Creating pocket places helped to empower a neighbourhood and stimulate on-going community participation in regeneration projects
Pocket Places for People, Stobswell
Dundee, Scotland
£350,000
Dundee City Council, Stobswell Forum
Scottish Water, Sustrans, Transport Scotland
2023
Neighbourhood centre (pop. 2,458)
Community / Environment
Less affluent
New or refurbished open and/or green space / Improvements to pedestrian comfort, convenience and personal safety / Improvements to route appearance/ Reduction of traffic speeds / Deprioritisation of vehicles
Albert Street is the local centre for Dundee’s Stobswell neighbourhood. It is home to a number of independent and long-standing retailers who serve the local community, where a high proportion of ethnic minorities and older people live in high density tenements in the streets adjacent to Albert Street. The road is a major transport corridor into the city – so it experiences heavy traffic and high parking demand.
Several of these side streets had previously been closed to traffic at their Albert Street end, creating a continuous footway along the main road and preventing rat running. Some limited planting and seating had been provided alongside these modal filters but the redundant road space they created was mainly taken up by parked cars.
Dundee City Council started to think about how it could use its District Centre Fund to make these spaces, and other junctions in the vicinity, work better for the local residents, not least since many of the tenements don’t have their own outside space.
In partnership with Stobswell Forum, a local community charity, a consultation period began. During this, temporary planters (made of durable and easy to procure concrete piping, painted by a local artist) were placed at the closed end of Craigie Street – to get residents thinking about the road space which could be converted and how it might be altered to revitalise areas around dull, grey tenement buildings.
Ultimately, five neighbourhood locations benefitted from permanent streetscape changes: Arthurstone Terrace, Balmore Street, Craigie Street, Langlands Street and Park Avenue. At each location, space has been reclaimed from parked or moving vehicles, in the process improving road safety and creating pockets of pedestrian-friendly spaces for people to move through or spend time in. The changes have included:
Injecting colour with trees and planting, murals, painted pavements and light projectors.
Providing seats, bins and cycle parking – to make more useable spaces for pedestrians and cyclists transferring to foot.
Putting in raised tables, build-outs and/or advance stop lines at three side roads – to slow turning traffic and improve the visibility of vulnerable road users, while also creating space for planting and seating.
Creating continuous footways along Albert Street across these three side roads and installing dropped kerbs and tactile paving throughout – to give pedestrians priority and improve accessibility.
Designing all planted areas as rain gardens (where rainwater run-off is channelled directly into the soil) – for ease of maintenance and to help prevent flooding.
At Craigie Street, the dead end created by the existing modal filter has been turned into a pocket park, which is Dundee’s first large-scale rain garden. A 30,000-litre storage tank beneath is fed by run-off and downpipes from the surrounding buildings. The tank is emptied slowly back into the city’s drainage system. It provides flood defences sufficient for a ‘1 in 1,000 year storm’ and will help to protect the city centre downhill from extreme weather events brought on by climate change.
Above-ground improvements at Craigie Street include trees and planting, high quality seating and tables suitable for wheelchair users, a mural and community notice board, and resurfacing to provide a continuous walkway across what was the old road surface. This surface is made of loose blockwork, which provides gaps for drainage, and has been laid to create patterns which tie into a pre-existing mural on the gable end of an adjacent building.
A Town Centre Health Check was completed for Albert Street before the pandemic. A follow-up will be completed when time and resources allow. For the time being, the Council is reliant on upcoming student projects and internships to monitor the impact of the scheme. In the meantime, it is reassured that the rain gardens functioned as planned during the four named storms the city has experienced since the project was completed.
Locally, it is clear that the most significant impact of the Albert Street improvements has been on community empowerment and participation, engendering a belief that change is achievable. This has been reinforced by the prestige of the scheme, which has won, and been shortlisted for, several national awards.
The absence of graffiti and vandalism in any of the new spaces suggests that the community is proud of its new assets, and it is certainly making use of them. For example, pupils from the secondary school at the top of Albert Street now spend money in the takeaways at the bottom of the street, and then use the newly created spaces to socialise.
The local community has since led projects to install four more murals in the Stobswell area, using street art to create vibrancy and a greater sense of place. It is working with the Council to create another pocket park in nearby Eliza Street, where the Stobswell Forum (supported by the local housing association) has opened a previously vacant shop. This space serves as a much-needed community hub, where residents can drop in, and get support and advice.
The recently launched Stobswell Albert Street Action Group is now campaigning for improvements on Albert Street itself. It wants to make further progress towards community regeneration by reducing the dominance of traffic and HGVs, drawing in a wider range of shops and making the street somewhere pedestrians feel safer and want to spend more time.
Online and face-to-face conversations with residents and local businesses helped build a belief that change was possible and worth the impact of construction works and further road closures.
Renovating overgrown planting around a nearby car park was a low-cost solution to improve natural surveillance, make it more useable, and placate residents concerned about the loss of on-street parking spaces.
www.showcase-sustrans.org.uk/news/dundee-community-at-heart-of-neighbourhood-transformation