Bishop Gate

I notice the website says this: "Coventry is the tenth largest city in England with a population of over 320,000. Over one million people live within a 30 minute drive and six million within one hour. The city centre site benefits from excellent public transport and road links. It doesn't get more central or better connected in Coventry." Coventry has to focus on becoming a hub of some kind. It seems that most of us have lost faith in the city planners and developers based on post-war schemes. I do believe there are many people who would live in the city centre if there were good shops, restaurants, and entertainment. Not just young people either - my husband and I recently moved to Atlanta and, after 30 years of suburban living, were very interested in a highrise apartment where we didn't have to keep up the garden or maintain the property, and could walk to restaurants and shops. Unfortunately the commute to work would have been awful so we are back in the burbs again! Just as in parts of London, certain blighted downtown areas in the US are being revitalized - Los Angeles and Memphis, for example. It's not necessarily a speedy process and is at times contentious but downtown LA today is ten times better than the downtown of 20 years ago (cleaner, safer, better public transport, more amenities, etc). For a city centre to thrive people need to live there. For people to live there they need a variety of shops, restaurants and entertainment (one or two aren't enough). The citizens of Coventry are well-served by public transport so you are ahead of the game there. I don't know if Bishopgate is the right development at the right time in the right place but there's some truth in what the website is saying.

That's probably not feasible with this section without digging a massive cutting to 'sink' the road, which would then have to come back up for J1. At-level crossing is the best compromise IMO. Friargate is much different as the main carriageway is already in a cutting. If anything I'd have liked that to go up, with an entrance at the first floor station level crossing over the RR and then down the other side into a green space where the tax office now is looking at Cheylesmore Manor House

No city in the present day (or recent past) is designed and planned solely by people from that city. Even places like New York, Chicago and London with world renowned schools of architecture have major developments from people/firms from outside that city and country. The rebuild of London after the Great Fire was largely designed and overseen by a man from Wiltshire, educated in Oxford and who took most of his ideas from Paris I'm sure I've covered this before, but the stuff left from the Edwardians/Victorians is largely pleasant because it's the more expensive posh stuff (though not always). The equivalent buildings to these would have been dirty slums that have long since been cleared and forgotten. And arguably the Victorians, with the birth of the railways and the beginning of 'true' medicine leading to longer lives and population growth, saw the biggest spread of urban sprawl in the history of the world, as it allowed people to live somewhere different from where they worked. Prior to that they did cram buildings in wherever they could as close as possible so they could be got to easily. These were cramped conditions that allowed things like the Plague to spread like wildfire, and for the City of London to burn to the ground in a night. Huge families living in houses most people would consider their private space now. Prior to that, such as during Georgian times, it wasn't necessary to accommodate a huge increase in the number of people as population was largely constant due to high mortality (especially infant) rates offsetting high birth rates and immigration was by and large unheard of.. We also build an assortment of buildings for a variety of entertainment and space - the level of options available to us would boggle the mind of an Edwardian and Victorian. Sports stadiums and facilities for a wide range of sports, theatres, museums, art galleries, pubs, clubs, cinemas, theme parks, even stuff like racing tracks. Actually in Coventry compared to the 80's we don't live on top of each other more, as quite a few of the 60's tower blocks were demolished in the 90's and replaced with lower level housing/maisonettes etc. so the level of high rise living has fallen. If anything you lived through the largest phase of high-rise living this city has seen to date with the post-war development. Maybe they should, but again a lot of the people who complain about this also complain when already built on land is scheduled for demolition and redevelopment. On the other hand, some people would argue these people should compensate those who'd buy one of the new homes because they obstruct so much of the house building. Gardens are getting smaller, but people tend to have less time to keep them. Unless it is a hobby it is another chore. If most people are going to pave over their gardens, often creating flooding problems as they weren't planned with hard landscaping in mind, why bother providing them with large expanses of space to accommodate plants when they would get by, and in some cases prefer, a small patio area? I like my garden, I wish it were bigger so I could fit more in. I think they're great for the air quality and wildlife. But for many in my age group they just see them as this thing that constantly needs tidying. I've mentioned before about friends who live in apartments, and they love the fact they have no garden or plants to care for. They have a balcony they can sit on and have a drink and thats just fine for them. Also, as people live longer and work longer into their lives by the time they get to an age they can spend time tending a garden they have health issues that prevent them from doing so. The photos of your garden are lovely, but you also rely on someone to help keep it in decent nick. I spent years keeping my nans tidy in her later years and elderly neighbours all have a gardener to mow the lawn and generally keep things reasonably tidy. I know if I leave mine for a month it's just a straggly mess of weeds and long grass. With massive population growth over the last generation, and the amount of consumerism, fast food etc. there has undoubtedly been an increase in rubbish, and with people wanting lower taxes and encouraged to be more aspirational it is harder to employ the number of people it would take to deal with it. But in terms of air quality, levels of recycling rather than landfill, fuel efficiency and cleanliness of our cars, energy efficiency of homes and white goods, even the cleanliness of power generation etc have improved remarkably. Had we still had the same considerations as the 'good old days' we'd barely be able to see in front of our faces.

