GaryReggae
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Everything posted by GaryReggae
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Oh yes, now this pub I like a lot!
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Wow, these shops all look really good - along with GC's Georgewardian shops, Ill_Tonkso's contemporary ones and my Postwar ones, we'll almost have a complete set of UK shops!
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Wow, some great work here! I especially like the 60s HSBC bank!
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I am working on an ASDA supermarket...although it does need a lot of work.
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Starchitect Discussion Thread
GaryReggae replied to louisville327's topic in Architecture & Urban Planning
I think the Selfridges building in Birmingham is one of the best (or should that be worst?) examples of 'Starchitecture'. I didn't like it at first but after visiting it recently, it's grown on me a little bit. It looks totally out of place and IMHO is much worse than the boxy concrete Bullring centre that stood there before. However, it is a Landmark building and it seems that architects are striving to create landmarks rather than the functional and simple buildings of several decades ago. Creating landmarks = lots of publicity for the architect. -
Cities like Birmingham and Coventry are pretty bad. In the 1960s, they were encircled by numerous ring roads (elevated highways) which cut off the city centre from the rest of the city. Fine for cars but useless for pedestrians. However, the ring road systems in Birmingham at least have been breached in the last few years with them being lowered and pedestrian crossings being introduced. Coventry is particularly bad, it has one of the smallest internal ring roads in the world and the railway station is a fair way away from the city centre (indeed it is outside the inner ring road!). If these cities had alternatives then it would be OK but they don't excepept buses which are incredibly confusing for a tourist as there are no route maps. Dr Beeching destroyed many cross city routes in the 1960s, he even destroyed what was once Birmingham's second biggest rail stations, Snow Hill. It was completely demolished, however it is now back although it is nothing more than a few platforms underneath a multi storey car park.
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Interesting, there's also a Big Dig going on in Liverpool at the moment only theirs is a massive urban regeneration scheme.
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Date: 11/17/2005 12:49:45 PM Author: umnoscottishhootsmon edinburgh scotland's capital they have the highest bus usage in britain (i think) but they aren't cramped it is relativley easy into bad parking quote> Actually Manchester has Britain's busiest bus route, with a bus going between the city centre and University every 30 seconds (I think). As for good city infrastructure, I think Central London is quite good. The tube system is excellent, there is a constant stream of buses and the new congestion charge is a real disincentive to car drivers which frees up the roads for buses which are a far more efficient means of transport. Southampton is the worst city infrastructure I know. Although it is famous for having more green space than any other UK city outside London, it is also famous for having more traffic lights than any other UK city and the council, in their infinite wisdom, make one of the main routes into and out of the city extremely narrow, so that if a bus stops or a lorry stops to unload, the road is totally blocked and the traffic backs up!
