Rays of Hope

A brisk walk on a cold and sunny day around the open space of Battlefield a.k.a. City Stadium, almost certainly for the last time this year amid feelings of relief that many possibly bad outcomes for this patch of urban green space have been held at bay (for now ...) and my own disbelief at the transformation of a shabby and perhaps doomed to be short lived greening initiative last century has produced this increasingly mature habitat! I turn in from the busy streets of speeding traffic and here all around me is a woodland! The spans of a great piece of 19th century engineering, beautifully crafted are framed by soaring trees against the sweep of a winter sky. Birds flit between the branches and the track is strewn with fallen leaves and berries, braced for winter and waiting for spring.

As 'they' say, the best things in life are free.

Photographic slideshow here (off site link)

All good wishes and a happy New Year

Star and Shadow, Newcastle

This unusual space has been run as a cooperative since 2006 but moved to its current Warwick Street location last year after the co-op bought and converted a building on a former landfill site. Staffed by volunteers and dedicated to promoting grass roots culture, the cinema aims to get patrons involved, rather than merely consuming films. Customers can get involved in discussions about what they’ve seen and maybe even curate a season themselves. The programme is a joyous melange of genres: this month’s offering includes Cambridge Analytica documentary The Great Hack, 1934 Christmas comedy thriller The Thin Man, and evergreen mockumentary This is Spinal Tap. On Sundays, the volunteer-run vegetarian cafe serves toasted sandwiches and homemade cakes.

https://starandshadow.org.uk
Republished from The Guardian 14th December 2019. Link to full article here

The Big-ish Picture

Star and Shadow, Newcastle

This unusual space has been run as a cooperative since 2006 but moved to its current Warwick Street location last year after the co-op bought and converted a building on a former landfill site. Staffed by volunteers and dedicated to promoting grass roots culture, the cinema aims to get patrons involved, rather than merely consuming films. Customers can get involved in discussions about what they’ve seen and maybe even curate a season themselves. The programme is a joyous melange of genres: this month’s offering includes Cambridge Analytica documentary The Great Hack, 1934 Christmas comedy thriller The Thin Man, and evergreen mockumentary This is Spinal Tap. On Sundays, the volunteer-run vegetarian cafe serves toasted sandwiches and homemade cakes.

Republished from The Guardian 14th December 2019. Link to full article here



• starandshadow.org.uk

Cui bono?

Development opportunity

The indefatigable John Urquhart (Cities 4 People) writes:

