York Without Walls - Building a future for York

About

What is Without Walls?

For many people, York is a great place to live and the city has many assets. But what sort of place do we want York to be in the future? Is enough being done to make the best use of our assets for everyone’s benefit? And how can we build upon the city’s distinctiveness to improve it still further?

With a healthy economy and low unemployment, York compares well when measured against other British cities. There are now huge opportunities for the city that will shape the next thirty years. As well as these there are challenges such as congestion, rising house prices and skills shortages which we need to deal with in order to remain competitive

‘Without Walls’ is a group of people who are working together to develop a shared vision and look at ways to improve quality of life for people in the city. This partnership (officially the Local Strategic Partnership or LSP) is made up of representatives of public, voluntary and business organisations in York.  Partners include the police, council, health, voluntary agencies and local businesses.

The result of their work is the Sustainable Community Strategy, based around seven ‘themes’ - areas we want to concentrate on to improve the quality of life for everyone in the city over the next twenty years or so.

The themes are:

• A Sustainable City
• A Thriving City
• A Learning City
• A City Of Culture
• A Safer City
• A Healthy City
• An Inclusive City

Without Walls also have to produce a Local Area Agreement, which is the three-year delivery plan for the community strategy.

Festival of Ideas

Throughout the summer of 2003, Without Walls asked residents and visitors about the kind of York they wanted to see in the future. This consultation was called the ‘Festival of Ideas’ and the comments gathered were used to produce York’s first ever Vision and Community Strategy. That strategy included a promise that we would review it after three years, and so in Autumn 2007, Without Walls asked residents once again to join in the discussion about York’s future through the Festival of Ideas 2.  This built on the earlier consultation, but also tried to tackle some of the more difficult new challenges facing the city.  Hundreds of people registered their ideas, raised concerns and asked questions about what York will be like in the future.

The Vision

The vision for York was developed following the extensive consultation through the first Festival of Ideas in 2003 mentioned above. Residents and visitors took part in producing a vision for the future that is still valid four years on.

Our vision is to:

•     build confident, creative and inclusive communities
•     be a leading environmentally-friendly city
•     be at the forefront of innovation and change with a prosperous and thriving economy
•     be a world class centre for education and learning for all
•     celebrate our historic past whilst creating a successful and thriving future

Many people would agree that the majority of York’s residents are relatively well off. Even so, we must plan for the future because there are a number of important challenges facing the city.  

We want to make sure that everyone can share in the city’s success, especially those living in deprived neighbourhoods or who are disadvantaged in some way. We need to be certain that growth of the city will not spoil York’s special qualities and that we reduce our impact on the environment.  We have to plan for enough houses that people can afford and we need to improve transport and promote alternatives to car travel.

The following pages explain who will take the lead in making improvements and what you can do to help.