Someone asked me for pictures of Salford Quays and the MediacityUK site. So here you go…
Patrick Lauke wrote a interesting comment on my picture of the Lowry outlet centre.
captures the loneliness of the fake
“human” environment quite well. no
matter how many bars and cinemas they plonk
in here, i can't see it become the bustling
central location that the planners seem to
have in mind. then again, they also never
really got the idea of planning for actual
people…in this case, for instance, where's
the benches? these empty spaces seem
positively hostile to people sitting down and
relaxing. ah well…
Yep it is a shame. It could be a lovely space. Maybe a market, benches, who knows what. In Bristol there's a area like this called lloyds (its in front of the lloyds building on the docks). Almost exactly the same but its used for lots of great things as its a perfect outdoor amphitheatre for a lot of people. Looking at the plans for mediacityuk there will be a couple of spaces like this but right now its pretty dead around the lowry centres.
My old college Ravensbourne annouced its plan to move to North Greenwich about 5 years ago. And at the same time they talked about lovely human spaces where people could hang out and enjoy such things as free wifi while sipping a triple skinny mocha frappachino. Well its happening but I'm not seeing the lovely human spaces yet. Actually if you walk away from the dome, theres a great little pub in the middle of the peninsula which has a green park next to it and lots of benches around. I've spent many a sunday afternoon there. Its a combination of the man made and natrual, and it just works.
