Bowling Green is a residential community of over 70 households in the historic core of the city. Some residents have lived here all their life, others for 30, 50 years. A number of young adults have grown up in this street.
We welcome policies that strengthen protection of residential amenity and improvement of the public realm.
We welcome the idea of a Living City. A living city makes provision for its citizens of all ages to enjoy the city, with priority given to pedestrians.
The draft plan makes a number of references to Bowling Green. However please add Bowling Green into Table 3.1 alongside Wood Quay, Long Walk etc.
There are many references to residential development. For city centre communities, it is very important to distinguish the different elements of residential. The most important for communities is owner-occupied or long-term letting. Short-term rental, hostels or hotels do not contribute to building up and strengthening a community. Please distinguish between long-term living and short-term stays in your policies. Hotels and hostels are ‘commercial’ and cannot be considered ‘residential’.
Development Standards and Guidelines are set out in Section 11. We object strongly to the following on page 305: ‘Student accommodation, hotels and hostels can be considered as a proportion of the obligation to deliver a residential content’. This is being proposed for the City Centre area only.
Large-scale student accommodation, hotels and hostels are all commercial and cannot be considered residential.
Policy 10.1 City Centre: please amend accordingly
No. 4 Encourage a living city centre by requiring a long-term residential content in new developments and promoting ...
No. 5 Encourage use of vacant upper floors in the city centre and promote long-term city centre living through measures such as the Living City initiative.
No. 6 Maintain and enhance the environmental quality of the city centre to support long-term city centre living ....
In the core of the City Centre, the Market Street car park is a significant brownfield site ever since the Mon was demolished 40 years ago. Please include this site in the policy on city centre regeneration along with the other sites identified such as the Ceannt Quarter and the Inner Harbour. Any residential proposal for this site must include for long-term residential so as to contribute to the living city.
The text on both the Ceannt Quarter and the Inner harbour should be amended to state ‘the use mix shall provide for a minimum long-term residential content on the site ...’