Today and over the next few days there is a performing arts festival in Shrewsbury. The traffic has been stopped coming into town after 10.00am
How nice it has been at work to not have the constant rumble and pollution of traffic. Why on earth dont the planners pedestrianise the whole town centre. It would preserve our older buildings stop noise pollution and be more in keeping with other roman towns in the country. The streets are just too small to take petrol/deisel guzzling 4x4's and buses and we would all end up healthier by walking.

So wake up planners please in your quiet hideaway offices in somewhat secluded Shrewsbury :lol:

You see, on the other end of the scale, I found closing off Wyle Cop to uphill traffic, High Street and Shoplatch somewhat uncalled for considering the minimal use of the streets by the 'Street' Theatre. Or at least when I was in town I considered it to be minimal use.

Remember that basing pedestrianisation on the buzz of the town's summer events is simply unwise. The footfall around the streets which are presently unpedestrianised does not justify it - are you ever deprived of space while walking along High Street? Although I believe every effort should be made to promote the use of the town's park and ride facilities as well as the use of the bypass rather than driving through the town, I do not think that pedestrianisation will help the town flourish socially as you believe it would. Bus services would become cut off from the centre (think of the elderly and disabled) while cars would need to either park near to the Abbey or take Town Walls around to Smithfield Road so that they may park. Does that sound like a good idea?

There is also the aspect of making it seem more of a ghost town. Traffic can make a place feel alive. Shrewsbury is not the size of Birmingham. Nor does it have its catchment area. In Birmingham there is full justification for a pedestrianised city centre. The place heaves with people. But in a town such as ours, where access is limited within the river loop and is inhabited by under 100,000 people, the only options that are viable are the increased provision of (and greater subsidised?) public transport and the promotion of out-of-centre parking (be it outside of the river meander or at the park & ride sites).

As you can see I'm rather opinionated on this issue. ;)

As a town planner I must insist that you recall your comment there - Shrewsbury would have been pedestrianised LONG AGO if it were up to town planners, however we are not in charge - the politicians are.

And there are still far too many arrogant car driving people who demand that it is their right to drive and park their car where the hell they want to. Local politicians need to wake up and realise that actually it would be beneficial to pedestrianise more streets in Shrewsbury, increase Park and Ride services (including a new base at Emstrey) and improve bus services within the town too.

I have always been saying on these forums that I want to see the following streets pedestrianised immediately: Mardol, top half of Roushill, Claremont Street and Hill's Lane. Other streets would be pedestrianised upon the improvements I have mentioned above as well as the building of the North West Relief Road.

And can I really get this into people's heads - town planners sitting in council offices across the land do not decide what goes on and cannot have a meeting and decide "let's do x in y". Even when politicians, planners and organistations want to do something there has to be public consultation... which is a long (longer than what is needed) and bureaucratic (and more bureaucratic that what is needed) process. And even then it comes down to costs.

If you want pedestrianisation in Shrewsbury town centre I suggest you start a campaign and get the media on your side. When an election comes up for borough and county council seats, get some candidates to support your campaign publically. Hopefully if they are elected they will put the project into motion. Then, and only then, will planners be able to make your dreams come true!

Yes, more often than not. I have also been knocked on the upper arm very painfully by a van wing mirror whilst walking up the Cop. :angry:

We had huge resistence to the pedestrianisation of Pride Hill and that is a seething mass of people a lot of the time.

I agree that some sort of hop on and off (maybe electric?) vehicles need to tour the town to get the elderly/disabled/obese!!! up the Cop etc. The benefits would be phenomenal IMHO. The town would have little noise and fume pollution, we could actually listen to the birds, access both sides of Wyle Cop, enjoy the architecture and heritage as the town guides could actually be heard and we could smell coffee, newly baked bread, flowers and beer too!!! ;)

Apologuies if I have offended 'planners'. I was unaware that politicians made decisions on pedestrianisation willsay however the planners are tucked away in more scenic, less polluted parts of the town

As I have said most Roman towns are pedestrianised and thrive on a flourishing tourist and regular trade. The mock cobblestones in the centre of Shrewsbury,designed to slow traffic down are a form of noise pollution within themselves. Is that politicians or planners, I'm confused ? I think with pedestrianisation it should create a more social scene for our town, more importantly the buildings will suffer less noise and carbon pollution. On a more light hearted note people may not be subjected to the 'thump thump thump' of music in incar entertainment

I'm sorry, but I'm not sure if we live in the same town? We are talking about the new Guildhall on Frankwell Quay which you describe as "more scenic, less polluted parts"? The same Guildhall that is a cheap office building which doesn't work as a Guildhall, let alone as modern offices, surrounded by car parking en masse and flood defences, and cut off from the rest of Shrewsbury with only a wobbly footbridge running over Smithfield Road leading to our worst shopping mall as access... :rolleyes:

Oh and of course the councillors meanwhile are tucked away... in their homes!

