The Way We Live Now: Student Village Revisited

Increasingly an occasional blog post. Partly this is because the threat level that once hung over the green space I call 'Battlefield' has diminished, partly due to my other commitments. But my interest has never flagged.

I created this blog because Newcastle City Council appears only too happy to give up the large expanse of publicly accessible open green space to someone else to exploit. Indeed my concern stemmed directly from their decision to approve a large office complex on the old paint factory site using the adjacent City Stadium open air running track for a thousand plus car park. The city still has plentiful unused or never used office space owned by tax dodging investors.

This was no small issue. Around and about the area are families who haven't the means to fly away to the sun; it remains the case that casual use by lots of families with young children have a safe place to go to on a sunny day or weekend. With rise and rise of student numbers in Sandyford and Shieldfield the summer months see lots of use. Initially troubled by the construction of the cycle way I have to admit this has worked well and also makes the question of developing the space beyond a leisure and wildlife resource much more of a challenge for the City's planners. There is increasingly also great concern about air quality in the city. These green lungs are our lungs. I really do think the threat has faded if not entirely disappeared.

Why not adopt the area as a public park? Lower Ouseburn Park as a certain ring about it. That designation would secure the future of what has become a rounded and attractive space when I think back to how it was when I first saw it forty years ago.


Another look at the changes – some good some not so good – around Shieldfield and the swiftly changing street scene. Just enough of the inconsequential and surviving structures helps. But the sense is of one large dormitory too. Corporate investors build corporate spaces and the balance between interesting, eccentric survivals, and the bland business park feel now has tipped a long way towards the latter. It's all a bit new. See what you think:

Off site photographic album here.

Shieldfield to City Road 2018.

Timber!

Hands up all those who recall the Core One Strategy? Core One Strategy .... ? No? Expensively produced Master Plan (c.f. Great Leap Forward, Soviet era Five Year Plans, Cultural Revolution ...?). I seem to remember details outlined at length in this fanatasy planning document for safeguarding Newcastle's ecology ... Once again Newcastle City Council's preening P.R. machine is exposed for the high priced tosh it is.

The unvarnished saw dust truth is out there! Link here.

Meanwhile, Save Newcastle Wildlife have been doing much more than merely complaining. They managed to get broadcaster and all round good bloke Chris Packham to visit Havannah Nature Reserve on his 2018 national tour. Red Squirrel woodland habitat that is threatened by ever more 'development'. Link here.

Flaming June – No, Really!

In Blighty we have been promised a 'barbecue summer' so often it has ceased to be even funny to our usual maudlin sense of humour; global warming was something that happened to other people. This year though is turning out to be a cracker as we say.

My solitary reader will perhaps recall how miffed I was with the construction of the cycleway. especially because so many trees were sawn down to make way for it. I am willing to say I was too easily persuaded that this was an unnecessary intrusion and threat: I had visions of mad cyclists whipping down the new cycle track at speed. Few do I am glad to report. The Missing trees have not as yet been completely replicated in new plantings – several of these were vandalised. That's not the fault of anyone but the vandals. Then something happened.

Council workers turned up one day and laid turfs all along the central reservation that marks the pedestrian side from the cyclists side. Wild flower turf. The results have been madly spectacular for two years in a row. True and couple of places have been trodden down – that could easily have been anticipated in the design stage; people tend to walk in straight lines not where planners wish to direct them. You can see examples all over new estates, etc.

What we have now is yet another argument for a new Public Park. It's well used, mostly well used by considerate people and gives access to green space to families and increasingly students. Why not Lower Ouseburn Park?

Slideshow here. (Off site link.)

Bridging loan

Building on the Green Belt. What could go wrong? Lots of new homes (that few can afford) and more income for our local councils struggling with Austerity. Must be a good idea.

What about the negatives? Don't ask.

