Alan Dugdales Moustache
Well-Known Member
Birmingham spend big when they develop. Cov goes for unambitious mishmash of half baked ideas like West orchards, Cathedral lanes rather than a 20 year plan of redevelopment that bulldozes the whole lot and builds something that sucks people in from a 15 mile radius.It's all opinions, of course, but mine is that the city centre is an architectural monstrosity that started to go wrong at the point they put that ridiculous escalator through the middle of the upper precinct. From that day onwards it just went further backwards, at least in appearance, with the planners having no clear idea of what they wanted the city centre to be.
There are some nice bits still, of course, if you can dodge the deliveroo riders, but a lot of it just feels desolate and in desperate need of repurposing.
I doubt the current council have either the ability or funds to do it properly, so I don't see it improving any time soon, except perhaps in terms of student accommodation.
Rugby , for all its limitations, has built a huge retail park a mile and a half from it's town centre called Junction 1 and Elliots field, which gets people coming over from Northampton, Leicester, lutterworth and Coventry. True, it's not a city centre development and it has damaged trade in the town centre but I'd rather go there than broadgate.