Cut the gas guzzling 4x4 rubbish Andy you don't know what your on about, however pedestrianisation is a great idea, seems to work elsewhere.

While we're talking about gas-guzzling (and do you mean petrol? "Gas" sounds like an American expression) - I've recently become convinced that travelling by car is cheaper than travelling by public transport. Example - A train ticket from Shrewsbury to Cardiff (return) is around £25 (and that's WITH my student rail card) - I drove that journey on Saturday (plus my house to Shrewsbury, which is a fair way in itself), taking a friend with me. The whole journey, Woodseaves-Shrewsbury-Cardiff-Shrewsbury-Woodseaves, used half of my tank of petrol. A total of 260 miles. My tank takes less than £40 worth of petrol, I've never measured exactly, and petrol prices fluctuate anyway, but let's assume about £35 for a full tank. That's about £17.50, a saving of nearly £10 (factoring in, of course, that I would still need petrol to get from Woodseaves to Shrewsbury, which is a 30-40 minute drive). And then remember two of us went, that would be double the cost of a train ticket for both of us on the train, yet half the petrol price if we split that.

SO WHY DO THEY WANT PEOPLE TO USE MORE PUBLIC TRANSPORT?!?!?!?!?!

[Edit - and about the subject at hand, let them pedestrianise the town centre if they want, it's quicker to drive AROUND the centre anyway...]

Public transport is expensive... and not that good either.

The government just don't care enough to change things.

I have amended the americanism Chingwakabungya :lol:

Although this is not the subject of the thread Proud Salopian, beg to differ or could I indeed be in the wrong town ?

'Cheap' office building. Well im not sure of the cost but too me it dont look cheap :o

Car parking on masse for the convenience of the employees 'en planner choice' I'd guess,shrewd shrewsbury planners at work ?

Fllood defences only appear when the offices are being built, long overdue in my opinion

Wobbly bridge yes it does sway a bit ! It is an elaborate suspension bridge though and I bet it cost a packet!

The worst shopping mall, Yes it's probably is down to planning . Tut Tut !

I don't think I'm in the wrong Town though, now !

Coming back to the thread if pedestrianisation is agreed by the 'politicians' then there could be more car parks and revenue will be raised for the council creating more jobs for eagle-eyes car park attendants who will soon whip up a fine if you are seconds over your ticket time and put a yellow sticker proclaiming your fine. I'm having second thoughts :blink: I wonder if this happens in the guildhall car park which has coincidentally more relaxed parking times. I wonder why ?Oops... sorry ive gone off the thread :huh:

Quite frankly you don't know what you're talking about. Do you read the Shropshire Star regularly per chance?

The new Guildhall is a cheap, tacky office building. It looks awful. It is awful. It's neither modern or conservative. It was never designed to be a council headquarters - it was built as four seperate office units. And no, it wasn't that expensive and the building of it saves the borough council (and therefore us) a lot of money each year in not maintaining the four old borough council office sites. In fact the borough council used the money from selling the old sites when building the new one. So money doesn't come into it. And to be honest, they should have spent more and then we would have got a Guildhall to be proud of.

Car parking which isn't free for council employees! The car parking underneath and next to the building is for councillors and bosses, etc. The main bulk of council employees have to park in the public car parks at their own expense. But of course you wouldn't read that in the Sloppyshire Star..

Flood defences were built by the Environment Agency and protect the whole of the Frankwell street.

"Elaborate" suspension bridge?! Goodness sake, this comes after your claim that the Guildhall was an expensive project too - have you ever been beyond the borders of Shropshire? These sort of structures would be considered to be cheap and tacky in most parts of the country.

The Riverside Mall has been slowly run down by its owners as a "low market" end to the shopping centres. Sad, I know.

I suspect that you're the sort of person who would love to see the entire civil service, both central and local, abolished, because as far as you can see they don't do anything!

Right then! Let's abolish the planning system. Let's have the country a free-for-all zone where anyone can build anything anywhere! Hooray! :rolleyes:

This is the tried and tested way of working in Manchester, so I can vouch for it. ;)

And yet Manchester has some excellent buildings - I love walking around the city centre, admiring the architecture and grandeur of many of the buildings, both old and new.