I also enclose our objection to the proposed Kingston Village development.  Please follow up if you have time!  https://publicaccessapplications.newcastle.gov.uk/online-applications/applicationDetails.do?activeTab=makeComment&keyVal=PQQ5KPBS05100 From: <no-reply@newcastle.gov.uk> Date: Mon, 2 Dec 2019 at 22:07 Subject: Comments for Planning Application 2019/0666/01/OUT To: <jurquhart.ou@gmail.com> Mr John Urquhart, You have been sent this email because you or somebody else has submitted a comment on a Planning Application to your local authority using your email address. A summary of your comments is provided below. Comments were submitted at 10:06 PM on 02 Dec 2019 from Mr John Urquhart. Application Summary Address: Land To The West Of Brunton Lane, North Of Brunton Bridge And East Of Sunniside Newcastle upon Tyne Proposal: Outline application for the erection of up to 900 dwellings (Class C3), primary education facilities (Class D1), a village centre (Class A1 and A3), public open space, access, car parking, landscaping and associated infrastructure and demolition of agricultural building with all matters reserved except for points of access Case Officer: Sarah Davitt Click for further information Customer Details Name: Mr John Urquhart Email: - Address: Comments Details Commenter Type: Public Organisation Stance: Customer objects to the Planning Application Reasons for comment: Comments: Dear Sir We wish to object to the planning application for Kingston Village, reference number 2019/0666/01/OUT on the following grounds: 1. The application contravenes Core Strategy Policy NN4 - an increase of 400 houses over and above what was agreed in the Core Strategy 2. The development would compromise important wildlife corridors. 3. The application site is one of the last strongholds in Newcastle for Brown Hare, a protected species and priority species in the Biodiversity Action Plan. 4. The application site is home to Red and Amber listed species of breeding/wintering birds including Lapwing, Linnet, Skylark, Starling, Yellowhammer, Grasshopper Warbler, House Sparrow, Grey Partridge, Fieldfare and Reed Bunting. 5. The proposal would put yet more pressure on the delicate ecosystems within Havannah and Three Hills Local Nature Reserve by increasing footfall and disturbance from human activity and domestic pets. 6. The proposed removal of protected trees and hedgerows contravenes Policy CS18, EN3, DM 27, DM28, Policy T1 and T8 of the Newcastle City Council Tree Strategy Policy and NN4 Newcastle Great Park. 7. There are no wholly exceptional circumstances to justify the detrimental impact on ancient semi-natural woodland, therefore the proposals are contrary to the NPPF. 8. Proposed open space provision does not accord with with the standards set out in the local plan. The 'village green' has shrunk considerably since plans were provided for community engagement. 9. There are no detailed comments from the Council's ecology officer 10. The uplift in housing numbers will place undue strain on existing infrastructure, resulting in increased traffic congestion and air pollution. This, coupled with insufficient provision of open space, will have an adverse effect on the health and wellbeing of residents, contrary to CSUCP Policy CS14. 11. Housing numbers should be reduced to minimise harm on biodiversity, Green Belt and open space. No account has been taken of the impact of increased traffic on roads into Newcastle or whether the bus services would have capacity at peak times. In view of the city's commitment to a climate emergency and the need to reduce air pollution, these problems must be factored into any planning application first before proceeding further. John Urquhart Cities 4 People Best wishes John Urquhart

Copyright © 2019 Cities 4 People, All rights reserved.  You are receiving this email as you have previously shown interest in local environmental matters.  Our mailing address is:  Cities 4 People Bridle Path Newcastle Upon Tyne, NE3 United Kingdom

Many thanks to Mr Urquhart for kind permission to re-publish this correspondence.

The scale of new house building on the edge of this city defies rational explanation. Who is buying all these houses? Almost none are in the 'affordable' category and 'social housing' (leprosy to developers) never.

'Who benefits'?

My latest understanding is that Newcastle's recent demographic expansion stems from two main sources: Students and refugees. As my informant suggested, neither of these groups are, in the main, a source of home buyers on this scale. If someone reading this has an answer to this mystery, please let me know.

Latest: Some of the new housing rattled up in the past few years has experienced flooding after this Autumn's prolonged wet weather. Fancy that! Warnings by objector's to some of these schemes have proved well founded. My heart goes out to those who bought in good faith to have their dream home affected from a cause that was predicted before one brick was placed upon another on some green belt silver meadow. They deserve immediate and full compensation and re-dress.

Gushing

Threatened – with vibrancy

City News is a regular fictional account of what is in the pipeline for the citizenry of this great city, though, to be fair, some of it is inadvertently – one presumes – revealing.

The Grand Design for wrecking one of the country's least known but important Georgian-Victorian cities was mapped out by the ineffable T.Dan Smith half a century ago. There is a scene in a film made at that time of planners in Smith's seat-of-Empire solemnly placing small rectangular blocks of polished wood on a model of the 'new' Newcastle as envisaged*. A series of fiercely yet talent free cuboids would spread out over a demolished city centre through whose canyons cars would freely circulate ... Freely because, in around 1970 or so, there would never be more than a handful. Such is the optimism of planners.

Only part of Smith's 'vision' was created. Bits remain, testament to a fact of the impersistence of Modernist dreams, that concrete does not weather, it only rots. The damage was heroic if the reality is not. Today log jam cars queue through the mid afternoon to go at walking speed over the Tyne Bridge and yet still more to come. For this, much that had grace, vigour and grandeur went down to dust.

