Monnow Street Design Proposal

Client: Monmouthshire County Council

Partners: Roberts Limbrick

Place: Monmouth, Monmouthshire

The community need

Monnow Street runs through Monmouth town centre. It's a busy street with lots going on, so it often becomes congested.

Monmouthshire County Council wanted to create a vibrant and attractive streetscape that is a destination for all and that:

• Solves the street's loading and disabled parking issues

• Works for the street's shops and businesses

• Is welcoming for pedestrians and cyclists.

What I did

I supported Roberts Limbrick Architects, who led on the proposals to reimagine Monnow Street.

To help inform the design proposals, I designed and ran a series of stakeholder and public consultation events:

• Three hands-on stakeholder co-production workshops

• Two door-to-door business consultations

• An open and staffed public consultation within the town centre over two days and a static display for two weeks in the Community Hub

• An online and offline survey.

Following each stakeholder and door-to-door business consultation, we updated the design proposals in light of the comments we received, the project's vision and ambition and the context of the Welsh transport appraisal guidance (WelTAG) preferred option.

We also carried out a similar review after the public consultation and survey before arriving at a final design concept.

The outcome

The proposal for Monnow Street includes the following design principles:

• Stronger links for residents to create a quieter and calmer street that is not the focus of through traffic.

• Active travel, using wider footpaths and a narrower highway to minimise the dominance of cars and promote walking and cycling along the route.

• Improved access for all, with a particular emphasis on visually impaired people through the inclusion of a significant tactile strip.

• Bike parking to encourage cycling in the town centre.

• A wider footway to allow some businesses to 'spill out' onto the street and create a vibrant and active environment.

• Better traffic flow, including loading bays to serve the street's businesses.

• Green-blue infrastructure for sustainable urban drainage, pollution filtering, public realm greening and general well-being.

• Improved and rationalised signage, more efficient street lighting and the removal of unnecessary features such as yellow lines and bollards.