Stockport design handbook aims to create ‘liveable’ town centre
5plus Architects and Planit have crafted a guide for residential developers in a bid to ensure future projects delivered in the rapidly evolving town are of a suitable standard.
Stockport’s draft residential design guide aims to foster a “more sustainable, more liveable” town centre and encourage proposals that deliver “a compact urban form [and] respond sensitively to the existing historic townscape”.
The guidance will be used by Stockport Council’s planning department to assess applications for new developments. A consultation on the proposals will run until Wednesday 3 July.
The guide has been drawn up in response to Stockport’s rapid regeneration over recent years. Since the town’s mayoral development corporation was established in 2018, the west of the town centre has seen several large-scale residential projects come forward.
These include The Interchange, a 196-apartment scheme next to the revamped bus station, and Capital&Centric’s Weir Mill, which proposed 253 homes within new and repurposed buildings.
Stockport 8, the transformation of an eight-acre chunk of Town Centre West, is being drawn up. ECF was appointed as development partner for the 1,000-home scheme in 2023.
While much of Stockport’s recent regeneration has been focused in the west of the town centre, the design guide covers a much wider area, stretching from Hollywood Park in the west to Vernon Park in the east. The M60 is the northern boundary and Hempshaw Lane acts as the southern boundary.
160 pages? Maybe distill this down to the key issues associated with development in the town centre. Defining the special character and the potential for development and building re-use. The rest reiterates pretty standard design strategies that have been adopted for over a decade and any decent architect (and developer) should be entirely familiar with. If potential developers and their teams need this explaining to them then Stockport are probably better without them.
By Dave McCall
What utter tripe, let’s redevelop the town centre while letting everything else go to trash. Council tax, council tax, council tax yet two swimming pools required at a minimum. Marple demolished, Stockport Central needs 10million, Reddish doesn’t have a pool in the centre, Norris Bank closed!.
By Dave
@Dave, June 22, 2024 at 8:47 am
Marple demolished because it was beyond economic repair and they’re spending £20m building a new one.
Reddish – if only there was a bus going into the centre of Stockport, and another back the other way, every 10 minutes so that people could access the swimming pool there.
By Anonymous
Its critical that views of the viaduct are not obscured unlike the latest carbuncle.
By Anonymous
Generally design guides stifle good innovative design, this guide is no exception, a backward step.
By Anonymous
@June 24, 2024 at 9:06 pm
By Anonymous
Or they can help to improve the median of design.
Design codes are now mandated as per the Levelling Up and Regeneration Act 2023.
I’m all for innovation in design, but since architecture is the most democratic of the arts, it has to consider all end users.
I think the big innovation wave will be AI and new forms of ornamentation that are totally original and beautiful.
By Rye