City Centres

[cromwell]

just idly wondering about this.
There is a continuing push around these parts to make city centres better for cyclists and pedestrians. There were some letters in the Yorkshire Post saying how wonderful this is.
I wonder. In the same paper there was another story about Marks and Spencers. In the near future they will be closing more than thirty stores, but opening others. The stores they are closing are mostly in city centres, the ones they are opening mostly in retail parks.
This is because sales are down in city centres, but up in retail parks, where M&S say that there is more parking (and free parking).

Given that this is so you can only see that more stores will be moving out of the city centres to retail parks, for the exact same reasons.
So what's going to be left in the city centres?
Coffee shops, bars, charity shops and bookies, maybe.

So the cyclists and pedestrians will be OK, because there will be far fewer people in the city centre!

I know it's been a trend for a while, stores moving out of town. But I do get a bit nostalgic for the days of the bustling city centres and the markets, which have certainly declined from their glory days.

[Kaz]

Agreed! I do hope Gloucester escapes the M&S cull, it's pretty much the only decent shop left in the town centre We have the Outlet, but that's a different kind of shopping.....

[Suff]

You can always tell when a city, or town, centre is on it's last legs when McDonalds ups and leaves.

We saw this with Kirkcaldy a long time ago. M&S Kirkcaldy has already gone. Losing BHS, Littlewoods and now M&S has been a series of hammer blows to the town. OK Littlewoods and BHS were company failures, but nothing come in to replace them. Comparatively few people go to the town centre any more. They head for the huge trading estate on the outskirts of town right next to the main Fife distributor road. Parking in the town even in 2016 was easy. I went to college there in the 80's and the last thing I would call parking was easy.

Councils did it to themselves. Constantly raising taxes, reducing parking spaces, raising parking fee's and closing off roads to make traffic even harder. Telling themselves that if they just kept the cars out things would be "so much better". Well they are, they kept the cars out. And the people in them. Things are much less congested. There is little reason for people to go to the town centre any more.

Hardly a surprise that everything headed to the periphery. Compared to the 80's the town centre is a ghost town. This is what the replacement looks like.

[cromwell]

You can always tell when a city, or town, centre is on it's last legs when McDonalds ups and leaves.

Castleford never had a McDonalds, but it did have a Burger King. Which shut some years since.

Councils did it to themselves. Constantly raising taxes, reducing parking spaces, raising parking fee's and closing off roads to make traffic even harder. Telling themselves that if they just kept the cars out things would be "so much better". Well they are, they kept the cars out. And the people in them. Things are much less congested. There is little reason for people to go to the town centre any more.

This, absolutely.

[TheOstrich]

We have a slightly different problem here. It's not the local council - our town centre is pretty much 100% owned by one of two local property developers.

He's just sitting on his investments awaiting development opportunities. For example, he owns the Co-op building right in the centre, which was the focal point store in the High Street. In 2012, a cooler caught fire and the interior of the place was gutted.

The Co-op was tied into a lease until 2021, and couldn't get out of it. So he just sat back and collected the rent. The building has remained derelict for all those years. It's not the only derelict building in the town either.
Now the Co-op has finished paying rent effectively for nothing, he is seeking planning permission to turn the site into housing. As a commercial centre, the High Street is already dying on its feet, mainly charity shops and takeaways.
Any modern commercial development is now out of town on the Trading Estate; that's where Aldi have set up shop and a Home Bargains store is being built to open next year.

[Workingman]

In the 1960s Leeds city centre became a traffic free zone. It was about a mile square bounded by the Headrow, Duke Street, Boar Lane and Park Row. The only vehicles allowed were deliveries, and then only after the shops closed. Over the years it has spilled out beyond its original boundary so we now have the one-way Leeds Loop around it. The original boundary roads are now buses and taxis only. We have become used to being car free, and it works.

The original Leeds, at the start of the industrial revolution, was a collection of about seven villages with Leeds the ford across the river Aire. Those villages still have their old high streets but also now have multi-outlet shopping centres with plenty of parking.

Leeds never went down the out of town route of a Meadowhall or Trafford Centre, though it does have a the much smaller White Rose shopping centre at Beeston. Instead it went for developing Trinity in the centre of the original traffic free zone. It's a bit like Birmingham's Bull Ring, totally covered, lots of escalators and moving walkways.

I guess that there is no one-size-fits-all solution.

[cromwell]

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[cromwell]

Strange I posted this yesterday; today the Sunday Telegraph has run a story on the small Gloucestershire town of Thornbury, population 12,500.

In June 2020 South Gloucestershire council closed Thornbury High Street to through traffic at a cost of £4 million. The council had been promised millions by Grant Shapps for his green transport revolution, intended to promote social distancing, cycling and walking. The council held a "consultation" whereby 65% of the 2,890 people who responded opposed the scheme.

The council leader Toby Savage said that actually the move was very popular, but those in favour of it were reluctant to say so!

The result has been shops closing and a drop in footfall. People who used to pull up in a car and spend £20 now no longer do so.

So residents had another vote. 72% wanted the High Street to be restored to what it was. A council spokesman said that they believed in the democratic process but it was going to pedestrianise the High Street and keep the bus lane anyway. Mr Toby Savage refused to be interviewed.

John mills aged 100 said "Now, nobody comes to the town centre".

So there you go. A government buying off local councils with promises of big money and the local council going along with it over the objections of the local majority and small businesses.

I honestly think this government, if asked why they are punishing the small businessman, wouldn't have an answer. It's just "Cars bad, pushbikes good". Do they think that people go to town to do their shopping on a pushbike?

[Workingman]

Isn't there a bit of confusion here - city centres v towns and high streets?

Cities, with their numbers, can cope with the new public transport, walk and cycling agendas of the anti car zealots, they have the infrastructure. Towns cannot, they do not have the population size.

It is towns like Kendal. Malton, Shrewsbury, Grantham, Hereford. Cas and others that are hit the worst. Once their town streets die their residents will have to drive miles to a city to do a decent shop. Tell me how that works for walkers, cyclists, air pollution and the environment?

Don't bother asking your council because they will not respond. I have tried.

[Suff]

Well it's not working for Edinburgh. It is slowly dying in the city centre and the tram didn't help with that one bit. In fact the Sturgeon take on Covid killed a whole load of businesses on Princess street just in those two years.

I have worked in the city, twice, 20 years apart.

I can tell you, categorically, that the change in the city centre, as far as a vibrant community of shopping and services, is significantly worse than it was 25 years ago and, even then, we were talking about the decline of the city centre.

They have, successfully, reduce the vehicles and parking, ramped parking costs to London levels and put in a ruinously expensive tram system which stopped short of its intended length as they ran out of money and it is basically empty outside rush hours.

Edinburgh is ringed with ever increasing out of town trading estates with free parking and easy access to the ring road and major trunk roads.

Lest it be forgotten, Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland and the seat of it's government and has the majority of high profile further education.

It is no mystery what has caused it. They were told at the time and they have continued on this manic path which they are determined to complete.

No UK Government Unicorn cash needed.