The Society has submitted a response to the consultation launched by the City Council on its Harbour Place Shaping Strategy. The Strategy covers the harbour eastwards from the Junction Lock Bridge to Totterdown Basin, and including some of the adjoining land areas. It excludes the Cumberland Basin area, the subject of another consultation, on the Western Harbour master plan.
The Society welcomes the consultation. It is unusual in a number of respects: it looks forward for up to twenty years; many of the proposed changes/enhancements are not within the Council’s gift; and while there are over 100 specific “interventions” mooted, responsibility for delivery and financing are not clear, nor are timescales and priorities. So it is an early foreshadowing of work which will be developed and refined in more detail later.
The accompanying documentation is comprehensive (and this itself is to be welcomed and applauded): there is an Atlas, depicting the current situation in some detail, a “Vision” document, a Waterspace Plan and six Place Plans.
In our general comments we note that there is much in this to be welcomed. But we point out that in many of the proposed interventions there are trade-offs, potential conflicts, which are not always brought out as clearly as they might be: eg between different leisure uses (eg swimming and sailing), commercial and non-commercial activity, the desire to “animate” the public realm and the need for tranquil spaces; and underlying all, the need for the Harbour Authority to reduce/eliminate its revenue deficit.
We would also have liked to see more discussion of the problem of long-term maintenance of the fabric- there is a backlog of some 60 years’ worth of work, which is now manifesting itself in problems with the bridges and harbour walls- this can only be expected to get worse, in the absence of serious remedial work.
Finally we have made some detailed comments on the Waterspace plan and the Place Plans: generally to commend or critique individual proposals, and sometimes to point up potential conflicts or trade-offs which have not been sufficiently highlighted.
We look forward to engaging further with these proposals as they are refined/developed.