WMUD

Bolton Metropolitan Borough Council have commissioned Kevin Murray Associates, Drew Mackie Associates and ourselves to provide the research baseline for the Building Bolton project, incorporating consultation, urban analysis and policy recommendations. The team has devised a unique approach to Bolton town centre linking the inputs of different stakeholders to ideas and propositions for the future evolution and management of the town centre.

This is a new approach to the planning of towns and cities, particularly their traditional town centres which act as the focus for so many citizens. Historically, town centres have been planned by Councils using their civic architects and planners, or by landowners, developers and their designers. Frequently town centres are not planned at all!

More recently the evolution of town centre policy has been a mix of general - and often generic - planning policy handed down to towns by the government, combining with pressure for more shops from the retail and investment sector. Sadly the results have often been monolithic clone towns, increasingly the same in terms of the appearance of anywhere shops and buildings.

Few have attempted to understand the identity and distinctiveness of a place as viewed through its different residents and users. By trying to appreciate this dimension of local distinctiveness, as actually experienced and interpreted by its people, Bolton Council is trying to take a more sensitive and informed view of how its growth and evolution should progress.