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?

Can't be worse than Basingstoke I've heard is a shithole.

You've heard that but have not been there?

@RapunzelHadExtensions I know someone who visited Preston a few years ago and said it had vastly improved compared to their previous visit many years earlier.

Judging by this thread, I probably have lower expectations of city centres than most people.

Unless you spent the day in piccadilly
gardens, this is utter nonsense. Manchester is brilliant.

The worst city centres have no shops aside from vape stores, charity shops, nail bars and Turkish barbers. Way too many to mention like this. Try Wakefield on for size.

Have no idea why so many have mentioned Manchester. It’s basically a small version of London in the north nowadays. I work there so see it daily. Piccadilly gardens is and always has been rough but the rest is fantastic. Leeds is also great nowadays. Bradford has turned itself around in many ways too.

Birmingham was scary, Banbury was rough, Huddersfield is particularly bad near the train station.

Most town and city centres have gone downhill, particularly since Covid. The larger retail stores have gone from many high streets and there are so many sad looking empty places. The high costs have forced others online or out of town or out of business. Added to this the increasing amount of homelessness, rough sleeping, open drug use and shop lifting it just makes many places a very intimidating and unpleasant place to go. It is a very rare event to see police on the beat where I am, they only appear by car when there is an incident. By comparison walking the streets of many European cities and the police are very much present and it really does make a noticeable difference. That’s not to say they don’t have crime but having that police visibility is a good deterrent.

This night be terribly outing but I live in Bangor. I never go to the centre so I am part of the problem but you are 100% right. Full of Turkish barbers, vape shops and marijuana factories in the empty upstairs flats. My mum used to own a shop on the High Street in the 1980s-1990s. It was vibrant full of independents and all the chains. Online shopping and the caernarfon road retail park killed it.

Wakefield is depressing. I used to work in Wakefield when The Ridings was the go to shopping centre before Meadowhall was built.

The developers thought it would be a good idea to build a new shopping centre and now The Ridings is full of empty shops and the ones that are still there are depressing. And now it is going to be demolished.

The only time Wakefield is worth visiting is when they have the rhubarb festival.

The Hepworth is lovely too and I enjoyed the museum in the library. The outskirts of Wakey are much better than the centre. The Ridings is quite sad, we go to the cinema in there because it’s so cheap! But yes, it’s a very depressing centre.

I need to visit the Hepworth again. We went when it first opened.

Glasgow a better city than Reading?

Well, yes!

Are you seriously comparing the two?

Glasgow was the second city of the empire.

Reading has applied at lest three times to become a city, but it's just a big London dormitory town.

Yeah, well this is racist bullshit.

English towns and cities don't become less English because they welcome people from around the world.

Britain is not India. Britain is a country that colonised India and, as a result, has a complex history with India and a large Indian diaspora within it. Just as India didn't become Britain when lots of British people went there, Britain hasn't become India because we have generations of them with Indian heritage here.

London is a significant capital city precisely because it is one of the world's true multicultural cities. It has been so historically, for hundreds of years.

London is absolutely the best by far. I spend time in Manchester and Liverpool and there is no comparison. Walking through London on a sunny autumn day exploring the history, the little cafes, the department stores, the parks is my absolute favourite thing to do, it has a totally different vibe to anywhere else I've been.

Hanley was horrible twenty years ago, I actually have a rental flat there but I've not been up there in years. I can't imagine it's any better now.

I don't believe it is racist to acknowledge that some parts of Britain have changed to the extent that they no longer resemble what anyone would traditionally consider to be representative of an English town or city. In the town where I live there are areas which have predominantly asian residents. The culture in these areas is markedly different to other areas and their values reflected in the environment they create around themselves.

Remember great nights in the Fat Cat!

I was listening to a travel podcast and there was much praise for Japan and experiencing Japanese culture. I suppose it would be racist if a tourist landed upon, say, Bradford and expressed disappointment that “English” culture was not in evidence.

Many town centres were a bit shit, but Covid (wfh so decline of offices) + internet have made most hellholes now.

My local town was rough and ready but bustling: museum, main post office, library, weekly market… all have now closed down. There is a lot of new supported housing so people from there wandering about but almost no shops left. The little mall is empty, and on the high street the only “famous” shop left is Greggs. Otherwise it’s minimarts, barbers, nail salons and a few grubby-looking coffee shops. Even the hairdresser I used to go to has shut up shop ☹️

Going to derail a bit here - sorry.

I live near a small market town, we have oodles of nail bars, Turkish barbers, charity shops, estate agents and a lot of empty shops

I keep thinking should we return to an older model of high streets where people actually live in the properties? Think Pride and Prejudice where the milliners was in between two residential properties. A lot of the old shops in our high street were houses before they became shops

Not going to solve the problem in our cities, but might regenerate small towns a bit

I think a lot of towns and cities are over retailed- part of the issue is we de industrialised so retail was put in its place but town centre retail only thrives when people can’t buy cheaper from elsewhere online or retail parks ( hello Amazon, B&M etc) hence why you have an awful lot of service things instead, cafes, coffee shops, nail bars, hairdressers etc - the genie is out the bottle now though and won’t go back , so I think town centres do have to think sideways,

I went back to my home town ( Mansfield) in March to visit my son - I live in Bath, so blimey it’s a complete contrast - and yet if I lived there I would be moving unless I really couldn’t - bloody awful - was as you say bustling , buzzy and perfectly acceptable up to about 15 yearsago , even if rough round the edges, it’s not migrants that the issue there it’s de industrialisation - a whole mining area ( not just Mansfield) and all the dependent and pretty well paid jobs just went

Surely the issue is more online purchasing. I live in a town renowned for its shopping centre. It has its problems but it's nice enough and a lot of people come here for a day out. But bizarrely there are very few shops selling teenage girls' clothes. River island moved out for example.

I was there recently and there was a crack head lying on the floor, dodgy looking blokes and an air of despair. I don’t mind rough but I did feel scared and I have lived in some high crime areas.

Sorry the quote should have been about Preston. Manchester is great, only slightly edgy. Preston was scary.

No, it's not racist to notice that modern Britain is not the same as 1940s Britain.

It is racist to use racist, dog-whistle phrases like "their values reflected in the environment they create around themselves."

Mansfield town centre has just hollowed out. There is still big brand retail, but it's in the retail parks that surround the town centre - Next, Boots, Sainsbury's, TK Maxx, JD Sports - rather than in the centre.

There's still an M&S in town!