Urban Lifestyle Areas

What is this all about?

Growth happens all the time within our urban areas, and market towns, as individual sites and buildings are redeveloped. This is called “brownfield” development and it is allowed for in national planning policy and in our current Local Plan. There are existing policies to manage these developments to avoid negative impacts on neighbours and harm to the environment, and to achieve high-quality design.

The new Local Plan will continue to manage this type of development. However, national policy now says that in the most sustainable locations, around town centres, high streets and public transport hubs, we must make the best use of brownfield land by optimising the density of new development. The new Local Plan needs to make sure we do this without compromising quality of life for existing and new residents. We call this approach Urban Lifestyles.

This approach will provide some of the homes we need by making the most effective use of land in the most sustainable locations, making sure that issues such as respecting the existing character of an area, parking and access to open space are properly considered.

• confirming the most sustainable areas in South Gloucestershire where making the best use of land in future developments would be appropriate. These are called the Urban Lifestyles areas.
• Exploring the key design issues involved with optimising density of new development. We are consulting on draft planning policy which will address these issues.
• The draft policy approach includes proposed density ranges for each Urban Lifestyles area.
• Most new development in urban lifestyles areas will come about slowly as individual landowners decided to redevelop but the Local Plan can also allocate specific sites for such development. So finally, we are consulting on options for change on some sites where developers have suggested ideas for redevelopment.

You can learn more about the issues relating to design and density ranges and comment on our proposed new policy approach to Urban Lifestyle areas in our Phase 2 Local Plan consultation here.

You can view the potential site allocations in the urban area on a separate map here.

You can view the Density and Character Study which supports the new Urban Lifestyles approach here.

What does the map show?

This map shows all the Urban Lifestyle areas which are being investigated as part of the new Local Plan process. The purple areas represent 800m extents from the edges of each of the Town Centre boundaries or transport hubs, shown as black outlines, and from existing or planned transport hubs, shown with white pin symbols.

How do I get started?

Click on the map below to get started. You can look at any of the Urban Lifestyle areas by selecting any location from the drop-down list on the left hand side of the screen. Simply click on the green ‘have your say’ text, to comment on the proposed Urban Lifestyles policy approach. The map view can also be changed by clicking on the ‘Change map view’ button.