What do you have against Swansea? I think its lovely.
I don't know, or haven't been in the others in the last few years.
CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Infrastructure
Foreign Policy article on Independence, with focus on Edinburgh urban planning
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Posted 11 years ago #
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One of the real charms of Edinburgh is the wider areas outside the city centre - my experience of quite a few UK cities is that outside the nice centres where there's been a lot of investment and regeneration and there are fancy buildings, you can very quickly get into the badlands. I don't feel like that at all in Edinburgh.
Hmm, depends where you go!
I can't help agreeing with the American woman who thought Stockbridge looked "poor". When you think about it, we only think it is posh because we know it is posh. It doesn't look it and neither does Morningside.
Posted 11 years ago # -
Northampton and Middlesbrough are both generally quite overall-impression tattered, though both have better pedestrianised city centres. Doncaster is fairly profoundly manky from a passing-through POV. Nottingham has a similar mix of tidy-historic-ish, clean-new and EURGH-aged-REALLY-badly, with some similar pedestrians-forgotten-in-favour-of-cars spots.
Posted 11 years ago # -
Swansea is one of my 'hearsay' cities - I knew someone a few years back who hated it, sounded like running the gauntlet of death every time he got on the bike, and thought it missed out on beautifying in comparison to Cardiff.
But then it's all personal opinion, I think you're being too hard on Edinburgh. Horses for courses.
I was thinking of the 'impression on getting off the train' idea. Most recent ones I can remember would be Newcastle (lovely grand station, out onto a main road, but not far from some pedestrianised areas or heading the opposite direction down precipitous Dean Street to the Tyne Bridge); Leeds (thinking on it, we ended up dining al fresco in a clearly newly renovated square); Glasgow (coming out of Central is nice, Queen Street leaves a lot to be desired - especially given they've shelved plans to redevelop the square); Aberdeen (straight into a nice new shopping centre, so it feels modern and clean and lovely, but from there it's into the Trinity Centre or onto Union Street - which in itself is a missed opportunity after years of talking of pedestrianising it but bloody Brian Souter or whatever his name is holding some kind of hex over the Council).
EDIT: forgot about Edinburgh of course. Princes Street us tired, but there is the iconic Castle view to save it at least (shouldn't underestimate the impact of that location - I can still remember the first time I arrived in Edinburgh 13 years ago and was blown away by it, whereas we tend to take it for granted now).
Posted 11 years ago # -
"It doesn't look it and neither does Morningside"
Well, it depends where exactly you go, both have good and bad. Its like judging a city on what you see arriving by train - generally the crappy bits are next to the line.
There are many parts of the article which are
correct.I spoke to someone living the american dream last week - great home, great schools,lots to do, sunshine etc. Just dont venture downtown after sundown or you WILL be mugged (or worse).
Edinburgh needs to improve in many ways. That said, I wouldnt live anywhere else.
Posted 11 years ago # -
She should have visited Stockbridge or Dean Bridge in the late sixties if she wanted to see it looking poor! I've spent a lot of time looking at photos of Edinburgh from the 50s through to the 70s, large parts of it really DID look like a slum back then. It's hard to appreciate that sites currently inhabited by ugly
concrete blocks were an improvement on what was there before, but very often they were. That's not an excuse to carry on building rubbish, trendy buildings that look expensive but are ultimately cheap (the faux-sandstone and glass-clad boxes that are currently in fashion will probably end up looking as dreadful as the Banana flats in Leith given 30 years time.)Was she expecting all of Edinburgh to look like Multrees Walk? I'm not bothered if places aren't all wine bars and high class handbag emporia, I quite like a bit of homely "urban charm". It's not perfect, but it's home.
Of course when I'm in power all the ugly forest of street signage tat will come down and the whole place will look much better.
I'd dread to think that someone might come along and "sterilise" Edinburgh to make it look less "poor".
Posted 11 years ago # -
For a city undergoing an "urban renaissance", Manchester is remarkably grotty in places. And you want rough tarmac? It's got it in spades. And a ped/cyclist-hostile road system and users.
There aren't really any cities that are pristine and, to be honest, I doubt they'd be interesting places to live.
Posted 11 years ago # -
Singapore would be the closest I've come across to pristine - but we made the effort to wander a bit further and even there you can find grotty bits that can be much more interesting.
For grot Kolkata takes some beating (though found it much more interesting that New Delhi, while Varanasi was grotty AND particularly unpleasant).
