The problem with masterplanning is that it is a long drawn-out process and such a lot can go wrong along the way. Masterplanners are fated to see most of their plans remain unbuilt and many of the others to be altered beyond recognition in the building. The New England Quarter, Bristol, was URBED’s first major private sector masterplanning commission, secured back in 1999. It is still not quite complete but it is incredibly gratifying to be able to hold up the Google Earth image of the site today next to our masterplan and see that they match.

The site had been proposed as a Sainsbury’s supermarket surrounded by a car park. This was opposed by local people and refused by the planners. We were appointed after the scheme had been thrown out at appeal to see whether the principles that we were advocating through the Sustainable Urban Neighbourhood Initiative (which at the time had just been published by the Architectural Press) could be applied. This we did both in terms of the form of the development and its environmental credentials although unfortunately not to the satisfaction of all of the protestors who continued their campaign against Sainsburys and by association ourselves.

Our client was a local developer QED who had an option on the site which was owned by Network Rail, and who was funded by JS Developments (the development arm of Sainsburys). We developed a masterplan that involved rerouting New England Street to loop around a Phase 1 site that included a supermarket at ground floor level, parking in the basement and apartments above. Indeed such was the change of levels on the site that the back of the supermarket was at basement level. The masterplan as a whole includes around 450 apartments, a number of smaller retail units around a square, two hotels, language school, a decked car park for the station with taxi drop off and a recently completed block by BedZED. In 2009 only one of the plots remains undeveloped.

The masterplan has be built in line with the plan because of the way that we framed the outline planning consent. Like all masterplanners we concentrated on an illustrative plan to show how the area would look. This however has no teeth when it comes to dealing with Reserved Matters planning applications. We therefore created a Regulatory Plan and Document setting out the precise parameters of the plan. This created a 3D envelope for each site while saying nothing about detailed design. This gave each of the block architects a clear brief while allowing them the freedom to be creative. A friend recently described perfectly what we had done without realising it – which is to make every plot a tight infill site.

Arriving in Brighton Station today – if you walk out to the left via the taxi drop off you can walk down through the site to London Road and the North Laine. Once past the remaining vacant site, the masterplan site feels satisfyingly like a piece of the city, that integrates with its surroundings. As a masterplanner its not often you can say that!  

David Rudlin
Director, URBED