So has Smith and most of his deeply unedifying acolytes. But the 'legacy' seemingly persists, warmed up from time to time. Those wood blocks are safe in some cupboard one feels.

City News is gushing this month. It even held a launch of its Trust for the city parks in Leazes Park. Last century the City Council wanted to hive off Leazes Park to Sir John Hall's 'Newcastle United Sporting Club' creating a private playground from a public space on Common Land, the Town Moor. Unsurprisingly, given the players on this pitch, this kind of beneficent approach to the public interest survived that debacle and the shameless City News announces that somewhere it has just decided to call East Pilgrim Street is preparing to go 'vibrant'. Anyone with a memory must tremble at the prospect.

It is common knowledge that the 'High Street' is struggling. Eldon Square and Northumberland Street hold the majority of the large established chains in the city. None are exactly thrilled by the idea another set of stores are planned to join in slicing, even very thinly, the available shopping pound. The news that 'East Pilgrim Street' – vibrant East Pilgrim Street – is about to be developed as another additional shopping venue for the city,  regional centre for shopping no less, might not be the Christmas present the writer of this gushing piece believes it to be. True there is not much competition for miles around, but then again, there is this invention the internet ... you see where this is going.

But all is not what it seems, as is usually, almost invariably in fact, the case with these City News bombshells. The crucial kickstart here, 'key turning' I think the term is, will be a gigantic block of offices –

'Work is expected (nb) next year on the glass fronted (wow!) building which (sic) has been hailed (by whom?) as the catalyst for the rebirth of East Pilgrim Street' – with emendations Ed.

To be followed by more bars, 'leisure' and 'living' developments and a 'pavilion' towards Carliol Square if the wind is set fair and vibrancy doesn't flag.

Eagle eyed among you will be some who will recall the rather large new offices that have been built around the city this century that have never had a paying tenant. As for bars, well, there are no end to the number Newcastle can support it seems. As with all the News one must watch this space.


*Commissioned from the Amber Films collective it was never used. Latterly, and perhaps not unconnected, Amber Films led the fight to preserve the historic Quayside from the wood block treatment. As is, the Quayside is perhaps the singular reason Newcastle is Newcastle still.

Guys to go

A break in the rain and I made my way to Battlefield a.k.a. City Stadium to snap a few more pictures before the wind and rain strip the trees of their colour. Busy. The path a flow of  people, mostly young and I assume students, with a few oldies like me joining them. The sun shone. The ingredients all there. How amazing the place looks now!

Then I came on a green Land Rover parked up and two guys running a pop-up coffee (and more) stop, Zees Beans. George and Zak. They couldn't escape and so had me to bore them half to death with stories about this green space I have seen grow from benighted 'threatening' No Person's Land to what is now a lovely haven for us locals, visitor's and wildlife. They put up with me as I talked non stop and guzzled a very nice and strong coffee. Over on the stadium, the set of up for the fireworks was under way.

Later: I came to watch the first fireworks. Huge crowds, all friendly types. Then there was Zees Beans, busy with a queue of customers. Good luck. It's what is making this part of the city thrive, people with imagination. So many good developments in this past couple of years and, for me, a lot of potential still.

Part One of a photographic essay is here (Off site link)

Way to go

More and more pressure for housing – student or other kinds – grows and grows. More of our green spaces are going to feed the frenzy. But are these homes or housing assets? The planning rules have been relaxed but the 'homes' being built are as I have seen up and down the country, are unaffordable to all but well heeled and or investors. Since the Great Banker's Depression of 2008, finance for social housing has dried up. The double hit of no money and forced to sell the existing social housing stock has produced the predictable situation of unmet demand. Housing lists grow – you've more chance of winning the lottery, any lottery – as fast as the green fringes go under bricks and paving.

