Character Area Assessment
What is a Character Area Assessment?
Places evolve and adapt over time. The creation of a successful town requires recognition of the history of a place and the assets that exist because of that history, combined with a strong vision of how the town could look in the future and how that might shape its community.
Historic housing and neighbourhood buildings such as shops, civic buildings, schools and places of worship, all help to define an area’s sense of place and meaning.
A basic principle of good urban design is to understand this concept of local distinctiveness.
Houses in Arlen Hill, showing how the character of the town is shaped by the housing development that has occurred here over many years, up to and including the present day.
Continuing development is necessary to provide new homes, businesses and social infrastructure. It is required by national and local policy that all new development should be designed to a high quality and should respond to the distinctive local character of the area in which it is situated.
This Character Area Assessment helps determine what the characteristics are that contribute towards making Arlen Hill distinctive so that we can ensure and promote positive development in the future.
How was the character area assessment of Arlen Hill carried out?
- Initial appraisal undertaken across Arlen Hill town to identify and record characteristics
- Character areas were then defined by common characteristics e.g. time period and building type
- Street by street surveys were carried out to identify locally distinctive contextual features and detractors. Features were documented through photographs and written descriptions
- Character areas were then sub-grouped into more specific types relating to time period, building type, and layout.
- The information has been collated to give an overview of the locally distinctive features (e.g. building materials) and detractors (if any) of each of the character areas.
Local Representative groups and elected Members of the District Council assisted in each stage of this work.