Coventry City Council and other landowners want to redevelop the city centre.  We agree that something needs to be done but we are not impressed with the plans so far.  Here are all our recent articles about the city centre redevelopment. Follow the links to see each article in full.

A new beginning

It all started promisingly with an announcement in January 2008, although we did have some questions.
There was cause for optimism in March when a city council spokesman came to talk to one of our monthly meetings.

Canopy

When public opinion forced the Council to include Cathedral Lanes in their plans we were even more pleased
and when the hated canopy was finally removed in September we were delighted, but we did not want them to stop there

Ideas and principles

In April we published our own set of 10 principles for the a successful city centre
This was after we heard from a team of international experts who were convened for a council symposium
We provided a bit of historical background with this article about how Gibson planned the new city centre from 1939
An interesting angle was provided by Coventry University’s Mike Tovey with his ideas for the ring road

Draft plans

When the draft plans were published in September we did not rush to judgment but we did have some questions
We wanted to hear from the experts, something the city council did not seem too keen on.
But we reckon they will have to take it to Government architecture watchdog, CABE anyway
We were not impressed by the way the City Council consulted on the draft plans
And finally, after careful consideration, in our full response we had to pronounce the draft city centre masterplan a dud. 

View the city council's pages about the city centre redevelopment here.