In 2016 HemingwayDesign embarked on a project to produce a Vision for Lowestoft South Beach, with aim to rejuvenate the seafront and help enliven the town’s leisure and tourist attractions. Labelled ‘rundown and dirty’ in a recent article, Wayne Hemingway spoke to BBC Radio Suffolk’s Sarah Lilley about ‘click bait’ culture, the reality of this […]

In 2020, working with NEW Masterplanning, HemingwayDesign completed a Vision and masterplan for Andover town centre. Our team worked closely with Test Valley Borough Council, with extensive consultation with Town Council officers and members, key employers, local retailers, and the local community to secure widespread support for a comprehensive redevelopment focused on four key proposals: […]

In 2016 HemingwayDesign embarked on a project to produce a Vision for Lowestoft South Beach, with aim to rejuvenate the seafront and help enliven the town’s leisure and tourist attractions. With its extensive sandy beach, two levels of promenade, seafront parks and gardens, all flanked by handsome period buildings, it quickly became apparent that Lowestoft […]

I am not an expert on skateboarding, none of my children ever got into it, and if I were to try it I would, for certain, do myself a mischief. But I do love watching skateboarding and recognise it as an important part of youth culture and urban sport; one that’s totally durable. Now it’s […]

On Covid and the future of cities When I moved to London in 1979 the population was 6.75 million. England’s capital city had experienced a decline from 8.9 million over 4 decades (see graph here). A heady cocktail of air pollution (there was even a song called A Foggy Day (In London Town), by Gershwin […]

A response to Boris Johnson’s “Build Build Build” mantra My (increasingly bushy) eyebrows raised somewhat last week when Boris Johnson stood in front of his podium with his latest three worder “build, build, build” and his promise to cut red tape around infrastructure – and raised even further when the chancellor promised to cut stamp […]

Musings on the first lockdown, creativity and the future of public space.  It’s now almost 40 years since we started our design business and perceptions of the creative industries have changed hugely over that time. I grew up in a household where my mum and my nan were always making clothes and my pop was […]

Did you know that twice as much land in the UK is given to golf courses as to housing? Wayne went on Wake Up To Money on BBC Radio 5 Live in July 2019 to talk about the state of housing in Britain, and what we can do to improve communities in the future. You […]

Until now, this would’ve been met with cries of ‘bang goes the neighbourhood’. Charity shops popping up on high streets have long been seen as a sign of a town’s demise – sitting alongside pound shops, greasy takeaways and long-empty units who’s previous owners were victims of austerity, or Brexit, or universal credit, or whatever […]

We are all for localism when it truly serves the best interests of the local community. I recently read that Preston has been named as the UK’s most improved urban area in a study by PricewaterhouseCoopers and think-tank Demos and was cheered by the fact that a town I know and love is doing well. […]

The UK builds some of the smallest homes in Europe and this greed must be stopped in its tracks. The average house has lost 20% of its space since the 1970s as austerity warps planning processes and greed rules the market. On any given week, if you can bear to look, you’ll see dispiriting news […]

Witnessing the power of driven and passionate individuals getting things done when it comes to regeneration. We have a significant portfolio under our belts of delivered / completed, impactful regeneration and urban design projects and I am often asked “what is the key to good design and the original good principles not being ‘value engineered’ […]

Wayne was made a Mayor of London Design Advocate, and has been an advocate for celebrating the city’s suburbs.  I had been thinking about what Good Growth in London means to me and it came to me during this recent sweltering spell of weather in London when I was struggling to sleep, getting up at […]

We have always called for the housing industry to not be dominated by the large / mega-scaled housebuilders like Taylor Wimpey, Barratts and Persimmon.  The housing crash of 2008 devastated the small and medium sized housebuilding sector resulting in today just 26% of new homes being built by this part of the housebuilding industry as […]

You don’t make change by taking the easy route. Having been following the furore surrounding the planned Garden Bridge over the Thames and it’s got me wondering. At HemingwayDesign are we suckers for projects that have conjecture surrounding them or is it that the most impactful projects are often immersed in significant difficulties? When I […]

Questioning planning orthodoxy is what we do and have always done.  Most housing developments we work on at HemingwayDesign have a “mixed use” element. “Mixed use”, in simple terms, means “a development that blends a combination of residential and commercial, cultural, leisure services, institutional, or industrial uses”. In terms of good urban design practice, in […]

We started 2016 campaigning as we always do. The front page headline on the New Year’s Eve edition of the Guardian last week was:“Revealed: house builders sitting on 600,000 plots of land.“ This is part of the sorry UK house building situation that has been a contributing factor to housing un-affordability and shortages for the […]

A decade and a half after we started to bemoan the state of new build housing in the UK, there is still a need to be noisy on this subject matter. It’s over 15 years ago since I coined the phrase the “Wimpeyfication and Barrattification of Britain” and started to publically criticise Britain’s mass housebuilding industry for […]

We opened our mouths on societal issues in the 80s, 90s, 2000s and carried on right through the 2010s.  “Corbyn wants to take us back to the 70s of strikes and rubbish piled in the streets”, has been one the hysterical cries from the bullying Sun and other gutter press who seem intent on trying […]

We are not afraid to speak out and say it like it is Very sad at the moment how decent folk in the public eye are increasingly being vilified in the popular press. I abhor the way Charlotte Church is being treated after she was brave and full of passion for a fairer society on […]

Oh how we hate this selling of new homes in London to “buy to leave empty” investors overseas. This is a plea to the Mayor of London to do something about it. Read The Guardian’s news story, 200 Flats Worth £140m Sold In Just Four Hours and the Independent’s take on it here. Surely it should be seen […]

A recurring theme – bravery is one of the most important aspects of regeneration. Last week I was tasked with giving a talk on: “Bravery and a can do attitude” at the Somerset County Council’s Staff Awards. The premise being that with all the cutbacks in central government funding, these are hard times for councils.  […]

I’ve had an interesting few weeks sitting on the Eco Towns Challenge Panel. The proposed Eco Town programme has naturally caused a major outbreak (nay plague)  of “nimbyism”. Many of the new towns and settlements the Britain commissioned since the successes of Letchworth and Welwyn Garden City are having to have regeneration money lavished on […]