Blinded by the flashing lights? Insights into Paceville's urban design present and future

Abstract

It is easy to be blinded by Paceville's flashing lights, a symbol of the locality's night-time activities as an entertainment mecca, and to forget that this is still an urban environment with a local community and a growing amount of daytime land uses that require well-thought-out strategies to ensure the formation of a quality urban realm and a liveable place in the long term. With this in mind, this paper starts by highlighting some important urban design principles revolving around key themes including spatial quality, place-making, street design and product- and process related concerns. It subsequently discusses several pertinent issues and current conflicts that characterise Paceville's urban realities, identifying spatial issues that are intensified through daytime and night-time patterns. The paper then delves into Paceville's development framework and Master Plan commissioned by the Planning Authority and underlines salient themes therein, before zeroing in on a possible alternative future that may be envisioned for Paceville. To this effect the paper presents some key results and observations from temporal analyses carried out in the locality, to inform a strategy with implications for the urban realm, that also involves the local community as key stakeholders.