I saw plans recently for 5000 homes to swallow up farmland. Much of the landscape where I spent my teenage years has vanished under huge new build schemes in a few years, all detached and few semis, none for starters on the housing ladder not those unable to stump up the necessary thousands for a deposit. Ballooning estates depending on the same infrastructure that coped well with one tractor a day now faces hundreds of cars daily merely for access. The public will have to stump up the deficit in education, health and transport created by private entrepreneurs.

But here is better news. A slight correction to public finances has produced a sort of flag waver for public housing, housing moreover in urban environments; re-development of 'failed estates' or public controlled land. The Guardian has the details here.

Those of us who seek to protect urban green space neglect the housing crisis at our peril. Too few environmental groups proactively promote sustainable urban housing. Not only does it make sense, it promotes social justice.

“The planners told us it was the future.”

"At the time, the zeal of architectural modernism was all-consuming. Many cities outside London, such as Newcastle, Liverpool, Bradford, Birmingham and Plymouth, saw sections of their mostly Victorian historic centres lost to comprehensive redevelopment."

A timely reminder of what has been lost from Simon Jenkins in The Guardian today. Timely, because a wave of spec building has swept over this city and doesn't look like its ending soon. The Chronicle warbles on about exciting developments (sic) around the city that hinge on office blocks, blocks that will join others that have never had paying tenants since they were built in the pre-2008 boom.

Jenkins, not that I am a fan of his, is surely correct in claiming that for many of us, the very features of urban living that have produced the greatest creativity and dynamic growth have come about by re-purposing older buildings and transforming districts collectively, rather than through corporate speculation. Prize examples are to be found in and around Shieldfield, where dilapidation and neglect create chances for low budget revivals. Ironically, as with Ouseburn this eventually draws in the white Porche driving developers, sussing out a market for the chic well heeled in search of authentic urban roughage minus the roughs. Still, there is hope and as the article shows, we can win.

Read the article here (off site link).

Bringing it home

One of the exciting, indeed, energising consequences of finding a green walk on one's own doorstep is the way the connection to nature and environment can suddenly be integrated in one's every day life without an effort. Much of our 'getting away from it all' involves physical transport, timetables, time keeping and no little psychic exhaustion. Little wonder we need to unwind and move at a different pace, to linger and look.

The old track way from Byker down to the Tyne is also reclaimed space for life.

Nearly every year we are seeing or hearing of more and more of the so-called 'Green Belt' going under housing, aspirational housing that does not begin to address the housing problem and recedes the landscape beyond ever further, pushing wild life away from us, particularly the resources poor us. It seems we shall have to await a very different age to redeem what we have lost.

My own feeling is that the post Second World War planning for the future, however well intentioned, was itself a product of viewing life as mechanism. One only has to view those old newsreels on the New Towns or look at the Modernist designs for our bombed cities that were all the rage then to see this essentially bureaucratic view of human society, structured, highly organised. It shared too much with a totalitarian ideology: You Will Be Happy. The faults with it are so obvious now. It has become outmoded.

If one looks objectively at the Green Belt, one of the planners achievements, a trade off to the regimentation elsewhere, what is there? Precious little. Hardly any of the Green Belt is actually available for walking, cycling or simply wandering in. The sacrifice we are making today is simply one of vista. We need to re-think what green space is and what it is for.

I began this blog because the slice of green space on my doorstep was being measured up for a 1300 spaces car park! That was almost twenty years ago. Since then this green field of uncertain parentage has turned into a park in all but name. I would like to live long enough to have it designated as a park. It springs to life in the summer months and walkers and strollers use it as much as speeding cyclists. It has grown an identity too; it's a place. It's accessible and increasingly well used. It gives the young real experience of natural life, a place where imaginations can find projection. That is what quotidian 'green space' does. We need it in our lives. We need to bring it home.

Meanwhile a few snaps of the marvellous efforts that have made the windswept and forlorn warehouse facing 'Battlefield' into the Star & Shadow cinema and cultural hub. Someone (or three?) have also set to and made the former flower beds bloom, a fair compliment to the wildflower strip alongside the cycle path that almost always leaves the best to last as the days grow shorter.