Well AD, some enjoy their concrete jungles and some like their beautiful gardens, so each to their own. It's a good job we don't all like the same thing, how boring that would be. Unfortunately, today's architecture is not so pleasing to the eye as years ago, is that the price of progress, there is certainly nothing historical about them. Forgive me if I have strayed off topic here, but I seem to be reading about people's way of life.

I just wonder how many artists will be inspired to paint any of these new modern builds as did the artists of our historic buildings and how many will want to photograph our new city like when we had with Lady Godiva in the centre of a green garden in Broadgate, now surrounded by a concrete jungle. Let's face it, the city now is designed for the university students and office space, not for shopping and evening entertainment.

Broadgate isn't a 'concrete jungle'. The buildings are actually made from brick, stone and slate, and the colour was chosen to be close to the local colour already seen in buildings. Some thought did go into some of it. Even Cathedral Lanes is a brick building. Some of the features appear to have failed (like the balconies) and are no longer in use, which makes them look a bit odd and abandoned. The only real 'concrete jungle' in Coventry is the ring road and the absolutely awful landscape it has created - huge flyovers crossing land at weird angles to everything else, and vast areas taken up with horrendous roundabouts and junctions. The city's biggest problem is lack of any sort of continuity anywhere, endless gap sites and a general lack of any character. Even the post-war festival of Britain character has been mainly ruined by cheap and tacky additions. As for the 'old' Broadgate - one side was the back of buildings, and the other side was a row of cheap prefab shops. My main issue with Broadgate is the poor layout that has created strange spaces and stuck a blank towering wall opposite Holy Trinity. For crying out loud, a medieval building should be the centrepiece of a square or public space, not dominated by a blank wall on a square filled with tatty benched and strips of grass.

Thank you, Flapdoodle. I think you've said it all, couldn't agree more. The concrete bit I refer to was the slabs, not shops. A bit more shrubbery with the slabs would have taken the harshness off so many slabs, pretty flowerbeds like there used to be in front of Trinity Church instead of grass bits. I haven't seen this wall you speak of as I rarely go into the city, perhaps they want to distract people's attention from Trinity Church or anything that's pleasing to the eye.

Ah, so this would fill your needs admirably. A building which is mostly a pastiche of what had been built 400 years previously.

This thread also seems to have gone drastically off-topic

I find it amazing that this is the third proposal for this site - they've tried supermarkets, retail/offices and now residential. I think this scheme is by far the best, and the ring road in this area is surface level and probably far likelier to be developed around than elevated sections. In Sheffield, for instance, the surface level ring road has seen a lot of development around it and much of Birmingham's ring road is urban in character rather than empty spaces. One of the major 'points' for the supermarket development was the number of cars on the ring road, but clearly this didn't help find a tenant or garner any interest - nor for the 'retail' development that followed. It also seems developers might not see the ring road as the 'asset' the council think it is, as both Friargate and Bishopgate want to alter it to make developments more pedestrian friendly.

As a 'Coventry Kid' born and bred, I'm disgusted at the so called recent developments of this once proud city, Bishopsgate being the latest, I don't profess to know all the ins 'n' outs of the project but I would like to put my two pen'ith in!!! Why not develop this site with incorporating the canal around the project, many a city have rivers/canals flowing through them, lots of bars resturants by the side of canals etc, develop housing alongside and make it a 'place to be/live'. This could then expand further into the city centre creating a city centre to be proud of instead of these concrete creations that we have now. This would need a bit of thought from our council though, which I don't think they're capable of!!! What are other people thoughts on this?????

Great idea SG! Just get rid of the damned ring road, then Bishop Gate could be linked to the Canal Basin Don't want any bridges or subways for the link, so out with the ring road

Don't agree with getting rid of ring road, sorry MR, You could change canal height by series of locks going under the RR, or here's a radical thought, create something like the Falkirk Wheel to add to the character of the place, that would bring in tourism!!!!!

Looks like Sutton Stop has stolen your thunder - link.