Landscape Character Supplementary Planning Document ...

City of Bradford Metropolitan District CouncilLocal Development Framework For Bradfordskylines. The industrial archaeology gives the area a strong historical character andvisual identity.Nottinghamshire Derbyshire and Yorkshire Coalfield6.6 This is a large area of densely settled countryside embracing major industrial towns. Ithas a low lying, rolling landform with escarpments and broad valley resulting fromsloping alternate bands of wet shales and dry sandstones. This area is dominated byextensive urban influences and rapid expansion of industry, settlement and transportnetworks. Likewise the rural areas suffer from urban fringe influences and the resultinglandscape is downgraded – the soils are relatively poor and the graded pastures arebounded by a mixture of walls, occasional hedgerows and post and wire fencing.‘Horticulture’ is a popular activity among the complex mosaic of land uses, ribbondevelopment and transport route dominated landscape. Broad-leaved woodlands, oftenlarge and fragmented, are relatively common.6.7 The Countryside Commission’s character areas have been determined at a national leveland are therefore broad-brush descriptions of large areas of countryside. Theboundaries between theses are not distinct and often occur gradually over severalkilometres.Section 9.0 of this report however, defines the character of Bradford in more detail at alocal scale by subdividing the district into 10 Character Areas on the basis of their overallcharacteristics and the recurring pattern of landscape elements contained within them.These Landscape Character Areas are defined on a geographical basis and namedaccording to local terminology for ease of identification and recognition by a wide rangeof people.6.8 The area covered excludes the urban core of Bradford City Centre, Shipley, Keighleyand Ilkley. It also excludes all ‘inset’ areas defined as ‘urban’ or ‘village’ in the rUDP. Itis intended that these areas will be the subjects of settlement studies at some futuredate.6.9 It is important to recognise that the Bradford Metropolitan District Council boundaryconstitutes an artificial boundary in landscape terms. In many cases landscapecharacter areas and landscape types would extend into adjoining local authorities, agood example being the Pennine Upland.Landscape Character Supplementary Planning DocumentOctober 2008 Page 18