What form should the development take at the York Central site?

Phil Bixby, York architect

LIVING in York often feels like being a combined pub landlord/shopkeeper. You’re constantly surrounded by wild-eyed shoppers laden with bags, or jostled by drunken hen parties. The city centre is everybody’s. It’s flypaper to attract and detain the visitor, and detach them from their money.

But where’s the space for us?

Surely it should be at the heart of the city – accessible to all, linked to public transport, safe and easy for all ages to access. Near the river, the station. York Central, then. Somehow through the consumer boom we left ourselves a living room, overlooked while we were out spending.

It’s a space for all of those things the city lacks; places which bring us together, which serve everyone. A community stadium, a place for sports events, for gigs, for spectacle. For fireworks, even – remember when we used to do fireworks?

For an arts centre – a place run by local people for music, for dance, for comedy, where local artists can perform, where young talent can show itself, where families and friends can go together.

For sports facilities open to all – something different to the glossy health club where the membership fee alone will make you sweat. And for young people too, for the activities they’ve said they want – places to make music, to dance, to meet, to practise their skills on skate or bike. For adults, there are more than 200 pubs and clubs; for the under-18s – what? A youth club somewhere, twice a week?

There’s room in there for more, too. For businesses which serve the people of the city, for places of learning, for housing. Perhaps even for visitors who realise many of the shops elsewhere in the city centre look awfully familiar; who seek something different.

A place of character, but of modern character – alive, vibrant, subject to change without needing Listed Building Consent. A place with a scale which suits pedestrians and cyclists. Perhaps a local tram loop linking it to a transport hub in front of the station. Keep cars out – if we need to cross the railway tracks, let’s do it with some grace.

Some of this will pay its way, some comes with a business plan. But some... okay, let me suggest an idea. Despite the economic gloom, we still live in an age where on average we have personal wealth and mobility that would astonish previous generations. Yet we baulk at investing in the things that serve us as a society – railways, social places, even sewers. What price a living room for the city, what price a new heart? When was the most recent date you saw on a plaque which reads “Built by public subscription....”

Professor Dianne Willcocks, vice chancellor, York St John University

YORK’S proud past and glorious heritage surrounds us, but its future is not always as clear. It is important that we all begin to set out a vision for the future of York which is as clear and compelling as its past. York Central can and should be at the heart of the city vision for 2020.

The 2009 Centre for Cities think-tank report on York pointed to York Central as “critical to the city’s economic future… It should be the key priority in the council’s efforts to improve the economy”.

Despite the recent setback, York Central continues to be one of the major brown field development sites in Europe. It will be a valuable asset in shaping the future of York and signals its ambition beyond the recession.

Public and private sectors must therefore work positively together with City of York Council, Yorkshire Forward and Network Rail to ensure the successful realisation of York Central.

Entrepreneurs and young people with talent and ambition must be given compelling reasons to live and work in York. York Central can become an essential ingredient in ensuring both economic competitiveness and reinvigorating the public realm.

The imaginative ideas behind the ‘Cultural Quarter’ show how the public realm assets from York Central and the National Railway Museum across the river to the Yorkshire Museum and gardens, the library, art gallery and theatre through to York St John can better connect and work together.

Active discussions are taking place about new public assets such as a major music and performance venue and a community stadium. With a wide range of housing options, office, enterprise and incubation space, York Central could not only contribute to economic prosperity, but also to social cohesion and community health and well-being.

Along with York Central, the Centre for Cities also cited Science City York as key to developing the knowledge economy. The start-up businesses at Science City’s Phoenix Centre, at York St John University, demonstrate that enterprise is alive and unstoppable in York. Creative entrepreneurs are working with new ideas and concepts and trading products and services even in the recession.

Such creative entrepreneurs are highly mobile; they choose where to locate their talent – often, at the heart of urban life with access to cafes, restaurants, music, cinema and theatres.

York Central has the potential to become a destination of choice for creative businesses. It could become a prime reason for inward investment and a showcase for living and working in York in the future.

We at York St John University will continue to work as a key partner in shaping that future.

