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- Joined: Tue Jul 15, 2014 2:35 pm
Not sure where to put this but there was an article on Walesonline regarding the state of Central Square already -
https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wale ... n-16562997
This is from the same guy who recently described Cardiff as a city of shadows and had a general whinge about development per se. He is clearly entitled to his opinion however I get the feeling that he has inherited the Dan O'Neill role of railing against anything modern.
But I have to say that the city centre public realm is not just incredibly grubby at the moment but is also increasingly degraded. There are a number of places where there are large areas of uneven, cracked, broken or loose slabs - outside St Johns church (very heavy traffic), the junction on High Street between Church Street and Quay Street which has been relaid a few times but has always been very poor, Working Street and the top end of Queen Street to name a few.
In other areas the slabs have been taken up to accommodate the new security barriers, telecommunication works and general building works and replaced with tarmac. The top end of Queen Street is probably the worst place and is coupled with the silly over supply of visual clutter in the form of signage.
The repaving works took place at the same time as SD2 so are probably less than 10 years old. You would expect some deterioration but unless there is an intervention soon some areas will need to be taken up and completely relaid which may not be feasible in the current financial climate.
I don't know what the issue is (the council state that street cleaning vehicles are on the blink), it could be the logical outcome of sustained austerity and the reduction in local government budgets, it could be that those who live or visit Cardiff are dirty herberts, it could be that those carrying out works are either ignoring obligations to re-instate slabs or that there are no obligations or it could be that the slabs were poorly laid in the first place. Possibly a combination of all of the above.
The upshot is that that the public realm at the moment is very poor in places.
https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wale ... n-16562997
This is from the same guy who recently described Cardiff as a city of shadows and had a general whinge about development per se. He is clearly entitled to his opinion however I get the feeling that he has inherited the Dan O'Neill role of railing against anything modern.
But I have to say that the city centre public realm is not just incredibly grubby at the moment but is also increasingly degraded. There are a number of places where there are large areas of uneven, cracked, broken or loose slabs - outside St Johns church (very heavy traffic), the junction on High Street between Church Street and Quay Street which has been relaid a few times but has always been very poor, Working Street and the top end of Queen Street to name a few.
In other areas the slabs have been taken up to accommodate the new security barriers, telecommunication works and general building works and replaced with tarmac. The top end of Queen Street is probably the worst place and is coupled with the silly over supply of visual clutter in the form of signage.
The repaving works took place at the same time as SD2 so are probably less than 10 years old. You would expect some deterioration but unless there is an intervention soon some areas will need to be taken up and completely relaid which may not be feasible in the current financial climate.
I don't know what the issue is (the council state that street cleaning vehicles are on the blink), it could be the logical outcome of sustained austerity and the reduction in local government budgets, it could be that those who live or visit Cardiff are dirty herberts, it could be that those carrying out works are either ignoring obligations to re-instate slabs or that there are no obligations or it could be that the slabs were poorly laid in the first place. Possibly a combination of all of the above.
The upshot is that that the public realm at the moment is very poor in places.