Newcastle has been asked to review its decision to allow a huge development beside the Havannah Reserve. "Has this been thought through?" What is there to think about? These developments make a fortune for their backers. What more is there to say?

Work on widening the Metro bridge on Killingworth Road South Gosforth is delayed again.

This from The Newcastle Chronicle, that's what. I presume the developers are paying for a new bridge that is essential to the massive increase of motor traffic into Hadricks Mill stemming from their money spinning activities? I mean, if you want a pint of milk or a newspaper (old stuff for oldies I know) you will have to hit the road to get them. Surely, Newcastle Council Tax payers are not stumping up for this as they did the infamous Ouseburn barrage?

Details here: link.

Meanwhile Save Newcastle Wildlife is clebrating (rather too early I feel) a 'victory'. But good luck anyway.


Don’t Hem in Havannah

Newcastle City Council has resolved to take the planning application for 1,200 houses adjacent to Havannah Nature Reserve back to committee, following our proposed legal challenge.

This is a rare victory which required a lot of hard work and perseverance.

Officers were clearly concerned by the threat of legal action, otherwise they would not have backed down so quickly.

Even if we had fought and won judicial review, the application would still have gone back to the council for redetermination.

We have been advised the application will not be considered until after 1stJune.

In the meantime, we are encouraging further objections and will be submitting an enforcement complaint regarding landscaping issues in Newcastle Great Park.


A Greener Future for Newcastle?

A member of Save Newcastle Wildlife will be standing in the city council elections.


Rachel Elizabeth Locke is standing as an independent candidate in Castle Ward and will be calling for:
Greater protection for green space and Green Belt, including parks, nature reserves and allotments
Affordable housing on brownfield sites instead of executive homes on green fields
Better walking and cycling routes and an integrated public transport system to encourage people to leave cars at home to reduce traffic congestion and air pollution
A commitment from builders to actively conserve wildlife and biodiversity in all new development
More green infrastructure, such as wildflower areas, living walls, green roofs, trees and hedgerows to mitigate for air pollution, climate change and support wildlife
More bins, recycling facilities and incentives to reduce littering and waste
Commitment from local businesses to reduce waste, particularly single-use plastics

Planning Policy Peril

Local Wildlife Sites, as well as aged and veteran trees outside of woodland, are not protected under revised proposals for the National Planning Policy Framework.

We are encouraging people to respond to the consultation to demand better protection for wildlife sites and veteran trees.


The Wildlife Trusts' ‘Act Swiftly’ campaign provides more detail, while the Woodland Trust is encouraging people to support stronger planning policy for ancient woodland.

You can respond directly to the NPPF consultation here or email your comments to planningpolicyconsultation@communities.gsi.gov.uk

The deadline is 10th May 2018.

Byker from the back

Shields Road runs up through Byker. According to reports in the local media last year it was voted as 'the worst shopping street in the ..." U.K. or England. I can't say I remember or care. I like it.

Despite the fact that Byker was once a integrated community it was the subject of the kind of social experiment that became very popular among planners in the 60s and 70s, now the Empire had too few natives to expend their energies upon, an experiment that carved a dual carriageway through the centre of the district that ends up accomplishing little, but gave a fashionable architect (who made sure he didn't live there) a chance to win multiple international prizes for his 'Wall' (I presume a cynical play on Hadrian's Wall built alongside 1900 years earlier) and dislocate (de-house) thousands of people from basically sound homes that might easily (and have been) renovated to a modern standard for less money.

So then: Byker.

It intrigues me to wander about and note the incoherence that accident and neglect have brought that planning, detailed and much admired (by sociologists) sociological research could never achieve. A sense of place. The back ways, the unsuspected enclaves and pathways between settled estates with a hedge here and there and lichen covered trees. The back ways of comings and goings, small cafés (caffs) that the smooth operators would shun thankfully. And then, suddenly a glimpse of a near copy of a highland railway line complete with rocky outcrops and fir trees.

Byker photographs here (off site link)