Suburban Adaptability: how can the past inform the future of town centres in London?

In the following review we will show some results of a study we have undertaken of London’s outer suburban town centres, intentionally focussing on the smaller cases, the ones which are repeatedly dismissed as unsustainable and in decline, to see how many of these perceptions are correct. The following brief presentation will introduce space syntax then show you some results from our analysis of one of our London case studies: Surbiton’s transformation since 1850. The presentation will define commonly used terms such as ‘success’ and ‘sustainability’. It will go on to suggest that success is bound up in town centre built form and spatial configurational adaptability over time. It will close with some suggestions on how we can design and plan for such adaptability, showing that one of the most important factors is diversity of scale and use both within the block and the building unit itself and that smaller centres have the potential to provide a more targeted, genuinely sustainable growth, because of their scale and urban form: enabling local/non-local transactions alongside each other. Lastly, the presentation will show that the adaptability of the built environment relates to flexibility of use classes and the ability of the network to serve different scales of movement