'Big on Quality Lidl on Price'

Work begins

Lidl's supermarket's were a favourite for me even before I discovered they were building a store in Shieldfield on the old motor homes sales site at the junction of Portland Road and Warwick Street. True, I would have quite liked that cleared site to be integrated back into the City Stadium; for a while it had been used by skateboarders, a use I approved of but didn't last.

When plans were released I saw the flowering cherry trees beside Portland Road felled and posted about that vandalism on this blog. I wrote e-mails to all three of my local Councillors at that time for an explanation, and sent a copy to Lidl's U.K. Only Lidl's UK replied. Their reply came with a full outline of their plans and drawings and pledges to make good any lost trees and more; it also claimed the tree felling was requested by Newcastle City Council. Thee e-mail promised tree planting around the site in double figures, a sedum roof and comprehensive controls on waste management and integral re-cycling.

This preceded the Covid Pandemic and since then little has happened on site. I heard a rumour another large food retailer had placed an objection. Last month a digger turned up and work is well underway.

Shieldfield and Sandyford suffers from limited access to affordable and varied food at price points most can afford. 'Food access poverty' is a thing, particularly for the less mobile; we have many such households in the district.

A supermarket for Shieldfield

We shall have to wait and see if all the environmental promises are met. I still have the correspondence and will monitor progress. However, for the community's sake, I welcome Lidl's.

Dump

Newcastle City Centre east of Northumberland Street is a dump. Not alone, just the easiest one to reach.. This decay of what was once real and genuine replaced by machine age ambition stems from planning group think that was rolled out by just about every city and town council in the land more than half a century ago.  A corporate Modernism on the cheap, that everywhere became bleak, desolate and alienating, as it rapidly aged. 

The big players are deserting the High Street for cyber space and shopping is being transformed into a increasing ribbon development of fast food and beverage outlets selling froth and starch. The cycle of digging up Pilgrim Street, Grey Street, Grainger Street and Northumberland Street one after the other, each time subtracting from what point there was to each, less and less a city one wants to to spend time in The only places that have any identity left are the one's left out of the Great Leap Forward of the 60s.

Princess Square makes the point better than words. This is what the Shining Bright Future the planners envisioned looks like when concrete rots in line with blind ambition. Comfortless destitution, no nostalgic grandeur that was never there in the first place to be admired in decay.

A Lesson for Newcastle

Common or garden Blackthorn in all its glory

One of the many disturbing prospects that float over our policies for green space in urban settings – preservation as much as management – has been the 'newts won't stop the builder's' threats. Relaxing planning permission to build one and a half million new homes (and counting) in some fanciful space of time cannot be delayed any longer by objections based upon wildlife or amenity. The government won't be stopped in its drive to brick over the landscape.

This 'roll up your sleeves and put up your fists' approach is more than stupid and crass. It is a mistake that will cost future generations in many ways beyond having a roof over their heads.*

Again and again and especially, pointedly, since the Covid 19 pandemic, access to something like a natural environment has been shown (and widely claimed) to be a life saver, a giver of welcome relaxation from anxiety. Even the smallest of public green spaces has this possibility.

Why should such access and opportunity be an either or choice? Why is it impossible seemingly to avoid sprawl, compaction and bleakness in our housing schemes because green space is seen either as 'profit forgone', or potentially a vector of nuisance none wants to take responsibility for; a dull patch of council mown grass without clear purpose. It doesn't have to be so, but it does take thought, conviction and vision.

Here is an example of how, given some larger but not unobtainable idea about how and where we live longer term, it can be achieved. People and Newts. Together.

* How much new build do we in our region see that is actually for new home owners rather than exclusive executive class aspirational estates?

Intriguing

When I saw a triangle of rough grassland had been freshly mown and was in the first stages of being dug up, I feared the worst for Battlefield. However, there was something about this undertaking that gave me pause for thought.

A woman wearing a green gilet sitting on a bench nearby seemed to be involved. She and her soon arrived colleague, carrying an armful of snacks, beamed re-assurance. They were Wild Intrigue.

I hadn't heard of this group – shame! – but I soon learned a great deal more, all of it exciting.

The rough grassland had proven almost dead ecologically speaking and its roots form a membrane that would resist any flowering plants; this is the result of a gradual process where a dominant species excludes others. The lack of 'intervention' produces stasis. No ruminant animals to break it up by trampling, for example.

The Intriguing Two explained what they were about. Removal and replacement of this triangular patch to make a wild flower meadow, improving amenity but also providing a resource for numerous invertebrates, importantly, bees, those tireless agents of growth and sustenance. At the same time my own fears for this open space remaining open space were placed on hold if not completely allayed.

The 'meadow' will be seeded by the end of this month with a wild flower mix, hopefully involving members of the public.

Friends and neighbours

 Made a new friend on my walk around the patch today. Rocco taking his owner for a stroll in the Spring sunshine. He nearly kept still for a second!

An update coming soon with more photographs of this special part of Shieldfield.

Green is Good

Urban Green, the charity set up some five years ago to manage (and develop) the city’s parks and open spaces, great and small, celebrated or neglected, has been voted out by the City Council who have decided they want to resume stewardship*.

Urban Green attracted critics. It attracted critics before it was a thing indeed. The chief favour of these criticisms as I could see it, was this was ‘privatisation’ by another route and that ‘commercial interests’ would steer the new charitable body. I did in fact find a vendor of refreshments with a pitch in a popular park who told me Urban Green had hiked the ‘fee’ for the right to sell in the park by 270 per cent!

My own direct experience was slightly more favourable. The piece of open space (that in fact has no legal protection as I am informed)  I call ‘Battlefield’ has been given much more attention in a good way in recent years. It is a public park in all but name, and maintenance has included improved facilities and encouragement to use the space recreationally. This could go further with some enlightened interventions, but the security of public access and involvement compared with what was planned by the City Council only a few years before, is much to be welcomed.

However, in some dark corner of what are the Council’s Planning Department and co-workers in mischief, there have been hints that the Council has designs on ‘Battlefield’. I don’t not what these are, but I fear the worst. Urban Green might be a mixed bag of tricks, but compared to the record of the City Council, I fancy they have done a good job.

* One query about the replacement of Urban Green by the Council’s Environmental service is where is the money coming from and how will the networks of volunteering and public interactions be continued from this point on?

Meanwhile …

Some photographs of a favourite ‘ruban’ place. These ‘edges’ of our cities and towns are increasingly under pressure and we are set to lose more and more of nearby green space to developers. Enjoy it while we may.

Happy New Year!