A New Neighbourhood

Overview

The wider masterplan focuses on repopulating and rebalancing the town centre. To ensure the response reflects market demand, the project team has been working closely with South Lanarkshire Council to identify housing needs, but also with market-leading Development Agents to find the right partners in the private sector to invest in East Kilbride.

The Centre West site presents the opportunity for an exciting new residential neighbourhood that offers modern town centre living, founded on good place-making principles. The objective of the masterplan at this stage is not to determine a final mix, but rather to create a vision and demonstrate its capacity and the potential for this development area to play a major part in the transformation of the town centre.

DIVERSE HOUSING MIX

Early stage appraisals envisage this new neighbourhood could host 300-400 new homes for private, affordable and social markets. The Vision is founded on catering to a wide range of potential occupiers by introducing a mixture of house types, such as flats, suitable for first-time buyers, downsizers and senior living alongside maisonettes and terraced housing for family living all to foster a rich and diverse community.

A RESILIENT MASTERPLAN

The layout is focused on a series of urban design principles to create a resilient and flexible masterplan of ‘block structures’ that can adapt to a different mix and balance of housing types.

This arrangement also provides a careful balance of accessibility and parking provision with high quality private, shared and public amenity. The previously inward-looking site is replaced with strong streetscapes that offer visual presence to the perimeter as well as legible and safe routes through.

A CONNECTED NEIGHBOURHOOD

Providing a high-quality living
environment in the new neighbourhood will be important for connecting and blending the town centre with the surrounding areas and communities. This is further reinforced by the reduction of vehicle dominance on Rothesay and Cornwall Streets to create safer, more accessible routes into and through the site.

A GREEN PLACE

High quality public realm is essential for an accessible and attractive environment, to provide amenity for residents to share and enjoy. Equally, green space will be essential to promoting a healthy living environment, as well as providing an infrastructure that is supportive of bio-diversity and enhancing flood resilience.