Bradford

By Ben Bettis

The PCUK tour of Bradford City Centre convened at the Mirror Pool on a sunny Tuesday afternoon. We began with a talk from Bradford Council’s Jamie Saunders and Saira Ali about Will Alsop’s City Centre masterplan. This plan aimed to pedestrianise and commercially enhance the middle of town whilst respecting the landmark Victorian architecture.

Our Bradford colleagues outlined the new vision for Bradford, becoming a distinctive West Yorkshire powerhouse that should complement Leeds rather than compete with it. A large part of the identity is focused on the night-time economy, which was boosted by the successful City of Culture bid.  We then headed towards a cluster of cultural institutions and had a look at Alhambra, Bradford Live and the National Science and Media Museum, with the latter two reopening this year.

Our vantage point allowed Saira and Jamie to talk through their plans to extend the city centre including a new through-railway station at the southern gateway. They also explained their ambition to green and humanize the city centre. Early wins include planting 220 mature trees and the unexpected benefits of improved acoustics at St George’s Hall due to the removal of the dual carriageway.

With aims to reanimate the area, we toured around Little Germany, an area of timeless Victorian listed buildings, historically home to a prosperous textile industry - more on these plans is expected at UKREiiF 2025. A stop at the former wool exchange - now a Waterstones - illustrated the magnitude of the industry at its peak.

After taking in the new Darley Street Market, our final stop was the proposed Top of Town location for the City Village ECF development of 1,000 new homes.  We discussed the challenges of ground floor occupancy in the face of online shopping and I was pleased to hear plans to relocate retailers on the development sites.

Bradford’s exceptional architecture, a mix of old and new, heightens its prospects of successful renewal and I look forward to following its progress.