Hotting Up: A Vision for Bristol 2040.

Engine House in Bedminster, Bristol

Last week I attended Cushman Wakefied's MyCity Bristol event which focussed on an exciting vision for the city in 2040. Their research led teams presented the trajectory of the city over time – looking back in order to gaze forwards. Their 12 point summary of predictions below indicates an exciting potential future for our home city, and one that we're proud to be playing a part in creating. My overarching reflection is that we have been pursuing many of these approaches on our community led projects over the last 10 years. Our clients are themselves risk taking and radical, pushing an important agenda of decarbonising the way we live, and creating thriving communities, places and spaces where people want to be.

Bridport Cohousing’s car-less streets

Cars will be eliminated from the city centre

Our project at Bridport Cohousing has created car free streets, where parking is pushed to the perimeter of their site to enable safe, play friendly, sociable streets that encourage social interaction and neighbourliness. Many of our Bristol based Community Led Housing projects are also pursuing radical approaches to address private car ownership with the creation and provision of car clubs, better dedicated cycle storage, and electric bike charging.

Mixed-use developments will transform the city centre

The Engine House in Bedminster took an ugly, unloved 1970s former supermarket with a concrete framed ground floor and converted it in to a vibrant mixed use scheme. Nine apartments, each with a roof terrace were added using lightweight construction on top of the original superstructure and foundations using lightweight construction and engineered finishes referencing the history of the conservation area. The ground floor was crowd funded by the Bristol Loaf – an ethical supermarket and bakery supporting local supply chains of food and produce. It’s now a thriving hub of the community.

Development in the city centre will be higher density to support growth

The Engine House created new homes on a high street, adding residential density to an area undergoing rapid change. Density supports amenities and makes them become more viable and economically sustainable. Great places to live need great places to go. Some of the densest, not highest areas of cities in the UK and abroad are also the most popular. Think of Paris at 20,000 inhabitants per km2 for example!

Last mile logistics - Net Zero hub

At our recent shortlisted competition entry for Novers Hill we explored incorporating features such as a 'Storch' – combining the functions of a Porch + Store to service the needs of residents to receive the food, products and produce increasingly delivered to our doors.

Affordable housing will be delivered in every new development

All of the housing projects we are undertaking across the city are aspiring to being 100% affordable across a mix of tenures. This is a radical departure from most developments, and demonstrates what is possible with a joined up approach from Local Authority Land Owners, Housing Association partners and community led groups seeking to scale change.

New housing will be required to be passivhaus certified

Site plan of our submission for the Novers Hill competition

Certified Passivhaus projects are low cost to run, and eradicate fuel poverty for residents. The standard closes the performance gap between design and construction, ensuring that developments actually achieve the performance they set out to reach. Working with residents in Lockleaze, Sea Mills, Lawrence Weston, and elsewhere we have been seeking to embed this approach in our projects. Bridport Cohousing has met the rigourous AECB Building Standard – a slightly lower standard than Passivhaus, but ambitious for a site with 100% affordable housing.

Bristol will cement itself as the most livable city in the UK

As a practice and employer we're super keen and excited about this. Bristol is a great place to live, and we want to keep on attracting talented, capable people who want to be a part of our team and grow with us over the years. We hope our projects are helping to contribute to this, and the work we have undertaken within our own community in Brislington, BS4 helps to support this through actively engaging to improve our green and grey corner of Bristol!

Surplus and redundant public sector estate will be repurposed to end homelessness

This is an exciting and important idea, which we wholeheartedly support! We completed a project in North Dorset that converted a former council office building and site into supported housing for adults with physical and learning difficulties. This project provided essential housing that prevented the young residents from being forced to live out of county, or out of city as so often happens in Bristol.

Ethical urban farming

Working with Tiny House Community Bristol we have been exploring urban agriculture on their sites in Sea Mills. One of the founders is the National coordinator at The Urban Agriculture Consortium. She has brought this lens to the project, where we have been seeking to create as much space as possible in, on and around the buildings for food production within a suburban city setting. Elsewhere at Bridport Cohousing, food production is woven throughout the streets, with greenhouses, sheds, rainwater harvesting all incorporated onto the car free zones immediately adjacent to the houses.

Bristol's ecological emergency action plan will develop more ambitious targets

All of our projects are striving to be 'regenerative' for their places. To leave them in a better condition than they were as a result of undertaking them. Enhancing habitats, and creating maximum opportunities for nature to be intertwined with our homes as possible. At Turner Gardens in Lockleaze the clients challenged us to make the project part of an ecological corridor on what is currently a very busy road. This ambition led us to develop as many different features as possible within the buildings and landscaping to support nature.

University of Bristol to establish itself among the world's top 50 great research-intensive universities

Our studio looks out over the St Philips Marsh area of the city that is currently being transformed, primarily by the University, and the new Temple Quarter School. Seeing this area evolving into a new innovation area on our doorstep is exciting, and bodes well for the future of South Bristol and city Region. Innovation drives change, and we want to be a part of that through the development of new approaches to materials, construction and the circular economy.

Bristol will be the most productive tech economy outside of London

Our industry is also evolving, with new technology essential to driving changes to our stubborn construction industry. Working to find effective, efficient and ecologically economically viable approaches to building requires us to harness different tech to serve our needs. Ensuring that the use of tech is driven by the right set of values is important to us, and can enable it to be harnessed for the benefit of people and places.

The vision for Bristol presented by Cushman Wakefield is exciting, and something that we're proud to be a part of. The work we have been undertaking in the last 10 years at a range of scales feels important, salient and within the right context and culture can be scaled to provide more impact to more people. We're proud of the projects and ideas we're exploring, within the values that we hold dear, and reaching towards a more inclusive, accessible, ethical future is something we're excited about.

By Sam Goss