The tragedy of Bristol - the trashing of a historic city Is Bristol committing collective suicide? The Urban Living Supplementary Planning Document (SPD), passed on |November 6th 2018, strengthens
the already-strong hand of developers making planning applications,
and will have an extremely damaging impact on Bristol's built
environment. Bristol's strange new aesthetic: stumpy high-rises You only have to look at
the diagrams. They are strange - I have yet to find a word for them except 'stumpy'. The buildings often have 3 sides below the 'tall buildings' limit, but one
side sticking far above it. These odd buildings are encouraged by the SPD, and are appearing in planning applications all over the city. I've no idea where the
aesthetic impetus came from, maybe from psychological research which shows that diversity
in built environments increases happiness. But actually that research
wasn't about tall buildings, but about active facades rather than
blank walls. So to use it this way is completely wrong. Bristol will end up with a lot of these stumps, they're coming up all over. Meanwhile single standing tall
buildings like the Eye (in my view a good building) are
judged inferior by the Urban Living SPD, which
advises against free-standing tall buildings. Its a bizarre design conclusion
for the city. It all shows how haphazard the process has
been and how disastrous the lack of consultation. High rise proposals in Bristol at November 2018: Planning permissions granted:
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Meanwhile the Mayor:
The disastrous planning document which will seal Bristol's fate In response, the city's three most senior planning officers who presented the results on June 13 promised to remove the high rise segments from the SPD and to place them in the City Plan
(cabinet member for planning Nicola Beech was absent). The idea was
that removing the most
politically controversial aspect would speed the SPD's adoption,
necessary for progress to the new City Plan. However to general
amazement
in the final draft of the SPD a few weeks later, the city ignored the
senior officers' verbal promises and strengthened the encouragement of
high rises! A somewhat more satisfactory document did eventually emerge. However we should still be very worried. The document is extremely permissive, and presumes that tall buildings will be coming. |