Masterplanning for the new Mayflower Quarter, Southampton
Discover how PlaceBuilder was used to help inform the masterplan for a brand new part of Southampton's City Centre
Southampton City Council and innovative master planning firm, AR Urbanism, wanted to understand the community vision for the new Mayflower Quarter, a new development that will link the heart of Southampton to an area of prime waterfront. Southampton and AR Urbanism used our innovative platform PlaceBuilder to engage locals, stakeholders, and businesses to understand people's views and priorities for the future of the area.
The objective
Southampton and AR Urbanism had already engaged stakeholders but wanted to reach out further to understand aspirations, priorities and mapped suggestions from the wider community. They also wanted to PlaceBuilder to test and share their initial ideas for the Mayflower Quarter.
Solutions
Southampton chose to offer two ways for people to engage on the platform; quick polls and an interactive map to pin comments on. This would maximise response data and better understand the community’s views. The topics included Traffic, New Developments, Work, Economy, Community and Heritage.
Over the 8 week consultation period, 756 people left feedback on the PlaceBuilder site with 995 comments made via our mapping tool. The council communications team promoted the project via press and socials. This resulted in good participation levels by age group, with particular success among younger age groups in the quick polls.
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PlaceBuilder's Impact
The council team used the PlaceBuilder dashboard to understand the detailed results as well as the overall priorities from the polls. They were able to analyse which aspects of the project that people were most enthusiastic about, and what and where their concerns were, pinpointed via our map.
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PlaceBuilder data revealed that people were most interested in transport in the area, particularly in regards to access to the waterfront. Transport and accessibility throughout the area and its connection to the rest of the city was an overall trend in the consultation data.
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PlaceBuilder’s advanced clustering analyses also revealed trends in 7 sectors of the project area, helping create focus in different parts of the Masterplan.
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This exciting development is still in its infancy. We look forward to the future of the Southampton Mayflower Quarter and seeing the community voices represented in the ambitious masterplan.
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“A key consideration is ensuring we develop a futureproofed masterplan, positively meeting climate change challenges and offering sustainable solutions for the future.” - Amanda Reynolds, Director of AR Urbanism
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“This is a great opportunity for everyone in Southampton to tell us what they envisage for Mayflower Quarter as AR Urbanism finalise the masterplan before consultation on the Mayflower Quarter masterplan early next year.” - Cllr Jacqui Rayment, Deputy Leader and Cabinet Member for Customer & Organisation