Peterborough’s people and opinions change - but the buildings stay the same!
All families have tensions as do local communities, villages, towns, cities and countries, and dear old Peterborough is no different, writes Toby Wood of the Peterborough Civic Society.
One person’s progress is another person’s inconvenience. One person might look upon a development as a necessity, someone else as an unwanted luxury. You only have to look at the pages of each week’s PT to see what I mean.
I’m reliably informed that the articles that include old photographs of the city are one of the paper’s most popular features.
Whilst many might view these pictures with misty-eyed nostalgia, others might say that this is being stuck in the past. But, as the accompanying pictures show, often it’s the people that change more than the buildings.
Peterborough is undergoing a great deal of progress/inconvenience* (*delete as applicable) at the moment. Take the bus station for example. It looks like we are going to experience and/or endure 18 months of disruption while the new cinema complex is plonked on the top of John Lewis’s. Icing on the cake or blot on the landscape? This disruption will understandably cause ructions but there is one small benefit for this citizen – the number 63 bus that stops right outside my house now takes me down to right outside the Brewery Tap. Hallelujah – there is a god!
Our city is experiencing many changes. Despite what you might think, the Civic Society’s view is that most of these are for the better despite the short-term upheaval and inconvenience. As the phrase goes – the proof of the pudding is in the eating. However, it is up to all of us – individual citizens, community groups, councillors, our MPs – to safeguard and promote what we consider is best for our city.
Even within the Civic Society there is vigorous debate and even disagreement about what is best. For example, there are some (me included) who believe that a new football ground in a new location would be beneficial for the city. But there are others (mainly non-football supporters) who are unconvinced by the need for a move and resentful of the possibility of losing more green space in the city centre.
There is also a great deal of debate and disagreement about the proposed climbing wall at Ferry Meadows. Even the new university is not universally accepted, perhaps because we all have different views of what a university actually is.
Similar levels of scepticism exist around other impending developments. Many Peterborians bemoan the loss of the market, perhaps forgetting that the market itself replaced the livestock or cattle market in the 1960s. Presumably people exhibited the same feelings of loss when this happened. The hard truth is that the market was gradually dying because shoppers weren’t using it in the same numbers as 20 or 30 years ago. The same logic applies to Bridge Street. If consumers don’t want so many empty city centre units then don’t use Amazon or other online services and suppliers.