Path to the Productive Town

Clare Wilks June 2024

Bangor, Shrewsbury, Exmouth, St Just (Cornwall) and Middleton (Rochdale) are some of the towns across the UK where LDA Design has prepared Town Plans. I wanted to know if these Town Plans are making a difference, so I gathered intel from colleagues and clients and discovered lots is happening. Here are a few initial insights and my personal reflections with a more in-depth research piece to follow.

Why Town Plans?

I think Town Plans are useful for addressing the big drivers of change: the climate emergency, the cost-of-living crisis, rapidly changing working and living patterns, viability challenges, online and out of town shopping drawing people away from the high street and the depletion of nature. These combined demands require fresh thinking.

Over the last few decades, many towns have been shaped around the demands of retail giants, revenue expectations of the pension funds, land values, business rates, traffic flows and parking fees. The kind of town that is best placed to thrive and be resilient in the future, needs a strong independent retail and cultural offer, diversity of uses and well-organised and effective partnerships between businesses, councils, and citizens. I’m seeing that Town Plans can bring these key players together to agree a strategy to win hearts, minds, and funding as they prepare for an uncertain future. This brings more resilience to changing trends and patterns and a more bespoke and characterful response after years of complacency and underinvestment.

I use ‘Town Plan’ as a generic term for many titles we use: Big Town Plan, Placemaking Plan, Town Centre Vision, Masterplan, Framework and Strategy. The Plans set out what is distinctive about a town and how to reinforce the town’s relationship with its landscape context and the hinterland. They give communities a clearer sense of purpose, provide effective leverage for funding applications and are proving to be powerful mechanisms for implementing regeneration projects. A Town Plan needs a long-term vision, supported by a viable delivery strategy focussed on unlocking quick wins and key projects to stimulate change.

For our town centres to thrive, they need to find ways to increase footfall and create wealth. My question is, are Town Plans helping to redefine and reposition the town centre as the true heart of the community, to capture people’s energy, inventiveness, and passion?

Conversations and Partnerships

In Bangor I learned so much from people: a young student filmmaker, a pub owner introducing new activities, an entrepreneur running a makerspace offering business support, a cathedral minister, the Fran Wen arts, culture and community hub manager, the social enterprise café manager, a college director and many more…. I found that knowing how to listen to and harness local knowledge is so important when drawing up a Town Plan and delivering regeneration projects. Without real conversations with local authorities, communities and stakeholders, there will be no local ownership or sense of excitement.

The process of creating our Town Plans strengthens local peoples’ relationships and builds new long-term partnerships. On the back of our Big Town Plan for Shrewsbury (2018), the Big Town Plan Partnership was established with the Shrewsbury Business Improvement District, Town Council and Shropshire Council. The effectiveness of the partnership is evident in the funding they have secured: ￡20 million Levelling Up Funding for the delivery of Riverside, DLUHC Pathfinder funding for the design code and Combined Authority funding for highways interventions.

For our Middleton Town Centre Masterplan (2023) we engaged key landowners for the local mills, Tesco and shopping centre. We then engaged directly with the Combined Authority to gather support towards the Mayoral Development Zone and for subsequent Evergreen Funding. In Bangor for the Placemaking Plan (2023), we identified new local organisations to join the Strategic Partnership to make it more representational, now delivering their Action Plan.

Our St Just Town Centre Vision (2023) brought together local groups and initiatives within a common framework: the Tin Coast project, the Town Vitality Group and community farm. They now have a common purpose, successfully securing funding and delivering the projects identified in the Plan. Some of this funding is focussed on developing networks in the town that provide collective marketing opportunities. Competition to secure funding drives forward the need for 'oven ready' schemes.

The action plan approach prioritises investment, defines quick wins to galvanise communities and businesses around early change. Building strong delivery partnerships allows for soft market testing early in the process.

The Productive Town – Making it Happen

The path to a productive town requires co-operation, working best where we have a Town Plan in place and, most importantly, where our clients have the vision and energy to make things happen. The insights I’ve gathered suggest that transforming towns to meet future needs is often most effective through radical incrementalism. Rather than a big bang major spatial transformation, many towns are having more success identifying a set of smaller priority projects which build momentum towards a bigger vision and bring communities along.

Some are short-term projects, these are quick wins, an opportunity to test ideas and stimulate positive change. An event or meanwhile use captures the energy of people in the town and shows that something is happening. It is a great way of instilling real belief in transformational change and to secure and sustain real commitment.

In gathering intel, I’ve discovered how our Town Plans have helped secure funding for many listed priority projects, whether short-, medium- or long-term, and are now being implemented. I see many of these projects as typical of the trends which are addressing the big drivers of change. Here are some projects I think reflect these trends.

Climate Emergency

The climate emergency is being addressed through the promotion of sustainable transport for pedestrians and cyclists, the re-purposing of vacant buildings to be more energy efficient with new and flexible uses, more green spaces, improved tidal defences in our coastal towns and new renewable energy sources.

