Yr13 - Cities

You should, today, have handed in your work using the Neighbourhood Statistics site and the Derby City Partnership site. Thank you to those of you who did - if you are one of the people who didn't, you know what you need to do...

We spent Thursday's lesson mapping the best and worst places to live in the UK (according to Phil and Kirstie) and we spent the first part of today's lesson talking about the patterns that the maps showed and the possible reasons for this.

We then went on to think about the causes of inner city decline, and discussed some of the problems of inner city areas and how they've come about, and the cycle of deprivation. Don't forget though, that I also gave you a piece of writing by Tony Cassidy, a geography teacher who lives in inner city Nottingham - an interesting alternative perspective.

Linking back to the Bradford work that we did recently, you might be interested to know that the Westfield development has been "put on ice" according to an article in the Telegraph & Argus. Unsurprisingly, there have been plenty of letters in response to the news, and if you search for "westfield" on the T&A website, you can look at those, as well as a number of other related articles. The "Bradford Metropolitan District Council, Pull Your Finger Out" group on Facebook is also worth a look!

Yr13 - Bradford Regeneration Part 2

Some of the photos from the Bradford trip still need titles/detail adding, but they're here if you want to look at the ones we didn't see on Tuesday. A couple of videos taken with my new Flip video camera here though...

This is Centenary Square, in front of City Hall - and this will be the site of the "Park at the Heart":

Centenary Square in Bradford from victoria ellis on Vimeo.

I have to say that, having been there this morning, the park idea doesn't seem quite so far-fetched, and it wasn't so hard to imagine a hot summer's afternoon with music playing and people sitting outside various bars and cafes.... who knows?!

I didn't feel quite so positive about the proposed Westfield development, however:


Westfield Bradford from victoria ellis on Vimeo.

More about Westfield and the vision for Bradford, complete with a "flythrough" of what the centre will look like here.

Yr13 - Bradford Regeneration Part 1

Following on from the work you've been doing looking at possibilities for regeneration in Bradford, we spent Thursday's lesson finding out more about the actual plans...

The video we looked at with Will Alsop's Masterplan is here:


And the "streetsweeper one" (which I understand better now, thanks to Joel!) is here:


Should you not have heard enough of Linda Barker the other day, you can also watch the Building Britain programme, which looked at plans for the regeneration of Bradford, and compared them with how Leeds has developed in recent years, on YouTube...

Year 13 - Tuesday

Below are links to various resources that we used in yesterday's lesson, and also the Urban Redevelopment Corporation.

Urbed

Urbed Design Guide

Bradford URC

City Centre Map

All of the photos that we looked at were from Flickr - a search for "bradford" or "west yorkshire" will bring up lots of excellent images for you to look at.

Your task, which you will be continuing with tomorrow (and probably on Tuesday) and which will be due in from everyone on Tuesday 27th January, is to come up with a plan for the redesign of the city centre. Your finished piece of work can be presented in whatever way you wish, but should include an annnotated map showing the key features of your plan.

You need to make sure that you are considering the issues and challenges that we talked about at the start of the lesson that are specific to Bradford, as well as the more general problems of CBD decline, and thinking about how to address these...

Have fun!

"Northern cities beyond revival"

That's according to a "think tank" called Policy Exchange. Apparently, the regeration that is going on in cities such as Bradford (which I have posted about on Geogtastic before) and Liverpool is not working, and there should be a mass migration of poor northerners to southern cities such as London, Cambridge and Oxford...

Doesn't seem to me like the most sensible solution... Have a read of the article from the BBC here and see what you think!