Unfortunately, it now appears likely the £14.6 million Harrogate Station Gateway will go ahead, despite all the constructive objections from local businesses and residents. As usual, North Yorkshire Council has ignored these.

The project will see major changes to Station Parade, Station Square and One Arch pedestrian tunnel.

Purely from a design point of view as an architect with many years’ experience on major projects and one who has worked closely with experienced urban designers, I still totally fail to understand how the gateway project will deliver an ‘exemplary’ scheme. According to North Yorkshire Council’s press releases it will help to lift the central area of Harrogate and provide easier access to the railway station. I fail to understand this theory. The current appearance of this area is down to the lack of ongoing maintenance provided by councils over the last decade.

Most important, none of us still really know what North Yorkshire Council’s final proposals will look like even though we were promised this information well over 12 months ago. This is apart from the same limited information in the form of poor-quality aerial visuals repeatedly churned out by the council over the last few years. No one will ever see it from this perspective except the local bird population.

However, the one aspect of the ‘design’ proposals I am aware of through planning notices, is the requirement by the council to fell a mature, perfectly healthy species of small leaf lime tree adjacent to the pedestrian crossing to the railway station. This can only be classed as corporate vandalism. Any good designer would acknowledge this as a site restriction, work round it and incorporate such a feature which contributes to the quality of Station Square into their design proposals. Not North Yorkshire Council though!

As I have always claimed, it is a highway engineer-led design solution, two-dimensional in concept and certainly not capable of celebrating this as an exemplary and attractive gateway to the town. It should celebrate people and places, not highways as the council proposals will do.

North Yorkshire Council has clearly demonstrated it has no understanding of how an urban space works three-dimensionally. There will still be no sense of arrival at the railway station, for example. North Yorkshire Council has limited understanding of Harrogate, its character and the largely cohesive conservation area this area of town sits in.

It is quite obvious they do not know how to celebrate good urban design.

What do you think? Let us know in the comment section below. We have asked Councillor Malcolm Taylor, the Conservative with oversight of the gateway project on North Yorkshire Council, if he wishes to respond to this article.