The Strategic Development Framework (SDF) for Glasgow city centre – the document which will help guide the area’s development over the next three decades, driving economic renewal and meeting the challenges of climate change – has now been adopted by Glasgow City Council after approval from the Scottish Government.
The SDF for the city centre – a key contributor to the Scottish economy – was developed through public consultation, and at its heart, the document has six key ambitions for the city centre to bring economic, environmental and social benefit to Glasgow:
- Reinforce the city centre’s economic competitiveness;
- Re-populate the city centre and ensure liveable and sustainable neighbourhoods that promote health, wellbeing and social cohesion;
- Reconnect the city centre with surrounding communities and its riverside;
- Reduce traffic dominance and car dependency and create a pedestrian and cycle friendly city centre, with improved public transport, that is healthier and cleaner;
- Green the city centre and make it climate resilient with a network of high-quality public spaces and green-blue infrastructure that caters for a variety of human and climatic needs; and
- Repair, restore and enhance the urban fabric to reconnect streets and reinforce the city centre’s distinctive heritage and character.
The delivery of these ambitions will mean that Glasgow will have a city centre that is vibrant, sustainable, liveable and well-connected, offering ‘20-minute neighbourhoods’ that provide all the daily (and night-time) needs of the people who work, live, study and visit there in terms of local services, shops and green space.
The environment of the city centre will be healthier, with its streets and public spaces both more attractive and more resilient to climate change – helping to deliver the national target to be net zero-carbon by 2045. The area will also attract more investment as businesses and developers respond to the increased quality of its spaces and places, so fundamental to the enjoyment of a city centre.
Glasgow City Council looks forward to collaborating with local residents, workers and visitors – as well as government agencies, investors, developers, and businesses – and all who experience the city centre on the delivery of the SDF Action Plan and the future improvement of the area.
Some of the key actions proposed in the city centre SDF include measures to: improve the offer of the city centre as a ‘day out destination’ with more leisure opportunities, featuring public spaces (including a new river park) that will complement and support its retail offer; create high quality and vibrant mixed-use business environments that better serve and support a modern workforce; create a simplified, highly integrated ‘green grid’ street network that improves the walking and cycling experience across the area; improve crossings and environmental policy around the M8; and create a network of high quality public open spaces featuring trees and planting as part of the overall ambition to ‘green the grey’ of the city centre.
Glasgow’s City Centre SDF – the contents of which also respond to ongoing changes in the retail, office, leisure and residential sectors – can be found here: https://www.glasgow.gov.uk/CHttpHandler.ashx?id=53335&p=0.
This SDF now provides supplementary guidance for Glasgow’s City Development Plan, with the latter informing all planning and land use regeneration decisions in Glasgow. The SDF is an accompanying and longer-term document to the City Centre Strategy and the regeneration frameworks for the area’s nine districts, with these to be used over the next decade.