The Groves of Byker Part the Second

I will have more to say. For now the photography will do.

Another photographic slideshow here on an off site link.

A follow up collection of thoughts about the significance of urban walks soon.

The Groves of Byker Part the First

The start

A walk in high summer down the delightful pedestrian and cycle path that begins behind the local Mecca Bingo, under the roadway, past the imposing archway sculpture that tries (quite successfully) to reflect the former industrial activities this railway once served and onwards towards Walker and the Tyne.

The walk is inspiring for its sense of history in the remains of the impressive 19th century railway architecture that survives and the riotous nature that has seized on an opportunity to thrive in the midst of the city. But make up your own mind. Off site photographic gallery here.

Ring out the awful, bring in the so-so

The old Tyne & Wear Council offices on Sandyford Road,
one of the ugliest buildings in the whole of Newcastle,
currently dominates the entrance to the development
I hope the developers plan to knock it down.

When I first saw the transformation of the former Scottish Life buildings alongside the old Jesmond station, betwixt and between Sandyford Road (sic) and the Central Motorway, I was sitting with a man who had shaken hands with Frank Lloyd Wright. He looked at the concrete framework against the setting sun and said "I wish they would leave it just as it is'. It did have a certain Cubist attractiveness.

Years later the transformation has almost been completed except for a proposed tower block that will soar above the junction of Jesmond Road and Osborne Terrace. It is quite a sight even on the drawing board.

I missed the open event where the architects and developers presented their plans. Pity. But I did a bit of wandering about myself a day later on a nice evening and made a record of the current development.

I have to admit it isn't all bad. Not for me, but as an alternative to eating up the greenbelt, and, above all, an imaginative re-purposing of an office block, much to commend it. The detailing is good but also rather 'Canary Wharf', that soulless material, stainless steel, too much in evidence. What it's like to live next to all that car pollution, noise and poor air quality, I do not know.

So a guarded welcome for me. And a hope more of this city's wretched old office blocks and several newer ones that are unlet or never been let, will find a new use as housing. Bringing people back into our cities should be a priority

What do you think? Link to off site photograph gallery here.

The Rurban Belt

As more and more of Newcastle and Tyneside's Green Belts go under concrete the focus is on saving what's left. What is that exactly? Much of it is rye grass and barbed wire, jig-saw puzzled by Sitka spruce lozenges; or blocked out by golf courses. None of these places are friendly to walkers and cyclists and there are few footpaths and these not well sign posted. It leaves one thinking 'What is the Green Belt for?'

In defending the Green Belt in recent years the alternative sites for house building have often been focused on 'brownfield', land where industry once stood, now cleared of buildings, extensive concrete floors or runways, pockets of self sown birch and buddleia sprung up uninvited. Build on these sites first seems to be the argument. Oddly, in my experience brownfield sites are potentially if not actually, much richer in terms of their eclectic plant and animal populations than the, sainted by historic legislation and custom, Green Belt.

Recently I have been on two expeditions to see what old industrial land looks like. The experience is much more positive and exciting than looking at fields of chemical sprayed grass and crops.

Brockley Whins. View to the east from former Bolden Colliery.

There is something marvellous at seeing nature making a come back. There once stood a large colliery and a bank of railway yards transporting coal to the near by River Tyne. Long gone, the resultant landscape, bruised by heavy usage. In places it's possible to see the planted woodland is growing from a mixture of limestone ballast deposits and colliery waste. Yet wildflowers, particularly one's attracted to higher pH levels. In places a kind of grass meadow has formed. rich in Bird's-foot-trefoil. In wetter spots,  orchids and yellow flags. Of concern, and not just at this site, is the lack of flying insects. We seem to be in a time when the once familiar 'hum' of a warm summer's day in our countryside is memory.

