“Good urbanism can be the result of effective long-term planning, joined-up decision-making, high quality construction and sound governance. It can also be the product of piecemeal, informal development in a relative absence of intervention and infrastructure. Either way, it leads to places where people can thrive.”

Sarah Chaplin is the Academy’s Director of Education. She is Professor of Architecture and Spatial Culture and Head of the School of Architecture and Landscape at Kingston University. She has published widely on contemporary architecture and urbanism, digital culture and Japan.

My favourite kind of urbanism exists in the nameless narrow backstreets found in Tokyo and Osaka, where homes, shops and workplaces exist cheek-by-jowl, where the crazy tangle of overhead power lines adds to the scene, and where the pedestrian and the bicycle are the predominant forms of transport. It’s sustainable, low tech and local, yet just a few streets away from an urban environment that is regarded as a high tech blue chip metropolis.