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How town could look twenty years from now

Patrick O'HaganBBC Berkshire political reporter , Reading
Reading Borough Council Looking down onto the Oracle Riverside area from above at night you can see the Blade building in the distant background. Lights from the restaurants and the Oracle car park illuminate the walkways belowReading Borough Council
Reading town centre's skyline as it is now will be transformed over the next two decades

The number of homes in the centre of a major town is expected to more than double by 2041.

Reading Borough Council (RBC) says more than two thirds of them will be flats in major developments such as Station Hill, the Minster Quarter and the Oracle and Broad Street Malls.

Just under half of those currently living in the town centre are aged 20 to 39. More than half were born outside the UK.

RBC says while this brings energy into Reading, increased housing density risks putting pressure on already busy facilities. It's drawn up a vision of how it wants the town centre to look twenty years from now to create a stronger sense of community for those who live there.

Seven principles underpin this vision.

Amongst them, providing community spaces and expanding the capacity of health services around all these new homes.

Trying to make the town centre easier to travel through without using a car, by expanding cycling hubs near the station and improving crossings over the Inner Distribution Road (IDR.)

There's a lot of talk about how to make the town centre more climate resilient too.

Introducing low-carbon heat solutions, such as at the Hexagon Theatre with huge new ground source heat pumps, and accelerating the shift to lower emission travel like the bus lane project on London Road.

SO WHAT COULD THIS ALL LOOK LIKE?

To give just a few examples, there'll be more shaded seating on Broad Street and Friar Street with more trees lining pedestrianised areas. New blocks of flats will need to have communal gardens on their roofs and space on the ground floor for clubs and classes.

Reading Borough Council A computer generated illustration of a high street with people milling aroundReading Borough Council
Trees will become a more regular site on Reading's main pedestrianised street in future years

The document RBC produced to outline its thinking also includes images of places it wants to emulate, including a number of projects in London and one of the German town of Siegen.

It shared similar difficulties to Reading in that much of its urban water space was land locked.

After holding a design competition to remodel a 230 space car park along the River Sieg the urban watercourse has become a destination for waterfront retail and recreation.

Martin Randelhoff – Creative Commons A small number of people dressed in summer clothes sit on concrete steps lining the river running through the German town of Siegen. There are a number of small trees providing shade for people as they look down onto the River Sieg running serenely below them Martin Randelhoff – Creative Commons
The German town of Siegen could act as a template for Reading's Riverside area as the Borough Council's vision for the future takes takes shape

Back in Reading and more than 1,250 flats will be built on the Broad Street Mall and Oracle shopping centre sites alone in the next few years.

It'll be months yet though before developers and the council start thrashing out the small details that will turn these new blocks of flats into what RBC hopes will become a thriving town centre community.

Spending hundreds of millions of pounds on building flats developers are confident they'll see a return on is one thing.

Encouraging them to spend many millions of pounds more on the softer touches that go a long way to making a town centre a living breathing community is a harder sell.

Reading Borough's vision document makes no mention of money but councillors are confident the town's growing economy means they have a strong hand to play.

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