St James' Park

[timeEd32]

As an outsider with little connection to the city outside of the football club I can tell you that it is a beautiful place and miles better than anything I've seen in Leeds or Manchester. My wife, who has zero connection to the city, really loved it and she's generally 'meh' about England.

[Guest chopey]

Heartbreaking

[Guest Howaythetoon]

Whoever said Newcastle is becoming a bit like Leeds/Manchester is right IMO. Far too many sterile looking, cheap and bland buildings popping up in prime real estate areas too. Thankfully I rarely visit the Centre these days, its awful.

 

I appreciate I am new on here so I say this with all due respect, but you are talking nonsense when you say the city centre is 'awful'. I don't live in the city anymore, but I love close enough that it is always my destination of choice when going shopping etc. with the kids. I love taking them to the places I enjoyed as a young boy: Fenwicks (toy department!), Mark Toney's for an ice cream, Exhibition Park etc.

 

Yes, I would agree that there is a proliferation of student flats and development that could equally be at home in the likes of Manchester or Leeds, but if you can't see past that to admire the majesty of Grey Street, Grey's Monument and Grainger Town (never mind the units at the ground floor, look up!), or enjoy the likes of Fenwicks (give me that any day of the week over Harvey Nicks) and the brilliant pubs, then that is a shame.

 

I'm not that well travelled but I've been a few places and nobody will ever convince me that my home town isn't the greatest city on earth.

 

And yes I'm biased.

 

I admire lots about our City Centre, but its becoming a pretty bland and uninspiring place these days for all kinds of things other than the occasional night out drinking and dining. Its focusing too much on students and office space and cheap and tatty shops and it can be awful at times. Although that's largely down to some of the people that inhabit it on a daily basis, beggars, charvers and fucking charity sales people etc.

 

I genuinely think remove the Quayside/Central Station area and Grey Street and its just a bland old boring City Centre. Northumberland Street is shit, The Gate is shit and the Bigg Market and Haymarket likewise. Although I quite like some of the pubs around the Haymarket.

 

I have probably visited every city and town in England, Scotland and Wales and although Newcastle is great compared to many, compared to say Leeds or Manchester, it certainly isn't the Greatest City on Earth.

 

I personally would like to see more open space for pop up events and market stalls. I'd like to see less traffic in the City Centre and I'd like to see some new additions aimed at leisure rather than shopping and fucking eating. How many shops and food joins does a relatively small City need. Things like an ice rink, an open exercise park for example. A water fountain maybe. Less ugly buildings for students and office space, less stupid shops that sell the same shit as any other but under a different name/brand and less fucking kebabs and bookies. Its Adelaide Terrace but NE1...

 

I'm probably a miserable old cunt these days, but the idea of me visiting the City Centre other than for a piss up with the lads sounds horrendous.

 

Me if I was in charge I'd build the world's biggest car park where the Arena is and all that other disused land and run electric buses into Town from there and make it a pedestrian area with more open space. Do away with the daft polluting buses clogging up the roads and other traffic. Similar to Manheim in Germany who has trams and small buses and a nice clean and freed up centre.

[ponsaelius]

I was in Leeds for the Bradford game. It really lacks a core centre to it. Also thought the area where the Armories is around the canals is underwhelming; very unoriginal post-industrial development.

Cracking museum though.

 

The whole area is typical of that 1990s/early 2000s regeneration. "Shit the industry has gone, let's get some office/service sector stuff in ASAP". Not bad by any means, and certainly important economically for cities in the north, but just a bit bland in hindsight.

 

 

[Guest Howaythetoon]

I was in Leeds last week, the actual City Centre seems far less jam packed in terms of people, traffic and buildings than Newcastle.

[Guest firetotheworks]

I can see the poster now.

 

Come to Leeds, no one's here.

 

 

 

In all seriousness, it's the summer so every uni city is quieter than usual.

[Wandy]

Whoever said Newcastle is becoming a bit like Leeds/Manchester is right IMO. Far too many sterile looking, cheap and bland buildings popping up in prime real estate areas too. Thankfully I rarely visit the Centre these days, its awful.

