Wezzle

I suppose if you've virtually never left South Yorkshire (which to be fair is probably most of the poor hard up people in the high unemployment economic disaster zone of Sheffield apart from stuck up snotsville around Broomhill) you probably think Sheffield is great, bless, lol.

The question should be "why do so many people say Sheffield is great when it isn't". As someone who spent 2 years living in Sheffield here are my objections. 1 the city centre is nearly all awful, crap shopping, mostly run down, sad boring atmosphere, ugly buildings, tramps, chavs and litter. 2 there are almost no big companies and no good jobs for young people. 3 compared with Manchester and even Leeds it feels like a narrow minded small town. 4 the only really safe or nice bits are horrendously expensive and full of students. 5 the people are resentful. If it isn't chavs cheeking you off in town and trying to mug you it is older people bending your ear about how Thatcher wrecked the place or people who obviously hate outsiders and ignore them and freeze them out, which is most Sheffield born and bred people. 5 it has a terrible traffic system and is full of dangerous drivers and angry men with road rage.

To be honest, as someone who is from Leeds, who worked in Sheffield, is now back in Leeds and goes to Sheffield on a regular basis, I have to say it's a case of six of one and have a dozen of the other, Sheffield has some stuff that Leeds doesn't have and vice versa. Leeds is marginally cheaper to live in. Renting in a nice area of Leeds, for example, is marginally cheaper than a nice area of Sheffield, and the S10 and S11 postcodes are marginally more expensive than a good postcode in Leeds for housing. Yes, Leeds has a tidier and "better stocked" city centre than Sheffield with nicer buildings because it wasn't blitzed, and because there are so many offices there it has a buzz, if crowds of stressed out office workers during the week are your thing. In favour of Sheffield city centre, it's definitely got a friendlier atmosphere than Leeds and the bit around Division Street towards the uni with its bars and cafes is also really nice, there's nowhere like that in Leeds really. Also, Sheffield suburbs are nicer, there's nowhere like Broomhill, Sharrow or Nether Edge in Leeds with great little shops and a nice community feel, there's just poncy suburbs like Roundhay and Chapel Allerton which are increasingly full of posers, or places like Headingley which are student ghettos and have a really rough edge and are much worse than Eccy Road.

To be honest, as someone from Leeds, in terms of shops and what you can buy I wouldn't say Leeds city centre is much better than Sheffield. It is probably a bit better for high end shopping like Harvey Nicks where nobody normal shops, but apart from that Leeds isn't any better than Sheffield. In fact, in some ways Sheffield is slightly better. There are more independent clothes shops e.g. along Division street, there is John Lewis which is very good, the Sheffield Debenhams is also bigger and better stocked. Where Leeds is better is that the council has made a huge effort over the years to tart up the shopping area with nice paving and so on and of course Leeds has some nicer buildings as it wasn't bombed flat in the war. Trinity Leeds is a bit of a let down. Half of the shops have closed their existing shops in the city centre and moved there, it has a cold and airy atmosphere and I don't like it.

As someone who has lived in 8 different places and spent 5 years abroad, I want to add my tuppence about Sheffield. If you're not impressed with it that isn't surprising because it is really an awful city on the whole. I'm from Leeds and it makes Leeds, which can be a pretty provincial kind of place, seem like a vibrant, open minded, economically dynamic metropolis. What I can't get over about Sheffield is two things. My main gripe is the local people who are about as insular as you can get in Britain. If you are a newcomer to Sheffield they ignore you like you don't exist. I have never met such people before, even when I worked in Germany. It is the way they walk past you like you are utterly invisible and appear to enjoy making you feel small and uncomfortable. The local people can be vile. Sheffield has a horrible, oppressive small town atmosphere which is impenetrable unless you already have friends or relatives here. Also, the city centre isn't worth going to unless you are a local working class person or a student. If you aren't in one of those categories there is nothing for you and you will be made to feel unwelcome and uncomfortable, everyone will ignore you flatly, or possibly be abusive in some way, and the shop assistants will be rude to you. In the evenings the city centre is gloomy, eerie and dangerous, apart from on fridays and saturdays when it is full of drunken louts and tarty slappers. The second thing I hate about Sheffield is the council. Most of the city looks as though nothing has been done to it for 25 years, and the council doesn't give a stuff. It is a typical old Labour authority that throws its money at the poor areas of the city and leaves everywhere else to absolutely rot. The potholes are appalling, the waste collection ditto, there is litter everywhere, half of the city centre is dying on its feet. Local people have been clamouring for change for years and all the council seems to do is stick two fingers up at them. But hey that's the Sheffield way, and if you live here you like it or lump it or you move somewhere civilized.

Sheffield is full of rude people and weirdos full stop, especially the town centre. I hesitate to call it a city centre because it isn't big enough. Questions. Why does everyone in town, especially young women, walk along staring at their phone and expecting other people to get out of their way? This is not polite and it isn't even normal! there are always some people who do this in other places, but in Sheffield it is the vast majority of people. It is like they do it to deliberately annoy you. Question: who is the guy in town who keeps walking up to me saying "hi mate" and wanting to have a converation with me. rant over.

