Urban development

[Jah Warrior]

A boring topic? a waste of time? i beg to differ!!!

Ok to get you in the picture, I live in Bedford, England.

Bedford is a small town of just under 100,000 inhabitants. Of late despite the booming population i have noticed that there are less and less shops in the town centre and more and more pubs and bars.

Ok if you like beer and fighting this is all good, however for the sane amongst us (am I?) this aint a good thing. All the major shops are moving out of town and into retail parks where there are large so-called superstores.

This is making less and less people visit our town for shopping and hence the small businesses are losing out on a lot of passing trade which adds to the problem. each year the taxes rise and each year there are less and less customers.

To sum up Bedford is becoming a ghost town, old folk who can not necessarily drive have less and less choice of the goods and places they purchase these goods. Violent crime is amongst the highest per capita in England and by day the place is like a ghost town.

The council is directing less and less to the upkeep and development of our town centre and as such it is becoming grotty. While they are spending fortunes on access roads for these retail parks?

This ultimately saddens me, i was once very happy to live in nice safe bedford, the place WAS beautiful but now i am ashamed of the place.


Is this happening elsewhere too? is your home town being turned into grotty old dump?

If you live in a nice place with good local shops all i can say is make sure you use them, fight the big corporations and thier retail parks, Make a stand for the small business owner! And remember you will always get better service in a small shop from people who actually know what they are talking about!

[StormHammer]

Here, here! I agree with everything you just said. I too am sick of these out-of-town superstores and retail parks. The whole notion is nonsensical...particularly as the government wants less people to use their cars on the roads.

Many towns have perfectly good shopping centres, with smaller shops that are within easy reach of the town's populace, yet as you say, they feel the bite when these developments suddenly spring up, with promises of jobs, etc. All it does is move the employment out of the town, away from the smaller traders, and into these huge stores where free parking is an illusion, and long queues are the order of the day.

I live in a town that has always had too many pubs and clubs, so I'm sort of used to the anti-social behaviour. I think it was a mistake extending drinking hours...it usually just leads to more drunks and more violence on the streets.

Government, both local and national, has a lot to answer for.

Of course, I am unfortunately now a hypocrite...because I don't have a car, can't (and don't want to) drive, and my health has seen better days, I end up ordering a lot of groceries and other goods online, and have them delivered to my door. That's certainly not helping the shops in the town where I live - and it's a shame more local shops don't offer this type of service, or I'd use them instead of superstores like Tesco.

At the moment I truly can't believe that my local government is contemplating building a new hospital for the area in a location that is prone to flooding...particularly when all the experts keep saying the weather is going to get worse, we are going to have more rain and more flooding in the future, and woe-betide anyone living on a flood plane because you won't get insurance.

Have IQ's suddenly dropped sharply in the last 20 years?