ABSTRACT
At the same time the city was looking to the next stage of the works. The Urban Task Force chaired by Richard Rogers reported at the end of 1999 and recommended that urban regeneration companies be established to drive forward the renaissance of UK cities. Sheffield and Manchester were first off the mark and in February 2000 Sheffield One was established to spearhead six key projects in the city centre. It commissioned an updated masterplan from the US urban designers Koetter Kim and appointed Alison Nimo, fresh from the Manchester Millennium Company, which had spearheaded the reconstruction of the city centre after the IRA bomb. The first project on their to-do-list was Sheaf Square which, at the time, was a high-capacity traffic island severing the station from the city centre. When Network Rail announced that it was to spend £13 million to upgrade the station, Sheffield One commissioned a masterplan from EDAW to redesign the space outside the station. The highways engineers were persuaded that they could do without the roundabout, and furthermore that a ‘super crossing’ could be created over the ring road. This is a wide, high-capacity pedestrian crossing paved in granite that allows pedestrians to navigate the ring road without being cowed by traffic. It looks so obvious now it is completed, but try suggesting this across any other city’s ring road and you will start to appreciate the scale of the achievement in Sheffield. Working with the city council’s internal Regeneration Projects Design Team, EDAW