 

I appreciate I am new on here so I say this with all due respect, but you are talking nonsense when you say the city centre is 'awful'. I don't live in the city anymore, but I love close enough that it is always my destination of choice when going shopping etc. with the kids. I love taking them to the places I enjoyed as a young boy: Fenwicks (toy department!), Mark Toney's for an ice cream, Exhibition Park etc.

 

Yes, I would agree that there is a proliferation of student flats and development that could equally be at home in the likes of Manchester or Leeds, but if you can't see past that to admire the majesty of Grey Street, Grey's Monument and Grainger Town (never mind the units at the ground floor, look up!), or enjoy the likes of Fenwicks (give me that any day of the week over Harvey Nicks) and the brilliant pubs, then that is a shame.

 

I'm not that well travelled but I've been a few places and nobody will ever convince me that my home town isn't the greatest city on earth.

 

And yes I'm biased.

 

I admire lots about our City Centre, but its becoming a pretty bland and uninspiring place these days for all kinds of things other than the occasional night out drinking and dining. Its focusing too much on students and office space and cheap and tatty shops and it can be awful at times. Although that's largely down to some of the people that inhabit it on a daily basis, beggars, charvers and f***ing charity sales people etc.

 

I genuinely think remove the Quayside/Central Station area and Grey Street and its just a bland old boring City Centre. Northumberland Street is s***, The Gate is s*** and the Bigg Market and Haymarket likewise. Although I quite like some of the pubs around the Haymarket.

 

I have probably visited every city and town in England, Scotland and Wales and although Newcastle is great compared to many, compared to say Leeds or Manchester, it certainly isn't the Greatest City on Earth.

 

I personally would like to see more open space for pop up events and market stalls. I'd like to see less traffic in the City Centre and I'd like to see some new additions aimed at leisure rather than shopping and f***ing eating. How many shops and food joins does a relatively small City need. Things like an ice rink, an open exercise park for example. A water fountain maybe. Less ugly buildings for students and office space, less stupid shops that sell the same s*** as any other but under a different name/brand and less f***ing kebabs and bookies. Its Adelaide Terrace but NE1...

 

I'm probably a miserable old c*** these days, but the idea of me visiting the City Centre other than for a p*ss up with the lads sounds horrendous.

 

Me if I was in charge I'd build the world's biggest car park where the Arena is and all that other disused land and run electric buses into Town from there and make it a pedestrian area with more open space. Do away with the daft polluting buses clogging up the roads and other traffic. Similar to Manheim in Germany who has trams and small buses and a nice clean and freed up centre.

 

Agree with a lot of this. Also, people bang on about Grey Street & Granger Town but the truth is that the buildings are actually in horrendous shape. Next time your out in town take a look up at the buildings. They are rotting & crumbling away and look absolutely filthy. The unpalatable truth is that the central part of the city centre is in a bad way. Newcastle City Council are a shockingly absentee landlord and think the answer is to just build as much student accomodation on prime locations as possible. Appalling.

[ponsaelius]

I do agree a bit with HTT about how the city is selling itself. We've gone overkill on being sold as a city for cheap nightlife.

 

There was an article in the Guardian last year where Newcastle was ranked as the best city in the UK. It was a very good article, and was good at selling the city as a hub for the whole region. So good in fact, it made me really wonder why the hell the council and NewcastleGateshead tourist board isn't making more of an effort to sell the city in the same way.

 

I disagree on the traffic aspect though. I think they're making a real effort to pedestrianise the city and get rid of the pollution, despite opposition from motorists (you just need to look at the Chronicle comments section on this). This country has been planning for the car for so long, that trying to change habits is hard and requires are lot of long-term, expensive and brave planning. It'll take a long time to sort that out.

[Wullie]

Posted this a few years ago, on this theme:

 

Couldn't comment, really. Left Newcastle just as I turned 18. Feels good to come home but not somewhere I ever want to move back to.

 

I could go on and on about the good the bad and the ugly of Newcastle as a place, its people and its future. I work away a lot, i.e. on the road, and visit London a lot due to my sister living there and the more time you spend away from Newcastle and its people the more you realise that despite our fine architecture, jovial and friendly nature as people and everything else, the place itself is becoming a shit hole and the people ever so insular and somewhat fucking backward. Not mackem backward but backward all the same. The place is blighted by charvers and casual racism and outside of the actual city itself, most areas are becoming ever more bleak and dark.

