Local Government
Malcolm Fraser is an architect and founder of Malcolm Fraser Architects. He was chosen to chair the Scottish Government’s National Review of Town Centres, which is due to publish its results in spring 2013. He spoke to Clare Goff about the review’s findings so far and why he’s the antithesis of Mary Portas.
Why were you chosen to lead the Scottish town centre review?
I, like many architects, spend much of my life complaining about how government gets things wrong and puts barriers in the way of good development. So when a senior cabinet minister asks you to help do something about it, it’s hard to say no. I’ve been critical of certain government initiatives so I have not been chosen as a yes-man! I can be quite spiky and I think the Scottish Government wanted to see that spikiness used on their behalf. And I think we’re on the cusp of change. We’ve had 60 or 70 years of believing that driving yourself around in a metal box from suburb to business park to out of town shopping centre represented the brave new future for our built environment. But it disconnects you from the world. And then we spend our holidays going to places where we feel the community and the richness and where we are able to walk to the park or the beach. Why can’t we live like that all year round? I cycle the ten-minute journey to work and it invigorates me but it also means that I meet friends on the way or someone with some news of interest to my business. The creativity that you get in a city or town is not something you can get in a business park and it feeds into business success.
Less than two years into the current spending review’s implementation and with only a fraction of the public expenditure cuts it created actually made, we are witnessing hardship and despair in some communities across the country. More cuts are to come and not all of them have yet been identified by central or local government, the NHS and other public bodies. The government has announced its intention to find a further £10bn of cuts to welfare benefits over the next two years. It has also signalled that it will be seeking significant further cuts to public expenditure in the 2013 spending review.
