Liverpool City Council is tasking LDA’s award-winning team of urban designers, landscape architects and planners to create a 50-year plan for the city. Tony McDonough reports

A team of experts has been appointed to develop a new public realm strategy that will aim to transform how Liverpool looks and feels over the next 50 years.

LDA Design’s award-winning team includes urban designers, landscape architects and planners. They have a strong track record which includes leading the design for the public realm and parklands of Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. They are now designing the public realm for Stratford Waterfront and London’s South Bank.

The firm is currently working for Liverpool City Council on a Spatial Regeneration Framework (SRF) to guide the future development of the Baltic Triangle area, to the south of the city centre.

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The draft strategy will go out to public consultation next year. It will provide a detailed planning framework to ensure a co-ordinated approach to the design and management of streets and open spaces. Its implementation will also support the city’s continuing economic and social regeneration and will be deigned to meet the needs of all users, including children, older people and people living with disabilities.

The strategy will underpin Liverpool’s renaissance, with £14bn of development schemes either underway or in the pipeline over the coming decade. Its aims are to:

• Deliver high quality public realm.
• Envisage a better connected city centre that is more welcoming and easier to understand and get around.
• Create opportunity to ‘dwell and engage’.
• Contribute to sustainable development principles.
• Reinforce the city centre as a great location for business, homes, play, culture and tourism.
• Complement the Liverpool City Centre Connectivity Scheme and upcoming Public Art Strategy.

Mark Graham, Director of LDA, said: “Liverpool is renowned as one of the most vibrant and creative cities in the UK. The strategy matters because we all meet in the public realm so it needs to be healthy, welcoming, green and sociable. As Liverpool continues to grow, its people deserve a city centre that reflects their ambitions, the public realm plays a huge part in this.”

And Liverpool Mayor Joe Anderson added: “How a city looks and feels at a human level is vital to its success – as the Liverpool One development has proved. We now have a number of masterplans all looking to foster growth across the city centre but the quality of our public spaces and streets needs to be consistent and complementary.”