FMS-Blog : The Wildly Whimsical, Mostly Musical WebLog
Monday, June 26, 2006
The Changing Face of Bradford
Many local people have complained over the years about how awful Bradford is, particularly with reference to the disastrous city planning that has gone on here over the past 50 years. And it's true that many beautiful old buildings were destroyed in the late 1950's and early 60's to make way for the Lego blocks that are in turn now being knocked down and replaced with fancy shopping centres and the like. Of course, retrospectively we can now see that it would have been more worthwhile to have put the time and money into renovating the old buildings in the first place rather than simply putting up cheaper alternatives such as those that have made up the majority of the architecture on Cheapside and Broadway for the best part of 40 years.
And the private sector seems to be taking this wisdom on board when considering the future of some of Bradford's most historic (and dilapidated) buildings such as the great mills in Saltaire and Manningham. The new way to make money in this industry seems to be to use the character of the shells we have left from Britain's industrial past to create newer, more versatile and more interesting spaces to live and work in the 21st century.
So, this only begs the question 'why can't Bradford council follow suit??' It saddens me to visit the neighbourhood I grew up in, Undercliffe, because it reminds me that those looking after Bradford's schools are making the same mistakes now as did the city planners of the 50's : they are destroying or have destroyed many many Victorian style school buildings, selling this land off for housing and taking up valuable green-belt land to construct new places for our children to spend their days : places that I might add all look alike and will no doubt become the lego blocks of the next few decades.
Part of the reason for this change, of course, was Bradford Education's decision to become a 2-tier system, letting go of the middle schools and instead having only primary and secondary schools in the district. This in itself is a massive shame because I personally found middle school to be a really useful stepping stone between the dependence of being in one classroom with one teacher all day and the chaos that ensues in upper school education. But, more than that, I look to the places I, a 29 year old, went to school and see that only 2 of the 4 schools I attended even exist anymore and one of them has been re-branded and extensively altered for the new system in Bradford.
Perhaps I'm being a little overly-sentimental or melodramatic even, but it does seem like such a pity that these places that had such character and history should be swept away in favour of new buildings that look just like every new low-rise office block in Britain. The first school I went to, Undercliffe First, was not only attended by lots of people I know of my age group but also by my mother and her mother and, for all I know, her mother. Was the temporary cash injection that Education Bradford will have received a couple of years ago for the sale of this site REALLY worth destroying a place that had such historical significance to so many local people?
And the private sector seems to be taking this wisdom on board when considering the future of some of Bradford's most historic (and dilapidated) buildings such as the great mills in Saltaire and Manningham. The new way to make money in this industry seems to be to use the character of the shells we have left from Britain's industrial past to create newer, more versatile and more interesting spaces to live and work in the 21st century.
So, this only begs the question 'why can't Bradford council follow suit??' It saddens me to visit the neighbourhood I grew up in, Undercliffe, because it reminds me that those looking after Bradford's schools are making the same mistakes now as did the city planners of the 50's : they are destroying or have destroyed many many Victorian style school buildings, selling this land off for housing and taking up valuable green-belt land to construct new places for our children to spend their days : places that I might add all look alike and will no doubt become the lego blocks of the next few decades.
Part of the reason for this change, of course, was Bradford Education's decision to become a 2-tier system, letting go of the middle schools and instead having only primary and secondary schools in the district. This in itself is a massive shame because I personally found middle school to be a really useful stepping stone between the dependence of being in one classroom with one teacher all day and the chaos that ensues in upper school education. But, more than that, I look to the places I, a 29 year old, went to school and see that only 2 of the 4 schools I attended even exist anymore and one of them has been re-branded and extensively altered for the new system in Bradford.
Perhaps I'm being a little overly-sentimental or melodramatic even, but it does seem like such a pity that these places that had such character and history should be swept away in favour of new buildings that look just like every new low-rise office block in Britain. The first school I went to, Undercliffe First, was not only attended by lots of people I know of my age group but also by my mother and her mother and, for all I know, her mother. Was the temporary cash injection that Education Bradford will have received a couple of years ago for the sale of this site REALLY worth destroying a place that had such historical significance to so many local people?
