City spaces

 

A Barcelona Street lined with huge trees on both sides – Deansgate?

 

A tram in central Vienna flanked by large trees – Moseley street….?

Milan – take note Pat Karney and other fans of turf - great European squares are NOT generally covered in grass! Piccadilly Gardens……

Green Cities

I chose to live in the Northern Quarter for many reasons, mostly its character, fab buildings, people, bars etc….also I’m attracted to the slight grittiness in the character - I think a lot of people are, but lets not get this confused with  shabbyness, neglect and bland hard spaces. The last time I was in Milan at the end of the summer, I was amazed how effectively people made their city balconies and buildings a haven for greenery (perhaps even more so than Paris) with flowers, trees and shrubs visible from the pavement below. This totally transforms the feeling of walking down a city street, keeps the character, and provides a reason to look up and softens the whole feel of the city making it clear someone cares about those buildings.

Things grow amazingly well here in Manchester, we have a mild wet climate, so much so that the vines that I have on one part of my balcony/terrace bear big bunches of ripe fruit in september – there’s really no excuse for our city to not be more green  – and particularly colourful!

The Conservative City Centre Team and I will be out planting things to add colour (why oh why are all the planted spaces without any blossom! Why no blossom trees, just those awful Sycamores!) by the canal, by the car parks. This is to illustrate one of the key points of my campaign – we can show we care about our residential streets, and create a residential feel by sofening the spaces with greenery. For two years now I’ve been cultivating things that  wanted to plant elsewhere in the city to add some colour, and I now have enough to make it worthwhile. I encourage everyone however to take responsibility and initiative in this, don’t just put a chair on your balcony, put something colourful there! Parisians and the Milanese know how to make the limitied outside space they have with their apartments look amazing, it would totally transform the city if we took a leaf out of their book.

When I first moved in:

 And after some planting -                                             

                                                                                                                       

      

Cuts in Council services requires city residents to reduce refuse by 75%!

Further to my posts about the reduction in the frequency of rubbish collection, in anticipation of us all recycling so much (I’m all for recycling, the record for this is shameful in Manchester City Centre – it was our number 1 pledge last year), I’d like to point out something that makes this problem even worse.

If we have recycling, we loose half our large bin capacity (where all the rubbish goes outside to be taken away) for recycling, and so now we have half the space AND half the frequency of collection, effectively meaning we have to reduce our weekly rubbish by 75%! We should have an increase in the frequency not a decrease!

Fortnightly Rubbish Collection, Labour, Rats….

A letter I’d written appeared in the MEN following comments in that paper, by Labour Councillor Neil Swannick, regarding fortnightly rubbish collection. As a director of my apartment building’s management company I know our rubbish collections are half as frequent as they used to be. There were two letters from Labour Councillors (yes dear readers, the MEN published TWO responses to me on the same topic – one a joint response from Pat Karney and the Labour candidate for the city centre – sweet!) The suggestion was that less frequent collections are okay because of all the recycling taking place. The responses essentially said I was wrong to state the facts I did, as if these people who don’t even live in the city centre can tell me things I don’t know about the building I’m a director for….

I’d like to thank Councillor Karney for his offer to rid the city of rats – if any of the councillors for the city centre actually lived here too its a problem they’d already be aware of.

The two letters criticising my complaints about fortnightly rubbish collection are misleading. The frequency of rubbish collection for my apartment building and others in the city centre has halved, and as a result we have had problems with rubbish spilling over onto the pavement creating a health hazard and attracting rats.

The Labour Council follow the government’s directive that fewer rubbish collections are a good idea because so much recycling is taking place. I’d like someone at the council to tell me what percentage of waste is recycled in the city centre - I’m not alone in currently having zero recycling facilities in my apartment building.   

Decreasing the frequency of rubbish collection before recycling is in place sounds similar to introducing the Congestion Charge before the Metrolink extensions are in place - Labour’s policies for Manchester appear to be all stick and no carrot!

City Life

Just got home, and with the combination of a late night for a friends birthday drinks etc and the fact that the clocks go forward I’m slightly dreading my recording sessions tomorrow! Its a collection of John Ireland’s music though and should make a good disc for the Halle’s own label.

Was quite a random night, started out at one of my N4 favourites, Lamars, then a friend’s car took us to Panacea. I hate queuing for places, but it wasn’t long before we were in and catching up with old friends. Claire Sweeney was there, with her hair extensions and leopard print dress, you’d never know she was a Scouser….the walk home on nights like this is always an eye opener…I’ll limit it to the observation that the WORST place in the whole city which is the station approach on London Road.

The small ofurine is actually overwhelming at this time of night, that’s after you pass the huge que of people waiting for taxis and people brawling in Piccadilly (again, not a copper in sight). The bus-stops by the Spar are awful – the smell ofurine and marijuana, broken glass, and the amount of litter is staggering. People pushing and shoving eachother spills into the Spar where I pick up some onion bajis. Odly bump into Nic, who used to be William Haugue’s private secretary when he was leader, he claims what I’m buying is healthier than his food, which makes me worry for his health, and then passing a couple of people urinating against my building I’m home. City life……

Taking action….