What I find in Manchester is that organisations and businesses are willing to spend more money on their buildings, both when they build them and when they maintain them, as the standard is generally set higher.

What I also find is that once you cross the River Irwell into Salford... well, let's not go there!! :o

Erm.



That's cheap!

To put it another way, we have student accommodation going up in Manchester that is better quality than that. And considering that they build this student accommodation cheaply, quickly and in bulk (with an expected life span of probably no more than 30 years) that's saying something!

I was pretty impressed by the new Guildhall. I obviously don't work there but if the public-end is anything to go by, then it's pretty clean and modern, which surely is better than old and dingy?

David, you speak as if the world is against planners. Everyone knows that regulation is what restricts planners. Don't get me wrong, I'm still very much against pedestrianisation for Shrewsbury but I'm not against pedestrianisation as a concept. We all realise that if the world were a perfect one (more precisely if the UK was), then we'd have first-class transport systems, large public open spaces, a European cafe-culture and a variety of beautiful building styles in our towns and cities.

On that note, who was to blame for the abomination of 60s and 70s structures that now plague our country? This is out of curiosity. ;)

Fortunately the generation of planners who built all those horrendus 60s and 70s structures and wrecked many towns in this country are mostly dead.

And yes, that is a "fortunately" statement!!

Your definition of 'cheap' seems different to mine Proud Salopian, as a planner perhaps you can give the cost of the guildhall to me.Not sure of this as these days things are often kept under wraps in fear of upsetting rate payers I feel ?

Where do you get these ridiculous ideas from? "These days" everything councils do and spend is freely available to public knowledge. Councils, despite what the Shropshire Star makes you believe, are actually quite open about things. Sure, you may have to look for some of the information, but most can be found on council websites or on the internet one way or another. I mean, do you really think that the borough council's budget is secret?! The accounts are public and go into quite high detail. The Guildhall, including the land, design, building costs and furnishings came to a total of just under £10 million. I'm sure if you look around on the council's website you can find more accurate figures.

And why does everything have to cost as little as possible these days? Does it ever make you wonder why when many things are built they come out as not being very good? It's because people like you want to keep costs to an absolute minimum. Well you get what you pay for.

Take the upcoming new theatre in Frankwell. The borough council are under pressure to keep costs at £20 million, even though that was the figure 3 years ago. With inflation we should now be looking at spending £22 million or so. But they have just redesigned the theatre, cutting corners where they can. We're going to end up with a major public building that won't be as good as it could have been simply for the sake of saving a relatively small amount of money.

Many of the country's best buildings are from the 19th and early 20th Centuries, a time when money was spent on structures and infrastructure that people could be proud of and still are. Things were built to last and built to good standards. Sadly, many good Victorian buildings were demolished by the wreckful 1960s, but most of the ones that remain are listed or protected in one way or another. I doubt the same will be for most of the buildings that have been built 1950-2000 in 100 years time.

If you ask people what are Shrewsbury's best buildings they would list an exclusively pre-20th Century lot. And while in other parts of the country recently built structures and buildings are once again of a high standard, we don't seem to have caught the mood here in Shropshire. Well, I hope the time will come.

Can't wait to return to Manchester - where buildings and public works are being built that make people look up and give the city some civic pride. The Guildhall in Shrewsbury (and I suspect the new theatre) is a prime example of sub-standard design and construction in the county of Shropshire. Thankfully the borough council will be abolished in about 3/4 years time and we can then be able to just call it an office block, not the Guildhall. And then the newly set up Town Council can find some decent civic offices to occupy, hopefully the Music Hall or maybe a refurbished (into offices) Rowley's House.

Saying all that - there are one or two good recent projects in town, including the Nexus development on Roushill.

Sadly the much larger development at St Julian's Friars is horrendous.

The innovation and positive thinking of the 50s and 60s is not something you can compare with the drab poor quality 'pretend period' houses that have been erected in the'80s and '90s.

Yes, in the 50s & 60s mistakes were made. There was a massive programme of clearance from the WW11, another legacy of very poor quality Victorian 'gerry' housing that had to be upgraded or replaced (an argument that continues today)
Masses of people lived in squalor that you can't imagine today in Britain and some ideas and new methods of building were not properly funded or just did not stand the test of time. Who was to know that we would be catering for the huge number of vehicles we have on the roads today. With hindsight would we have axed such a large chunk of our railways had we known decades ahead we would come to regret such a decision?

