Post by Sherford on May 3, 2006 23:07:21 GMT
news.ft.com/cms/s/252979e0-da41-11da-b7de-0000779e2340.html
Prince sets out vision for central Lincoln
By Jim Pickard, Property Correspondent
Published: May 3 2006 03:00 | Last updated: May 3 2006 03:00
The Prince of Wales is to stamp his architectural ideas on the ancient city of Lincoln today when his charity presents its first city centre masterplan.
Lincoln's council has hired the Prince's Foundation to draw up an over-arching plan to erase some of the modern mistakes that have damaged the city's landscape.
This will include the removal of at least one of the city's elevated roadways, its ugly bus station and two tired shopping centres.
Prince Charles has attracted praise and scorn in equal measure for his criticism of some modern architecture. In Dorset, he has set up Poundbury, a village of 1,000 people living in an array of period - some would say pastiche - buildings.
The involvement of the Prince's Foundation in the rebuilding of Lincoln would be less about architecture and more about "new urbanism", said Hank Dittmar, the Californian head of the charity. He said the foundation had drawn up a strategy to introduce 20 projects over 30 years to "reconnect fragmented areas of the city", make it a more "walkable" place and improve its public spaces.
The history of Lincoln as a coherent conurbation started to go awry more than a century ago when the Victorians drove a railway line through the city, splitting it in two, he said. Town planners in the 1960s compounded these problems.
"The regeneration of Lincoln city centre is a story of reconnection," he said.
Prince Charles will today visit the city, where the masterplan will be on public display at City Hall for the next two months.
Mr Dittmar, 50, was an adviser to Bill Clinton, the former US president, and chairman of Congress for the New Urbanism in the US.
A town planner by profession, he said he shared the prince's view that architects had been wrong to have rejected tradition.
Prince Charles hopes to expand Poundbury to a community of 5,000 people over the next 15 years or so, with a new town centre and other facilities.
Elsewhere on the Duchy of Cornwall estate, the prince is talking to developers about plans for a scheme on the edge of Newquay, the popular seaside town in north Cornwall.
Meanwhile the Prince's Foundation is advising more than a dozen projects across the country, including an ambitious plan for a larger Poundbury-style development near Plymouth, Devon, with more than 4,000 homes.
The project, in the Sherford Valley, is being carried out by developer Braypool with advice from the charity and it will go for planning permission later this year.
Mr Dittmar said Lincoln would be used as a template for the foundation's educational wing, which offerslessons to councillors and others on best practice in urban design.
The foundation was keen to carry out a larger city centre template, perhaps for a large regional metropolis. "We're not quite ready for London yet," he said.
Last year a team of regeneration experts from the Prince's Foundation went to Mississippi in the wake of Hurricane Katrina to help with plans to rebuild New Orleans and other population centres that were struck by the disaster.
Prince sets out vision for central Lincoln
By Jim Pickard, Property Correspondent
Published: May 3 2006 03:00 | Last updated: May 3 2006 03:00
The Prince of Wales is to stamp his architectural ideas on the ancient city of Lincoln today when his charity presents its first city centre masterplan.
Lincoln's council has hired the Prince's Foundation to draw up an over-arching plan to erase some of the modern mistakes that have damaged the city's landscape.
This will include the removal of at least one of the city's elevated roadways, its ugly bus station and two tired shopping centres.
Prince Charles has attracted praise and scorn in equal measure for his criticism of some modern architecture. In Dorset, he has set up Poundbury, a village of 1,000 people living in an array of period - some would say pastiche - buildings.
The involvement of the Prince's Foundation in the rebuilding of Lincoln would be less about architecture and more about "new urbanism", said Hank Dittmar, the Californian head of the charity. He said the foundation had drawn up a strategy to introduce 20 projects over 30 years to "reconnect fragmented areas of the city", make it a more "walkable" place and improve its public spaces.
The history of Lincoln as a coherent conurbation started to go awry more than a century ago when the Victorians drove a railway line through the city, splitting it in two, he said. Town planners in the 1960s compounded these problems.
"The regeneration of Lincoln city centre is a story of reconnection," he said.
Prince Charles will today visit the city, where the masterplan will be on public display at City Hall for the next two months.
Mr Dittmar, 50, was an adviser to Bill Clinton, the former US president, and chairman of Congress for the New Urbanism in the US.
A town planner by profession, he said he shared the prince's view that architects had been wrong to have rejected tradition.
Prince Charles hopes to expand Poundbury to a community of 5,000 people over the next 15 years or so, with a new town centre and other facilities.
Elsewhere on the Duchy of Cornwall estate, the prince is talking to developers about plans for a scheme on the edge of Newquay, the popular seaside town in north Cornwall.
Meanwhile the Prince's Foundation is advising more than a dozen projects across the country, including an ambitious plan for a larger Poundbury-style development near Plymouth, Devon, with more than 4,000 homes.
The project, in the Sherford Valley, is being carried out by developer Braypool with advice from the charity and it will go for planning permission later this year.
Mr Dittmar said Lincoln would be used as a template for the foundation's educational wing, which offerslessons to councillors and others on best practice in urban design.
The foundation was keen to carry out a larger city centre template, perhaps for a large regional metropolis. "We're not quite ready for London yet," he said.
Last year a team of regeneration experts from the Prince's Foundation went to Mississippi in the wake of Hurricane Katrina to help with plans to rebuild New Orleans and other population centres that were struck by the disaster.