What do you think is the worst city centre in the UK and why?

[OneLilacHedgehog]

So many cities have gone downhill since COVID. But which is the worst?

@MincePieAny1 , don't go to Midsomer whatever you do.
Staines, now Staines-upon-Thames, hasn't been in Middlesex since 1965.

Some of us have to live in in these parts while all the investment has went to Southsea etc I hope that is changing and it becomes fairer.

I came here to say this!

@Dogsarethebestfriends , I think seaside towns and cities get criticised unfairly. Southend seemed fine to me. I hope the city status gives it a bit of a boost.

The Park and Ride is excellent. Wish we had something similar for Brighton, it's take a mortgage out to go shopping

One tragic, horrific event does not define a place forever. For one thing, in the aftermath of any event like that, the communities work so hard to pull together and recover. Being forever talked about as "the place where X happened" by people who have never been there and have no connection really doesn't help. Also, people often get it wrong...I have heard Dunblane and Lockerbie be confused more than once.

The events you mention happened 30 years ago - a lot of people living in those communities were not even born when they happened.

As someone with connections to both Dunblane and Hungerford I can confirm that they are both pleasant, actually fairly vibrant communities, who do not exist under a black cloud of foreboding.

I’ve got Indian national colleagues that told me they were moved to the edge of Birmingham somewhere for a contract (from Hyderabad) and on their first Saturday they got the bus into the city, and were so shocked that it felt, and looked, like they were in Bangladesh.

I love Bournemouth, yes definitely has its issues but so do most places. Also, it’s not a city but probably is the size of one.

The Midsomer area.. not a city, but lethal!! Probably the highest murder rate in the UK! Avoid!! As pp says.

The William Wilberforce museum was really good. That area I remember was lovely. Is that what you mean? I can’t remember it well.

Didn't visit Kreuzberg then? 😆

No one has mentioned the city I hope to move to, from Cornwall, yet so I am chuffed that it is below the radar. Obviously, it wont be without its problems.

@MincePieAny1

That's a very odd way of viewing things, I imagine most places had a tragic event or grisly murder. Would you dismiss London because of Jack the Ripper, or Yorkshire because of Peter Sutcliffe, Manchester because of Ian Brady and Myra Hindley What about Southport and Nottingham. Do all these places really have a nasty smell?
I think its actually quite a disrespectful thing to say, given that many of the families directly affected continue to live there, and the communities have moved on.

I have absolutely no connection to the Bulger family, but did grow up in that area. I know the schools they went to, the Strand, the route they walked very well. His body was found on the railway line behind our house.
It was a horrible, tragic thing that happened decades ago. I can't say our local community 'smells' or is consumed by the events of that day. In fact if you visited you wouldn't have a clue where it happened.

@MincePieAny1 Hungerford is a lovely little place and certainly isn't defined by the shootings.

I agree.

I live in Midsomer and it's even worse than depicted.

Thank you for a rational post

Unfortunately, I think the closure of University of Essex Southend campus will have a bit of a negative impact. It brought jobs and students to the area.

I was in Dusseldorf in June and that was pretty fab too, clean, upmarket with some funky areas, great shopping, good metro, terrific Asian food scene ( it’s the best in Germany) lovely central daily food market - contemplating a move as we have an EU centric business - I know Germany well and liked it more than Berlin , kind of less to see but I felt more liveable with much nicer residential areas and more mixed ages. I do wish the Press would stop with this, ‘it’s crap everywhere’ running saga - those of us who have eyes and go to places other than holiday resorts with work or for breaks know that it simply isn’t the case - yes everywhere has certain issues but the problem in the UK isn’t just an immigration thing, it’s more deep seated and a very long term lack of planning and our first past the post system means that partys don’t collaborate for long term planning if it involves making themselves unpopular with some sections due to our press.

The worst I have been to was Coventry. So run down and had a deeply depressing feel. Hopefully it rejuvinates one day.

(I only went there once, I likely haven't formed a detailed picture, I'm sure some bits are nice!)

Soham where that murderer Ian Huntley lived is another place I couldn't live in, yes. Whitechapel as it was in the 1890s would not have appealed to me, either. But you can't extend that horror to the whole of London. As a small place, Gloucester still has the 'smell' I was talking about, given those relatively recent murders. Saddleworth Moors? No thanks. Manchester in its entirety? No. Only where certain events are very localised, I think. I couldn't live in Chernobyl or Hiroshima or Nagasaki, yet Hamburg wouldn't be so bad. It's highly personalised odd thinking, admittedly.

Did you know that the second to last woman hanged in England was executed in late 1954 about six months before Ruth Ellis, and that the murders in each case occured in exactly the same London road, South Hill Park, Hampstead, just a few properties away from each other, on different sides of the very same bit of road? Not only that, if you look at the map, that road is in the shape of a noose. So the last two women hanged in the UK who might have committed their crimes in completely different parts of the country in fact committed those murders in the same noose-shaped road.

Worst Stoke on Trent (and Newcastle UL), and not cities but Ellesmere Port, Blackpool, Rhyl, Southend

Best Chester, Manchester (it's gritty not scummy as a PP called it), Alnwick (not a city but where I would move to), Bristol

I get really bad vibes in Gloucester and I've been there lots of times (have a friend who lives nearby). I can usually find something positive about most places though. Don't really understand all the hate for Birmingham.

@Pieceofpurplesky , Southend is a city.
Rhyl and Ellesmere Port are completely different from Alnwick.

Stoke has always suffered IMO because it was six towns and doesn't have a city vibe. It's also one of those places that doesn't really feel like the midlands but it's definitely not in the north. It's nearer to Manchester than Birmingham.

The IRA was a specific threat though and most people accepted the risk and got on with their lives. I was in my 20s at that time and I worked and socialised in central Birmingham and never felt intimidated, perhaps I was naive, I don’t know. But I think when so many people are high on drugs there is an underlying lying menace that wasn’t there years ago, people are more volatile.

The nicer suburbs of Birmingham eg Bournville, Harborne do actually call themselves villages. I’m perfectly happy to wander up and down Harborne High Street after dark.