Designing an ambitious, viable masterplan to transform a forgotten riverside embankment

Peterborough Embankment Masterplan

A seemingly forgotten riverside embankment area along the River Nene, Peterborough Embankment provides a green area close to Peterborough’s city centre and cathedral. Peterborough City Council wanted to transform the embankment into a new city gateway and destination for area residents, so they reached out to us. Leading this once-in-a-generation riverside transformation, our integrated team of planners, designers, and engineers delivered a community-focused masterplan.

Peterborough Embankment will play an important role in people’s lives, so the team engaged with the community, council, and key stakeholders to learn their vision for the area. Building trusted relationships with key stakeholders helped us overcome challenges at the site and develop an adaptable framework of proposals—and allowed individual proposals to be delivered in isolation, speeding up development. Carefully balancing investment opportunities with increased river access and green space, the ambitious, viable masterplan, brought forward through funding from the Government’s Towns Fund and Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority, also includes a theatre, university campus, homes, a riverside park, and a new bridge connecting communities on either side of the river through the Towns Fund.

Our plan enhances connectivity, green space, and river access, and creates valuable community facilities that support tourism and the local economy, that was also deliverable in terms of technical matters including transport, acoustics, drainage, and ground conditions.