In the way that we took action on litter to illustrate our point about keeping the city clean and taking pride in it, we’ll be having more action-days to illustrate more of our key points – look out for days where you can get involved helping us take action on Graffiti, keeping the city clean and planting for a more colourful residential feel….I’ll be posted details here aswell as staying in touch delivering information where possible – if you’d like to help me with delivering information/leafets please get in touch, we’d love to hear frmo you. Even if its delivering a few leaflets in your own apartment building, its a very small time commitment and a very great help. Email me at robadlard@yahoo.co.uk

Congestion Charge – You Say NO

The MEN published the results of the congestion charge this week, and its not really a suprise that 80% of people think it will damage Manchester. People very very negatively about the charge, and thats really without any campaign against it highlighting the most unfair and dishonest asoects of the proposals (that I have previously commented upon at length)

People are now beginning to see clearly that the charge in London is having no significatn effect on congestion – its as if people tried doing things differently but then revert to previous behaviour, then simply accepting that the charge is just another tax they’re going to have to get used to paying. Maybe Ken can use some of the money towards London’s contribution to their huge regeneration project nicknamed the ‘Olympics’.

It does seem odd that the World’s Capital City has to have contributions from the whole country for their regeneration and transport plans, when the regions are so desperate for funding for such projects. Its almost as if the more time politicians spend in London the more they forget the rest of us exist. Its time we got complacent Labour politicians out of the North where they feel they don’t have to do anything in order to get re-elected.

Saturday

I’m sitting writing this in Cafe nero opposite the BBC. The traffice outside is flowwing perfectly and all in all its a nice day – although another 3 hours of recording sessions recording the music of John Ireland is a little daunting. Looking outside again, there’s actually so little traffic that a big white van has actually jumped the lights on red and driven straight across the crossroads at Charles Street and driven across the crossing despite the green man clearly showing for pedestrians….I wonder if the congestion charge will apply at times such as this? Just imagine how much quieter the road would be if the tram ran from the busy route from Didsbury…….

Neil Swannick stikes again…

The MEN featured comments from Councillor Neil Swannick regarding rubbish collection – possibly people’s least favourite councillor after he proposed the parking changes that were defeated by our campaign in the city.

The new proposals are for collection once a fortnight instead of once a week (I’m told my building even used to have collection more than that at one point). He ludicrously states that this won’t have any negative impact due to the amount we’ll all be recycling. Well think again – my building doesn’t have ANY recycling collection at all, and most buildings that are lucky enough to have some will only ever have collection of one thing or another i.e. glass or paper, never the comprehensive system there is in the suburbs.

Recycling aside, since we’ve been having rubbish collection less frequently I see RATS all the time in the alley and street where the bins are. Its been widely commented upon in national and local papers that less frequent collection is resulting in a massive increase in the rat population. Come on Labour Council, what are you doing with our money!! Rats and used needles in our street – that’s not worth the council tax we pay – and we pay it at higher levels than the wealthy suburbs due to the banding of properties in the city. Its a disgrace.

Residential City – time for change

I walked past the corner of the Northern Quarter featured below on our clean-up day and its almost back to the way it was before – well, superficially anyway. The area of Dale St and Lever St simply must not be cleaned – it looks like other areas in the N4, but its clearly worse as the bushes etc catch the rubbish and prevent it being blown away.

The point of the clean-up day apart from to make a small difference, is to show how easy it is to do something, and how neglected it is. However the larger point is that this problem is just one of many factors where the city is failing in the larger sense of our ‘environment’. The City Council doesn’t seem to have any will (and perhaps understanding) of how to make our residential areas seem residential. Again I come back to the point that because none of them live there or seem to have much experience of city life in any other cities they don’t understand that simply allowing planning for an apartment block doesn’t satisfy people’s idea of a residential city. Look at the cities that work well at this – there are some obvious differences.

If I was elected Councillor for the City Centre whatI’d want to do about this is create something that looks more like a residential environment, and many other factors would fall into place.

• Better street lighting

Where I live the lights are all that awful dark dingy yellow colour, and they’re not spaced correctly. This creates a dark feel, leaves dark unlit patches, and it leads to anti-social behaviour as people feel they are slightly cloaked. This ranges from muggings, graffiti and people urinating against residential buildings.

• Better, and more thorough,  cleaning rotas

This isn’t rocket science – like cleaners at airports and stations with covered space like Piccadilly, you have people cleaning constantly, this also acts as a deterrent – if somewhere is already clean, people feel less inclined to drop more litter, if there is litter everywhere then it doesn’t feel like a taboo. It simply isn’t the case that there isn’t money for this, its lack of will, or understanding that its important to us

• Trees and green spaces

Softening our streets with greenery and trees marks it out as different to the streets where there are empty buildings and lack of care prior to the residential revolution. The more that streets like Dale St, Turner St for example look like residential streets in south Manchester, the more respect they garner, and the less likely people are to treat them as unloved public areas. If you have beautiful pollarded trees with lights as in Manhattan, Milan etc it sends a message as well as being attractive for the residents.

• Visible policing

I simply NEVER see police in the Northern Quarter particularly unless they’re whizzing through it in a van on their way somewhere. I think the police often respond very well to calls, but again, we’re talking about creating a mood and environment, one where we show that people live there and care what goes on in the street next to their apartment building.

• Graffiti removal

As in New York we should take the approach that we don’t let broken windows, vandalism, graffiti sit for even a day without being cleaned or repaired – the broken-window theory that turned New York from the most dangerous city in America to the No.1 place to live (safer and cleaner than London) needs to be applied here and can achieve similar results.

Although Manchester council-tax rises are modest by some standards, in the city we pay high council-tax bands – you can be paying as much for your one-bedroom flat as you would for a family home in south Manchester. In somewhere like Chorlton you will have, or can easily ask for, trees to line your street, newer lighter street lights, several types of recycling facilities – in the city we don’t have this – why…….let the revolution begin – vote for change on May 3rd.