A PLANE sweeps under the Itchen Bridge and barrelrolls into first position in the Southampton leg of the air race world series.

The bridge and promenade along the riverbank are packed with spectators cheering the acrobatics of the daredevil pilot, while down below the city’s summer-long sandy beach is packed with tourists and residents lazily basking in the sun.

Back on the water,a rowing race slips past the city’s latest cultural building, a testament to its growing reputation as a destination for European city breaks.

It’s the type of vision for the Itchen River that a group of architects, urban designers and councillors hope will be embraced by residents and civic leaders.

A bid to transform the city’s riverfront in the coming decades will shortly be taken to the doors of the council’s ruling Tory Cabinet.

And architect Paul Bulkeley, who is spearheading the call for change, hopes they will sign up to the idea.

“For a long time Southampton has punched well below its weight for urban qualities, particularly the spaces between buildings,” he said.

“Yet it has as much potential as some of the greatest cities in Europe. We need to seize that.

“It has all the ingredients to become a city that people travel to, like Bilbao and Barcelona, that people go to because it’s a great place to be.”

Mr Bulkeley said the focus of regeneration needed to be rebalanced to include the riverfront instead of being preoccupation with dockland owned by ABP around the Royal Pier district, where a developer is busy drawing up a yet another vision for a “world-class waterfront”.

How realistic is the vision for the river? - click here

“Southampton has far too long seen itself as a sea city and focuses on its relationship with the sea, but it has way more water frontage with the river,” Mr Bulkeley said.

Southampton sheriff councillor Liz Mizon, one of a number of councillors from Southampton, Brighton and Portsmouth who went on a recent £426-per-person study visit to Porto as part of a taxpayer-funded programme to boost their aspirations for public spaces, said: “We are so lucky to have this stretch of water, and it could be a real focus for Southampton, but at the moment it’s not much.

“The essential thing is we have got to have a plan.

"Even if it takes 100 years.”

But if it is going to become a reality then the plan must surely include a thorough clean-up of the shores of the Itchen after the Daily Echo reported how a mountain of junk was dredged from its banks.

Almost single-handedly, 74-year-old Ralph Clegg pulled out bikes, trollies and vacuum cleaners from the Itchen after he became fed up with no one clearing it.

Despite repeated calls for someone to take action Mr Clegg decided to do something about it himself.

Council bosses accused of taking European 'jolly' - click here

Labour spokesman for economic development Councillor Sarah Bogle recently urged fellow councillors to back a 20- year vision to regenerate the Itchen riverfront.

It followed ambitious announcements that city leaders were aspiring to make a joint bid with Portsmouth to become a European city of culture by 2026.

But ruling Conservatives said they didn’t want to waste hundreds of thousands of pounds on strategies and feasibility studies, when the council didn’t own much of the land in question and much of it was being used for various commercial activities.

Cabinet member for economic development Councillor Royston Smith said: “I have no problem having some ambition, but it has to be tempered by some realism. A masterplan would cost a fortune. We don’t have the money, and it’s not particularly realistic.”

However, he added that the exit and sale of the council-owned Town Depot would provide an opportunity for redevelopment.

Yet Mr Bulkeley, from Winchester-based architects Snug Projects and a lecturer at Southampton University, said land ownership was “always one of the excuses” made, but it was possible to have cultural development on privately owned land.

He said that with strong political leadership and vision the gradual transformation, likely from humble beginnings, was possible.

But councillors had to have patience, commitment and the “courage to say no” to developments that didn’t fit.

He slammed the city as one of the worst examples of “piecemeal development” which often brings quick political gain but little longerterm cultural identity.

He said the city needed to use planning policy for change rather than let it become a “chain around the city’s neck”.

Mr Bulkeley said there also needed to be a public debate to capture, broaden and raise the aspirations of residents.

While a £40,000 consultants’ report to inform a 2015 visitor destination vision included scant new ideas – other than renaming Mayflower Park – it confirmed most people wanted “more to see and do on the waterfront”

and that Southampton needed to raise its game.

As major developments around the city, hailed as a “renaissance”, have one by one fallen or stalled under the economic downturn, including a 550-home development on the former Meridian TV site, Mr Bulkeley said it was now the ideal time to “reflect” on the future, starting by “accepting the city is not as good as it should be”.