 

The Town on a night-time is cringe-worthy from the Gate to the Quayside, places full of people out on stag and hen nights, charvers and fucking Geordie Show wannabees. The pubs lack character and characters. Our stunning architecture is becoming lost in a sea of new-build type nothing buildings. Everywhere is dominated by bookies and kebab shops. The streets are getting dirtier, greyer and more miserable by the day. There is far too much city centre traffic and far too many people all squashed together going nowhere other than to Primark or if you're a taxi to the central to pick up another group of halfwits who in their collective wisdom thought a trip from Nottingham or wherever to Newcastle is a wicked weekend away. Its not, its fucking shit, and people like this have helped make it so to the point where the likes of me, born and bread here, can't fucking wait to get away.

 

I was in London at the weekend enjoying a few pints at the lovely White Swan in Twickenham down by the Thames and if that was Newcastle, it would have been overran with charvers with fights and slappers galore. I was shocked that I could take my GLASS pint out of the pub and onto the green with me. Hundreds of people, families with kids, all mingling and enjoying a bit of rare sunshine.

 

Meanwhile back home in Newcastle some cunts from Nottingham or wherever were pissing in our streets, puking their guts up and acting right bellends while tanked on drink.

 

And if wor lass gets racially abused on public transport again, which has happened 5 fucking times now, always on the fucking number 1 or 38, I'll end up in jail for killing some twat!

 

Just look at the idiots before, during and after the mackem game man. Its getting worse.

 

I wouldn’t put it quite so vehemently as yourself (and it's extremely true that people always get sick of where they live quicker than anywhere else) but there’s a lot I agree with there sadly. The city centre economy has built itself on people drinking themselves stupid and this has created a very unpleasant place to be at times. Large areas of the centre (Collingwood St and Mosley St, right up from outside the Job Centre up through the Bigg Market, most of the middle portion of Grainger St and the whole of Newgate St) are basically no-go zones after about 9pm for anyone who hasn’t had ten pints of lager, especially on a weekend.

 

The Gate’s a classic example and HTT has nailed it. There’s a very similar place in Edinburgh, the “Omni-Centre” and it’s the same old chain rubbish you expect from a place like that, it’s got a cinema, a Pizza Hut, a Frankie and Benny’s etc etc, and that’s all fine, we all like a night at the cinema and some cheap and easy food now and again. However what it doesn’t have is nightclubs on the ground floor, a 24 hour casino or a further array of nightclubs and putrid trebles bars right outside the front door. The planning for the Gate is dire. Who on Earth thought that was a good mix of businesses? Sometimes I feel a bit intimidated coming out of there at half ten with my missus so it must be really off-putting for a parent wanting to take their kids for a late weekend treat, or an older couple, or some 14 year olds on a cinema night. I find town planning very interesting and everywhere I go, I always come back thinking that Newcastle is a mess in comparison in terms of how the city is laid out and that's a perfect example.

 

The city council have sold their soul in allowing so many places selling cheap drink to be so tightly packed together. We only have a tiny centre compared to many British cities so it should be the opposite of what it is, we shouldn’t need to pack them into an area of less than one square mile. This didn’t used to be the case even just ten years ago, of course there were nightclubs in the centre but there was also Foundation on Melbourne St, Stereo in the old Barley Mow, loads of places on the Quayside, World Headquarters, plus two Student Unions spreading the people looking to have a good time around to the fringes of the centre.

 

However as the city centre opened more and more late bars selling booze for next to nothing within that tiny zone, a lot of these places either saw their clientele reduce dramatically or simply wither and die. Even somewhere like the succession of bars that have attempted to open in Swan House have shut down, not just because they were terrible (even though they were but that’s never stopped plenty of other very similar places from thriving), but because it was seen as too far out despite being about two minutes’ walk from the bottom of the Bigg Market but across the natural cut-off point of the roundabout. I’ve even noticed that places round by the Central Station and the Haymarket are noticeably quieter than they were a few years ago, but that Grainger St/Newgate St junction is a permanent cattle grid of students and charvers.

