people

Richard Lewis MRTPI MCIHT | principal

City Rickshaws of Salisbury was my career break.

For several years I had been building up an interest in environmental issues, climate heating in particular, and this coincided with my growing fascination with all things urbanism and transport. For all sorts of reasons I passionately wanted people to leave their cars at home and travel sustainably instead.

My single-geared Indian tricycle rickshaw was imported by ship from Mumbai and I used it to provide a local public transport service with affordable fares and as a tourist and wedding service.

Needless to say, City Rickshaws didn’t make a lot of money and so I started to explore other potential careers. My architect uncle introduced me to the concept of a “town planner” by complaining about the planning system, and so I went to Oxford Brookes University and studied town planning, finishing with a First Class Honours Degree and RTPI diploma in 2000. He stopped complaining after that.

diverse experience

In 2003 I moved to London, the coolest city on Earth, and worked in various roles for the Civic Trust, Haringey Council, Brent Council, Urban Initiatives, Newham Council and Kingston Council before becoming a director of the new UK office of the Dutch civil engineering consultancy, Witteveen+Bos.

My nomadic career of short agency contracts gained me a diversity of useful experience as I shifted from being a town planner to a transport policy planner. I wrote a Local Implementation Plan (the London version of a Local Transport Plan), several active travel strategies, a public realm design guide and an area regeneration study with recommendations.

development management

I also gained some experience in development management, successfully influencing the design of some major developments including the Crossrail Wall and an accessible lift to Custom House and the Excel Exhibition Centre; a large social housing project in Canning Town, and providing pre-application design review for the GLA social housing programme.

going danish and dutch

My extensive experience and knowledge of cycling, from how to cycle effectively in traffic to my new-found knowledge of Danish-style cycle infrastructure, led me to be appointed by London Cycling Campaign to design concept layouts for separate cycleways on Blackfriars Bridge, Stratford High Street and Parliament Square in support of their most successful campaign of all time: Love London Go Dutch. All of these schemes and more have been delivered.

career highlights

My greatest career triumphs are: Helping EcoResponsive Environments win two national prizes for the Heath Park Masterplan in 2022 and 2023, winning £30m for the Royal Borough of Kingston’s mini-Holland programme in 2013, and a further £6.5m for The Highland Council’s Community Links project in 2017 - which cemented my talent for strategic thinking and sub-editing dry technical reportage into persuasive, accessible narratives.

establishing activeplanning

In 2018 I established ActivePlanning with a mission to create active, healthy and inclusive places for everyone. The focus on active travel is a starting point for masterplanning, policy and infrastructure design. I decided to put myself at the junction of built environment professions to achieve a joined-up approach that would deliver a raft of positive social and environmental outcomes. The business has been continuously employed from inception and has built up a varied portfolio of projects.

The business reflects my interest in cycling and walking as modes of transport, my extensive knowledge of a diverse range of built environment topics, a strong vision for the future and my strengths as a strategic policy, funding bid and strategy writer and my natural abilities as a designer.

The coolest city in the world: my sister and me (on my recumbent cycle) waiting at traffic lights in London. Recumbents are aerodynamic, very comfortable and go very fast.