Nevertheless, there are reasons to be optimistic. Whitethroats, Great Tits, Chaffinches still singing, ubiquitous Magpies, a Moorhen obviously displeased to have its young bothered by a passer by, and a Heron beside the burn that bounds the site were all welcome. Even a few butterflies, common blue and gatekeeper types.

Have we got it right about Green Belts and nature? It seems to me not. If I am honest I think the what the Green Belt stands for in people's imagination is not meeting current needs. A Green Belt that is uninviting, cannot be explored needs re-examining. It's time to think about what delivers experience and connections rather than mere expanse. I'm not trying to make the case for overwheening greed, opportunism or simply bad planning, such as is the case today around the north east, but bringing a fresh point of view to these discussions. A nature beyond reach, is not nature in people's lives at all. It's a concept out of reach.

Online gallery here (Off site link)

Real and Unreal

The Ouseburn Barrage

I picked up a copy of Ouseburn Valley News recently (1). I rarely see it. Ouseburn Valley News is the newsletter of the Ouseburn Valley Trust, a front organisation of Newcastle City Council. It was this Trust that instigated the Barrage Fiasco that resulted in a massive over spend and an unused barrage that mucked up the area around the popular and successful Tyne Bar. The total cost of the barrage was something like more than six million quid all of it borne by Newcastle Council Taxpayers. An alternative to the barrage idea put forward by an independent group of local campaigners that involved using natural processes to resolve the mud question was overruled. Since that time I have viewed the Trust with askance. It seemed to me, and this was confirmed by subsequent events, that the Trust was pursuing a Newcastle Council 'corporatist' agenda in the Lower Ouseburn.

Long time ago I entertained a visitor to the city, a journalist. He and I went for a drink on the Quayside. We discussed the then recent re-built river frontage and admired the views along the Tyne. Then, we took a stroll into Ouseburn. As we came into the Valley, Jonathan turned to me and said "I like urban dereliction". I know what he meant. So do thousands of other people sensitive to the possibilities that arise with unplanned and often unloved areas of our cities and towns. That old expression 'scope for the imagination' has a grounding in truth. Many such places have been highlighted around the world now, unfortunately too frequently because the bull dozers and developers have rocked up to begin work 'transforming' 'dereliction' into expensive 'destinations'.

Togetherness

Ouseburn has been similarly threatened. Indeed, the barrage was intended to assist and enable Lower Ouseburn to become such a 'destination' beloved of the planners and their corporate mindset. Lower Ouseburn would lose the mud at low tide and then very expensive apartments could be built alongside the burn with the ouse covered by water. Smart? Thank heavens it never happened. Or, not yet.

'Mud, glorious mud ...'

On the front page of Ouseburn Valley News I read this:

'We feel a plan for the Ouseburn should not simply be about its regeneration, but about protecting and celebrating what we already have here too.'

I take 'we' to mean the Board of Trustees. If so, this is good news. No longer a rubber stamp for Council plans then. Moreover, looking forward, the writer also adds:

'We want to be ambitious but do not want to compromise what makes Ouseburn special.'

One way of interpreting ambition in this context would be diametrically opposite to 'what makes Ouseburn special'. That must be obvious. I think it so and from reading between the lines I suspect the writer does too.

My own fear that the Lower Ouseburn was a step on a pathway designed in planning offices and awaiting the next consignment of catalogue instant heritage ye olde finger post signs and genuine fake white marble and original Victorian stainless steel handrails have lessened. Not entirely, but much abated by what I have read.

The essential character of Ouseburn is that it was not planned but re-discovered and cherished exactly for those qualities that are now an obstacle to some and a delight to others. It doesn't need the 'heritage' treatment that ruins so much it touches. The very incoherence and occasional inconvenience – a too narrow pathway or over steep set of steps – has to be set against what the alternative would bring in train. Let's keep it real.

