Strategic Planning
Find out about how our team works on strategic planning projects, particularly internationally with those who face environmental and social vulnerabilities. Through early engagement and collaboration at all stages of planning, design and programming, we demonstrate how this can lead to positive change in communities.
Rose Town Regeneration, Jamaica
Developed with the full involvement of the community, the Rose Town masterplan provides a clear and agreed framework for development and delivery of a programme of inner-city regeneration.
With the support of the Planning Institute of Jamaica, the masterplan now informs local government infrastructure delivery. Specific projects have included the re-provision of a north-south road and bringing running water, decent sanitation and street lighting back to the heart of Rose Town, and the delivery of multiple community facilities, such as the Rollins Enterprise Centre.
Rapid Planning Toolkit
The Rapid Planning Toolkit for Urban Expansion is designed to help city mayors, their teams and built environment professionals create simple, robust and implementable urban framework plans to manage any required urban expansion. The Toolkit has been piloted in Bo in Sierra Leone, where it helped the community avert over-development in sensitive and flood- prone wetlands, and instead identify and structure new walkable growth areas, creating roads and infrastructure routes and protecting community assets.
Heritage Protection in Yangon
Working in partnership with Turquoise Mountain Foundation and local stakeholders, The King’s Foundation refurbished a dilapidated historic building, using the project to train 250 local construction professionals in heritage restoration skills. Working with the Yangon Heritage Trust, we drafted a regulatory framework for the city and presented proposals for key regeneration areas, enabling new, but sympathetic, development in the city centre.
Community Development in Freetown
The King’s Foundation helped to develop a masterplan through which local residents identified and agreed the priority needs of the community. A new community centre was built in the heart of Coconut Farm, following a ‘Building Skill in Sierra Leone’ training course. Following this, three further buildings have been delivered – a birthing centre, computer classrooms to provide ICT lessons for school children and adults, and the reconstruction of a Krio House providing new classrooms for a primary school.
Participatory Planning, Sylhet
We worked with Shahjalal University of Science and Technology, Birmingham City University and the Commonwealth Association of Planners to apply the Rapid Planning Toolkit both as an educational and implementation tool in Bangladesh. The toolkits’ bottom-up approach has helped students using it in a village setting to gain trust from the village council, developing a charter and growth plan for the next 20 years.
Our approach
Community Development in the Commonwealth
With His Majesty The King as head of the Commonwealth, we have long been supporting communities in Commonwealth nations. We have developed long standing relationships in Rose Town, Jamaica, where we developed a masterplan with the community that has delivered new roads, clean water and community spaces and buildings. We have also delivered a number of community facilities in Sierra Leone, such as a birthing centre. In both cases, construction was completed by local people using local methods of building, providing opportunities for employment and skills training to the community.
Planning for Rapid Urbanisation
Issues of rapid urbanisation are increasingly acute, particularly in the Commonwealth, where over half of the world’s projected urban growth by 2050 is anticipated. Surveys of the built environment professions in the Commonwealth reveal that there is a corresponding lack of capacity in those countries that are experiencing the most rapid rates of urbanisation. Our Rapid Planning Toolkit aims to provide this much-needed resource to such cities, with a free online toolkit to implement a step-by-step participatory planning process. More information can be found in these publications: Survey of Built Environment Professionals in the Commonwealth and Call to Action on Sustainable Urbanisation Across the Commonwealth.