• A quick win in Shrewsbury used temporary works in Castle Street to test ideas in our Big Town Plan to provide extra footways by closing parking bays. This assisted with access and queuing outside banks, post offices, pharmacies, and supermarkets.
• In Bangor a focus was on introducing signage and wayfinding to encourage pedestrians and cyclists by improving navigational infrastructure with 22 fingerposts offering essential information on local landmarks for residents and visitors.
• Our Exmouth Masterplan (2015) included a public realm framework which identified seafront areas in need of improvement to mitigate the effects of climate change and to support regeneration. LDA went on to design and deliver the Exmouth Tidal Defence Scheme which reduces the risk of tidal flooding to over 1,400 residential and 400 commercial properties.
• In Middleton, we tackled the challenges of the ring road encircling the town through bold moves to remove two major roundabouts and the closure of the historic Market Street to vehicles. This relieved a town core, choked by a dual carriageway.

Cost-of-living crisis

For coping with the cost-of-living crisis, a variety of presences on high streets are being introduced intended for different demographics, support is being given to local businesses through grants and incentives, new health hubs are reusing vacant buildings, active transport is being improved, mixed used developments include affordable homes and cooperative housing models.

• A quick win in Bangor saw the vacant Deiniol Shopping Centre reducing its rates to encourage temporary use of the units by small businesses and enterprises while the future permanent role of the building is determined.
• Regenerating Bangor High Street was a key priority, now starting to revitalise: Varcity Living has secured Shared Prosperity Funding to regenerate the old Peacocks store with retail, office space, and residential. The Coleg Llandrillo Menai has secured funding from Transforming Towns and the Sustainable Communities for Learning Fund to purchase the old Topshop building. This will transform the space into an educational hub for adult learning and community support services.?

Changing working and living patterns

Rapidly changing working and living patterns are resulting in hybrid working which supports the productive neighbourhood, mixed use developments in town centres, flexible workspace solutions, digital infrastructure, and more active travel. New public spaces are fostering community interaction.

• Emerging from our Big Town Plan for Shrewsbury is the repurposing of shopping centres: a high-intensity mixed-use neighbourhood with a new riverside promenade, re-purposing two remaining shopping centres at Pride Hill for leisure and Darwin for retail, consolidating all the other shopping centres. New build will also take place following the demolition of a multi-storey car park, removal of traffic from Smithfield, the demolition of the Riverside Shopping Centre, and the town’s bus station.
• Our Middleton Town Centre Masterplan outlined opportunities for the Middleton Shopping Centre. Now being implemented, these include the use of the rooftop car park as a garden, additional entrances, and an extension to deliver homes or offices.
• Our Exmouth Masterplan proposed re-aligning Queen’s Drive along the seafront: this has been implemented freeing up land for the Sideshore Eco-Hub.?Run by a non-profit Community Interest Company to inspire low carbon living. It includes Mickey’s beach bar, coffee kiosks, ice cream parlours, artists’ studios, and a centre for kite surfing and winging. Reducing the dominance of traffic has enabled a new cycleway, promenade and a public square, creating much safer spaces for children to play and people to relax and socialise.

Online and out-of-town shopping

The negative impact on town centres from online and out-of-town shopping is being mitigated with the diversification of activities on the high street mixing consumption and production. Key to longevity is expanding from retail towards greater culture, education, leisure and health. This is being done by harnessing energy among entrepreneurs and creative business owners, encouraging independents, boutique shopping, local artisans, entertainment and cultural attractions, programming events and festivals.

• Quick wins in Middleton included forming the Urban Room by Local to co-design the future of the town and closing the Market Place to traffic to use for events and markets.
• For the Lafrowda Club in St Just, the community had already started to think about how to bring it back into beneficial use. Our Town Centre Vision Plan set those proposals in a bigger context and showed how they were key to strengthening the town overall. Using our Plan, Lafrowda Club then secured Shared Prosperity funding to help towards the restoration of the building.

Depletion of Nature

The depletion of nature is being addressed with the creation of new and improved green spaces to preserve biodiversity, sustainable drainage systems, more tree planting, educating residents and creating green corridors to facilitate movement of wildlife.

• In Shrewsbury the station quarter project has secured funding and proposals are out for consultation to enhance the gyratory area to the front of the railway station, including improvements to walking and cycling, greener streets and spaces that promote and preserve local biodiversity, improving key junctions and access routes.
• Bangor City Council has secured ￡97,000 Transforming Towns funding to complete various high street public realm improvements, including the addition of new street furniture and greenery as well as electric and bike charging points. Most of the planned improvements have been finished, greatly enhancing the appearance of the High Street.
• College Park in Bangor was overlooked and underused. Our Bangor Masterplan identified it as a key public space for connecting the university and city centre. It has since received significant investment for a complete re-design which is being implemented.

These and other examples have shown me what can be achieved using a collaborative, questioning, collective approach to problem-solving. This reinforces LDA Design’s belief in working with and enabling communities and aligning the activities of various partners. Created in this way, I think Town Plans can reflect the true heart of the community, capturing the energy, inventiveness, and passion that people have for their town centres.