Paris seems to maintain an overall sense of 'nice AND interesting'. Not pristine, but not rundown (though you'll be able to find that in the 'burbs). And has the benefit of the Velib. And Copenhagen as well. Not as taken with Amsterdam. I'd probably put Edinburgh after the former two, before the latter.
But it's all a bit pointless as it really really is down to personal opinion. In the words of Rob from High Fidelity, "How can having an opinion be wrong?" You can disagree (and we clearly are), but everyone is 'right' because for them their personal preference can't be anything but right for them (f'rinstance I'll bet there are plenty people who do actually like Hull).
Posted 11 years ago # -
What people don't get is that research funding to Unis is now dependent on something called 'impact'. so being controversial, getting into FP and all this media attention is basically all just fodder for the PR machine and the next REF. Perverse incentives produce perverse results.
Posted 11 years ago # -
Kaputnik - Was she expecting all of Edinburgh to look like Multrees Walk? I'm not bothered if places aren't all wine bars and high class handbag emporia, I quite like a bit of homely "urban charm". It's not perfect, but it's home.
I don't know. I think perhaps she was hoping for it not to be all charity and pound shops and nose-to-tail cars. Or at least that is what I would hope. Stockbridge does have some nice independent shops but they are tucked away in among the above mentioned.
Wingpig Doncaster is fairly profoundly manky from a passing-through POV.
From a having-a-night-out there POV the pubs all have bouncers and all the bouncers have stab-proof vests. But it STILL isn't as shabby as Edinburgh.WC Swansea is one of my 'hearsay' cities - I knew someone a few years back who hated it, sounded like running the gauntlet of death every time he got on the bike, and thought it missed out on beautifying in comparison to Cardiff.
I didn't take my bike but I didn't see anything that would have prevented me from taking it next time (apart from the overcrowded train on the way there) and it has plenty of off-road cycle paths. It may have improved since your friend lived there.
All that said, if we are ever going to get out of here, we are going to need to sell our house so from that point of view, I am happy that not many people can see past "ooh look at the pretty castle!". Which is kind of ironic because it goes right back to what was said in the article - that this (in part) is the problem.
Ah well, never mind. Hey everyone, look at the pretty castle!
Posted 11 years ago # -
"
I'd dread to think that someone might come along and "sterilise" Edinburgh to make it look less "poor".Already happened.
Some of the closes off the High Street used to be derelict.
Grassmarket was where the hostels used to be (not the backpacking sort).
Not saying that was the good old days and now things are sanitised.
Generally people have got more affluent and expect more.
No more single ends (unless you count studio apartments!)
You can blame 'the council' for a lot (I do - over many years) but there's a limit to what it can do (or stop).
Boom time is over. The council can no longer do joint enterprises like Edinburgh Park.
Its great housing (re-)development arm withered ("originally set out plans for the development of 2200 new publicly-owned homes").
Not that private/commercial developers have done any better - Granton/Newhaven, Springside, Caltongate etc.
Edinburgh is fairly safe (though a cycling associate had a kicking from a drunken pedestrian at the weekend), with greenspaces and galleries and hills and shopping.
The traffic is of course a disgrace - but this is just another UK city where the 'traffic engineers' hold too much sway and the politicians still imagine that the only people who vote are drivers.
Posted 11 years ago # -
Let's face it, most cities in the UK are pretty much grotty and horrible, including much of London outside the inner core. In comparison, Edinburgh is quite nice.
You have to go out of the UK to see how things are done better. Netherlands, Germany, Scandinavia, Switzerland...
On the other hand if you go further east or south you'll find urban planning disasters aplenty, as well as the touristic, beautifully preserved museum towns...*
* - which I suppose is largely how visitors see Edinburgh.
Posted 11 years ago # -
I expect a lot of those cities at least have an excuse - like not having a huge financial sector and a very large number of enormous houses whose occupants must be paying a shedload of council tax rather than are just being very badly and/or corruptly managed.
Posted 11 years ago # -
From what I pick up off of Twitter, I don't imagine for one minute that there is a town or city in the UK where cycling advocates aren't fighting every step of the way for tiny improvements and concessions and indeed things aren't going largely backwards in the face of a rising tide of well-meaning but empty words from some politicians, downright hostilities from other, a hugely negative local press sector and private developments that do little more than create new places to drive to and from that the world can really do without (more of the same shops, but in an out-of-town location where the big retailers can pay lower rates and don't have to worry about pesky conservation legislation).
