Monday, 17 November 2008
Cardiff is a 'pigs ear'
I am writing in response to Kevin Morgan's outcry against the city fathers over encroachment into Bute Park. I am in total agreement with him about this and will support any fight he is willing to lead on it. In fact I don't think they are just making a mess of Bute Park. The Bay, with all its new and wonderful architecture is an absolute mess - no cohesion in the layout or design of the buildings, nor in the infrastructure around it. The station is another pig's ear, with no access for pick ups and drop offs (which I would have thought essential at a station). And the city centre is a mess too with pavements jutting out into St. Mary Street in an incoherent fashion. It's nice there for pedestrians now, but not a thought for the visual design of the street. So ... I think Bute Park is a good place to start.
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Cardiff Bay is a disgrace. So much potential has been squandered. Striking examples of architecture, which will I believe endure in their appeal, sit incoherently and messily next to cheap, lego brick flats and dreadful chain restaurants. A complete lack of provision for cyclists, an inability to even reach Penarth on foot, an 'International' Sports Village that sits surrounded by litter and six centimetre deep topsoil with dying plants, itself paid for only through the incursion of the dreadful Toys R Us and Morrisons. Cardiff Bay could have been something really special, but instead has ended up as a sort of sub-Blackpool dive which will not have legs. Its lack of vision and in-built longevity is worrying.
But then, this is the city that allows people to paint dressed stone windows and to insert white UPVC windows in prime examples of Victorian Gothic Revival architecture that could be famous. I could cry as I travel along Cathedral Road. Perhaps the residents just deserve what they get.
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