Renaissance Scarborough

The Strategic Development Framework is an integral part of the larger vision for Scarborough. It is central to changing our attitude to the future of the town, creating a new future and raising confidence.

This framework is not about renewing public space for the sake of it, but to set in process the cycle of lifting the image of Scarborough, which creates more investment and leads to more jobs. People will invest, live and work in a town that looks good. The current faded image of the town is holding back economic progress.

The renewal begins with the Urban Fabric and public space is the catalyst.
This is not a here today and gone tomorrow solution, but a vision for the long term; putting in place the mechanisms for a new permanent and sustainable direction.

The process of community consultation that has led us to this point is supported by a large and varied group of Scarborians. It has involved a close working relationship between the Town Team, the Urban Space Group and SBC Officers and Members for over a year.
As John Prescott has recently said "What we want are places where people want to live, not leave". Scarborough's public space is largely over 100 years old, and there is widespread demand for the town to renew itself and stop the drain of its youth southwards.

Do environmental improvements create jobs and prosperity? Some say you can't eat grass, but without a pasture there is no farm.

Eileen Bosomworth
Leader, Scarborough Borough Council

Some towns exist because of coal or wool or steel. Scarborough is there as a jewel in a perfect natural setting with a background of varied beautiful coastline and country.
It is fourty miles on from Hull or York, but the quality is such that it is worth going the extra miles to visit or stay.

As in most things, confidence, determination and vision experience low patches. Scarborough has had one for many years until the realisation came that modern business can skip the miles, that people value quality and that there is so much going for the place that it should renew and develop and grow. A growing public realisation that the downward spiral must be reversed coincided with the Yorkshire Forward Renaissance Towns initiative.

So, this has been seized with enthusiasm by the Town Team and many other less actively involved people.
The majority of Scarborians and their potential investor partners believe the future will be better, more prosperous with more good jobs and facilities and of course better accessibility due to improved transport and communications. While the early visible initiative will be in public space, all the while, scheming and planning are in train for housing, cultural, commercial, traffic and all the other facets of the jewel we are polishing and resetting that will be the twenty first century leading coastal town.

Tom Pindar
Chairman of the Scarborough Town Team.

Community involvement with the Public Space Master Plan started with the Planning Weekend in April 2002. From this meeting many ideas for improving Scarborough's public spaces were generated and adopted by West 8 and John Thompson and Partners.
We then went on to create an Urban Space Group, composed entirely of volunteer residents, who worked directly with West 8 in developing the Public Space Plan (a blueprint for improving our streets, squares, parks etc), continuously contributing proposals and suggestions as the drawings developed.
In this way the resulting proposal has been co-designed between members of the community and the consultants one of the specific aims of the Renaissance project.

The purpose of the Plan is to achieve a high quality of Public Space throughout the town.
Spaces which are great to look at, enjoyable to be in, stimulate outdoor social life (cafes, markets, street theatre etc), and attract a pattern of further investment.

The Plan will work on the detail and overall levels. The detail will involve implementing beautiful and sustainable designs for street paving, lighting, furniture, landscaping, signage and public art. The overall view has examined how the town is distributed culturally and economically and improvements to how people arrive and move around.

Scarborough, with its valleys, castle, beaches and legacy of noble Victorian architecture, has huge potential. What we hope is that as qualitative changes are made to the town, from the ground up, rooted in community participation, that potential will start to be realised. As an architect, my engagement has been with town's material fabric, however other groups of residents are looking at cultural and economic programs of transformation. Together we hope to promote a shift in how people, residents and visitors alike, see the town. We'd like people to see good futures for themselves here, choose to stay here, and come to live in Scarborough because of the quality of life - physical, cultural and economic - on offer. The premise of the Renaissance program is that this transformation starts with public space, and under the guidance of West 8 and JTP, a great start has been made and we look forward to the first implemented projects of this process.