Newsletter - Links - Advertise - Contact Us - Privacy
 

Views sought on Woodside public realm improvements

June 1 2020

Views sought on Woodside public realm improvements
Queens Cross Housing Association has opened a consultative website relaying its plans for a series of environmental improvements to the Woodside area of Glasgow to stimulate discussion around the future public realm.
 
Conducted in parallel with plans by Sustrans to introduce an active travel network the Woodside Making Places initiative seeks to unify streets, parks and playgrounds as a single connected habitat of routes and spaces.
 
Indicative designs have been brought forward by landscape architects Raeburn Farquhar Bowen to show how key areas such as St George's in the Fields; North Woodside Pool and the M8 motorway can be made to function as one with new planting, community gardens, cycle routes and a civic space at the junction of North Woodside and St Georges Roads.

Feedback on these approaches is being sought remotely with interested parties invited to share their thoughts directly. All input received will help inform a planning application which is expected to be formally submitted in August, with phase one construction following by spring 2021.

Construction had originally been timetabled to begin in November this year but the necessity of prolonging the consultation format to allow for online mechanisms has enforced the delay.
A disjointed agglomeration of buildings and spaces stretching from the M8 to St George's Road will be knitted together
A disjointed agglomeration of buildings and spaces stretching from the M8 to St George's Road will be knitted together
An Oak grove and nautically-themed playpark will attempt to humanise the motorway ramparts
An Oak grove and nautically-themed playpark will attempt to humanise the motorway ramparts

1 Comment

Donny O’Rourke
#1 Posted by Donny O’Rourke on 7 Apr 2021 at 08:44 AM
BENCHMARKS! Most intriguing. Montpellier. Barcelona. Rotterdam etc show what can be done. But the spirit oppressing SCALE of the motor way depredations, razing of Maryhill and planless ‘planning’ will require a vision and verve for which the city is not recently famous. But these proposals ARE encouraging and enlightened and exciting. Imaginative, citizen enabling work along the canal is well underway and bodes well for joined up thinking and journeys. However the pressure to KEEP moving, spending and providing evidence of measurable purpose is relentless. Can we at least have plenty of benches and not just clustered so that the elderly, infirm and those just wanting to think, dream, relax or survey the passing scene can at least pause for a wee cost free sit down in a cityscape intended to be enjoyed by citizens who are not consumers? A municipality not defined by the needs of wealthy students in ugly blocks of purpose built- the purpose being profit-flats but predicated on the requirements of babies, the old, the disabled and women. France has its never more than fifteen minutes walk from every essential amenity ethos. King car must be curbed. And all forms of public transport integrated with a low cost, or free single ticket system that really CONNECTS the city’s furthest flung and inermost quarters. More parks, plazas and pedestrianised areas. Greater amounts of greenery. And purposeless places just for being. When I asked why the benches down by the Clyde along from the courts were being removed I was told, ‘the wrong type of people were using them’. Install
Hundreds of benches and single seats and the poor, marginalised and ‘anti social’ will be spoiled for choice as to where to sit, or recline or drink and shout while they wait for society to ease and end their plight.

Post your comments

 

All comments are pre-moderated and
must obey our house rules.

 

Back to June 2020

Search News
Subscribe to Urban Realm Magazine
Features & Reports
For more information from the industry visit our Features & Reports section.