Preston's key projects: the regeneration schemes, one by one

Six schemes read by status: one framework, one finished, two under way, one housing entry, and one unresolved after decades.

This is the scheme-by-scheme index of Preston's regeneration programme. The invest sheet sets out why the programme exists; this one lists what is in it, divided by whether a scheme is a framework, complete, current, or still a question.

The division is worth keeping because it is honest about the state of things. Regeneration programmes are usually presented as a single forward momentum, and reading them by status instead shows what actually got built.

The framework, and the areas

The City Deal is the infrastructure and funding agreement most of the rest runs through, covering Preston and South Ribble across the river. The key project areas sheet covers regeneration by district, never by scheme, and its substantial entry is the markets quarter.

Complete, current and unresolved

Complete: the bus station, which was saved and refurbished when it could have come down, and which is the one scheme in the programme that is genuinely well known outside Lancashire. Current: the university masterplan, the largest single build in the centre, and the former post office conversion.

Housing sits under city living, where Corporation Street is the entry. And unresolved: the railway station, which the City Deal did not address and which remains the largest piece of obviously needed infrastructure in the city.

• Framework / 01

  The City Deal

  The infrastructure and funding agreement.

• Complete / 02

  Preston bus station

  Grade II listed, 1969, saved and refurbished.

• Current / 03

  UCLan masterplan

  The largest single build in the centre.

• Current / 04

  The former post office building

  Conversion of a landmark city-centre building.

• Housing / 05

  Corporation Street

  City-centre residential development.

• Unresolved / 06

  Preston railway station

  The West Coast Main Line question.

How to read a scheme sheet

Every sheet in this index opens with the same three things: what the scheme physically is, where it stands in relation to the city centre, and which of the four states it occupies. That last point does most of the work. A scheme described as complete has a building or a route you can stand in; a scheme described as current has money committed and visible activity; a scheme described as future has an intention and a site; and a scheme described as unresolved has a site, a history and no settled outcome.

The four states are not a sequence that everything travels along. Preston has a scheme that went from unresolved to complete without passing through the middle, and it has a site that has been future for long enough that the word has stopped meaning much. Keeping the states separate is what makes the index honest: it lets a reader see, at a glance, how much of the programme is finished and how much of it is still a drawing.

The pattern the schemes share

Read together, the six sheets describe one thing repeated at different scales. In each case a piece of the city that had a single twentieth-century purpose lost that purpose, sat empty long enough to become an argument, and was then either adapted or replaced. The bus station was the argument that ended in adaptation. The former post office was the argument that ended in a change of use. The railway station sheet is the argument that has not ended.

That pattern is why the geography of the programme is so tight. Almost everything here sits within a mile of the Flag Market, on the north bank of the Ribble, in the part of the city that was built once and has had to be rebuilt in place. Preston has no large cleared site next to its centre, so regeneration here means working inside a street pattern that was fixed long before any of these schemes were drawn.