Commuter Changes Create Cardiff Challenges
Nick Worman is a Chartered Surveyor at Bruton Knowles property consultants, operating out of the Cardiff office. He acts for a wide range of national clients and is a spokesperson for the firm on social housing matters.
Cardiff Business School and Bruton Knowles, as sole sponsor, develop property related Breakfast Briefings in partnership, ensuring that essential topics are identified and examined.
The most recent Breakfast Briefing, shed an interesting light on the influences that have shaped the recent development of Cardiff and the surrounding region.
The speaker, Dr Brian Webb of Cardiff University’s School of Geography, described how planning policy is gradually reshaping development and travel in the city catchments, within Wales.
Most notably, it was highlighted how over the last ten years car journeys in to the capital have barely risen whilst train journeys into Cardiff have doubled.
This is a startling statistic. It confirms why commuter trains are getting increasingly busy alongside railway stations, particularly Cardiff Central and Cardiff Queen Street.
Cardiff, along with Newport, is the only urban area in Wales which has seen an increase in workers commuting in the last few years. Such an outcome must be of concern in an era of environmental concerns where Cardiff City Council has a sustainable travel target of 50%. There now needs to be a dual focus on improving employment prospects in areas outside of Cardiff as well as providing more sustainable means of commuting.
There is now a deliberate focus on nodes of development such as Central Square but the city needs to widen its commercial base. Younger professionals also prefer to live closer to where they work, attracting more residential development - something that will add vitality to the city and help to re-invigorate the high street in an era of increasing pressures from internet shopping.
Regeneration activities in the city are currently positive, but moving into 2019, it was agreed at the event that there needs to be a focus on development in Southern Cardiff, where there is more space as well as the provision of the South Wales Metro to support this. The large-scale current developments in North West Cardiff have already provided additional Metro routes as an integral part of its design and it is now time to focus on other areas.
The next Breakfast Briefing, Governance and Sport, will take place on Tuesday 22nd January, with Professor Laura McAllister as guest speaker.
Attendance is free of charge but places are limited so registration is recommended. You can register here https://bit.ly/2BYo53k.