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opportunities of modular accommodation and infill sites in the city. The city has launched its own housing company, Goram Housing, to ensure publicly-owned land is used to maximise sustainable city growth. Policy change also supports this change in mindset through the recently adopted Urban Living SPD (Supplementary Planning Document) which sets out some of the challenges the city faces.
The role of tall buildings The role of tall buildings in this new policy has divided opinion and brought protests by local campaigners, who see Bristol as a low-rise city. However, the debate is more complex than this single issue. Good urban design, achieving high density in urban settings requires collaborative thinking across a diverse range of areas, such as transport, planning policy, health and landscape. When the alternative is ‘city sprawl’ through volume housebuilders, Bristol needs to join-up its thinking as quickly as possible.
Mid-rise city districts in Paris or Barcelona are often used as examples of achieving higher density living, reaching densities of over 50,000 residents per square kilometre. However, these measures do not address the current policy issues of open space, parking, space standards and amenity which drive brownfield development.
Equally we must learn from some of the mistakes of other UK regional cities where an over-provision of small units in soulless towers lead to a lack of diversity and long-term investment in the future of the city centres. The picture of a city full of young professionals enjoying the culture, bars and cafes is one-dimensional, and misses the social, economic and environmental benefits of family living and intergenerational development which requires a mix of unit sizes and tenure in the city centre.
Age of consent Tall building projects are already consented in Bristol city centre. These include: • City Link’s development at the Old Ambulance station offering residential accommodation over 26 storeys
• Axa and Bellhammer’s Assembly Building, (workspace)
• The University of Bristol’s new Temple Quarter Enterprise Campus (includes a 21 storey student accommodation building)
• Change Real Estate’s proposed Redcliffe Quarter tower, (includes 22 stories of residential accommodation in the heart of the city).
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URBAN DENSITY BDP’s The Sheaf, Sheffield
With a history of invention and innovation, from Brunel to the current aerospace industry, Bristol’s inventiveness is a key aspect of the city’s character, and must be presented in its future plans. Early signs are good, with support for the recent Festival of Housing, which will make the city ‘a laboratory for housing’ for the next five years. Tall buildings need to be considered in the
city’s plan, and this is recognised in the now-adopted SPD (Supplementary Planning Document). They can play an integral role in creating mixed use accommodation and inter-generational housing in the city centre, re-using brownfield land and developing new urban communities. If you live in the city, the chances are your commute will be shorter, your work/life experience will be more balanced, and you and your family will have greater access to education and health services, not to mention entertainment and leisure facilities on your doorstep. Most of us experience the city at street
level, and this is where tall buildings need most consideration. Their interface at street level needs to be generous and ‘give to the
city,’ through public realm, footfall and access to local amenities and services. They need to convey a sense of openness, community ownership and accessibility. And, precisely because they have a hyper-dense footprint in a single city centre location, this should free up space close by for other types of housing, including family homes and accommodation for the elderly. The scale of sites which can
accommodate tall buildings in this model should make them identifiable in the medium term and allow us to plan around them. St Philips Marsh near Bristol Temple Meads station could be an exemplar city quarter – there are already plans for education, housing and employment adjacent to the main transport node of the city. If Bristol is to deliver on its promise of housing, listening to its communities and providing an equitable and sustainable future for all, then it must grasp what tall buildings can offer as pioneers for the wellbeing and prosperity of future generations.
Yuli Cadney-Toh is architect director in BDP’s Bristol studio
ADF FEBRUARY 2019
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