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Southey Owlerton Area Regeneration (SOAR)

Sheffield

Process

CABE helped Sheffield City Council develop individual neighbourhood strategies and establish a design panel to support the SOAR partnership.

Developing neighbourhood strategies

Individual neighbourhood strategies were developed through participatory workshops with local communities. These were then tied together into a single spatial regeneration framework for the whole area.

The work that went into generating the neighbourhood strategies helped unearth and develop keen understandings around sense of place and identity. It positioned the Southey Owlerton neighbourhoods differently within Sheffield - as places physically visible from much of the city, with a key role in structuring Sheffield's identity.

Detailed masterplanning work was commissioned later, through collaborative work between SOAR, the design panel (including CABE) and other stakeholders. In this way, the SOAR partnership ensured that the priorities and principles of the agreed neighbourhood strategies would properly inform the masterplanning approach.

Setting up a design panel

The design panel helped officers and community representatives develop clear ideas about what 'good design' might mean in their area and how they could contribute to achieving it.

Panel members, officers and residents made collective decisions leading to the procurement and appointment of internationally-renowned design practices for housing and public space projects in the area.

Design panel activities included:

  • assisting local groups and council officers to brief, appoint and manage designers, consultants and developers for demonstration projects across the area
  • helping local people contribute to masterplanning survey work
  • advising on and being a part of community consultation to develop design principles
  • conducting visits to projects elsewhere to broaden ideas and raise aspirations about what might be possible in these areas
  • advising on and participating in the procurement of a developer panel and an architects’ panel for hub projects, and
  • commenting on emerging design proposals, ensuring these were judged against the design principles developed in collaboration with the community.

The work of the design panel was supported by CABE enablers - Stefanie Fischer, Graeme Smart, Andrew Beard and Justine Leach.