I was in Redcar yesterday and Middlesbrough a couple of days ago. Redcar is worse. In some town centres it's desperate with charity shops and buy for cash / used kit selling shops and Pundlands being the only growth areas and just about everything else under threat. Gosh knows where this will end.
I do think something needs to be done otherwise all we'll have is betting shops, charity shops, the porn shop type sellers and the budget shops. I don't know what the answer is, drastically cut business rates and incentivise owners to let their properties at reasonable rates etc.. but do something for Gosh sake.
The UK claims to be amongst the richest and most developed nations but sometimes it's hard to believe it. We went to Singapore this year and they seem to be lightyears ahead of the UK in just about everything. Their public transport seems excellent, the social housing seems outstanding, their shopping centres are fantastic compared to what we have in the Middlesbrough area and their utility costs are a fraction of what they are here. In the UK we just seem to be slowly decaying or at least large areas of the country look like they are. And this is in no way a politically biased rant as Labour do sweet FA when they're in and I don't expect any difference if Comrade Corbyn and his cronies bribe their way to No.10.
Maybe their society has far less of the never want to work chavvy mob who love the cheap shops selling crap.
So many places that they show with rubbish town centres are primarily populated by this gruesome lot
I live between Cambridge and Huntingdon, the former has a thriving shopping centre, the latter is the polar opposite
Same goes for awful local authority estates, these places don't get built to be rotten, its the people that do that
When I was a kid in the East End we were poor as were most of my friends families.
This made us want to get a job, earn money and hopefully improve the quality of our lives
These days the less well off seem to revel in poverty, no ambition or inclination to better their lot in life
Everyone now can go to university admittedly with loans, but that definitely wasn't the case when I was a youngster
These town centres often mirror the local area, until they make the effort things will never improve.
I went to Middlesbrough a couple of years ago primarily to see and photograph the Transporter Bridge.
To be honest it hadn't improved much from when I went to see the O's play a FA cup quarter final there in 1978
Regeneration money does help, Hull was a lot nicer than I remember it as are quite a few places
Presumably effort by the populace has been made to improve these places, its not only about cash