 

There used to be a statistic that Newcastle had more pubs per square mile than any other city in the UK – whether that was true or not I don’t know, but I’d certainly bet that it’s true now, only now they’re not pubs, they’re cheap tacky bars selling paint thinner. Unfortunately this is a trend that would be incredibly difficult to reverse even if there were any will to do so, which there isn’t. I look at Edinburgh and if you put Edinburgh stag dos into Google, it throws up a vast amount of results and suggestions – yet I go to Edinburgh quite often and never see any evidence of it. That’s because not only is Edinburgh bigger than us (not a lot we can do about that in the short term) but because the late bars and clubs are so spread out – some on George St, some at the Grassmarket, loads just randomly dotted here and there. It’s not vastly bigger but there’s no square surrounded by cheap hovels for hundreds of them to stand in, be sick and chin each other. Why have we let that happen? The answer is because we have neither the affluence and tourism base that Edinburgh enjoys but that doesn’t make it right. And what has this conviction to pander to the party city reputation, put bars on top of bars and pile the students into the city left us with, in answer to the question “What to do in Newcastle?” – not an awful lot to be honest, particularly during the day. If you want to drink or shop, you’re laughing, beyond that we’re severely lacking in things that will bring in visitors, but have plenty things that will put them off coming for a weekend, which is a great shame really.

 

I sound like I really hate the place but I don’t at all, I love it and I’m very happy living here but I definitely feel like there’s a lack of ambition, we’re happy to trundle along propped up by students hoying drink down their necks (staggering amounts of student accommodation being built at the moment) when we could be doing so much more. Inochi’s right when he says that there has been a transformation in the city over the last twenty years and we do still have a lot going for us (good restaurants, fantastic theatre, superb independent cinema etc) but we need to be very careful that we don’t get to a stage where normal people don’t want to come to Newcastle because of what the city centre can be like after dark, or because there’s little to do in the city itself. This is especially true now that we seem to be stockpiling hotels in the city in the last few years – if the only people to fill those rooms are stags and hens, our reputation is really going to start to suffer but at the same time, we don’t want them standing empty and eventually shutting down.

 

Won’t pretend for a second that I know the solution to all this, but I know that I really don’t like Newcastle city centre these days and I dread having to go there for a night out, and that’s not a feeling I like in my own home.

 

Not sure how much of it I still agree with really but I very rarely venture into town after dark anymore (and I only live ten minutes walk away). Think I got really soured by walking from Central Station up Grainger St a few times in quick succession having got a late train back. That stretch is fucking awful during the day and much worse at night.

[ponsaelius]

There should be a thread on this in the Chat board. A general thread for new developments and planning in the city/region.

[Disco]

There should be a thread on this in the Chat board. A general thread for new developments and planning in the city/region.

 

We do (sorta)

[Guest Howaythetoon]

Posted this a few years ago, on this theme:

 

Couldn't comment, really. Left Newcastle just as I turned 18. Feels good to come home but not somewhere I ever want to move back to.

 

I could go on and on about the good the bad and the ugly of Newcastle as a place, its people and its future. I work away a lot, i.e. on the road, and visit London a lot due to my sister living there and the more time you spend away from Newcastle and its people the more you realise that despite our fine architecture, jovial and friendly nature as people and everything else, the place itself is becoming a s*** hole and the people ever so insular and somewhat f***ing backward. Not mackem backward but backward all the same. The place is blighted by charvers and casual racism and outside of the actual city itself, most areas are becoming ever more bleak and dark.

 

The Town on a night-time is cringe-worthy from the Gate to the Quayside, places full of people out on stag and hen nights, charvers and f***ing Geordie Show wannabees. The pubs lack character and characters. Our stunning architecture is becoming lost in a sea of new-build type nothing buildings. Everywhere is dominated by bookies and kebab shops. The streets are getting dirtier, greyer and more miserable by the day. There is far too much city centre traffic and far too many people all squashed together going nowhere other than to Primark or if you're a taxi to the central to pick up another group of halfwits who in their collective wisdom thought a trip from Nottingham or wherever to Newcastle is a wicked weekend away. Its not, its f***ing s***, and people like this have helped make it so to the point where the likes of me, born and bread here, can't f***ing wait to get away.

