The Future is… Dock Branch Park
It's always a good idea to check back in to see how the story of a place is evolving over time. That’s why we decided to return to Birkenhead one year on from our sunny evening at Future Yard CIC in 2022. A more soggy July this time round meant there was less lazing around in the sunshine, but no less fruitful discussion of parks as catalysts for regeneration – with a focus on Dock Branch Park, a new linear park taking shape within the cutting of the disused railway line between Rock Ferry and Bidston Dock.
The venue itself for the event was very much part of the learning process. PLACED Birkened’s Place is a pioneering exploration of the potential of using ‘urban rooms’ to try to make community engagement both more inclusive and more sustained. This one has created a pop-up community space nestled inside the Grange Precinct for the people of Birkenhead to share views that will impact the long-term regeneration of the area. Set to ‘pop down’ later this year, the event was a good opportunity to discuss informally the room’s potential longer term future and what we can learn from the experiment to take forward these rooms into the future.
While last year at Future Yard, we all set about “piecing together the puzzle of regeneration for Birkenhead”, this event was more about zooming in on a project which aims to act as a catalyst for the impressive ambitions of the Birkenhead 2040 Framework.
We kicked off, however, with the bigger historical picture – with our own Dr Sam Hayes harking back to his pre-PLACED academic career to give us a run-through the history of parks in northern cities. While today, green and blue infrastructure is often seen through the lens of health and wellbeing and climate resilience, 200 years ago it was more often about “improving the working classes” through cricket and archery, and as a mechanism to improve land value for private development (some of that still sound familiar?).
Followed by a few words from Alan Brighouse from the Friends of Birkenhead Park, this part of the evening teetered on sparking a classic “which came first?” War of the Parks, between Salford’s Peel Park and Birkenhead’s Birkenhead Park. But that is a battle for another day. Instead, we spent the remainder of the evening understanding the detail of plans for the emerging Dock Branch Park taking shape (almost) beneath our feet.
Cathy Palmer, head of Regeneration Delivery at Wirral Council, gave us an update on the nuts and bolts of the piecing together of funding needed to get the spade in the ground on this kind of project, emphasising the importance of the ‘start with the park’ approach being taken by the Council.
Landscape architect Andy from OPEN brought the display boards to life by talking through the design process for Dock Branch Park over the last three years. The park itself follows a sweeping S-shape bend, at odds to Birkenhead’s famous Laird Grid, and has to deal with challenging issues around access and safety given the deep cutting it sits within. The design team have gone heavy in their strategy on activating the space at all times of day to address those concerns. There is clearly excitement locally about the project. However there is evidently some open-ended debate lingering within the community about whether earlier iterations of plans to use the cutting as a mass transit line were closer to the mark.
Finally, Andy handed over to Mark from Maccreanor Lavington to explain how, once the Council has ‘started with the park’, they are working on the next step of transforming 8 hectares of land surrounding the park to create a new mixed use neighbourhood that will embrace new ways of living and working. The plans even look forward to building on Merseyside’s long history in community-led housing to explore working with local Community Land Trusts (CLTs) and coliving arrangements within the neighbourhood.