(1) Ouseburn Valley News, April 2019

Blankland

Creeping Corporatism. What is it? Increasingly a sort of disease of the mind. Once we were content with pavements and street corners, weaving through alleyways and emerging onto prospects of civic dignity jostled by the sorts of variety that made city living one of possibility. The new wave of town planners have decided the future is the kind of pre-cast, ready made space that I saw in Rome when visiting the plentiful reminders of Italy's not then long gone fascist leader, Benito Mussolini. A sort of Roman Modernism that collectivised civic space and made the imagination redundant in a time of mindless adulation.

Northumberland Road (sic) is now a wholly owned glide slope of Northumbria University® p.l.c. and looks as though banking and insurance are the main activities of the earphone wearers going back and forth engrossed in listening rather than looking. And, no. I have never seen anyone sitting on the oversized tranquilser tablets that are dumped along what was once fondly known as the Queen's Highway. White fake marble and stainless steel are the favoured materials of this style and it is showing up all over the city either placed by the Council or others following this lead. I detest it.

Instant mediocrity would be bad enough. But this is no simple crassness. It is planned. It means something.

What that is I suspect will wring out any of the delights of urban life; the untidiness, the unplanned, the contrasts and sheer imbalances that make food for the mind. It has been a feature around the country and in other parts of the world, that stimulus in cities so often springs up where two things are present: neglect and creativity. Neglect is not fussy. Even great buildings fall on hard times and plain ugly ones can spring into new life when the economics are right. A wave of creative people around the city have landed up in buildings that were once banks and insurance company premises. I visited one recently. Walking around corridors that still had the unfeeling sheen of business all over them and entered a space now converted by not much money but a huge amount of belief into something that resembled a Thai restaurant, if you could find one that did Zombie weddings and funerals. Wonderful!

The fear I have is these ecstatic upheavals won't be enough to halt the three piece suits and their lackeys however.

Maybe some small pockets are just too small and piecemeal for the pinstripe successors to Il Duce to bother with. Yet. Another feature of the Creeping Corporatism disorder is the frequency with which, having pioneered urban wasteland renewal on their own or begged money, the artists and entertainers are elbowed out by people quick to see the dollar potential of the edgy urban lifestyle. c.f. Ouseburn or 'designer Punk' of an earlier episode of cultural appropriation by the wealth 'creators'.

An area that has long intrigued me lies as yet mostly uncoverted and overlooked but showing signs that its potential is being realised by a variety of enterprises, all young, penniless one suspects powered by enthusiasm and a creative eye for the very defects that dissuade property sharks and the pedlars of street furniture. It lies like a set of origami shaped spaces and back ways, scraped up between this vanity project, urban motorways and listed but unwanted buildings between the truly dreadful Jury's Inn building (sic) over the old cattle market site, a flash Casino, the lower part of the Newcastle City University campus, the Discovery Museum and the Centre for Life. The Creeping Corporatism has gripped Blandford Square and the back of Waterloo Street, so the threat is there ... The Boulevard drag theatre and the intriguing back lanes, the admixture of buildings styles, periods and uses makes this corner of the city centre a place for new voices.

I welcome the aplhabetti theatre alongside the 'boulevard' urban motorway as positive sign. That, and the nearby excellent Vegano vegan café (licensed) are a sign of hope that unconformity and repurposing are on the move in another piece of unwanted urban space. Despite traffic hammering past, on my visit to Vegano I thought as I looked out on the sprouting trees that I might be in another city altogether, a re-invented one.

Photographic record of my stroll here (Off site link).

Up, up and away

The student bijou dwellings go on proliferating around the city. There is seemingly no let up. Two that caught the eye. One open and another climbing ever skywards. When will this building mania run out of steam?

Well, maybe it's better than the continuing building of offices without clients to occupy them. Just opposite to the tower block shown here, the steel work for a new huge office block boasting advanced features is coming together. More on that. Meanwhile, as I showed a few years back, Newcastle has several brand new (at that time) blocks that have never subsequently attracted occupants.