 

I was in London at the weekend enjoying a few pints at the lovely White Swan in Twickenham down by the Thames and if that was Newcastle, it would have been overran with charvers with fights and slappers galore. I was shocked that I could take my GLASS pint out of the pub and onto the green with me. Hundreds of people, families with kids, all mingling and enjoying a bit of rare sunshine.

 

Meanwhile back home in Newcastle some c***s from Nottingham or wherever were pissing in our streets, puking their guts up and acting right bellends while tanked on drink.

 

And if wor lass gets racially abused on public transport again, which has happened 5 f***ing times now, always on the f***ing number 1 or 38, I'll end up in jail for killing some t***!

 

Just look at the idiots before, during and after the mackem game man. Its getting worse.

 

I wouldn’t put it quite so vehemently as yourself (and it's extremely true that people always get sick of where they live quicker than anywhere else) but there’s a lot I agree with there sadly. The city centre economy has built itself on people drinking themselves stupid and this has created a very unpleasant place to be at times. Large areas of the centre (Collingwood St and Mosley St, right up from outside the Job Centre up through the Bigg Market, most of the middle portion of Grainger St and the whole of Newgate St) are basically no-go zones after about 9pm for anyone who hasn’t had ten pints of lager, especially on a weekend.

 

The Gate’s a classic example and HTT has nailed it. There’s a very similar place in Edinburgh, the “Omni-Centre” and it’s the same old chain rubbish you expect from a place like that, it’s got a cinema, a Pizza Hut, a Frankie and Benny’s etc etc, and that’s all fine, we all like a night at the cinema and some cheap and easy food now and again. However what it doesn’t have is nightclubs on the ground floor, a 24 hour casino or a further array of nightclubs and putrid trebles bars right outside the front door. The planning for the Gate is dire. Who on Earth thought that was a good mix of businesses? Sometimes I feel a bit intimidated coming out of there at half ten with my missus so it must be really off-putting for a parent wanting to take their kids for a late weekend treat, or an older couple, or some 14 year olds on a cinema night. I find town planning very interesting and everywhere I go, I always come back thinking that Newcastle is a mess in comparison in terms of how the city is laid out and that's a perfect example.

 

The city council have sold their soul in allowing so many places selling cheap drink to be so tightly packed together. We only have a tiny centre compared to many British cities so it should be the opposite of what it is, we shouldn’t need to pack them into an area of less than one square mile. This didn’t used to be the case even just ten years ago, of course there were nightclubs in the centre but there was also Foundation on Melbourne St, Stereo in the old Barley Mow, loads of places on the Quayside, World Headquarters, plus two Student Unions spreading the people looking to have a good time around to the fringes of the centre.

 

However as the city centre opened more and more late bars selling booze for next to nothing within that tiny zone, a lot of these places either saw their clientele reduce dramatically or simply wither and die. Even somewhere like the succession of bars that have attempted to open in Swan House have shut down, not just because they were terrible (even though they were but that’s never stopped plenty of other very similar places from thriving), but because it was seen as too far out despite being about two minutes’ walk from the bottom of the Bigg Market but across the natural cut-off point of the roundabout. I’ve even noticed that places round by the Central Station and the Haymarket are noticeably quieter than they were a few years ago, but that Grainger St/Newgate St junction is a permanent cattle grid of students and charvers.

 

There used to be a statistic that Newcastle had more pubs per square mile than any other city in the UK – whether that was true or not I don’t know, but I’d certainly bet that it’s true now, only now they’re not pubs, they’re cheap tacky bars selling paint thinner. Unfortunately this is a trend that would be incredibly difficult to reverse even if there were any will to do so, which there isn’t. I look at Edinburgh and if you put Edinburgh stag dos into Google, it throws up a vast amount of results and suggestions – yet I go to Edinburgh quite often and never see any evidence of it. That’s because not only is Edinburgh bigger than us (not a lot we can do about that in the short term) but because the late bars and clubs are so spread out – some on George St, some at the Grassmarket, loads just randomly dotted here and there. It’s not vastly bigger but there’s no square surrounded by cheap hovels for hundreds of them to stand in, be sick and chin each other. Why have we let that happen? The answer is because we have neither the affluence and tourism base that Edinburgh enjoys but that doesn’t make it right. And what has this conviction to pander to the party city reputation, put bars on top of bars and pile the students into the city left us with, in answer to the question “What to do in Newcastle?” – not an awful lot to be honest, particularly during the day. If you want to drink or shop, you’re laughing, beyond that we’re severely lacking in things that will bring in visitors, but have plenty things that will put them off coming for a weekend, which is a great shame really.

