THE SPACE SHAPERS

Here is a revised E&C sketch plan based on our discussions yesterday.

This reverts to the historic road layout with the exception of joining up the two 'islands' in the middle. The three stations are visually linked with buses adjacent to the new central tube station. The central space is predominantly a transport hub and market place (like a traditional market town), also serving as public open space and open-air entertainment venue.

I'm not sure the traffic and pedestrian movements quite work at the moment - the idea is that traffic would go north on the western side of the market place and south on the eastern side, but the junction at the top looks rather scary and there may be too many pedestrian crossings, but perhaps that's what we want - it would certainly slow the traffic down! The other areas that aren't quite resolved are the open spaces where the roads have been extended down into the area currently occupied by the roundabout (in front of the college buildings, northern most tube station, and flats), and the design of the southern venue - this ought to terminate the north-south axis, but the relationship to the Strata tower is awkward to resolve.