Could old fashioned views slow Cardiffs progress

Reading peoples thoughts on social media is disturbing.
Its seems whether it is Cardiff Council, Cardiff days gone by or any other group that shows a photo of current Cardiff, which often looks very good, out come the OAPs stating how good Cardiff was before all the progress.

I was a teenager in the 80s and I cannot remember Cardiff being anything other than downtrodden. It certainly did not look like a City, never mind a capital City.

Yes, some buildings going up are not ground breaking but this is Cardiff not Dubai or Chicago.

The City has never looked so good and is actually starting to look like a good sized city, a place in fact that people have commented on saying things like "i did not expect Cardiff to look like it does" in a good way.

I know people in their 70s 80s remember their youth, and the good times they had, but their constant knocking of Cardiffs progress is worrying in that someone, somewhere may start taking note.

Hopefully Cardiff continues to grow and is not hampered by the I preferred it in the 50s brigade.

Reading peoples thoughts on social media is disturbing.
Its seems whether it is Cardiff Council, Cardiff days gone by or any other group that shows a photo of current Cardiff, which often looks very good, out come the OAPs stating how good Cardiff was before all the progress.

I was a teenager in the 80s and I cannot remember Cardiff being anything other than downtrodden. It certainly did not look like a City, never mind a capital City.

Yes, some buildings going up are not ground breaking but this is Cardiff not Dubai or Chicago.

The City has never looked so good and is actually starting to look like a good sized city, a place in fact that people have commented on saying things like "i did not expect Cardiff to look like it does" in a good way.

I know people in their 70s 80s remember their youth, and the good times they had, but their constant knocking of Cardiffs progress is worrying in that someone, somewhere may start taking note.

Hopefully Cardiff continues to grow and is not hampered by the I preferred it in the 50s brigade.

Totally agree! God knows what rose tinted glasses memory they are reminiscing? But lets face it some peoples default setting is to moan!! I believe that they are a great minority but it's those whinges that we hear - think Wales online reader comments! I think we've lost some very good quality buildings in the past - think the likes of the old capital theatre - queen st station and many more. However the new crop of high rises will not be guilty of this (with of course the exception of Guildford crescent - but to me that was more about active businesses being closed than losing quality architecture) I'm feeling pretty optimistic about the way our city centre is progressing but like you I do get pretty fed up with hearing the negativity. I deal with it by realising that the more moans I hear then the likelihood is the better things are getting!!

As an OAP who has lived and worked in Cardiff for most of his life (save for periods at university and other education establishments) I certainly think that the city's new buildings are generally a great improvement. There are some exceptions e.g. Ty Pont Hearn, but those exceptions apart, the new generation of tall buildings are slowly taking us into the 21st century.

I agree that we have lost some excellent buildings, but that is not the fault of the current generation of developers.

One objection I do have is the tendency to facadism. I see no merit in retaining the frontages in Guildford Crescent. There is very little original building work in those facades. I can remember when the middle buildings comprised a cash & carry outlet with large, I think metal, widows. The current porticoes are a modern addition. It seems that the Council is determined to repeat the mistake made with Altolusso.

As to the comment about the loss of businesses in Guildford Crescent, I understand that they all had years of warning that development would take place. The Portuguese restaurant planned its relocation. The others chose insolvency.

Reading peoples thoughts on social media is disturbing.....

I was a teenager in the 80s and I cannot remember Cardiff being anything other than downtrodden. It certainly did not look like a City, never mind a capital City.

Why do you think our best and brightest move away and don't come back?

Having spent three quarters of my life outside of Wales, I'm on my third attempt at coming 'home', and I'm only do that because my parents are getting really old. Otherwise, I was ready to give up after attempt number 2.

If you're someone who is intelligent, well educated, ambitious and has vision, you’ll really struggle to fit in with most of the locals. It’s so tiring being surrounding by these negative, energy vampires who are like nasty lobsters in a pot, too eager to drag anyone down who might want to better themselves and their community!

Yes, we have lost some really precious architectural gems in Cardiff, in fact, I’d go as far to say that it bordered on criminal activity, but I really don’t know what reality some of these people live in.

Believe it or not, not all our best and brightest move away, plenty stay or come back. Plenty of other place's 'best and brightest' chose to settle here.

The reason that happens is because of the UK's unique / bit weird higher education system where students are more or less expected to study at universities far from their homes.

It's probably an arguement for another place but I have a lot of sympathy for the Scottish Government's policy of prioritising local students for university places in fields like medicine, knowing that such students tend to stay in their communities.

Perhaps it's not as bad as it used to be. It was certainly the case for my parents generation that to get on you had to move on. Even better if you could lose your accent along the way and become less obviously Welsh.

If we focus here on developments/building, there are a couple of consultancies in Cardiff where you can do interesting work, but by and large, you really need to leave Wales to progress your career. Sure, you can do reasonably well if you stay in Wales, but you won't become outstanding unless you leave and build your experience elsewhere. We simple don't have the range of projects with the necessary scale and complexity of other cities.

Then, if you have that sort of experience, it's actually quite hard to come back to Wales later in life. Trying to bring in new ideas to people who have never moved away and never pushed themselves is like bashing your head against a brick wall.

That's all without mentioning the complication of having married someone from another town/city/country/continent, and grown your social and career network elsewhere.

I dont think that is any different from most regional places. If you grow up in Hull and want to be a corporate lawyer or grow up in Plymouth and want to be a fashion designer etc you move to get on. Generally you move to London and then perhaps move back to your place of origin later in life when your economic vitality has waned somewhat. If you havent retired already you've got one foot on the beach (generally speaking).

I don't see Wales being much different in that respect although in reality we have one reasonably sized city with a variety of economic activity (Cardiff) whereas in the north of England there are at least 4/5 cities. That offers more opportunity for ambitious professionals to stay in their local area than in somehwere like north Wales for example.

I think we also have a tendency to benchmark ourselves against cities that we have very little right to benchmark ourselves against. In reality we are the size of places such as Coventry, Hull, Newcastle, Leicester etc. Compared to those cities I think we do ok in terms of modern development.

I also think that there isnt much of an architectural heritage in Wales in terms of urban settlements. We tend to do Georgian market towns and reasonably picturesque seaside towns quite well but the built enviroment in our towns and cities is not great. Thats not really surprising as most of our urban settlements were jerry built to service an extractive economy and as soon as that economy tanked were effectively left to wither.