Culture Mile and the Barbican Study

LFB in collaboration with LSE and Configuring Light undertook research and analysis related to Culture Mile and the Barbican Estate with a key focus on providing recommendations to improve the after dark experience and wayfinding in the area.

The City of London Public Realm team and the LSE Configuring Light research group conducted a small pilot project to demonstrate the potential role of social research in City of London public space development. The project was targeted on the Corporation’s two leading edge programmes: Culture Mile and the Lighting Strategy. While aiming to facilitate and connect Culture Mile and Lighting Strategy, the strength of qualitative social research approach was to start from the diverse perspectives and needs of actual and potential stakeholders. This neighbourhood is socially complex and rapidly changing, while Culture Mile development will take place over quite a long transition period.

The research started from the diverse public realm users we identified, looking at how they use the area and what they think about it.

The first two sections of the report give an overview of the area and of the wide range of stakeholders we researched.

The third section offers main findings from our lighting analysis.

Finally we offer recommendations based on both social analysis and lighting analysis by giving detailed analyses of six specific sites as well as area-wide recommendations.

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