Chapter III – Practical studies

Comprehensive redevelopment

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In both the schemes so far described, Northbrook Street would be left untouched as far as its buildings are concerned. It would be quite possible (disregarding the question of architectural or historical interest) for the individual buildings to be rebuilt, one by one, without prejudice to the scheme as a whole. We did, however, also consider the advantages of almost complete, staged reconstruction of the whole centre of Newbury, where only the best of the existing buildings would be retained if they would not seriously interfere with redevelopment. A possible scheme is shown in Figure 99 where only the southern part of Northbrook Street, the parish church, and the Corn Exchange area remain. The northern part of Northbrook Street is redeveloped with the whole of the ground level given over to parking and servicing, with shopping and residential accommodation over. South of the river the area is redeveloped with parking and servicing at semi-basement level, ground level shopping, and Offices over. This merely illustrates one of many possibilities. The important lesson is that if comprehensive redevelopment can be organised and financed on a sufficient scale, then the highest standards of environment can be combined with a very high level of accessibility.