The government’s approval of Glasgow City Council’s Strategic Development Framework (SDF) means that the plan can now be adopted.
The SDF has six key ambitions:
- reinforce the city centre's economic competitiveness;
- re-populate the city centre and ensure liveable and sustainable neighbourhoods that promote health, wellbeing and social cohesion;
- reconnect the city centre with surrounding communities and its riverside;
- reduce traffic dominance and car dependency and create a pedestrian and cycle friendly city centre, with improved public transport, that is healthier and cleaner;
- ‘green’ the city centre and make it climate resilient with a network of high-quality public spaces and green-blue infrastructure that caters for a variety of human and climatic needs; and
- repair, restore and enhance the urban fabric to reconnect streets and reinforce the city centre's distinctive heritage and character.
Delivery of these is intended to mean that Glasgow will have a city centre that is vibrant, sustainable, liveable and well-connected, offering '20-minute neighbourhoods' that provide all the needs of the people who work, live, study and visit there in terms of local services, shops and green space. The council said that the environment of the city centre will be healthier, with its streets and public spaces both more attractive and more resilient to climate change - helping to deliver the national target to be net zero-carbon by 2045. The area will also attract more investment as businesses and developers respond to the increased quality of its spaces and places, it said.
Some of the key actions proposed in the SDF include measures to improve the city centre as a 'day out destination' with more leisure opportunities, featuring public spaces (including a new river park) that will complement and support its shopping. The council also intende to create mixed-use business environments that better serve and support a modern workforce; create an integrated 'green grid' street network that improves the walking and cycling experience across the area; improve crossings and environmental policy around the M8; and create a network of public open spaces as part of the overall ambition to 'green the grey' of the city centre.
This SDF now provides supplementary guidance for Glasgow's City Development Plan, with the latter informing all planning and land use regeneration decisions in Glasgow. The SDF is an accompanying and longer-term document to the City Centre Strategy and the regeneration frameworks for the area's nine districts, with these to be used over the next decade.
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