Paul
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The wrong size cookie cutter - 2008/03/12 11:20
Leaving aside flood risk and congestion, I feel that the main issue with the proposals is the attempt to impose a "city scale" of masterplan on a small town. The scheme presented would work fine in Brighton or to regenerate a run down area of Bristol, but it is not in accord with the scale and pattern of development in Lewes.
To see examples of city and town masterplans and how they contrast in scale, take a look at http://www.jtp.co.uk/public/projects.php?cat=1 and compare the schemes to those proposed for Lewes.
The difficulty, of course, is how the developer can make a profit on land that is expensive to develop without resorting to city-scale development. The answer may be to compromise. Perhaps stage one could be to build, say, 100 new houses for full market resale on the highest, least contaminated part of the site, together with flood defences. Stage 2 could involve, say, mixed use development tied to some decontamination and a new road road link and so on.
To expect a developer to pay for quality development, affordable housing, flood defences, public spaces, road infrastructure, decontamination and new employment space all in one hit is bound to result in inappropriate development.
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