The Star article is actually surprisingly accurate. If you find the statistics the west and south west of Sheffield are indeed home to some of the most affluent parts of the UK outside London, wheras much of the rest of Sheffield is way down the league table. Statistically, Sheffield is indeed one of the most unequal cities in Britain. This is because of the Sheffield economy that hasn't moved on much since the industrial revolution with wealthy business owners living in big houses on the west and south west side, and a lot of poor workers who have become poorer due to industrial decline living to the north and the east. In other cities like Leeds new industries such as law and banking have made the city feel more middle income on the whole, but in Sheffield the enormous disparities persist because few new industries have stepped in to replace the jobs that have been lost in the steel sector.

We were talking potholes in Sheffield at work the other day and a colleague showed me the repairs schedule, it's somewhere on the sheffield council website (I think). The council has been given a huge grant and has a five year timetable. It appears to be prioritising the areas to the east and north of the city centre first, I used to live in the Nether Edge-Sharrow area and that appears to be at the bottom of the list somewhere.

Other people have mentioned S11, S7 (Nether Edge) is also nice in places. If you want to live in much of S11 or S10 you shouldn't mind being around hordes of young 20 something students during term time and the accompanying noise, litter, drunkenness and general irritation of very young people who are high on life with not much sense of responsibility or any awareness for the other people in their community. I lived in a nice terrace in a good area of S11 with students next door who flatly ignored my kind requests to keep things down after midnight, who left the shared areas (we shared a back yard with bins etc.) in a terrible mess and were on occasion threatening to the point of being intimidating. This is typical. If you don't mind walking out of your flat in the morning and seeing the remains of last nights kebab or chips on the pavement, your bins and their contents everywhere that someone turned over for a laugh when they were piseed and empty beer cans and bottles in your front garden then you won't mind living around Eccy Road. To be honest, I don't know if coming to Sheffield is going to make you feel better. Uplifting it isn't. The city centre is mainly pretty dispiriting, it was bombed very badly and apart from one or two streets is bland and run down, although some minor improvements are being made. I would say Liverpool city centre is far more impressive. I lived in Liverpool briefly, I would say the people are about ten times more friendly than the people of Sheffield. I lost count of how many times I went into pubs in Liverpool and got talking with the people on the next door table, this almost never happens in Sheffield where the people are reserved and can even be downright hostile to outsiders. Sheffield also has similar economic problems to Liverpool in that you go into town and if you look around you can be forgiven for thinking half the city is on benefits and the other half working in minimum wage jobs. Also, a 1 bed flat in a nice part of S11, S7 or S10 is likely to cost you around 550 pcm not including any bills so around 650 with bills. I know this from experience. Demand in the rentals market in the nice parts of Sheffield far outstrips supply. Oh well, good luck, some people love it here, it has been said Sheffield feels 20 years behind places like Leeds and Manchester, I would say more like 40 or 50.

No harvey nicks doesnt come into it actually. The presence of normal people who talk to newcomers for a start, instead of people in Sheffield who ignore and are often blood curdlingly rude to people who aren't from "these here parts" for years on end as if they are aliens from mars. That and the comparative lack of an extremely uneducated and oppressively narrow minded, small town atmosphere that makes even Bradford look metropolitan. Those would be for starters.

TJC1's comments are right. The word I would use to describe Sheffield is provincial. Sure, everywhere outside London is provincial by definition, but Sheffield mostly makes places like Leeds and Manchester, which aren't exactly world beating cities look international and exciting.

Can't recommend moving unless you line up a job beforehand. If you move on spec you could find it very hard to find work and end up going on benefits. Unless you have specific skills in engineering or computers the jobs market in South Yorkshirre is very tight at the moment. Besides sports which are actually very good in Sheffield, I would say Leeds and Manchester are better and livelier places, especially for music and the arts and they both have better job prospects and a more open minded vibe than Sheffield.

- The council, including: - its badly maintained roads and pavements - its appalling and incompetent waste management service - the litter everywhere that it never clears up - the mess it has made of the city centre - a lot of the people in Sheffield come across as parochial and don't want to know or talk to outsiders or newcomers - the macho, hard drinking culture and stoneage attitudes towards women and minorities that prevail - there is a culture among men in Sheffield and south yorkshire as a whole for not washing, obviously because they don't think it is manly to wash, so if you sit next to them on trains and buses they often stink - the city centre doesn't have much atmosphere and is generally boring - too many students everywhere

In returning to the original topic I have lived in eight different places and three different countries and Sheffield is by far the most narrow minded inward looking place I have lived in. As other people have said, it isn't only Italian people who get comments, get shunned, or get downright rudeness, it is everyone who isn't from Sheffield. I lived in Sheffield for just over one year and ran away for my life and my sanity to Leeds and now commute and work from home, I did this because Sheffield is full of narrow minded, braindead morons and apart from that, students. I would say Sheffield is by far and away the most boring major city in the UK, and it makes Leeds, which any leeds person will tell you isn't the greatest place on earth, look like paradise.

If the drunks and druggies and undesirable people in Sheffield were confined to West Street it wouldn't be a problem. The problem is they are everywhere in the centre! Castle Square, all around castle market, around the back of the cathedral, down at ponds forge, the bottom of the Moor - they are all rough areas where respectable people are made to feel unwelcome. On castle square I got dissed and shouted at for committing the crime of wearing a suit and tie, I have been spat at, accused of bumping into someone (pretext for a street fight), called a gippo and called gay (I'm not) and almost got mugged (ran away) all either on or around west street, I have had a cigarette end thrown at me on the Moor, and I also almost got mugged at ponds forge. And this all in less than a year!!!! In 37 years of living in Leeds no trouble from one single person in the city centre so far! Which is why I moved back there and now commute. And yes it is worth the money.