Which part of the country would you rebuild and ‘start again’

I'd remove most of the new build housing estates in Essex countryside. The rate they are building North Essex will end up being part of Greater London. A new housing estate of 50 houses has been recently started on the edge of our village and apart from the visuals of the area being spoilt, every time it rains we are cut off by floods in places where it has never flooded before. No provision is ever made for the impact of the removal or trees and the concreting over of land that normally absorb rainfall.

I am sure it's the same all over the country but I can only speak about what I know. They build those awful modern offices like the Gherkin and the Shard in London instead of homes for people. All brown field areas should be used for housing before any further building is permitted on green spaces.

Beauty isn’t something the planners in Australia seem to consider. It’s all about money.

Casdon

There’s one major contender in Wales, it even made Comic Relief. At least we can laugh about it though.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJwzRV3AU9Q

Brilliant 😂😂😂
How did I miss it?

The town that eventually got a Debenhams, years after everywhere else. Just before they all closed down.

The Council destroyed one thing that made Newport famous; the beautiful mural commemorating the Chartists.

There’s one major contender in Wales, it even made Comic Relief. At least we can laugh about it though.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJwzRV3AU9Q

SeaWoozle

Joseann

Centre of Plymouth, yes ghastly!

Lived in Plymouth about 30 years ago. Think I've been back twice (such a long way away!) and only after the big revamp! Not sure what to expect now...

Of course, Plymouth City Centre got completed bombed during WW2 and was rebuilt in a very modern style with pedestrianised areas and new buildings in Portland stone.

With trees and green areas.

I’d have two branches to my planning. I’d downsize London and upsize somewhere further north, maybe Manchester or Edinburgh. One could be the seat of government, the other the seat of business/finance and then hopefully the country would be evened up a bit.

My home city of Bristol. I'd like to reconstruct all the historic buildings and cobbled streets that were flattened during the war and all those that were needlessly destroyed by the then city planners. So many buildings could have been saved but were demolished and replaced with brutalist architecture. It was licensed vandalism.

Plymouth is better than it was, but the layout doesn't do it for me. I much prefer Exeter with the Cathedral at its centre and the old Roman walls.

I love the architecture of Paris too, so romantic. It's no surprise Paris is the backdrop to so many films. There is a very modern part, la Défense, where all the financial institutions are.

Joseann

Centre of Plymouth, yes ghastly!

Lived in Plymouth about 30 years ago. Think I've been back twice (such a long way away!) and only after the big revamp! Not sure what to expect now...

Chocolatelovinggran

Joseann I agree with you totally. I love that in one London street you can travel in architecture from Tudor to Georgian through Victorian to last year.
In contrast, my youngest daughter loves central Paris for the homogeneity of layout and building.

I also love the architecture of Paris..

Wouldn't it be wonderful to have all of the ruined or lost to time abbeys, priories and monasteries back -just imagine!

I'd unbuild where I live, in an ideal (imaginary) situation.

I'd put back all the quaint quirkiness that has been taken to make room for "luxury retirement apartments" and the like.

Joseann

Centre of Plymouth, yes ghastly!

I haven't been since that happened, if and when I do, I'll probably cry at the vandalism.

My dad would have voted for Bangor.

Centre of Plymouth, yes ghastly!

I’m not going to nominate anything because to one person, what may be an eyesore can be a thing of fascination for another.
Very true TinSoldier, and when you live in a place you have more affection for it - well I do anyway.
I kind of agree with M0nica that the financial area of London has gone all swanky panky and taken away the older more interesting buildings, but that only accounts for a relatively small surface area in the bigger picture. For me, coming from the Eastern fringes of London, there is a wealth of old architecture in Hackney, Shoreditch and even good old Bethnal Green where we have Victorian houses, old canalside warehouses, parks etc. alongside newer blocks of flats. The regeneration has been/ is being carried out sympathetically to incorporate old and new. Certainly the facades of old hospitals and schools are retained, and very often the newest parts are built upwards on top of Victorian buildings whose foundations will last forever. The past lives on in the present in London.
(Boris, as Mayor of London, was thankfully stopped from tearing down quite a few old buildings in the area). Thankfully.

'Italy and Japan.'

nanna8 World population is alreay programmed for a rapid fall over the next hundred years. The only thing making it grow at the moment is people like us living longer than our parents and grandparents.

For most European countries, including the Uk, plus Japan, China and India the birthrate has fallen below replacement level. It aky and jaoan were the first countries to reach this state and nothing they do has succeeded in increasing it.

In the first episode of Life after People, it's speculated that the only thing that might survive after 10,000 years are the Egyptian pyramids.

I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley

I’m not going to nominate anything because to one person, what may be an eyesore can be a thing of fascination for another.

I rather like urban and industrial landscapes. They are a necessary part of human existence and demonstrate era-defined design. I find myself drawn to “brutalist” architecture and love the Barbican in London but I know that others hate it.

As an aside, is anybody watching the latest series of Sky Arts Landscape Artist of the the Year ^which is featuring the city of Liverpool as one of its locations? The mixture of different buildings and architectural styles is fascinating ^and presenting quite a challenge for the artists.

The TV series Life After People is well worth watching. It’s on the Sky History channel. Without human intervention, the urban landscapes we are familar with would soon start to decay, through weather and and bird waste mostly which is very corrosive, but it would take around 10,000 years for virtually all traces of human existence to disappear.

Smart Motoways, Agree! Too many lives lost on those for sure.

A lot of sixties buildings were awful and ugly, even though some of the more iconic architecture from that era has been re-branded as "mid century" when I first heard that term from some of the younger generation in the family, I wondered what the hell they were referring to, mid century conjured up the 19th century in my mind 50 and 60s was how I referred to that era. Anyway, suffice to say a lot of it was great slabs of ugly concrete.

nanna8

I certainly wouldn’t look forward to a plummeting population. I think that is a cruel thing to wish for. They did their best with Covid I suppose but couldn’t quite manage it, thank goodness.

I think it could be managed with contraception etc.

Who would want to be a woman in an area of the world prone to famine or conflict, trying to feed yet another baby that has been thrust upon her?

Oh dear, think I'd better log off before I blow a gasket!!

Not a particular part of the country but every 1950s - 1990s ugly building that was built with a 30 year lifespan, in particular schools.

Built-in obsolescence should never apply to buildings, especially schools.
Surely they can be built solidly but with an interior that could be altered as needs change?

Some stupid idiot thought that the centre of Plymouth should be drastically altered, to give it more of a Mediterranean bistro cafe look and started by chopping down all the mature trees!
Thankfully he got the chop too.

Mamardoit

Smart motorways. They should never have been allowed.

Yes! Awful things. And half the time it's not like you can even have a better journey due to all the roadworks!!