As part of The Island Quarter’s commitment to echo and represent the communities that will enjoy it in the future, the design team is holding a series of engagement sessions to gather ideas, opinions and insights that will inform its work going forward.

Led by John Morgan of masterplanner Leonard Design Architects and David Jones of planning consultant Axis PED, the sessions touch on a broad range of topics and issues and feed into The Island Quarter’s wider development strategy.

In the first of our #TIQandYOU series, we look at sessions that covered TIQ’s intergenerational living approach to its residential elements.

“Make TIQ housing different and unique.” 

“Encourage students to stay in Nottingham through a range of initiatives – housing, leisure, outlook.” 

“Hireable spaces and wellbeing places are important on site for students to take advantage of.” 

One of the key tenets of The Island Quarter’s placemaking strategy is around encouraging intergenerational living, ensuring that the residential aspects of the development reflect the different needs of the community.

This is not purely about building a good mix of housing – we need to consider all aspects of what creates “community”. Encouraging students to stay around after graduating plays a really important part in this, especially in a city with such high-quality institutions as Nottingham.

In speaking with students as part of these engagement sessions, we found that there was a lack of awareness of opportunities for graduate placements at some of Nottingham’s biggest companies, but also a need for the kind of leisure and entertainment offering that matches some of the city’s main competitors.

A key theme from several of our sessions was that green areas rank very highly among all age groups, with responses calling for “leafy areas”, “townhouse-style residential” and “shaded spaces” as part of The Island Quarter’s emerging masterplan.

Our conversations incorporated a broad cross-section of different ages, specialisms and areas of expertise, but the message that came out loud and clear is that The Island Quarter needs to be an area where all can feel welcome.

The student accommodation will start to welcome young people from across the world in autumn 2024, and the private rented apartments that form part of the blended-use element of phase 1B will give opportunities for those people to retain roots in Nottingham when they graduate.

Alongside this, Conygar’s commitment to extensive green space throughout The Island Quarter will help create that collegiate environment that helps create community, with the long-term plans being for a wide range of housing tenures on site to ensure that there is an ongoing vibrancy as the development continues to progress.