 

I sound like I really hate the place but I don’t at all, I love it and I’m very happy living here but I definitely feel like there’s a lack of ambition, we’re happy to trundle along propped up by students hoying drink down their necks (staggering amounts of student accommodation being built at the moment) when we could be doing so much more. Inochi’s right when he says that there has been a transformation in the city over the last twenty years and we do still have a lot going for us (good restaurants, fantastic theatre, superb independent cinema etc) but we need to be very careful that we don’t get to a stage where normal people don’t want to come to Newcastle because of what the city centre can be like after dark, or because there’s little to do in the city itself. This is especially true now that we seem to be stockpiling hotels in the city in the last few years – if the only people to fill those rooms are stags and hens, our reputation is really going to start to suffer but at the same time, we don’t want them standing empty and eventually shutting down.

 

Won’t pretend for a second that I know the solution to all this, but I know that I really don’t like Newcastle city centre these days and I dread having to go there for a night out, and that’s not a feeling I like in my own home.

 

Not sure how much of it I still agree with really but I very rarely venture into town after dark anymore (and I only live ten minutes walk away). Think I got really soured by walking from Central Station up Grainger St a few times in quick succession having got a late train back. That stretch is f***ing awful during the day and much worse at night.

 

Its hasn't improved put it that way.

[AyeDubbleYoo]

There's not enough money in Newcastle to make the whole thing nice, we should be grateful for the amazing bits we do have.

 

I agree these new flats are shit though, similarly the monstrosity they replaced Gateshead with.

[Guest Howaythetoon]

I do agree a bit with HTT about how the city is selling itself. We've gone overkill on being sold as a city for cheap nightlife.

 

There was an article in the Guardian last year where Newcastle was ranked as the best city in the UK. It was a very good article, and was good at selling the city as a hub for the whole region. So good in fact, it made me really wonder why the hell the council and NewcastleGateshead tourist board isn't making more of an effort to sell the city in the same way.

 

I disagree on the traffic aspect though. I think they're making a real effort to pedestrianise the city and get rid of the pollution, despite opposition from motorists (you just need to look at the Chronicle comments section on this). This country has been planning for the car for so long, that trying to change habits is hard and requires are lot of long-term, expensive and brave planning. It'll take a long time to sort that out.

 

We should never judge our City against others because in most cases it will come out on top. Quite frankly I don't care about other Cities, I care about my own and IMO its not whats its cracked out to be, far from it.

 

Drive past the Central at any time of day at any day of the week and its 6 or so buses and 5 or so taxis constantly just polluting that stretch, taking 10 minutes just to reach the Centre Of Life bus stop every so many minutes on rotation. Its a nightmare to take people to or from the Station in any kind of mode of transport. Its a major hub of the City Centre, but so poorly organised and designed.

 

The traffic issues are a real problem, big daft buses, too many taxis and too many cars. Fair enough goods vehicles etc.

[Guest Howaythetoon]

There's not enough money in Newcastle to make the whole thing nice, we should be grateful for the amazing bits we do have.

 

There is, but money is misplaced or disappears.... its about handing out contracts to certain contractors!

 

One of the biggest waste of money has to be the Cowgate Roundabout and what about the West End, only a year or so ago they rip up the roads at great expense and inconvenience, but hey less pot holes and now they are ripping it all up again for cycle lanes and mobility scooter friendly pavements. One particular stretch they rip up and implement such a scheme, but some bright spark forgot about where people are meant to park their cars... as they have no driveways. Said cars now get parked over cycle/scooter pathways...

 

Fucking idiots!

[AyeDubbleYoo]

I mean in terms of money in people's pockets as well though. Prices of flats have been static for years, there aren't enough people with enough money to support much more shopping or regeneration around that. There aren't enough good jobs to attract people to the region and gentrify new areas.

