Future Plans

There are around 500 residential units in the Valley Neighbourhood at present (including student accommodation). In addition to this, there are up to 1,800 new homes in the pipeline and market demand could increase this to as much as 5 000 units over the next 10 years. The first theme is to encourage this as the backbone of the areas regeneration.

This demand needs to be shaped to maximise its benefit to the area. It is therefore proposed that there be two foci for residential development, the Goitside Urban Village and the Valley Bottom while further residential development between Thornton Road and Sunbridge Road should be discouraged.

In 2001 the Goitside Regeneration Partnership commissioned Acanthus WSM Architects to prepare a masterplan for the Goitside Urban Village. The partnership was formed in 1999 by local businesses frustrated that firms were leaving the area because of the poor physical environment, prostitution and associated crime. The masterplan covered the whole of the Valley Neighbourhood and was based on a strategy of supporting businesses in the east of the area and developing a residential community in the west. The proposals also included environmental works to create a valley park along Thornton Road. Many of its proposals remain relevant today and have been incorporated into the NDF. The main residential element of the urban village is proposed in the area north of Sunbridge Road. This includes the existing Chain Street housing where Bradford Community Housing Trust has regeneration plans. In the west of this area there are opportunities for the conversion of existing buildings to apartments and to the east there are new build opportunities on the surface car parks and underdeveloped sites around Wigan Street and Paradise Street.

The other area of residential opportunity is in the central part of the valley along the southern side of Thornton Road and the former Gasworks site at the head of the valley. This area includes the pipeline residential schemes of Beehive Mills and Listerhills Student Village both of which have planning permission. The residential market therefore has the potential to create a new urban structure for this area through a series of residential schemes.

The Neighbourhood Development Framework strategy is therefore to concentrate residential development in the Goitside Urban Village north of Sunbridge Road and in the area along the valley bottom where there are the greatest new build opportunities. The challenge will then be to prevent economic activity in other parts of the area being driven out by the pressure for residential development.

Central to proposals for the Valley in the City Centre Masterplan was a park running along the Beck. This was a reaction to the weak market at the time. The park made use of land for which there was little demand to transform the appearance of the neighbourhood thereby encouraging development on neighbouring sites. Since that time there has been a significant upturn in the property market throughout Bradford and the concept of the park needs to evolve to reflect this. There is no longer the need, nor indeed the opportunity to turn over as much land to open space.

The parkland concept also needs to take account of the completed and planned developments in the Valley Neighbourhood, not least the Odeon redevelopment. The aim of the Neighbourhood Development Framework has therefore been to maintain the strength of the park concept and its power to transform the image of the area but also to create opportunities for development in the valley bottom.The parkland concept has therefore evolved by developing the idea of buildings within a landscape linked by the reopened Beck. In this way the Valley will become a series of linked spaces: A landscape incorporated into the Listergate development on the former Gasworks, a new square at the junction of Thornton Road and Listerhills Road (the Orchard), a park along the side of the valley (Beckside Park) and a series of landscaped courtyards within new residential development along Thornton Road. In this way the public realm can still help to transform perceptions of the Valley Neighbourhood while exploiting the development opportunities in the area.

The NDF has also looked at the way that public realm improvements can transform Goitside. Here the environment is much more urban with narrow streets and courtyards tightly enclosed by buildings. The approach to the public open spaces in this area is much more urban using hard materials and street trees contrasting with the lush landscaping of the valley. The streets are the most important public spaces of Goitside and are dealt with under the Quality Streets theme. However there are also opportunities to create a series of intimate courtyards and squares making use of the spaces along the Goit. These could become outdoor galleries and foci for the creative businesses in the surrounding buildings. A further space (Paradise Square) is proposed as part of the Goitside urban village to create a ‘village green’ at the heart of the new residential development in the area.

In this way each part of the Valley Neighbourhood is defined by a public space; Thornton Road by the Beckside Park, Listergate by Orchard Square, Goitside Urban Village by Paradise Square and Goitside Create by the courtyards along the Goit.

As we described in the baseline analysis, the topography of the Valley Neighbourhood has thwarted attempts to complete Bradford’s Ring Road. As a result large volumes of traffic presently use Westgate and Godwin Street (Plan 1) undermining the quality of these streets and cutting the Valley Neighbourhood off from the remainder of the city centre. Proposals have therefore been developed in the past to create a new high-capacity road between Drewton Road and the Odeon corner (Plan 2). It would have a hugely beneficial impact on Westgate and Godwin Street. This would however have been at the expense of the quality of Thornton Road which would have become an even greater barrier between the Higher Education Precinct and the city centre.

The traffic proposals in this NDF have therefore focused on ways of achieving the objective of reducing the impact of traffic on Westgate without undermining the quality of Thornton Road. This is achieved by distributing traffic across Westgate, Sunbridge Road and Thornton Road (Plan 3). The objective is to achieve traffic volumes on Thornton Road below 40,000 vehicles a day. This will mean that it does not need to be designed as an engineered high-capacity road (such as like Shipley Airedale Road). This level of traffic is similar to Kensington High Street which is the first street in the UK to remove the barriers allowing pedestrians and vehicles to mix. The results from first two years of operation in Kensington is that these measures have reduced accidents as well as making the street much more attractive and pleasant to use.

The Quality Streets theme has therefore been developed to build on this experience by designing all streets in the Valley Neighbourhood to accommodate traffic but also to be inclusive attractive public spaces. Reducing traffic numbers to 40,000 vehicles a day allows us to design the new link from Drewton Road to the Odeon as a tree-lined boulevard with at-grade crossings. Meanwhile Sunbridge Road will be developed as a high street for the area with shared surfacing, on-street parking, tree-planting and active ground floor uses such as bars and cafes.

The reason for reducing the impact of the roads is to encourage pedestrians to use the Valley Neighbourhood and particularly to improve links between the University and the city centre. The Quality Streets theme therefore also includes a series of cross valley routes that should tie-in with pedestrian crossings over Thornton Road. There is a need for public realm and lighting improvements along these routes to make them attractive and safe to use.