Shaking off the past: how Bristol is changing

As part of a series of articles and opinion pieces looking at how Bristol is shaping up for the future, Bristol24/7 investigates if the city has shaken off its reputation for stagnant development.

Bristol. The place where nothing ever gets done. The graveyard of ambition. Where dreams go to die. Apparently.

For every tram, arena, stadium or grand renovation mooted over the last few decades, there seems to be a dusty blueprint lying on a shelf somewhere beaten by time, money and politics.

Think of all those dreary council meetings, revised budgets, dips in the economy and protesters chaining themselves to beloved trees. Well, they won in the end – according to one councillor who says the city is now is “diseased” with failure.

But there is a chink of light. Although many are still in early planning stages, a series of major developments could (again) transform the city and the way people move around it.

That arena which was shelved, that stadium which was blocked and that new transport project (ok, it’s still not a tram) are all under construction and due for completion in the next few years.

They are due to be followed by new commuter suburban rail lines, the redevelopment of long-derelict blocks like the old sorting office behind Temple Meads and practically a whole new town in Filton.

“We’re seeing an end to the era where major projects were left to hang,” says Rob Gregory from The Architecture Centre.

“The right strategic decisions are making things a lot more positive and the city has a momentum which hasn’t been seen for a long while.”

The momentum has seen confidence in a grand plan of proposals which would see swathes of the city centre to be rid of their disastrous post-war planning infrastructure.

Dark underpasses are being filled in with concrete, traffic is being squeezed out and slowly replaced with wider pavements and shared bike spaces.

A culture of an open and shared public realm where car is no longer king has slowly seeped into the city council and the offices of developers holding the cash.

Bottom-up regeneration schemes are gathering steam for most of Redcliffe, which will one day, mayor George Ferguson says, be the “gateway to Bristol”.

The area will be connected to Temple Meads by a new Temple Gate, replacing the pedestrian nightmare that is the current Temple Circus Gyratory.

Temple Meads itself is changing. The passenger shed is due to reopen to take new electrified high-speed trains to London while the entrance to the station could be shifted to the derelict car park near Temple Quay.

A street-width tunnel punched underneath the station and emerging onto the current site of the old sorting office, has been tabled. The back entrance would link to the new arena, due to be completed in 2017.

Stretching from the arena to Castle Park will be hundreds of new homes and businesses inside the Temple Quarter Enterprise Zone, the biggest regeneration project in the UK.

The city centre is also being remodelled, with traffic lanes reduced, cycle space improved and new bus lanes for the coming guided MetroBus.

Heading north, the Bearpit (St James Barton roundabout) redevelopment is due to be completed, taking pedestrians over the top and into a market place instead of through the old notorious tunnel underpasses.

Up the road, the Carriageworks looks likely to be finally developed into homes and commercial spaces, after more than 20 years of dereliction.

And if you keep going, you will eventually get to what has been dubbed Filton Keynes.

“We’ve broken this vicious circle of decline,” says the city’s transport boss, Peter Mann, who has been working with local authorities to turn the city’s redevelopment woes around.

In less than 10 year’s time new commuter lines will be opened or reopened to Portishead, via Pill and possible a new Ashton Gate station, and Henbury, via new Ashley Down and North Filton stations. And, of course, the MetroBus will be rumbling through the city on and off its network of guided bus ways.

“I would say, for once, things are moving forward – very fast,” says Alistair Reid, the council’s director of economy.

Look out for our second installment where we look at where Bristol might be in 50 years.