Podsmead, Gloucester
Residential Development and Public Open Space
Services: Landscape Design, Building with Nature, Ecology and EIA Screening
Gloucester City Homes has taken the decision to bring forward proposals for comprehensive urban regeneration of the Podsmead Estate with the aim of making better use of available land, delivering quality homes, meeting housing need and aspiration, enabling provision of local amenities and services and providing general physical, social and economic regeneration. The proposals involve a phased estate regeneration programme set over a 25-year period. Landmark’s Environmental Planners, Landscape Architects and Ecologists have been involved in the regeneration of the Podsmead Estate in Gloucester since early 2019.
Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) screening by The Landmark Practice confirmed that an EIA is not required to be undertaken. To inform the evolving site design, ecological surveys have been undertaken including a strategic assessment of the way that bats use the area and detailed surveys of development plots. Developing proposals for public realm and open space are being guided by The Landmark Practices’ Landscape Architecture team, informed by site visits and experience of delivering similar projects.
The regeneration proposals will include the re-provision of spaces within and enhancement of the public realm in the form of multifunctional open spaces, new streets and a considered sustainable urban drainage strategy with rain gardens, swales and attenuation basins. The Green Infrastructure (GI) of the estate and its surroundings has guided the early design stages to ensure the proposals incorporate existing assets and consider the wider GI network and its social, drainage, landscape and ecological functions.
As part of the concept design Landmark devised a simple table which explored landscape and ecology opportunities and constraints, and identified planning policy requirements together with Biodiversity Net Gain and Building with Nature standards. This exercise has ensured that landscape interventions offer multi-functional benefits which will in turn create a great place for people and wildlife that connects to the surrounding landscape.
Online consultation began in summer 2020 alongside a series of pre-application discussions with Gloucester City Council. A planning application is proposed to be submitted in the spring of 2021.
Client Benefits
The Landmark Practice is providing the client with all its in-house services; Landscape Architecture, Ecology, Environmental Planning, Graphics and Building with Nature. This collaborative approach has ensured that the proposed development has a multi-layered and multi-functional approach to design benefiting people and wildlife alike.
Working with
Architects: Quattro
Urban Designers: Nash Partnership
Planning Consultant: Nash Partnership
Civil Engineer: Enzygo
