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If you walk along the waters of the Bay by the Norwegian Church in Cardiff Bay today, there is a joyful sense of space.

Behind you, there are trees on a thin patch of grass and as you walk past the church you come to a paved open space with a sculpture in the middle.

In front of you, the views stretch across the Bay.

As you turn around, you look back across to open space of Roath Basin where that navy destroyer was parked during the Nato Summit in 2014.

Yet much of the character of this place will change dramatically under proposals by Associated British Ports for a multi-building development of apartments they are calling Dolffin Quay.

The development of the Bay has been one of Cardiff’s greatest achievements in the most recent decades.

Yet there are now serious questions to be asked about whether some of the schemes being put forward have too little consideration for the public and for the needs and character of the city that they are bringing into being.

This is not just true of Dolffin Quay but also of the major developments of bars, restaurants, apartments, offices and shops planned for the Brains Brewery and surrounding land.

It is also true of the Central Square scheme in front of the railway station which has at its heart a bus station that some experts say is already too small.

How will that cope if the city grows as expected in the coming decades?

The Dolffin Quay proposal is a powerful example because, unlike what developers Rightacres are calling Central Quay in the city centre, it is a site that tens of thousands of people visit in the summer to enjoy.

It is also a site whose redevelopment has only been made possible because of the huge sums of public money that have been poured into building bridges and other infrastructure to open up the former docklands for development – not to forget the many millions that paid for the barrage itself.

(Image: Flickr/Ben Salter)

The question now is not whether redevelopment should take place but the extent to which the powerful argument in favour of creating spaces that can be used and enjoyed by the public should be weighed against the desire to cram in more and more flats.

If you look at the digital impressions of the proposals for Dolffin Quay, it is hard to believe that the public has been considered at all.

The strip of green with trees running behind the waterfront walkway is gone, replaced by a series of buildings.

Here's one artist's impression

The walkway itself is gone, enabling the buildings to look directly out over the water.

The public is left walking behind a series of buildings with little sense of the joyful expanse of water that their taxes have paid to create.

In front of them is a towering 20-storey wedge-shaped block of apartments, all of which will certainly have wonderful views and cast slightly less wonderful shade.

It isn’t entirely clear what the paved area on the other side of the Norwegian Church will become but it certainly isn’t the wide-open public space that's there today.

It has another building on it, leaving what looks like a small public terrace in front of it.

Facing Roath Basin, another building hogs the views of the water that are currently enjoyed by the public thanks to a second paved area with seats and bordered by railings.

This is a fundamental change of an area that will turn what has been a well-used public space into a residential complex.

In the middle of that, the Norwegian Church will become an isolated curio.

Given everything else that is planned for the neighbouring bayfront area, including the Box City of converted shipping containers and whatever housing development will soon doubtless be revealed for the site currently occupied by the Doctor Who Experience and World of Boats, it is surely right that we are asking questions.

(Image: EllisWilliams Architects)

Not least, why is someone not fighting to protect the interests of the thousands who don’t want to spend hundreds of thousands on an apartment in the Bay, or a fortune on lunch in a converted container, but just want to enjoy a nice walk and take in the Bay, the city’s history and its transformation?

How is it that the huge sums of public money spent on the Bay will end up bolstering the profits of a giant corporation like ABP, rather than by building a city Cardiffians can use and enjoy?

The argument is admittedly far less strong for the Central Quay development as the area it will replace is little loved.

But the fact is that we will all live and work in the city it creates and that risks becoming a city of shadows; a city with little public space that will be characterised by tall buildings hemming in narrow roads.

We will also all be stuck in the traffic jams that are only going to become worse because we’re building a city whose public transport infrastructure simply cannot cope.

Development may be vital to sustain jobs, create the homes that people in South Wales want to live in and to continue the extraordinary journey of transformation that Wales’ capital has been on since the 1980s.

Yet surely we that doesn’t mean being blind to the nature of the city that we will be building?

The contrast between the civic centre, Bute Park, even the broad avenues of St Mary Street and Queen Street and what is now being proposed in this latest phase of development for the city is vast.

Without the vast coal wealth that built those grand Victorian treasures, that is inevitable.

But it doesn’t mean we have to be so blinded by digitally-produced artists’ impressions of tower blocks that we fail to stand up for a bit of public space in and amongst the tower blocks.