 

In a way that's good, because otherwise you end up with an identical town to everyone else. But it's a challenge because someone needs to find money for the right kind of development.

 

I guess these student flats are just the easy answer to making a return on investment.

[Guest Howaythetoon]

All the council care about is the now and not the future. Most planning is based on the now. Again I guarantee there will be lots of empty student accommodation and office space in the near future which will never be fully occupied. Not without the council part funding organizations to occupy said properties.

 

Rent and rates in the City Centre is ridiculous to start with and prevents new, innovative, pop up, cultural and independent SME's from energising the City Centre in terms of jobs and new ideas indigenous to the locality.

 

So what you get is a plethora of Greggs, Macdonalds, Burger King, Tesco, Safeway, M&S, Costa etc. taking up prime residence within previous or originally planned student accommodation and office space and it just dilutes the whole user experience of the City Centre as a visitor, worker, resident.

 

For example give me a Ouseburn Coffee Co shop over a Costa...

 

A friend of mine organises the Jesterval Comedy Festival, a what I'd call pop up type of event which is great for Newcastle and Gateshead, I helped organise it, well my company did and the City needs more of that. Also, they store a lot of the seating, props etc. at  council owned storage in a huge out of the way location that has these huge storage containers. I asked the council mush how much they are to rent because as a company we need somewhere to keep our fleet of vans and also need storage and he said the whole place is to be flattened and sold off to build housing soon....

 

Fair enough, but SMEs need somewhere to house themselves. We are priced out of the City Centre and that is effecting the quality of life in terms of choice and shopping experience etc. The council could rent such storage/land to SMEs and make good money. But no, they will sell it off to developers who they will then subsidise to build soc-alled affordable housing which will probably be knocked down 20 years down the line because they become shit holes or unsold/unrentable properties...

 

I'm going off on a tangent here I know, but my frustrations with City planning is huge given my experience in this area as an SME and a contractor of the local council for various s***!

[Sir Toon]

Once Ashley dies, as that will be the only way he'll let go of his gravy train reigns, any potential ambitious owner will just build a new stadium elsewhere if the demand is there.  It's the only way so forget tradition.

[Guest firetotheworks]

I dunno about anyone else but I really take it to heart when people slag off Newcastle like.

[Foluwashola]

I dunno about anyone else but I really take it to heart when people slag off Newcastle like.

 

Definitely taken as a personal slight.

[Interpolic]

Worst one is when you're in London and meet a shit geordie, which is a geordie who is firstly a total prick but secondly, and most heinously, completely slags off the area to anyone who'll listen. Only met a few shit geordies but when I have I get out of the situation quickly as I'm never going to be capable of anything constructive with those kind of anger levels

[Altamullan]

Worst one is when you're in London and meet a s*** geordie, which is a geordie who is firstly a total prick but secondly, and most heinously, completely slags off the area to anyone who'll listen. Only met a few s*** geordies but when I have I get out of the situation quickly as I'm never going to be capable of anything constructive with those kind of anger levels

ditto. They're often from some peripheral 'pit village near hell/new town'/have only a passing knowledge of the city.

[AyeDubbleYoo]

I haven't met any of them yet, will keep my wits about me.

[Gosforth Lad]

Worst one is when you're in London and meet a s*** geordie, which is a geordie who is firstly a total prick but secondly, and most heinously, completely slags off the area to anyone who'll listen. Only met a few s*** geordies but when I have I get out of the situation quickly as I'm never going to be capable of anything constructive with those kind of anger levels

 

A few lads I used to go to school with (all from the posh end of Gosforth) who now live in London are like that. All

disappeared up their own arses at some

stage.

[Matt]

I haven't met any of them yet, will keep my wits about me.

 

Same. Not met any. Although visiting 2/3 times per year you see the damage these cheap student/uni blocks are doing in trems of the balance of the city.

 

The brewery site was a missed opportunity- they could have completely changed the layout but instead just laid out as many buildings as possible on the footprint.

 

It's no different to anywhere else in the country, the development laws make it hard to restrict new projects. Unless you're Dolly Potter.