Harbour Place Shaping Strategy

DK-CM, working with Fourth Street, Savills and Rising Arts Agency, developed a comprehensive 20-year strategy for Bristol’s harbour that ranges from an overarching Vision (informed by intensive, bespoke engagement activities) through to detailed site-by-site Place Plans, a Delivery Plan and Strategic Outline Business Case for discrete elements of the strategy. The Place Shaping Strategy will be the primary tool guiding planning, place-shaping, development, investment and funding in the harbour area up until 2044. 

Bristol’s harbour estate is a complex urban environment of waterspace, parks & green spaces, existing communities (residential, creative and industrial) and development sites. The waterspace alone is 28 hectares and the harbour area received 11m visitors in 2023. DK-CM’s strategic work is intended not only to shape development on a place- and site- specific basis, but also to set out a series of income-generating projects to take forward, and finally a coherent approach to public realm and public transport, in effect reimagining the harbour estate as a waterborne park for the whole city. 

Having set out a clear principle-based Vision, using evidence gathered through a substantial, genuinely innovative and multi-pronged engagement process, the project sets out principles, site-by-site guidance, project briefs and other site-specific information in the form of the Place Plans – to guide development and investment in each location.

The project involved a lengthy, bespoke engagement process led by DK-CM; this incorporated a substantial interactive public exhibition at M Shed (in the space recently vacated by the toppled Colston statue), virtual events, in-person 1:1s and an innovative youth-creator -led programme giving the project access to the experiences and aspirations of diverse local young people.

The completed Strategy has now been endorsed and adopted, and can be downloaded here.