Newcastle upon Tyne
Newcastle is a compact city situated on the north side of the River Tyne, opposite the borough of Gateshead. It has a long history - it was an important settlement in Roman times, and parts of Hadrian’s Wall still remain in the centre. It was a major exporter of coal, and a centre for shipbuilding and manufacturing, all of which went into decline in the second half of the 20th century
Key facts
Population 276,400No of households 111,200Local authority Newcastle City Councilwww.newcastle.gov.ukUrban design team
Urban Design & Conservation Group
Planning & Transportation Division
Civic Centre
Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 8PH
Tel: 0191 277 8953
Regeneration of the riverside area in the early 21st century helped signal that the city was changing. The city now attracts shoppers from across the region, has a growing economy, and attracts visitors from Britain and Europe, especially for late night partying and drinking.
Visually the city is dominated by a series of high bridges, including the Tyne Bridge of 1928 and Robert Stephenson's High Level Bridge of 1849, the first road/rail bridge in the world, while an innovative tilting bridge, the Gateshead Millennium Bridge, was commissioned by Gateshead. Newcastle has many other attractions, including art galleries and museums (with the Baltic and Sage just over the river in Gateshead), and the recently refurbished Grainger Town. Large-scale regeneration has replaced former shipping premises with imposing new office developments.
Grainger St, looking north towards Grey’s monument
Key policies
List of supplementary planning documents
The City Council expects to see a transformation in the centre over the next 10 to 15 years. The council aim is to make Newcastle a regional capital, through creating new destinations for visitors within the city.
These heritage-led regeneration areas include Ouseburn to the east, which will become a new cultural and artistic district, and Scotswood to the west. The latter is already home to the new Sir Terry Farrell designed Centre for Life. The Centre for Life is one of 14 UK Millennium landmark projects, and includes science-based exhibitions, laboratory space and major conference facilities.
Shared streets – pedestrians and cars intermingle
The council aims to regenerate the West End by 'growing' the prosperity of the city centre westward with the launch of the Discovery Quarter and the UK’s first Housing Expo in Scotswood and an academy.
The council has also announced plans for a ‘Science City’ development with partners One NorthEast and Newcastle University on the former Scottish and Newcastle Brewery site with pioneering research links to Newcastle General Hospital. EDAWwill be masterplanning the project.
Shared space has become a key feature of the streetscape
West Newcastle
West Newcastle is the first step towards physical regeneration in an area that has seen large scale clearance for the last 10 years. It is part of a range of regeneration initiatives already announced for the West End including the City’s West First Academy, which was granted planning permission last week and is due to open in 2008, and 300 new homes in a Housing Expo due in 2009.
Work to produce an Area Action Plan for Scotswood and Benwell is the latest regeneration initiative for the area since the City-wide regeneration strategy, ‘Going for Growth’ ceased in June 2004.
EDAW have been appointed to develop an Area Action Plan for Scotswood and Benwell. Other members of the Benwell Scotswood Project Board include the regional development agency One North East, the North East Chamber of Commerce, the Housing Corporation and the West End Community Development Consortium.
Further information
Bridging NewcastleGateshead is one of nine Housing Market Renewal pathfinders set up by the government to tackle problems caused by low demand housing
Newcastle is refreshingly open to new ideas – Thomas Heatherwick’s Blue Carpet was a Millennium project, laid in a new public square outside the Laing Art Gallery. In the day, it is not as blue as one might expect
Case studies
Grainger Town
Newcastle has an extensive neo-classical centre, largely developed in the 1830s by Richard Grainger and John Dobson. Known as Grainger Town, it has been recently extensively restored. Grey Street, which curves down from Grey's Monument towards the valley of the River Tyne, was voted as England's finest street in a 2005 survey of BBC Radio 4 listeners.
The Grainger Town Project was established in 1997 in partnership with Newcastle City Council, English Partnerships and English Heritage with the aim of reversing the slow decline of the area. The whole area had become quite neglected, and a portion of Grainger Town was even demolished in the 1960s to make way for the Eldon Square shopping centre, including all but one side of the original Eldon Square itself.
The £120 million regeneration programme ended in March 2003. It had been anticipated that £40 million of public sector investment would be bolstered by a further £120 million from the private sector, but the latter reached £160 million
Gillespieswas appointed to prepare a Grainger Town public realm strategy as a key component in delivering regeneration to the area. Following its successful adoption, Gillespies prepared design briefs, feasibility studies and conceptual designs for Monument, Bath Lane and Grainger Street, and was retained as consultants to act as design advisors throughout the implementation of the work.
A full report can be seen on the CABE website
See also the Newcastle City Council website
A detailed guide to the Grainger Town project can be found in Newcastle’s Grainger Town: An Urban Renaissance is published by English Heritage ISBN 1 83592 77 9
Grainger Town at night
A palette of street furniture and paving has been introduced throughout the city centre
Quayside
A masterplan for the regeneration of the waterfront along the River Tyne was drawn up by Sir Terry Farrell in the late 1980s. Maximum and minimum heights were laid down for the new apartment blocks that were built along the water’s edge.
In 1991, on winning the commission to develop the Quayside, Terry Farrell and Partners set out to establish a new 'place' in Newcastle that would act as a framework for a phased mixed-use development. This has evolved and become the focal point of a rapidly changing quarter of Newcastle. The scheme reflects the site's historic use as a dock, whilst revitalising the Quayside.
