IT IS said that cranes on a city's skyline are a sign of prosperity and renewal.

In Oxford, nowhere is this more on display than at the Westgate Shopping Centre.

As the £440m redevelopment rumbles on, huge cranes loom above the site which is now finally starting to take shape.

One of the main movers behind those cranes is David Edwards.

After a five year stint, the 60-year-old is just about to step down as Oxford City Council's executive director of regeneration and housing.

During his tenure he has overseen a number of major schemes – many revealed in the pages of this newspaper – including the Barton Park estate, the planned redevelopments of the Oxpens, Oxford Rail Station, Frideswide Square and more recently the proposed overhaul of Osney Mead industrial estate.

Barton Park aside, a signature accomplishment is how they combine into a fresh vision for the city's West End – something the city council has formed a joint company with Nuffield College to deliver.

Mr Edwards told The Oxford Mail: "It is a major regeneration and that is exciting. For anyone involved in planning, particularly in a marvellous city like Oxford, you cannot fail to develop a big site like this when you get the opportunity."

Where at the moment there is an auto centre and a temporary car park, there could soon be new public spaces, offices, shops, leisure facilities, up to 500 homes and possibly a hotel.

It is the next step, with hopes that construction will start within the next two year, in an ambitious plan to redraw the area of the city stretching from there to Worcester Street.

Oxpens is seen as one of the only large city centre sites left to develop and the scheme overall is expected to be worth upwards of £200m.

But it is dwarfed by projects Mr Edwards has worked on in the past, which include some of the biggest UK development schemes in recent memory.

Thanks to a series of high-powered roles in government and its various agencies, he can boast involvement with the Channel Tunnel, the Eden Project, London's 2012 Olympic bid, the redevelopments of St Pancras and King's Cross stations and the 15,000-home Greenwich Peninsula proposals.

"They were big, big projects", he smiles. "But I've never really planned my career, I have just been very fortunate that it has worked out quite well."

Born in 1957, Mr Edwards briefly lived with his parents in Oxford when he was growing up. "My father worked for the university and we had a university house in Abingdon. I was very young, but I remember it had mice and a roof that leaked!"

The family later moved to Canterbury and he went to university in Aberdeen to qualify as a development surveyor, before doing a postgraduate degree in economics and planning at the London School of Economics.

He was appointed head of regeneration, land and property at the Department for Communities and Local Government in 2004, then director of English Partnerships – then England's regeneration agency – in 2007.

His appointment at Oxford City Council was originally supposed to last just a year, but he ended up staying and even moved here with his partner.

It is a city with, arguably, some of the most vexing housing and transport problems in the country. But although there is controversy around whether it should be allowed to expand, Mr Edwards is unequivocal: "Successful cities do regenerate, they grow, they change.

"We are a dynamic and diverse city, but for that to continue you have to plan. We are not a museum and we don't wish to become one."

He plans to remain involved in the Oxpens scheme and discussions about Oxford Station but is leaving the council to take a bigger role at the Paragon Community Housing Group.

"I just hope I've delivered the opportunities given to me and, hopefully, created some new ones," he says.

"I've got no pretensions about legacies or anything like that, but the city has started to realise its potential and that's really important – we will be seeing a lot more cranes."