Canterbury tale of progress...

LAST November, almost within the shadow of one of England's great cathedrals, the bulldozers moved in to begin work on a major £100m city-centre development. Most of the scheme is new shops: but there is also housing, car parking, a library - and two brand new streets.

The city where this is all happening is Canterbury. The developers behind the scheme are Land Securities - and the architects Chapman Taylor.

Sounds familiar? It should: Land Securities and Chapman Taylor are the two firms behind the £60m Coppergate Riverside scheme in York.

The parallels between the two schemes are obvious.

Canterbury's Whitefriars involves complete redevelopment of a 17-acre city centre site within 500 yards of Canterbury Cathedral. Coppergate Riverside takes place within the shadow of Clifford's Tower - described by one American academic in a letter to the Evening Press this week as a national treasure of immense historical importance.

In both cases, the developments are justified partly on economic grounds as helping the respective cities maintain their position as important regional shopping centres. In both cases, there is potential for important archaeological discoveries.

And in both cases the development site, while close to areas of great historic and architectural sensitivity, is itself run down and neglected. Whitefriars, in fact, is being built in an area of Canterbury damaged in the Blitz, then hastily but 'unsympathetically' rebuilt in the 1950s and Sixties. It sounds almost as ugly as the Clifford's Tower car park.

So what lessons can York learn from the Canterbury experience?

Canterbury is a small city of about 39,000 people. Take in outlying coastal towns that rely on the city's services, though, and you're talking a population of about 130,000 - more like York.

The city is, says Canterbury council's head of development projects Malcolm Burgess, the major shopping centre for the East Kent coast. Unfortunately, in recent years that status has come under threat - with stiff competition from the Bluewater Park shopping centre an hour up the A2 near Dartford and from a new shopping complex in nearby Ashford.

Canterbury, unlike York, doesn't have any out-of-town shopping malls of its own - strict planning rules have seen to that. So if it is to continue to compete as a regional shopping centre, the new shops have to be in the city centre.

True to form, Whitefriars is mainly a retail development. It will mean three new large stores and 36 smaller retail units - a total new retail floorspace of just under 20,000 square metres, compared to Coppergate Riverside's 25,000. Unlike in York, says Mr Burgess, small traders have largely welcomed the scheme, recognising it could be vital to Canterbury's future as a major shopping centre.

But the scheme is not just about shops. There will also be a new public library and arts complex opening on to a new public square, a possible leisure centre and nearly 40 new homes.

Perhaps most important of all, Mr Burgess says, is the architecture and layout. Virtually the whole site is being bulldozed, and in an attempt to recreate something more like the original pre-war streetplan, two completely new streets are to be built: Whitefriars Street and Gravel Walk.

Delivery vehicles will approach shops from underground to minimise the impact on traffic, architecture will be contemporary but 'respecting the scale and form' of the city: and materials will be those found in other buildings in Canterbury. That means brick, slate and tile, no concrete.

Development is to be carried out 'piecemeal' so that the life of the city centre is not disrupted too much - and to make sure members of the public know at all times what is going on, there will be a manned showroom on site throughout, and a regular quarterly magazine.

There is also to be a major investigation of the site's archaeology, expected to take up half of the six years or so development time.

The city council, says Mr Burgess, took great pains to consult with local people to achieve the kind of scheme it wanted. A detailed planning brief was drawn up in 1996, and an architectural competition was held. Four firms prepared master plans and, following public consultation, Chapman Taylor was selected. A planning application was submitted, there was another full public consultation, and approval was finally granted at the beginning of last year.

There were, Mr Burgess admits, mixed feelings among local people about the scheme: but less opposition than there could have been.

"You're never going to please everybody, but my feeling is there seems to have been less contumely than might have been expected, because we have taken people with us."

Ian Read, assistant editor of the Canterbury Times, agrees there has been a 'pretty good reaction', with concern about traffic and disruption, but general support.

But there's a sting in the tail. Ironically - and perhaps worryingly for York - it was a subsidiary of Land Securities which was behind much of the 1950s and Sixties development now being bulldozed to make way for Whitefriars: a development which, according to the Canterbury City Council website, 'largely erased the historic pattern of streets within the area, and opted for an architectural style which was very different from traditional Canterbury.' Even worse, the earlier development proved 'largely unsuccessful ... from an economic point of view in terms of inefficient layout of space.'

Isn't that worrying? The city council says no. Land Securities, says Mr Burgess, has worked very closely with planners to get things right. Land Securities assistant director Mike McGuinness, meanwhile, insists his company has learned from experience - including two earlier, smaller developments in Canterbury. The new scheme he says, will be 'completely different' to the old eyesore. For Canterbury's sake, it is to be hoped so.

York, you might think, may be able to learn something useful from the Canterbury story. But planners work in their own special way.

Alasdair Morrison, City of York Council's head of development and regeneration, admits to knowing very little about the Canterbury scheme - though when I outline it to him he says the planning process followed in York was very similar to that gone through in Kent.

Wouldn't it perhaps be worth planners from York going to see how things were working out in Canterbury, I venture?

"I would imagine that the people who are leading work on the scheme from here, of whom I am one, would have been around," he says. "It is something that I will certainly point out."

What about archaeology? Will that be given the same importance in York as in Canterbury?

Apparently not. Archaeology in York is dealt with by preserving it for future generations, Mr Morrison points out - meaning it is essentially covered over and left, rather than excavated.

There is one aspect of the Canterbury experience welcomed as a good idea, though - the manned showroom on the development site designed to keep people informed of what is going on.

"The worst thing you can do is put big hoardings around so that no-one can see in for three years," Mr Morrison agrees.

So there's hope yet. Good to know that planners in York remain open to suggestions.

PICTURE: One of the proposed new streets in Canterbury's city centre with heavy accent on wide walkways