webpage. The event was chaired by Kalim Siddiqui, President of the Commonwealth Association of Architects. In the live event, Ben was joined by Haja Halimah Lukay, Development Planning Officer from Bo City Council in Sierra Leone where the Rapid Planning Toolkit is being piloted. Upon conclusion of the lecture, Kalim, Ben and Haja were joined in conversation by Billy Cobbett, Director at Cities Alliance.

Outline 

• Setting the Scene:
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• Context:
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• Theme:
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• Theme:
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• Questions & Answers:
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1. Writing a Charter for Your Growing City
   • Preparing for the Charter Workshop
   • Running the Charter Workshop
   • Consulting Publicly on the Charter
2. Creating the Rapid Growth Plan
   • Preparing for the Growth Plan Workshop
   • Identifying Growth Areas
   • Structuring the Growth Areas into Neighbourhoods
3. Implementing the Rapid Growth Plan
   • Identifying Landowners & Stakeholders
   • Finalising the Growth Plan Workshop
   • Demarcating the Growth Plan on the Ground
4. Populating the Neighbourhoods
   • Preparing for the Neighbourhood Workshop
   • Running the Neighbourhood Workshop
   • Demonstration Project

The above overview has been extracted from this lecture and the more comprehensive Rapid Planning Toolkit Publication. To access this document, see the additional resources section below.

Learning Outcomes

The sessions learning outcomes were:

• [insert lesson outcomes here]

Core Curriculum Topics

• [three or four core curriculum topics here]

SDG Learning Outcomes

• SDG09 – Industry, Innovation & Infrastructure
• SDG11 – Sustainable Cities & Communities
• SDG12 – Responsible Consumption & Production
• SDG13 – Climate Action
• SDG15 – Life on Land

The following CPD questions forms part of the learning guide for this session. As different Institutions of Architecture across the Commonwealth have different CPD reporting requirements, it is suggested that you retain a copy of your responses to these questions for your records.

1. Questions here

To discover more about this project, please feel free to visit:

• https://commonwealthsustainablecities.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Toolkit-design-brochure-v6.pdf
• https://issuu.com/comarchitect.org/docs/survey_of_the_built_environment_pro_1d9f5abd455ca1?fr=sOTY5YjEzNzg1MDY
• https://sdgs.un.org/goals
• https://www.turley.co.uk/news/one-world-link-highly-commended-major-international-planning-award
• https://unhabitat.org/our-city-plans-an-incremental-and-participatory-toolbox-for-urban-planning