Wansbeck Rd. – Fawdon Area

To create a realistic and viable plan for an area requires a lot of work. For a start it needs to be underpinned by proper evidence, based on detailed research into local conditions and needs. And any proposals need to be consulted on, costed and a business case produced. I’m not going to do any of that because this is a blog, simply because I don’t work for a developer or the council, and what follows aren’t serious proposals. But, as someone who knows this area and walks though it every day, I thought it might be an interesting exercise to put together a few case studies based on my own observations, consider what are some of the area’s strengths and weaknesses, and what opportunities there might be for positive change.

The area I’m looking at is bounded by Kingston Park Road to the north, The Meadows / Jubilee Road to the south, Wansbeck Road to the east, and Fawdon Lane to the west. It’s a relatively standard residential area with a mixture of housing sizes and types, both public and private. Using a Google map as a base I thought I’d try and do a very simple analysis:

The area naturally divides into three distinct sub-areas:

1. North West area extending from the junction of Kingston Park Road and Fawdon Lane down to Pine Ave. and Fern Ave. This area is physically segregated from the area immediately south by back gardens, with no direct public pedestrian or vehicular links between the two.
2. North of the Metro line up to Kingston Park Road. This area is well connected to main roads and to both Wansbeck Road and Fawdon Metro stations. This area could be further subdivided into east (Aln Crescent to Wansbeck Road) and west (Laurel Ave. to Fawdon Lane). The whole area is bounded to the south by the Metro line.
3. South of the Metro line down to The Meadows / Jubilee Road. This area is bounded to the north by the Metro line and Regent Farm First School, which also form a barrier between this and the areas to the north. This area is connected to area 2 above by a small footpath from Felton Ave. underneath the Metro line to the southern end of Aln Crescent.

Strengths

• Well served by local shops and amenities
• Well connected to the wider city by both road and public transport links
• Seems to have a good mixture of both housing types (flats, terraced, semi-detached, detached, bungalows) and tenures (owner occupied, private rental, public rental).

Weaknesses

• Poor connectivity between sub-areas because of physical barriers.
• Some pedestrian footpaths feel a bit too remote and unsafe to use at night.
• Some problems with litter and fly tipping on or near the less overlooked footpaths.
• A number of council garages have been vandalised.
• Some instances of antisocial behaviour (though not a major problem).

The above issues make accessing shops and services between sub-areas more difficult than they could be. In some areas a direct route is impossible because there is no path, and where there is a path some people will be put off using them because they feel unsafe (e.g. using the dark and dirty footpath under the Metro line to access the nursery, pharmacy and buses on Jubilee Road from area 2, or Wansbeck Road Metro station from area 3).

Opportunities

While there are no doubt many opportunities, here are a few initial suggestions:

• Some of the conditions that make existing pedestrian footpaths unwelcoming and unpleasent could quite easily be addressed with minimal investment.
• There is some scope for development of waste land and garages to provide additional housing and/or business premises, and to improve passive surveillance of underused paths.

In my next post I’ll look at the first of the case studies: what to do about the path under the Metro line.