Kevin McCloud and the Big Town Plan

Here are images of almost all of the design projects that form The Castleford Project: an urban renewal initiative in the forming coal-mining town in West Yorkshire.

A TV series on the design and delivery of these projects and the pleasure and pain of renewing a town will be broadcast by Channel 4 in the U.K. for four weeks from Monday, August 11 at 2100hrs. It is called Kevin McCloud and the Big Town Plan and produced by Talkback Thames. 

According to an article in today's Times newspaper

the physical results are impressive. Talkback attracted serious talent. On the steering committees are leading lights such as Roger Zogolovitch, one of Britain’s most influential, design-led developers, and Peter Rogers, brother of Richard and the founding CEO of developers Stanhope. Architects included rising stars such as DSDHA and Hudson Architects, plus international luminaries including Martha Schwartz.

Here are two views of the new pedestrian bridge, designed by McDowell & Benedetti.

The new town square, designed by Hudson Architects:

A new pedestrian subway and public space to the south side of the town centre, designed by DSDHA with lighting artist Martin Richman.

The initiative features the renewal of three open spaces in housing neighborhoods across the town as public spaces and play areas.

Here is the new Playforest at Cutsyke, designed by Estell Warren Landscape Architecture and Allen Tod Architecture:

The new playground at The Green Ferry Fryston/Airedale, designed by Parklife:

A new public space at New Fryston on the site of former mining cottages by American landscape designer Martha Schwartz:

In addition to these physical transformations, the Project enabled the creation of a forward plan for the town's riverfront by architect Sarah Wigglesworth.

And a new master plan for a housing district known as Wilson Street, adjacent to the town centre by architects Allen Tod.

The design team was supported by Roger Zogolovitch, AZ Urban Studio and design writer Lee Mallett.

The public space strategy of the initiative was advised by Gehl Partners, Copenhagen.

Project Management: MACE. Cost Management: Gleeds.

Comments

[Anne]

I'm just watching this now. Well done! Looks really interesting. I'm not looking too closely at your photos so the result is still a surprise...

[Diane McLernon]

Firm beleifs balance the thoughts of hearts and minds but beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
I look at this project and wonder the parralels between Middlesbrough and Castleford. How do we improve towns and accept that everyone has a valid opinion and contribution to make to the process.
I look at the money that has been spent on improving the asthetics of our town and see a tale of two cities a mutant hybrid of Newcastle Quayside and Wembly high street.That's progress!

[Soapsoane]

Having really looked forward to this series of programmes and then having moaned about it on the 'Leftwing Criminologist blogspot', something really dawned on me.

Although Channel 4 really did their background work, put their money where their mouths were, the pressure of the TV market place and the way it really is in TV is clear.

What the programme really lacked was any real 'social documentary space' to connect to.

Space where there is any sense of historical continuity of the lives of people who live in areas that have been excluded and deprived. The lack of really good quality statistics, research, oral histories of the people who live and work in the area, any historical perspective to place this series into, really tells you about how even the media punishes excluded communities for being excluded. (Not on purpose, but by default!)

I really don't think media people or website planners or the good will of the pressured media environment which thinks it's doing the right thing by promoting property, acquisition and social status is doing anything wrong in itself, just that this market environment privileges one kind of world view without enough detail and truth for it to be viewed by a wider audience.

All this work needed was some time spent historically,socially and culturally, contextualising the area and building this into all the hard background work that had obviously been done.

I think this would have developed a sense of suspense that was unpredictable in its outcome. Gripped all the people in similar situations to follow...

Channel 4 can really be part of regeneration by realising that the quality the social documentary needs to be found again in the whole of the British experience, that even the excluded communities want to live in 21st century Britain and it is something that we can all share in.

PS 'A people without history is like wind on bufalo grass' Sioux proverb

quoted in the Wow Factor How Soccer Evolved Within the Social Web' by John Blythe Smart

Kindregards

Soapsoane