Meanwhile social housing languishes and the city's Green Belt goes under more and more boxy aspirational 'housing'.

West Road at Collingwood Street

Westgate Hill approach

Junction of Westgate Hill and St James' Boulevard

Sprung

A recent return to normal temperatures cannot disguise signs of the onset of Spring around Battlefield.

Slideshow here.

Work on the footpath through the wood continues. A sign that this piece of open space – so uncharacteristic in its haphazardness –  is valued? I hope so.

Winter Sun

Winter sun without discontent ... or something. A stroll around to see how the recent snow might have held back Spring, a season that follows on from Christmas without a break these days.

The imminent disappearance of this open space under tarmac or privatised playing fields is lessened. It might not last. I still have a feeling that someone in the Civic Centre might even now be drawing up a plan ...

The usual sights have been joined by welcome developments. The Star & Shadow is still something of a work in progress but the intriguing sign is illuminated and the doors are open. The great lost opportunity of the Portland Green Student Village may in time become less of one; without jeopardising security, some interaction between the spaces of the new accommodation blocks (Halls of Residence just won't do these days) and the Lower Ouseburn could be achieved here and there. One pointer are the informal paths that are being made by people's feet rather than someone with a slide ruler. Compared with where we were even a few years ago, the prospects for this fine slice of green space are a mite better.

A refurbished path leading from Stepney Bank to the railway road bridge into Byker is a sign I should like to see more of in the future.

Slideshow (off site link) here.

Wide awake?

John Urquhart (cities4people) writes:

'Dear all I enclose an email to The Journal, see below. Best wishes for 2019 John Urquhart email cities4people@environment.org.uk     ​From:  John Urquhart  <jurquhart.ou@googlemail.com> Date: Sat, 29 Dec 2018 at 14:24 Subject: 2019: Eat Sheep Wear Wool To: <jnl.letters@ncjmedia.co.uk> Dear Sir   “Extinction Rebellion” is coming to Newcastle this coming Thursday 3rd January at 6.15 pm at Brunswick Methodist Church Hall off Northumberland Street.  No doubt they will urge us to stop eating meat to reduce global warming.  But what about the millions of sheep on northern hills?  Their pastures absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and when they have eaten the grass they revitalise it with fresh dung.  Eventually the sheep are eaten by humans, whose waste products then end up sequestered in the sea or encourage more marine bioactivity.  In other words, this meat cycle promotes net carbon capture from the atmosphere.   Sheep’s wool is another way of storing carbon.  It challenges the present regime of artificial fibres which slosh around in our washing machines and fragments from them sluice out into the oceans to the distress of much sea life.  Why not check out your wardrobe and chuck out all garments that are spun from oil-based products, replacing them with natural fibre clothing?  When such garments are finally worn out they can be used as external insulation on buildings under rendering, producing breathable walls.  The resilience of wool is impressive.  Some years ago, I witnessed a sheep falling off a 60-foot cliff, land on its back, get up and walk away.  And how about the Durham viaduct of the East Coast mainline?  It has stood for 150 years thanks to North East pioneers who thought outside the box and built it on bales of wool!   Have a great new year – eat sheep, wear wool.   Yours faithfully John Urquhart

Copyright © 2018 Cities 4 People, All rights reserved. You are receiving this email as you have previously shown interest in local environmental matters. Our mailing address is: Cities 4 People Bridle Path Newcastle Upon Tyne, NE3 United Kingdom

 (Re-published by kind permission)

Another year and still here

It has been a sort of mixed pleasure to see the open space I call 'Battlefield' these past years. It is still there. So am I. So I go on watching the trees develop (and blow down) hopeful, more hopeful in fact, that one day this piece of once unregarded space will be seen as more than a crossing point for pedestrians and cyclists and mere vacant possession, more of a green lung and, increasingly, wildlife haven and free space. A designation that protected it would be nice ...

Best Wishes to my lone reader for 2019