Let's Stop This New Threat to the Cycle Path.

by Cycle Path User & Greenbank Resident Sun Aug 24, 2008 10:47

In no way do your views represent the people of Easton or the people of Bristol - in fact, i find your article wholly offensive & supremely small minded. If you can't learn to distinguish between positive and negative development then you really shouldn't be passing judgement in open forums. I don't think ANY of your points are valid & it leaves me concerned that in trying to derail this type of positive development, people like you will be responsible for undermining a real opportunity for this part of Bristol to realize it's potential. It's not about gentrifiying Easton, it's about making it a vibrant, fully functioning part of the city for those that already live there.

What's most annoying about the article is that you really are grabbing at straws..... I don't follow your point about the threat posed by having houses backing onto the cycle - whether houses back onto the path or not is irrelevant - houses already back onto the cycle path in many places along the urban parts of the cycle path in both Bristol & Bath - in my view they actually add to the character of the urban stretches of the cycle path. To allude to a mythical linear urban park in the proposed location of the new houses is just idle propaganda; it's a tatty, empty car park, a fence & a single line of bushes that separates the path form the site at present. Why employ scare tactics? How are an additional 10 bikes a day entering a cycle path likely to cause an accident black spot???? that just doesn't make any sense!

The implication that all development & therefore developers are bad doesn't hold any water - in an urban sense you could argue that (over time) there's nothing left without development except stagnation & degradation. We have to accept development on some level & we have to fight for positive development. Maybe you are under the impression that that is what you are doing here but I fear you are sadly misguided - the Chocolate factory is closed & an era is over. Realistic options for it's development are few & those that are good for the community fewer still. Squarepeg (without any doubt) are benevolent developers & they have gone to great lengths to engage & consult with the community; in fact, there's an extremely high possibility that they are the only hope for the local residents to get something that adds to the area rather than detracts from it - I strongly urge you to think about what's happening here in a less self centred manner. Nimbyism is never an attractive trait, even less so when it comes form quarters that clearly believe themselves to be quite the opposite.

by Cycle Path User Sun Aug 24, 2008 13:32

Cycle Path User & Greenbank Resident. I’m sorry, but you either aren’t aware of the proposals, or haven’t read the information that Squarepeg themselves have distributed. Squarepeg have (in addition to the piece of land to which you refer) purchased a strip of land alongside the cycle path itself, facing taway from the factory site. The plans, as described in their newsletter are that “The three bedroom, 3 to 4-storey homes will have dual aspect, but are designed to front onto the cycle path in contrast to the tradition of backing onto what was once a railway line”. Squarepeg have also given details of this on their website.

Interestingly, yesterday, I spent some time on the cycle path asking local people what they thought of the proposals, and showing them the artists impression that Squarepeg themselves had produced. Not one person thought that this was a good idea, everyone thought that it risked increasing the risk of accident by having the houses front onto the path.

You seem to be implying that I am against all development and developers - I am not. When the original proposals were put forward (yes, I was at the meetings), there was no mention at all of buying up the land directly next to the path itself and building there. This is an idea that has come about very recently, and as your comments show, most people are unaware of it.

by Astroturfer - Aconitums Fabulous Sham Sun Aug 24, 2008 17:27

… a real opportunity for this part of Bristol to realize it's potential …

… there's nothing left without development except stagnation & degradation …

… Squarepeg (without any doubt) are benevolent developers …

… possibility that they are the only hope for the local residents to get something that adds to the area rather than detracts from it …

It's a real Urban Smash!!!

by Allotment User Sun Aug 24, 2008 18:35

There does seem to be an element of greenwash in Squarepeg's plans and having properties fronting the cyclepath with direct access would be a radical, unnecessary change to that stretch, setting a precedent for more ribbon development. There's at least a couple of mature apple trees along there - not just a few bushes - which I guess now somehow belong to Squarepeg and will be ripped up. Certainly I'm a NIMBY, if they want to take away our back yard and make it their front yard. That sounds like theft. It's not as if there isn't enough road access already at other points of the site.

by Crash Mon Aug 25, 2008 17:55

I can't see any reason why the developers couldn't just set back the development a few metres from the path, with just one access point to it, and most of the greenery would be preserved. I do think that there is a real danger of more green strips along this path being seized on by developers - although I'm not saying that's the motivation here.

