BDP has been appointed by The Super Slow Way to design and develop the vision for a linear park in East Lancashire – an exciting, pioneering programme of change for a 23-mile section of the Leeds & Liverpool Canal.
The new stretch of landscaped canalside park will marry physical improvements to infrastructure and buildings with creative landscape architecture to support expansive programmes of environmental, cultural, leisure, educational and economic activity.
An interdisciplinary design team from BDP will create a series of thematic landscape strategies and area studies that explore and demonstrate how to unlock the potential of this post-industrial canal corridor.
James Millington, Director, Landscape Architecture at BDP, explains: “We are very excited to start our work with local stakeholders to create strategies for green infrastructure, lighting and wayfinding and design beautiful landscaping projects that focus on the needs of local people and local places. Our subsequent designs will create beautiful green spaces along the canal that vary in scale and complexity”.
Darrell Wilson, Design Team Lead at BDP, added: “Ours will be an inclusive and integrated design approach that seeks to revitalise neighbourhoods, improve access and safety, enhance biodiversity, increase walking and cycling routes, deliver wider integrated transport systems, and enable commercial growth across this part of Lancashire. We are so proud to be involved and look forward to sharing our concepts with the community.”
Completed in 1816, this Leeds & Liverpool Canal was the original ‘super highway’ of the industrial revolution, which once transformed Pennine Lancashire. Today, it provides the backbone for a this new Linear Park which will repurpose disused land and buildings alongside this great 19th century infrastructure, harnessing the same pioneering local energy to create new employment, educational, cultural, recreational, environmental, transport and tourism potential.
BDP’s work will focus on three main strategies. Greening and biodiversity, lighting and wayfinding and movement to bring life back to the places and infrastructure that once supported a thriving textile industry. The greening strategy will aim to make the land more productive with healthy, resilient and regenerative ecosystems, encourage bio-diversity and support climate resilience in local communities. New lighting will make the area feel safer, more welcoming and more attractive, with artistic interventions that are sympathetic to both the corridor’s wildlife and human use. And new,recognisable wayfinding will connect town centres and neighbourhoods to the vital green and blue spaces of the canal, improving movement and access to the new park.
This project is part of the Pennine Lancashire Linear Park pilot project delivered by The Super Slow Way. The Pennine Lancashire Linear Park pilot project is funded by the UK Government via the UK Community Renewal Fund.
BDP will deliver its design concepts for community consultation in May 2022.
