Six months after I submitted my dissertation, I was delighted to return to UCL to lecture second years on Tech City, the subject of my research. Invited by my former professor Dr. Nick Phelps after an earlier presentation by Max Nathan, my fellow researcher with Centre for London, it was not only a pleasure to engage with planning students, but also very helpful to organise my thoughts as Max and I (and the CfL team) enter the intensive Brain Crunch part of the research project. It was Friday afternoon on the last day of term and very sunny outside, so I was pleasantly surprised not only by the turnout, but also the way students engaged with the topic. The cool of Shoreditch and the digital industry perhaps held their attention more than government efforts to shape it, which they indignantly pointed out doesn't fit very well with their localism agenda. I hadn't yet discovered this photograph of local design firm 00:/'s proposal for turning the scruffy Old Street roundabout around which the cluster is centred into a sort of Picadilly style circus, but if I had perhaps they might have thought twice about letting the community decide for itself.....