There's a few exceptions. Probably. Even Cambridge is building big old shopping-barn cities and drive-to housing estates on its outskirts and frittering hundreds of millions away on a long-distance guided bus system.
Posted 11 years ago # -
This is about more, way more than just cycling facilities (though those of course are a constant source of irritation in this Iconic Model Cycling City). I am genuinely surprised so few people can see past this. I have not lived everywhere in the UK of course but I have never lived anywhere as blatantly badly managed as here.
The kowtowing to The Otherwise Law Abiding Motorist is a UK-wide problem.
Posted 11 years ago # -
* Although the Welsh Assembly do show some signs of concession towards walking and cycling.
Posted 11 years ago # -
"I have not lived everywhere in the UK of course but I have never lived anywhere as blatantly badly managed as here"
I'll go back to Aberdeen - certainly whenever I go home the newspapers are full of mismanagement, and the stories from my brother living in the city back that up. The council is basically broke, and that's without a tram line to pay for!
(none of which excuses mismanagement in Edinburgh, which is rife, but I think there probably are places which can match and 'better' Embra - which means that the differentiating factor isn't the mismanagement, but gets into the peripheral stuff like cycling provision and pretty castles).
Posted 11 years ago # -
The slap-in-your-face about Edinburgh is that it does kow-tow to the car and ultimately goes about it in such a dreadful way that everyone (even cars) generally lose. This of course provides much copy for the Chipwrapper to bleat about, it would probably go out of business (sooner than it is going to) without being able to moan about traffic, roads or parking tickets.
Of course the council can't seem to see that our Mediaeval-Georgian-Victorian street layouts just aren't up to the task of providing driving utopia and never will be, but they still seem determined to do everything possible to make the reasonable alternatives of cycling, walking (which you think in a compact city like ours would naturally be the obvious solution) or public transport unfriendly, inaccessable or off-putting.
Posted 11 years ago # -
I only lived nearby rather than within it but Lincoln has made some spectacularly stupid decisions, with a few attempts at trying its best and getting something vaguely right scattered here and there. The pedestrian bridge over the level crossing on the high street was demolished almost twenty years ago, with no replacement. The nice big bus station near the successfully-redeveloped new university area was sold off to become a Debenhams, leaving the offputtingly scummy neglected (but increasingly busy due to the relatively sensibly-operated bus services) bus station in the dead zone created by Pelham Bridge. The rail station could be a bustling hub right near the centre if it were not so ignored. Attempts to make main roads run through pedestrian areas leave chunks of pedestrianised centre cut off from each other. A redeveloped shopping centre has been reduced almost to the level of dereliction as the thing it replaced. On the plus side there is almost decent pedestrian accommodation through/to the centremost out-of-town development, though it's still a unfriendly frenzy of trafficjam at busy times. The nice hilltop cathedral has an ugly concrete box hotel within eyeshot of it. Bits of the castle are an actual prison. The relatively modern county hospital is far from free from problems.
Posted 11 years ago # -
"
Apart from visiting the city for various Party Conferences over recent months, I've not had time to 'be a tourist' in Manchester for years; and was duly very impressed with all the city has to offer ..."
http://andrewburns.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/manchester-weekend.html
Wonder what 'ideas' he'll bring back and try to apply!
Posted 11 years ago # -
"Council poll: Edinburgh happy with way city is run"
http://www.scotsman.com/news/council-poll-edinburgh-happy-with-way-city-is-run-1-2800333
"A record number of people have hailed the Capital as a good place to live, with the city scoring a 97 per cent satisfaction rating in the council’s annual survey."
Posted 11 years ago # -
Posted 11 years ago #
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I can attest that York, despite being an historic and compact city, is pretty awful for pedestrians and cyclists even within the city walls.
The usual stuff:
- very narrow pavements in high ped usage areas.
- you can wait for days for a 'green man' at lights.
- most of the road given over to cars.
- frequently 3 or more cars 'following through on red'.
- cycles lanes painted on only where this causes no change to the number of motor car lanes they can fit in.
- motor traffic through-routes traversing the mediaeval parts of the city...I can tell you it was very stressful letting our toddler walk there (sometimes he refuses to go in the buggy - and why should he have to?)
Posted 11 years ago # -
"Wonder what 'ideas' he'll bring back and try to apply!"
How about a tram network? ;-) Or (one of the few good-for-cycling things I saw in Manchester when I was there in December) an indoor velodrome?
Looks like he had a good weekend though - MOSI and the John Rylands Library are both very impressive.
Posted 11 years ago #
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