However, due in part to land limitations faced by the majority of city sites, they are also increasingly an essential part of urban renewal. Once typical of highly congested cities such as Beijing and Tokyo, in which sky-rise villages complete with restaurants, shopping centres and residential units are the norm, mixed-use developments are gaining popularity among developers as the UK market shows signs of life and success stories closer to home shine a spotlight on their merit.
Whilst speculative office buildings are still difficult to acquire funding for and the retail market remains shaky, the residential market continues to tentatively pick up. Mixed-use developments, then, seem to provide the ideal solution, providing the assured footfall needed to soothe would-be commercial investors, generated by the nearby residential units.
Furthermore, the willingness displayed by the leisure industry to sign longer leases has been fundamental in the securing of funds for these developments, working to counterbalance the increasingly short leases other occupiers are willing to sign. The success of leisure users who have taken the step of filling retail units have reaped the benefits of their bravery, with developments like The Rock in Bury becoming heavily populated with companies such as Vue Cinema, AMF Bowling and a Fit For Free gym.
Those projects that have already proved successful not only signify a boost in the economy but a change in mentality. Increasingly, buildings’ are recognised as potentially multi-functional, interactive spaces that enhance, and even create, communities, rather than stagnant spaces providing a single service. Urban tastes have developed in such a way that functionality is expected to exist in conjunction with convenience and pleasing, sociable aesthetics.
Businesses, too, are increasingly looking to spaces that reflect their work ethic positively, with a greater number shying away from industrial business parks in favour of more creative headquarters similar to those of Google, that are far more likely to attract young, creative entrepreneurs. This is the same demographic who shrink from the prospect of a long commute, electing wherever possible to live above, rather than beyond, the city they work in.
Developments such as Bristol’s J3, a £10m mixed-use regeneration scheme, achieves this in a way that could seemingly be replicated throughout similar cities. Combining shared ownership and affordable rent flats, business units, community rooms, libraries and public-use computer hubs, the mutuality of each development within the regeneration has worked to boost the economy of the area as a whole, despite taking up very little physical space, positively transforming the community at large.
Will we see similar results with schemes further north? Builds such as Manchester’s successful mixed-use development NOMA suggest we already are. A 20 acre, £800 million redevelopment comprising of offices, homes, shops, hotels, restaurants and cafés, NOMA has completed its first phase, establishing itself as a new, award-winning silhouette on the city’s skyline.
Then there’s Liverpool’s Stanley Dock, which represents a unique opportunity to regenerate a significant complex of Grade II listed former warehouse buildings. An initial £30 million investment has allowed for phase one of the scheme, a 153 room four star all-suite hotel with ground floor retail/leisure uses and a conference centre, to commence last year. Successful investment will further allow office, exhibition and retail space, as well as a multi-level car park, food and drink establishments and another, smaller hotel.
Liverpool’s £150m Cains Brewery development, which was granted planning permission in 2013, is certainly extravagant enough to achieve the level of impact promised by Liverpool Mayor Joe Anderson. The plans for the development include an independent cinema, upmarket quality supermarket, retail markets, restaurants, and bars, as well as up to 775 homes or 2,500 student bedrooms, the culmination of which is expected to create 800 much needed full time jobs and attract 2.5 million tourists, yearly.
The proximity to city attractions and residential developments equally, in addition to the iconic nature of the building itself - which one expects to only be enhanced by the regeneration - signals great success for a development still currently in its infancy.
The sheer scope of these regenerations indicates an optimism that would otherwise be unlikely if the spaces were reliant upon the market success of a single sector. Far away enough from the hubbub of the city centre to not feed too heavily on would-be high street customers, but close enough to inject further vitality into the docks, the developments, and others like them, pave the way for a sustainable, diverse urban economy that will bleed into employment, property value and public services, assuming all mixed-use tenants are relatively compatible.
This likely success will no doubt encourage similar mixed-use, self-contained ‘urban villages’, suggesting that, for cities in need of revitalizing, building upwards may very well be the way onwards.
