The Way We Live Now: Student Village Revisited

Increasingly an occasional blog post. Partly this is because the threat level that once hung over the green space I call 'Battlefield' has diminished, partly due to my other commitments. But my interest has never flagged.

I created this blog because Newcastle City Council appears only too happy to give up the large expanse of publicly accessible open green space to someone else to exploit. Indeed my concern stemmed directly from their decision to approve a large office complex on the old paint factory site using the adjacent City Stadium open air running track for a thousand plus car park. The city still has plentiful unused or never used office space owned by tax dodging investors.

This was no small issue. Around and about the area are families who haven't the means to fly away to the sun; it remains the case that casual use by lots of families with young children have a safe place to go to on a sunny day or weekend. With rise and rise of student numbers in Sandyford and Shieldfield the summer months see lots of use. Initially troubled by the construction of the cycle way I have to admit this has worked well and also makes the question of developing the space beyond a leisure and wildlife resource much more of a challenge for the City's planners. There is increasingly also great concern about air quality in the city. These green lungs are our lungs. I really do think the threat has faded if not entirely disappeared.

Why not adopt the area as a public park? Lower Ouseburn Park as a certain ring about it. That designation would secure the future of what has become a rounded and attractive space when I think back to how it was when I first saw it forty years ago.


Another look at the changes – some good some not so good – around Shieldfield and the swiftly changing street scene. Just enough of the inconsequential and surviving structures helps. But the sense is of one large dormitory too. Corporate investors build corporate spaces and the balance between interesting, eccentric survivals, and the bland business park feel now has tipped a long way towards the latter. It's all a bit new. See what you think:

Off site photographic album here.

Shieldfield to City Road 2018.