Christian Vassie, York councillor and energy champion

CONSIDER two plans for York Central.

Plan one. Build three thousand homes and a familiar mix of retail and offices in a style to match existing new housing estates across York or Leeds, with the usual pattern of roads, services and infrastructure.

Plan two. Exploit the fact that the site includes one of the nation’s premier railway stations and the National Railway Museum to create a development based around a 21st century public transportation system that runs up to a new northern ring road Park&Ride, via the old British Sugar site. Commit to delivering the most environmentally sustainable development in the country by ensuring that houses and offices are supplied with district heating and renewable energy.

Employ the best contemporary architects to design the site, focusing on exciting new buildings and homes, world class public open spaces, community facilities and sports provision, and a site layout not based around the car.

It is not hard to see which of those two plans is more likely to attract national government, regional development agencies, EU funding, and national and international businesses.

So why aren’t we advancing plan two?

Strategic documents in York follow a pattern. Report after report has the same missing front page; where politicians should be setting out ambitions, successive administrations have all too often left a blank space.

Meanwhile, in the middle of the recession, Birmingham is raising billions to transform its city centre. We cautiously proceed with a £500,000 revamp of our central library, while Birmingham progresses plans for a new £120 million library, with Government backing. Money flows to where investors believe it will achieve most.

The cultural sector has developed a master plan for connecting Museum Gardens and the National Railway Museum via a new pedestrian bridge.

This is key to York Central’s future because the site is cut off from the rest of the city. The culture and tourism sectors, and the city’s businesses, need the administration to back these plans.

The beauty of our narrow streets is based on the fact that they were not designed around the car.

Imagine a new York built at York Central along the lines of Plan Two and it is clear that something modern could sit very comfortably with the rest of the city.

We would be tackling the need for a thriving economy, creating jobs, businesses and a development millions of tourists would want to visit, and tackling climate change at the same time.

The current approach needs rethinking. We need real vision on the front page of the strategy reports for York Central.

• Christian Vassie is the prospective Liberal Democrat Parliamentary candidate for York Central.

Philip Crowe, chair of the York Tomorrow group

WE ARE assured that the two bids for York Central that were under consideration, although “very accomplished”, were not economically viable. Of course, no one can substantiate this as no information is publicly available, but what this undoubtedly means in “developer speak” is that the price being offered is too low.

Yet, as the value of land is only what someone is prepared to pay for it, the conclusion must be that the landowners are being too greedy and will not accept the logic of an open-market situation. The result is that the land remains undeveloped and of no value to anyone.

The main stumbling block is probably the cost of the infrastructure needed to make the site accessible and provide the utilities to service it, in relation to the financial return to be expected from the development.

Most of this will come from the one million square feet of office space and the half a million square feet of retail which are proposed, and illustrated to such seductive effect in the agent’s glossy brochure.

Yet if the return on these massive floor areas is insufficient, what is likely to tempt a developer in the future? Doubling the floor space? Is this acceptable? Does York really need it?

Surely there is now an opportunity to completely rethink the rationale based on unrestricted economic growth which has so far driven the council, to such little effect. There is an increasingly vocal movement at the highest level which questions the value of basing society’s well-being solely on increasing the amount of gross domestic product (GDP), on which the present proposals seek to capitalise.

“Our economy is supposed to increase our well-being; it is not an end in itself… GDP statistics were introduced to measure market economic activity. But they are increasingly thought of as a measure of societal well-being, which they are not” – So say Stiglitz and Sen, reporting recently to the French President. Once again, are our Continental friends ahead of the game? To be fair the Sustainable Development Commission, in its recent report Prosperity Without Growth, says much the same thing.

What is clear is that market forces alone will not solve the problem, and that significant development funds must be sought elsewhere. This gives the council an opportunity to provide the state-of-the-art community facilities which it acknowledges the city needs, for the benefit of all, rather than the acres of sterile commercial floor space occupied by inward commuters from Leeds and Harrogate which the glossy brochure promises.

What a challenge for our new chief executive.

• Philip Crowe is writing in a personal capacity.