On the other hand to say that houses shouldn't be provided with direct access to the cycle path does seem a bit silly - if the path is crowded, the solution is to build a bigger or alternative path, not to restrict access to it!

Despite carrying over a million journeys, in some areas this path is little more than 1.5m wide - compare with the new eight lane, 35m-wide Bond Street at Cabot Circus. Some thought required on priorities here for the Cycling City of Bristol.

by Gerard Lebovichi Tue Aug 26, 2008 00:45

I'll just say what their website wouldn't let me:

It looks like a rabbit hutch-cum-theme park for yuppies. Hopefully the well-named Squarepeg'll go bust due to the credit crunch / property crash, otherwise the yups'll get mugged as well as us ordinaries - just fancy that! Plastic pod-people could be the victims of crime too, maybe then something will get done about it.

I'm a commuter and actually use the cyclepath, as you can tell I'm not happy about it being turned into some idiots back yard. They seem to think that this is some kind of Tonka Toy backlot of interest only to "local residents" when it is, as another poster described it, a linear park and working road of interest and use to the whole city.

Get these parasitic yuppy scum the hell away from our green spaces - they're not welcome and when they try living there they will inevitably get burgled and mugged by the underclass they helped to create. Poetic justice indeed....

by Alice Mon Sep 01, 2008 10:05

I'm wary of dismissing the development out of hand, not because I feel that we should be forced to accept a new proposal just cos it's better than the last one, but because I think it could have some interesting potential to protect the path.

I agree with Crash: the gardens - and therefore the whole development - could begin a couple of metres back from the path. This would be in line with the rest of the path where back gardens come up to the path but there are a few metres of wildlife vegetation before the back gardens begin. The houses would need to pushed back too (the gardens remaining the same size as in the current proposal). It would also hopefully protect the apple trees - the need for local food growing being another massive issue.

Having houses face on to the path could be great. Why not? We have houses that face on to roads all the time - how much better to have houses which face the hope of the future: sustainable, peaceful, human-powered transportation which lives in harmony with wildlife. Of course, the detractors could be right: it *might* be more dangerous (to have extra bikes joining the path, though this seems a bit of a stretch to me - moving into a new house doesn't usually stop people from remembering to look both ways at a junction), and it *might* make no difference to safety because the house residents are glued to the box, but this is a new idea: we won't really know until it's tried. And if we're gonna change our society to being a more sustainable one, we're gonna need to try new things. Some of them might not work, but that's no reason not to try. I agree that being guinea-pigs to the nightmare of capitalist development hasn't been fun, but that doesn't mean that new=bad.

As to the question of the style of houses, or the fact that people with higher incomes may be most likely to be able to afford them (I’m paraphrasing Gerard’s rather more poetic “rabbit hutch-cum-theme park for yuppies” comments). While G’s post is pretty full-on, he has a point. The only thing is, to be frank it’s a much bigger question than just this development, because it applies to all of Easton and other “deprived” areas, and the process of gentrification.

Even without this development it remains a fact that many people with higher incomes than the Easton average will buy their first homes here, drive to Tescos, not participate in the local community (yet find the creative graffiti and street parties ‘quaint’) and move out as soon as they can afford to live in St Andrews (or wherever), in the process selling their house at the highest market price, which will have been driven higher by people in their economic bracket using Easton as a stepping stone. Meanwhile, lower-income Eastonites cannot afford to buy, so they rent, paying higher and higher rents because buy-to-letters can cash in on the increased house prices to put up the ‘market rent’…. The culture of making a profit from housing is what is doing us over.

So the question to me is, not just how do we stop this happening to us in the form of this development, but how do we stop it happening in the whole of Easton? My answer has been to work on an Easton-based housing co-op for the last 5 years – I’m not blowing my own trumpet, just that I’m here to say: it’s bloody hard work! And I would love to know other people’s ideas for solutions to this issue.

Sorry if I’ve gone off-topic, just that these are big questions…

by Birdseye Wed Sep 03, 2008 15:13

What kind of 'community sensitive development' would want to mash all this up ?

Cyclepath1

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