City Planning Dilemma's

I am a country girl at heart, given half a chance I would live by the sea, but I would hate to live in a city for any length of time. However, we find ourselves spending more time in Sheffield lately being as we are The Dancing Queens taxi service. I do think we should take care of our cities and love them a bit more than we seem to do in the UK. Sheffield has suffered a real identity crisis over the past few decades. Gone is the heavy industry and almost all of the cutlery manufacture that it was famous for. One of the most talked about subjects of late has been the strange decision that English Heritage took in adopting Park Hill flats when they became a grade 2 listed building in 1997. (Grade 2 listed puts this building in the top 7% of the most important buildings in the country making it as architecturally and historically significant as the Royal Academy of Art or Harrods. When they were built in the very early 60's it was the most groundbreaking and ambitious inner-city housing project of its day. It was built as social housing and to clear up the post-war slums. At Weston Park Museum, they have a really interesting feature about the flats and video of some of the first occupants who absolutely loved them. However in recent years, they became a big problem and were very run down. I think the grade 2 listing was a shock to almost all Sheffielders who mostly believed that they should be pulled down. Initially I felt that they should be pulled down, but I recently saw a programme on TV that showed what English Heritage wanted to do with this absolutely vast building. I hope that they can pull it off because when all said and done, the building has been part of the city skyline for over 50 years now, but I have to say that their plan looked flawed ie They didn't appear to have a realistic grasp on costs and the very posh bloke from EH seemed to be treating the whole thing as a huge joke. You can read more about the project here: http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/server/show/nav.20604 and my photo (which was taken whilst wizzing round a very busy roundabout - I wasn't driving at the time I hasten to add)doesn't show the enormous scale of the building, just the stage that they are at (and have been for a while!!). I was glad when city planners got rid of "The hole in the road" (as featured at the start of the most excellent film "The Full Monty"). The hole in the road started off as an amazing architectural feature of the city, but then became full of drunks and drug users and a bit of a no go area. Instead of dealing with the human problem, they got rid of the hole in the road. Now I wish it was still there. I saw an exhibition recently at the YSP and some eminent Japanese architect (who's name escapes me) had built something very similar in New York for Goldman Sachs. It bothered me that we had something so special here once, and we got rid of it.



Something else that didn't quite go to plan was the "Museum of Popluar Music", however pop music's loss was the Hallam University Student Union gain and it really is a super building (there are 2 of these silver buildings side by side.)

When you alight from the train at Sheffield station, you are greated by poetry on the University building across the road. We really are a civilised and cultural bunch here in the north.

The old town hall is a wonderful building. My kids used to think it was Hogwarts when they were little. This is the side view which faces into the Peace Gardens.

In front of the town hall are stars in the pavement to commemorate Sheffields good and great - we were suprised to discover Gordon Banks was born in Sheffield!

There are some stunning water features in the grounds of the Peace Gardens

A self portrait!!

And finally, the Birthday boy had a great time. He invited 5 of his mates round for hotdogs and I still had to provide party games!!!!! He is a total petrol head and loves cars. His "surprise" is a day out (in about 2 weeks time) to a race track where they will teach him the basics of driving, then let him drive around (with an instructor and dual controls I hope) in an Aston Martin - his favorite car of all time. I hope he treats it with more respect than the go kart!!!