Canal Quarter, Cardiff

Canal Quarter, Cardiff

Project Information

Client: Cardiff City Council
Partners: JLL
Location: Cardiff
Service: Urban Design

An ambitious masterplan for a major redevelopment in Cardiff City Centre, which includes reopening a historic waterway.

The Challenge

The Council and a private landowned had identified the area as one for future change, but needed a plan that could bring their shared aspirations together, while also dealing with highly complex changes to the City’s transport planning arrangements as well as short term development opportunities.

Our Role

Our response was to look at the whole of the City Centre and determine a clear role for this part of the City in the future. Most importantly, we needed to demonstrate that a covered canal could be reopened, yet still enable the City’s transport plan to work and do so in a way that added commercial and place value to the City as a whole. We coordinated with transport, highways and drainage engineers and developed a commercially focused plan that could be adopted by the Council and the private landowner.

The Outcome

The Council’s Cabinet formally endorsed the proposals for a major transformation of the area into the Canal Quarter in May 2021. The first intervention of this, the reopening of the Dock Feeder canal commenced in Summer 2022.


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