Rebuilding Oxford

Oxford can now easily claim to be the 'Two Billion Pound City', with plans well advanced to sweep away large areas of the city in an ongoing regeneration programme.

A whole series of masterplans and planning applications, setting out massive development and upgrading schemes, stretching from Headington to Walton Street have either already been submitted to Oxford City Council, or are about to be over the coming weeks.

Last week, Oxford University published its masterplan to transform the old Radcliffe Infirmary into its new city-centre complex at a cost of about £500m.

And not content with its scheme to create a new Oxford University campus on the 10.5-acre site, the university revealed that it already has a masterplan to redevelop the vast University Science Area, off South Parks Road.

The Radcliffe Infirmary scheme, which will start before the end of the year, will take up to 15 years to complete, while the science area could take several decades. Yet the start of a spring consultation about both these schemes comes only four weeks after Oxford's other university announced that it wants to demolish two-thirds of its Gipsy Lane campus, to make way for a modern university in Headington.

Oxford Brookes University is planning a new iconic entrance to the university, behind a central courtyard facing Headington Road. Brookes has also announced plans to build a 1,000-seat public auditorium at its Headington Hill Hall site.

Higher education may be being squeezed in other parts of Britain. But for Oxford's universities the beginning of the new century will herald a period of colossal investment and upgrading on an historic scale. A new era of epic fundraising can be expected to begin shortly.

And all this news comes as the city prepares for work to begin on a new £300m city centre shopping centre. A revamped Westgate Centre in Oxford is expected to open in 2011 after the Government recently said it would not examine the controversial application.

City councillors gave approval in October for what had been described as the biggest planning application in the city for a generation, that will increase central Oxford's retail space by a quarter. We hear yet another scheme will shortly be unveiled to develop one side of Gloucester Green, replacing the cinema.

Yet, remarkably these are only part of the wider scheme to regenerate the whole of Oxford's West End.

This multi-million-pound scheme would seek to develop a quarter of central Oxford, stretching from the railway station to St Aldate's, and from the Thames north to Hythe Bridge Street.

An Area Action Plan lays out plans to develop "an under-utilised backwater" into a vibrant redeveloped area, with 1,200 homes, and a new civic square in Oxpens dominated by a luxury 150-bed hotel and conference centre. The planning blueprint also calls for a redesigned Frideswide Square to provide "an attractive gateway to the city centre".

One way or another, after what will be the most costly building period in its history, Oxford will become a very different place over the next decade.

With a level of investment that can be expected to exceed £2bn, the proposed development is truly on an Olympic scale.

While it would be churlish not to recognise that most cities would be prepared to elect Jade Goody as mayor to attract this kind of investment, you do have to worry whether much of Oxford is destined to resemble a giant building site for years on end.

We may all one day enjoy strolling down a new boulevard stretching between the Radcliffe Observatory and the Oxford University Press Building, just as most will relish finally being rid of the shabby and outdated Westgate Centre - but isn't the city of dreaming spires going to be transformed into demolition city in the short to medium term?

Faced with such a rapid pace of expansion, is Oxford going to be able to cope? And is it all going to be worth the pain?

Although the likes of Oxford University, Brookes and the Westgate Partnership are not skimping on the quality of design, can we be sure that everyone has learnt from the dreadful planning blunders of the past that brought us the Clarendon Centre, Oxpens and the University's Department of Engineering and Science.

Debbie Dance, director of Oxford Preservation Trust, believes the Oxford Castle development should serve as an inspiration for those now coming forward with masterplans - showing that multi-million-pound schemes can be brought to fruition in the city centre.

"The castle complex may also be used as an example of quality design," she said. "Much of the castle site's success rests on its accessibility. It is crucial that all these major schemes, when they are completed, should be part of an upgraded city centre.

"It is important that future major developments do not happen in isolation. They must be part of a bigger vision for the city, very much linked to the public realm.

"The city needs to be linked into these places. These huge sites of redevelopment must not simply appear to belong to the organisations that own them."

The leader of Oxford City Council, John Goddard, said: "In my view these schemes are long overdue. It seems to me that for 15 to 20 years Oxford has been standing still and has not kept ahead or moved with the times. We are now moving ahead in a way that hasn't been seen for generations."

Keith Mitchell, leader of Oxfordshire County Council, is equally hungry for change. "It's exciting, although we are going to have to be careful about the transport impact. With the prospect of so much happening here, you do have to wonder about the whole city resembling a building site, But then anyone going to London sees so much building going on and the capital is not grinding to a halt.

"Everyone wants to see Oxford grow and develop, but we have to make sure the environment and transport system are managed properly."

As well as bringing scores of new jobs and growth, he believed the whole "feel" of Oxford could be changed. Almost all the major schemes appear to have at their heart large new public squares, with a 'new' Bonn Square, that most vilified corner of Oxford, expected to lead the way to a new era of the Oxford piazzas. Mr Mitchell says this presents a unique opportunity.

" I hope there will be a feeling of brightness and openness. with open squares rather than the closed college quads that people associate with traditional Oxford. I think the castle has started this idea of openness.

"The squares must not all be the same. There needs to be variety, while respecting the nature of Oxford city. You have to look at what we have inherited at Broad Street, High Street and so on.

"This is a chance to move on a step. While we have the older parts of the city. there is a chance to create a different, modern feel. But Oxford is not going to have a New York skyline."

He believes the West End steering group - which meets monthly bringing together the city and county councils, government agencies, developers and groups like the the Civic Society and Preservation Trust - offers an approach that the universities would do well to follow.

The county council director for environment and economy, Richard Dudding, offered the reassurance that the various schemes would be phased over many years, minimising the extent of the disruption.

The combination of massive developer contribution, and significant university fundraising, would mean various quarters of the city could be achieved without money from the public purse.

Mr Dudding said money had also been allocated for Oxford's rail station to be expanded as part of an £88m transport scheme to combat the city's chronic road congestion. Major improvements to the A34 and the main routes into the city form part of an extensive package of measures allocated money by the regional transport board, which wants to pump £62m into the Access to Oxford Project. Network Rail will be expected to pay the bulk of £25m for the new platforms and improvements to the station building.

The £6m shopping list of infrastructure improvements thrashed out with the developers of the Westgate Centre, Oxford, offers a taste of so-called planning gain.

The deal between Capital Shopping Centres and Oxfordshire County and Oxford City councils is for improvements to mitigate the impact the £300m development will have. Changes to transport infrastructure make up the lion's share of the cash - £3.8m - but £1.2m has been set aside for a sustainable energy plant at the site.

Jane McFarland, group development manager for the Westgate Partnership, said: "There is bound to be some disruption with a scheme like ours. But we will work hard to minimise it by looking at lorry movement and how to bring workers in and out of the city centre."

Work on the new shopping centre will begin in spring 2008, continuing until the autumn of 2011. While the work will be ongoing, Ms McFarland believed the first two-and-a-half years would prove the hardest, with substantial demolition work and digging out for an underground car park.

"The vision for the West End has a slightly longer time scale of ten to 20 years. The Westgate is a major piece of this jigsaw."

Some piece, some jigsaw, to paraphrase Winston Churchill.

So much for the centre of Oxford. But no one should forget developers are equally interested in the fringes of the city.

Oxford University has already consulted about a plan to build 200 homes for university staff in a £40m scheme to extend Wolvercote. And last week, at an examination in public of the South East Plan, planning inspectors listened to arguments from Oxford City Council and Magdalen College for building between 6,000 and 8,000 homes on land near Grenoble Road.

Whatever the future holds for this city, no expense is to be spared when it comes to building for it.