The Kingsway Urban Park, Swansea
A £13m transformation of a formerly vehicle dominated road into a new green street.
Project information
Client
City & County of Swansea Council
Partners
WSP
Location
Swansea City Centre
The Challenge
Driven by shifts in retail habits and night-time culture, Swansea’s Kingsway had lost its purpose, leaving a key city centre corridor directionless and declining. The situation was further compounded by a late 1990s traffic scheme that prioritised motorised vehicles over pedestrians, leaving the street dominated by heavy-handed transport infrastructure.
To reverse this trajectory and attract new residents and businesses to the city centre, Swansea Council initiated a major landscape-led regeneration project to transform the tired, transit-heavy thoroughfare into a vibrant, green "Urban Park."
Our Role
Working as urban designers and landscape architects, we were an integral part of Swansea Council’s multi-disciplinary project team—collaborating closely with internal specialists in transport planning, highways design, and project management to shape and guide the overall spatial concept for the street.
Our key contributions included:
Defining Design Vision: Formulated critical success factors and design objectives to guide all subsequent detailed decisions.
Ensuring Quality & Alignment: Conducted a comprehensive Quality Audit following Department for Transport (DfT) guidance to ensure all spatial proposals directly supported the project's strategic goals.
Testing & Refining Concepts: Developed sketch concepts, section drawings, CGIs, and physical models to explore traffic management options and maximise the impact of the capital budget across a wide area.
Material & Product Selection: Collaborated directly with suppliers to test product performance and deployment within the newly envisioned streetscape.
Public & Political Engagement: Authored the Draft General Arrangement Plan used for public and political consultations, which received overwhelming support.
Delivery Preparation: Produced the Final General Arrangement Plan that formed the foundation for the Council’s detailed engineering designs and tender documents.
