Ravenscraig is the first new town in Scotland for 50years. Does the area need a new town? Is it wanted by the people? Should the government concentrate on regenerating the surrounding areas of Motherwell and Wishaw rather than creating a whole new town? Will Ravenscraig's new town centre take money away from the existing town centres of Motherwell and East Kilbride or will it act like a catalyst for the area? If a new town is not needed/wanted by the area, what should the area be used for? Is Ravenscraig just another Cumbernauld in the making? What are your thoughts?

There's already a Ravenscraig thread. Someones going to suffer big time with the retail element.

Aye - here you go - it's in the forum index thread: http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=250381

Welcome to the forum mate!

I know theres another Ravenscraig thread, but I was hoping to find out about other peoples viewpoints for my dissertation. Do you think that it was right that Ravenscraig won their court case with regards to the retail element or should other town centres (ie East Kilbride and Motherwell) be given financial support rather than creating a new town centre? Is the greater Glasgow area already saturated with regards to retail?

You want our help? Play by our rules! In the other thread ;)

Welcome btw :)

Well it's not an actual New Town as it hasn't been designated by the Government. It's just a redevelopment of a large brownfield site which has a shopping centre in the middle. It's really just a way of North Lanarkshire increasing the amount of Jobs and people in Motherwell and Wishaw and draining resources away from other places where they are needed.

Also welcome to the forum, hope you enjoy it on here.:cheers:

Actually the site has been granted 'town centre' status which essentially allows the creation of the vast new retail complex. This was the primary reason why Standard Life and British Land (or was it Lan Sec?) took the matter to court as it threatened the established retail centres in Hamilton and East Kilbride respectively. Standard Life subsequently sold their interests when Ravencraig was finally granted approval.

Like it or not, there is a huge swathes of development planned for the site:

- HOK are doing the regional sports centre, originally costed at £16m, now at about £29m I think.
- Motherwell College is relocating. Cala Homes have plans for their old site (Cala Commercial have bought most of Motherwell town centre no doubt to extract 'value' since the Council were so bloody incompetent)
- The new retail centre itself
- Huge amounts of industrial space no doubt to be delivered by Wilson Bowden along the lines of Cambuslang Investment Park
- Tentative discussions have taken place with Motherwell FC to relocate them as well to a new home.

The first application for several hundred houses I understand goes to committee next week for approval if they haven't already received it - not that I would recommend anyone buy a house on that site considering the extensive contamination on it. Most of it was encapsulated and some of it was simply too dangerous to move or there was nowhere to move it too!

from Future Glasgow.
Ravenscraig has just overcome legal objections on grounds it'll exacerbate sprawl, opposition was centred on the development being classified as a town centre to circumvent strict out of town planning policy

Seems like NLC are only calling it a town to get around planning laws. Anyway it'll be an awful small town for the amount of retail floorspace.

As a Bellshill taxi-driver, im utterly dissmayed at the creation of Ravenscraig

Our town is barley alive at the moment, God only knows what will happen when this monster opens ?

Think i will have to change career after 20 years & at my age that will be difficult.

Ill thought out in my opinion & just gonna hurt all the surrounding towns badly.

BAAA HUMBUG

I have seen the plans and they look pretty good to be honest. however new towns have had limited success in the past so we will need to wait and see if ravenscraig learns from past mistakes or not. Also would probably be more useful to concentrate on existing towns and attempting to solve existing problems rather than possibly creating new ones