COMMENT Swansea is a remarkable city with so much potential. It is a city already rich in natural landscape and amazing architecture – buildings that stand against the backdrop of a fantastic coastal location right on the beach.
Urban Splash’s vision, as development partner on Swansea Council’s £750m regeneration of the city, is to celebrate this, understanding the local fabric and the need for homes and places to work, shop, eat, visit and relax. Central to this is reconnecting Swansea to its waterfront, creating a new world-class city waterfront district.
The scale of the vision calls for long-term commitment, and that is something we have lots of experience of. For almost 30 years now we have been transforming the fortunes of UK towns and cities, rejuvenating spaces and places to create homes, workspaces and green spaces, while nurturing cultural life and activity. Our formula is simple: to work with city councils, local people and world-class designers to create places that are truly sustainable and totally magical.
Journey of collaboration
It’s about much more than the physical architecture; it’s also about activation, inclusion and advocacy – components which breathe life into places and spaces.
We have learnt how to apply this to best effect during our 30-year journey of collaborating with cities and communities, with a track record of creating well-designed places that stand the test of time – such as our new city neighbourhood at New Islington in Manchester.
This was an area of Manchester that was poorly designed and hidden away from the vibrancy of the city centre just a street or two away. Over the past 20 years we have transformed the fortunes of the area, creating hundreds of new homes, new workspace and jobs, and places to eat, drink, visit and relax – centred on a new park (the first new park in Manchester for more than 100 years) and a new marina.
We engaged and worked with the area’s original residents along the way, ensuring that homes of mixed tenure (a third are affordable) and amenities such as a school and medical centre were part of an ambitious plan.
The great outdoors
The need to work with and integrate landscape and open spaces has never been more evident, with Covid accelerating demand for staying and playing local. This has enhanced our appreciation of and appetite for the great outdoors. It is just one part of the picture, but one where other cities struggle to rival what Swansea already has to offer.
We continue to collaborate with great architects to bring groundbreaking features back to life, celebrating and restoring the parts of buildings that made them so special when they were first built. We want to help people fall back in love with such spaces.
Shaping Swansea is a hugely appealing opportunity for our business, and we want to bring fresh thinking, while collaborating with and harnessing the great talent in the city – working together to continue the amazing work that is already happening here.
David Warburton is land director at Urban Splash