Some towns lost valuable mediaeval houses including Shrewsbury right up to the '70s, which would not happen today but you have to remember that the climate at that time was different. People did not want to look back at a past which consisted of the pampered landed gentry who in general were propped up by the middle classes then the poor working classes. WW11 precipitated a changing world and this country somehow made a bold start but then retreated to harking back to an era when GB was a so called proud nation (empire) and buildings tried to emulate that glorious past.

Today, hopefully, we will catch up with other Europeans who carried on building more innovatively and take on board the fact that house building in this country has to change, become more sustainable and less 'disney' like in design hopefully.

Chinwakabungya, I think you may have missed the point regarding the cost of travelling - people are concerned with the ENVIRONMENTAL (look it up) cost of using cars, not so much with what you're spending your student loan on. These days we're all trying to reduce our CARBON FOOTPRINT (ask your tutor what it means) which may involve certain expediencies, using public transport being one of them. The personal cost must be outweighed in the interest of the greater good - what d'you study anyway, economics? It seems to be the only thing you're concerned with. You wanna get out and hug some trees, son.

I was sitting in this building this morning and I was sweltering.

Not only is the dishonest pretend 'warehouse' design a disaster IMHO but the building is too large and dominating for the site. The theatre will diminish it somwhat but then" bye bye Frankwell, it was nice when we could see you from the town" <_<

The green credentials don't work as the huge chimneys that were supposed to draw cool air into the building draw in air warmed by the great mass of concrete surrounding the Guildhall. This has resulted in temperature of 100 f being reached in the centre and top of the building and electric fans being used!!!

The building was rushed through planning so new rules coming in demanded by the Environment Agency would not have to be met. The constraints on the height mean people working at the top bump their heads but the building still ended up too tall.

The Stew and other genuine Quayside buildings were damaged so much by the piling required for the Guildhall that their future is threatened.

I have heard that other authorities are amused by Shrewsbury having such a design as their flagship headquarters.

I think you will find that Chingwakabungya does know quite a bit about so-called "Carbon Footprints" as he studies Geology... :P

And there is more to being green when determining how we move people and goods about. Transportation has to be practical, economical and non-discriminatory. I would love to see cars replaced altogether with some other means of getting about. That's quite a while off yet, though the most likely future scenario is non-petrol/diesel powered cars (instead the fuel would be hydrogen cells, battery or something not developed yet).

A rural county like Shropshire can't survive on public transport alone - there still has to be individual transport. Whilst the idea of everyone cycling everywhere pleases the tinted glass wearing greens, it ain't going to happen.

Exactly. It's a disgrace that we have such a rubbish building as our Guildhall.

Pedestrianise it and we will have more bloody skateboarders trying to run you over, It like a bloody playground on pridehill.. :D

This week in the Sunday Times an article said;
Under the Tories all houses built since 1945 would be exempt from the planning regime. Householders wanting to improve their homes would notify the local authority and their neighbour a month before work began. If neighbours objected, it would be up to the local authority, at its own expense, to challenge the extension or alteration.
The matter then would be referred to an independent arbitrator who would decide whether the neighbours had grounds for complaint- for example,if the building overshadowed their own property or was an eyesore. :o

So really, things would be even more complicated!

Hello, Geology student here, I know a fair bit about that sort of stuff already - but there are better ways of improving the environment than trying to get people to spend MORE money on rather bad public transport. It also hasn't escaped my notice that the average bus seems to have an engine that's around 30 years old and is leaking fumes like a volcano... Cars nowadays are getting better at being "greener" too... It's really up to the rather large multinational companies (who happen to be the ones with the money) to do something about it - the government needs to give them better incentives... Unfortunately, look who's currently in power...

"Unfortunately, look who's currently in power..."

http://news.bbc.co.uk

Well, nobody it seems!

Roll on the next general election! Let's get the governing party back in!! :o

town planning


See, under the Tories anarchy will rule!!!!

That's not a very good comparison though, the ticket is the only cost of public transport, you don't have to buy the train, insure the train, service the train, clean the train, pay to park the train etc

Hello Person who works in the middle of the town here near the square around the noisy cobbles!

Chingwakabungya I thought that geology was the study of rock? Does this denote you are an expert within quite the opposite field of conservation ?

Not that any student wouldnt know that any combustion engine pollutes the environment regardless if its more or less, catalitically I mean ! :ph43r:

I would invite anyone to come to see whats its like where I work, the pollution I mean, not only from petrol/deisel guzzling ( thinks thats an english word) vehicles, the buses are worst but the noise is also a pollutant. The company I work for cannot afford that magical american invention we seem to rely on everywhere these days in the form of air conditioning so we have to open the windows on hotter days. B)