The Quayside has an identity and character unique to Newcastle based on a sequence of landscaped squares and urban spaces along the river. The development makes this district an exceptional place to live and provides a first-class office environment, together with an exciting retail, leisure and public focus for the new Quarter; the layout and detail of the scheme forges links to all surrounding developments and neighbourhoods.
The masterplan for Newcastle Quayside provides a framework of urban spaces, pedestrian activity, vehicular and service circulation, services and other civil engineering infrastructure, together with urban design guidelines for the development of individual buildings which have been built to conform to this framework. The masterplan has proved to be sufficiently robust to allow for changes over time.
Central to the scheme is a major landscaped civic square, which provides a heart to the new Quarter and links retail and parking elements to the pedestrian route along the river. This pedestrian route passes through the whole of the scheme, intersecting several secondary urban spaces. The masterplan provides clear and legible pedestrian links throughout the site as well as enhancing the route along the river's edge. It also affords a permeable pedestrian network outside the site, thereby knitting itself in as an integral part of the city.
The masterplan transformed the industrial waterfront of Newcastle into a new commercial and cultural hub for the city. Its completion provided the impetus for the new pedestrian bridge across the river and the subsequent cultural regeneration of the Gateshead Quayside on the opposite side of the Tyne.
This project won the Civic Trust Urban Design Award and RTPI Spaces Award in 1998 and was awarded the 1999 British Urban Regeneration Award for Best Practice.
More information
East Quayside: CABE Building for Life Case Study
Waterloo Square
The city also has a brand new public space. Waterloo Square, the latest and largest development on St James’ Boulevard, is now complete.
Before work began in 2003, the area was dotted with vacant or underused buildings, temporary car salesrooms and hot food takeaways.
Over the last three years, it has been completely transformed and now contains some of the city’s most striking new buildings – such as Dance City, the regional centre for Dance and a seven storey, 130 bed hotel for Express by Holiday Inn.
The square also includes the 400 space Grainger Town car park. This has been designed with space for shops and a bar/restaurant overlooking the square.
The waterfront, with Millennium Bridge in the distance
Newcastle waterfront is a walkable area
Waterloo Square, the city's newest public space
Ouseburn
Ouseburn is an area of run down former industrial warehousing and factories lying a kilometre east of Newcastle city centre. The River Ouse, which runs down the valley, was formerly used to carry coal by boat from Spital Tongues down to waiting barges on the Tyne. Today, it is choked by mudbanks and largely unused.
Ouseburn is regarded as a key site by the City Council, lying close to the city centre and forming the main gateway for visitors coming into the city from the east. It has a very distinctive character, being dotted with handsome brick Victorian warehouses and disused industrial buildings.
Bridges are a notable feature of the Newcastle skyline, and Ouseburn is no exception. The main Byker Road crosses overhead along a viaduct, as does the railway line.
Ouseburn: artists have converted the warehouses into studios and people from the surrounding communities have set up a city farm, a riding stables and a regeneration trust
Many of the iron foundries, glass bottle works, potteries, paintworks, mills and warehouses that have closed still remain, and small businesses are moving in. Artists have converted the warehouses into studios and people from the surrounding communities have set up a city farm, a riding stables and a regeneration trust.
The children’s books museum Seven Stories is housed in an imposing Victorian seven storied warehouse, rising from the Ouseburn's Quay wall. The building conversion was awarded the title of Project of the Year 2006 at the RICS North East Renaissance Awards
The City Council wants this community-led regeneration to continue, and its policy for the Lower Ouseburn Conservation Area is to enhance it without changing its character. A key planning document is an urban design document appended to the Conservation Management Plan for the area, outlining the general approach to urban design that should be adopted.
Approach taken
Richard Charge, City Design and Conservation Unit, is responsible for Newcastle east, including Ouseburn.
The masterplan, drawn up by Hopper Howe Sadler and Arup, works with the existing street pattern. It aims is to provide general design principles, its guidelines indicating the mix of uses and scale of development. The area is divided up into large plots. These are then ready to be further designed at a fine grain level. Two crucial elements are creating better connections between Ouseburn and the rest of the city, and ensuring that key views are protected.
The plan requires new developments to reach a Breeam/Eco Homes excellent rating, and for green roof technology to be incorporated where possible. In order to keep car parking to a minimum in the centre of Ouseburn, new parking will be provided on the edge of the site.
This document provides a framework for the physical and spatial regeneration of the Ouseburn, detailing design guidance to assist in the appropriate re/development within the Valley. The vision is to create an urban village that appeals to a cross-section of people; to attract families to live in the area, to provide resources to support the growth of existing businesses and to encourage new businesses to the area.
Its purpose is to guide the physical regeneration of the Valley at all levels, by informing potential developers of the quality of design expected in key development sites. It complements and enhances the aims and vision of the Regeneration Strategy for the Lower Ouseburn Valley, which seeks the creation of a sustainable mixed use community.
Further information
Urban Design Framework for the Lower Ouseburn Valley
This 92-page document forms an appendix to the Conservation Area Management Plan for the Valley, building onto the broad design concepts laid out in this document
Contact
Richard Charge
0191 277 8951 or richard.charge@newcastle.gov.uk
Seven Stories children’s book museum in Ouseburn, in the heart of the new cultural quarter
