24 Hours to Save Winchester - TrustNews June 10
The Solent Centre’s Director, Paul Grover, challenged three teams of volunteer professionals (architects, engineers and planners) to look at how an attractive and sustainable city might be achieved by 2020. The event was held at the School of Art in March when, after a series of short talks by planning and environmental experts, the teams worked through the night and presented their schemes the following day.
It is impossible to convey the quality and excitement of the presentations, all of them amazingly well illustrated, given the time scale. All had clearly enjoyed and learned from the process and produced ideas of great ingenuity and promise – some perhaps more practicable than others but all stimulating and worth considering as leads to the way ahead. It was calculated that at a reasonable rate for the expert time involved, the cost would have been about £75,000.
What impressed us was the degree of realistic thinking; there was a broad consensus on the approach and the outcome was to all intents and purposes the basis of our ‘Conceptual Framework’ proposals. In the past we have been struggling to find a way of promoting such a concept for guiding the change and development of Winchester, because we know that neither the City nor the Trust can afford to commission consultants to do the exercise. Now there is a good chance that building on this process could achieve it.
All those present were eager that this initiative should not be a nine-day-wonder but lead on to something that would influence the development of Winchester by finding a framework for change, which addresses the pressures of growth and the urgent need for comprehensive sustainability.
The Trust and WinACC have joined with the leading team members to promote the concept and to relate it to the Local Authorities’ strategic planning. WinACC held an open meeting on 1st May when members of the public responded enthusiastically to the ideas. On June 2nd it is planned to introduce the subject to the Winchester District Strategic Partnership conference, and later in the year to hold an interactive exhibition in a public building, followed by special presentations to councillors and officers of the City and County Councils.
Meanwhile the Trust will refer to this initiative when we host Southern Comfort* on July 10th, with Kim Wilkie (internationally famous landscape architect whose work includes master planning) as guest speaker.
*Southern Comfort is an informal gathering of societies in the south that has taken place every 3 or 4 years since it was started by an invitation from Chichester in 1983, when we found it ‘comforting’ to discuss our mutual problems.