Cheltenham Plan and Gloucester, Cheltenham and Tewkesbury Joint Core Strategy Review.

 

Gloucester, Cheltenham and Tewkesbury Joint Core Strategy & The Cheltenham Plan : Strategic Priorities and their effect on the design of North Place.

 

Having looked through the Gloucester, Cheltenham and Tewkesbury Joint Core Strategy (2017), referred to as JCS throughout this review and the Cheltenham Plan (2020), I will be identifying their key strategic priorities and reviewing the documents, in terms of their relevance and influence on the design of North Place.

 

Design Requirements

The Cheltenham Plan places emphasis on the requirement for “good” design within all new developments. It specifies that  good urban design should “produce attractive, high-quality, sustainable places in which people will want to live, work and spend leisure time” (5.3, p.20). Planning strategies and plans often have the tendency to produce ambiguous “requirements”, such as the subjective descriptor of “good” and “attractive” design, as seen in the Cheltenham 2020 plan. However, efforts have been made to operationalise this within the JCS, as found in policy SD4 (p.50).

Policy SD4, along with Table SD4b (p.50-52) outlines some specificities of what constitutes high quality urban design. It lists the creation of a focal point and place that create nodes to prompt sustainable and legible movement (p.52). It suggests the utilisation of new and existing landmarks to achieve this. This is something that should be a driving sentiment within the design of North Place. It also states that there should be distinguished public/private realms, with open frontages connecting them (p. 52.). This will improve safety, in terms of walkability (Dameria and Faud, 2021). This can be further enhanced through the provision of open and active frontages (ibid.), a fact that should be considered within the North Place site design.

Also improving the walkability of the site, the SD4 urban design policy specifies the priority of humans and cyclists, over motor vehicles, within its transport hierarchy (table SD4a, p.52). This provides a rationale for the pedestrianisation of North Place road, that divides the site.

 

Employment

Whilst the site is not designated as a key employment development site for Cheltenham, with the inclusion or creative/work spaces, as well as pop-up market facilitation, the site will fulfil paragraph 3.21 of the Cheltenham 2020 plan (p.15) by demonstrating it will be job-generating and contribute to the town’s mixed economy.

Paragraph 3.25 (p.16) states “In the long term, it is not socially or environmentally sustainable for people to travel long distances to reach work”. The development of live/work units on the site aligns with this sentiment, fulfilling requirements of the local plan.

 

Green Infrastructure

Both the Cheltenham Plan 2020 and the JCS placed an emphasis on Green Infrastructure as a key approach  to the future development and maintenance of Cheltenham and surrounding areas. Both documents designate a section to the topic of green infrastructure: “INF3” (p.103) in the JCS and chapter 16 (p.80) in the Cheltenham plan. The sentiments in each document, on the subject of green infrastructure, is very similar and equally convicted, with the Cheltenham Plan providing more local context and green space designation sites (p.83). Whilst North Place is not listed as a site for green space, the incorporation of green space, for purposes of recreation, leisure and biodiversity, along with other green infrastructure, would align strongly with green infrastructure recommendations of both documents.

 

“Require that all new developments, wherever possible, supports green infrastructure and improves existing green infrastructure within urban and rural areas to provide movement corridors for people and wildlife.” JCS Strategic Objective 4 – Conserving and enhancing the environment. p.17.

 

Sustainable Urban Drainage Systems (SUDS).

Both documents encourage and reference SUDS. They should be viewed as an important and powerful tool due to their multifunctional ability to assist in meeting biodiversity, green infrastructure, well-being and flood-risk management agendas (Lähde, et al., 2019). For this reason, they are referenced under multiple headings in the documents, including  “Biodiversity and Geodiversity” (JCS: SD9- p.71, Cheltenham Plan: Chapter 10, p.38) and “Flood Risk Management” (JCS: INF2- p.99). They should therefore be included, and perhaps made a feature of, in the design proposal of North Place.

 

Concluding Remarks

When considered in isolation, the Cheltenham 2020 plan and JCS appear to border on overly ambiguous or not contextually sensitive, respectively. However when used in congruence, the two documents create a coherent framework for which to produce a development scheme that will meet the needs of Cheltenham long-term vision. The JCS outlines detailed and extensive policy of future development and management, whilst the Cheltenham 2020 Plan situates these policies within the context of the Cheltenham area, identifying key sites for which to apply them. With a key emphasis, within both documents, on green infrastructure and nature-based solutions as a first port of call, a biophilic response to the North Place site has the scope to fulfil this specification. Reviewing the plan has provided further guidance on elements that should be more heavily emphasised, such as SUDS, pedestrian-priority, mixed economy and green infrastructure, within the design proposal for North Place.

 

 

 

 

 

References

Cheltenham Borough Council. “Cheltenham Plan”, Adopted July 2020.

Cheltenham Borough Council, Gloucester City Council, Tewkesbury Borough Council. “Gloucester, Cheltenham and Tewkesbury Joint Core Strategy”, Adopted December, 2017.

Dameria, C., Faud, A. H., 2021. ‘Enhancing female pedestrians’ safety perceptions through the permeability of building frontages’  IOP Conf. Ser.: Earth and Environmental Science, 673.

Lähde, E., Khadka, A., Tahvonen, O., & Kokkonen, T. (2019). Can We Really Have It All?—Designing Multifunctionality with Sustainable Urban Drainage System Elements. Sustainability, 11(7), 1854.