Levenshulme Neighbourhood Plan: Baseline brief of public space improvement
Academic Paper
Levenshulme neighbourhood is located in south east of Manchester city, it considered as a linkable zone that connects Stockport district with Manchester city centre, as the light rail way and Stockport road are the main corridors for levenshulme and Stockport residents to access Manchester city centre. This situation leads to a high amount and different types of transitory such as drivers, pedestrian and public transportation users among levenshulme neighbourhood. The neighbourhood is mainly divided into two mains areas, the west side area, which is more developed as the majority of Westside residents have higher quality homes with front and back gardens, while the east side area is more deprived in term of housing quality. However, both areas are having equal access to public space and facilities.
The latest statistics shows that the total population of Levenshulme neighbourhood is about 13051, 65% of them are white British, 13.5% are Asian British, about 7% are white Irish, while the rest of population are from other ethnic groups such as black, Chinese and other mix ethnic groups. This statistics demonstrates that Levenshulme population represents a diversity of different backgrounds; it’s easy to catch Christian prayers in Sundays and Muslim prayers in Fridays. As well, many mosques are located behind churches, while other leisure centres such as pubs, sport centres and community centres are full of diverse people from all over the neighbourhood. This is a very pleasant life way, where any one can enjoy his life style with others.
In fact, Levenshulme is full of different types of public space areas, as there are worship buildings, pubs, community centres, local markets, permanent local shops, library, sport centre, green spaces, well paved main road, and bike lane. Alongside with a diverse type of public spaces, there are many attractive annual event takes place in Levenshulme, such as The Market Festival, Food and Drink Festival and Beer Festival. Those events take place in many areas around levenshulme and in many different seasons during the year. These festivals create a great opportunities to locals to present what they has, and for visitors to enjoy their time.
There are many reasons behind the importance of improving public spaces, it’s not just because the rich and divers public space assets located in Levenshulme. Actually the well planned public spaces can have positive economic, health, social and environmental impacts. First, the well-designed public spaces enhance the economic life in urban centres as it attract many investors, business and local markets to set in within the proper public spaces fabric of the urban centres, as well it encourage the visitors to wander within the area which in return increase the market power. Second, the well planned public spaces can be a main reason behind reducing both, the amount of obese children and old peoples who suffer from diabetes and heart diseases, plus, it develops the social, emotional and physical skills of new born and children. Third, the well accessible public spaces create an equal free access to everyone regardless the ethnic, gender and class backgrounds, in return it deepen the democratic approach of the right to equal citizenship. Finally, the more green space the more air quality is there, and the big green space can be allocated to wildlife habitats within the city fabric, this would in fact increase the environmental value of the city compared with rural areas.
KHALAFALLA OMER 