Sheffield, the largest city in Europe..

[kidley 48]

move Meadowhall to the city centre, where would you park?

[drummonds 10]

move Meadowhall to the city centre, where would you park?

 

chesterfield, same as i do at the moment.

[Vague_Boy 10]

just how big a bomb do you think the ira used?

 

Let them have their little fantasies.

[JFKvsNixon 11]

Let them have their little fantasies.

 

According to the insurers the bomb caused, in todays values, £1.2 billion worth of damage. It allowed an unpopular city centre layout to be completely redeveloped by providing both the funds and the impetus.

[AndrewC 307]

Personally, I'd move "big" stores to Meadowhall, and revamp the city centre for the more boutique stores, so you would have something like Trinity Leeds and it's smaller shopping and "creative" spaces in the city centre, and run a tram line between the two, which we already have....

 

But that's just. And I'm no urban planner.

 

I think you have to have a mix though. The irony is actually that I imagine a street of independants next door to a larger retailer probably gets more footfall than a street of them out on their own somewhere. There's a bit of a 'hierarchy' if you like that attracts people to retail areas. I know there's a town in Cornwall(?) that is 100% independants but I think that only works because there is no alternative to shop at and they have consensus that there's no appetite for chains. No such luxury exists in any town or city of a reasonable size, and in Sheffield's case, I imagine an 'independant' city centre would almost always lose out to Meadowhall.

 

You're going in a decent direction though; like you say, maybe a modest collection of chains but a bigger-than-average independant scene to try and attract people away from M'hall and the more established 'high-street' names at places like Leeds, Manc, Nottingham etc...

 

---------- Post added 29-09-2015 at 13:46 ----------

 

move Meadowhall to the city centre, where would you park?

 

Even the most conservative, eco-friendly versions of plans for the retail quarter over the years have always included masses of parking spaces.

 

The Sevenstone plans incorporated a large car park behind the new John Lewis, directedly accessible from Charter Row, linking directly to the ring road.

 

 

Though I've never met a critic of Sheffield City Centre who didn't insist on nothing less than a magic carpet ride straight from door-to-door.

[alchresearch 215]

Liverpool One works in Liverpool city centre. Parking is pretty expensive though.

 

As for the Trafford Centre, that pulls in visitors from all over the North West and there are a lot of towns within its catchment area.

[glennpickard 10]

I have worked at airports all my life. Lots of pollution from ground traffic and aircraft (but jobs also). If you have transport, nothing to stop Sheffielders going after those jobs either. Huge scrap going on now in London just deciding where the extra runway is going to go for the south east. Noise and pollution is the concern. Let someone else manage it, Sheffield had it for over a 100 years !

 

Sheffield has very good train service to the south and west, and M1 close by.

 

The city also has an advantage in that it has Manchester, East Midlands, Leeds and Doncaster airports surrounding it, all within about 60 minutes drive. I believe they all have public transport to Sheffield ? Anyway the noise and pollution is mainly elsewhere, as aircraft are reaching cruise altitude when they pass over Sheffield

[mattleonard 10]

I think the question exposes the problems with very ropey definitions of city sizes, which typically show Sheffield weighing ludicrously above its punch. Thinking realistically, Sheffield's a great place, and thriving in many ways, but it really doesn't need a huge airport. I think the supposed necessity of such things is more about lack of confidence in Sheffield's actual strengths and an attempt to provide the necessary gimmicks to make Sheffield into Manchester - which isn't going to happen either way, and should never be a measure of success anyway.

 

There's a big history of white elephant projects intended to kick-start Sheffield into some imaginary premier league of Northern cities (which generally means Manchester and Leeds) and just quickly turns into a big embarrassment. There are also plenty of great projects which have been motivated by simply providing a good service to Sheffield, rather than some regional jealousy, and which have been a huge success.

[Markstevo 10]

I see absolutely no point in having a small/med airport which only flies to a handful of places it's unlikely I'll be going to. We are well served with several medium sized airports, a large airport (Manc) just over an hour away, and pretty good links to Heathrow.

 

Within 2 hrs drive (or public transport) you can get to Manchester, Liverpool, East Midlands, Doncaster, Leeds, Birmingham. That'll do me.

Not forgetting Humberside too

[darylslinn 10]

It used to have an electric train service

 

Which should never have closed !

[Daven 10]

Which should never have closed !

 

Why is that ?

[Longcol 604]

The argument was that M/Hall was stifling the city centre's growth..I just remarked that Mancherster had Trafford just outside it but the centre seems quite vibrant compared to Sheff..why can Manchester do it but not Sheffield?

 

Perhaps because the greater Manchester conurbation is nearly 4 times the size of the Sheffield conurbation -

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_urban_areas_in_the_United_Kingdom

 

a fact nearly always overlooked on SF when comparing the two.