Also, people keep knocking Leeds in shopping, but it has been stated as the 3rd best place to shop in the UK, although now dropped to 4 as Birmingham has gone from 13-3 with the Bullring.

The point is though, is that maybe Leeds' shopping isn't as bad as some people might think.

Who's knocking Leeds for shopping? No-one I know. On the contrary I'd say Leeds is known nationally as a shopping experience. What a strange thing to say LN1!

I'm amazed to see Manchester 5th on the list, it's got some superb shops and can't see how Nottingham can be a better shopping destination.

Completely agree though that Kirkgate will become a more important street once the Harewood quarter is completed, but given the 2010 forecast that's a while off yet.

. I'm not opposed to modern buildings at all, in fact Richard Rogers Lloyds Building (which I currently overlook from my desk :) ) is my favourite building in the world.

smoggie - a move from the Pompey chimes to the Bow Bells eh! For the positive indeed! Am one minute from St Pauls and Cheapside. Perchance we should do a Leeds meet in London Village?

Personal perspective - the architect/developer who proposed the stained glass roof over the Victoria Quarter deserves the Freedom of the City.
Trinity Quarter bores me senseless - endless argument between Tops Estates and a.n. other (who I can't remember). Don't think any new build shopping arcade will be as nice as the excellent use of the old Leeds Perm buildings on the Headrow (now the Light). Kirkgate - am with the retainers.......best to hang on to what we have rather than regret it later and claim the old hindsight clause.

Imagine, the Queens Hall on Sovereign Street (now car park space, hopefully due to be Criterion Place) could have been a fantastic period conversion. Twas bulldozed a couple of decades ago, but suspect that it might have held more architectural merit than was credited at the time.

Having done a fair bit of am dram with Opera North etc, I've seen inside the Assembley Rooms (part of Grand Theatre) on New Briggate, and can't wait for them to be converted. They've been used as rehearsal space for over 15 years, but the inside is fantastic, lovely space (ignore the fact that it used to be a skin flick emporium in the 60s - you can still see the grey concrete projection box hanging above the old building on Harrison Street). P.S. I wasn't alive till the late 1970s, so I'm taking the word of my Pop for the skin flick rumour.

However, this was the man who believed sheep grazed the grass roof of Temple Mill though - anything appears to possible in Leeds!

Excellent debate though. Personally, I think we should have a group membership to the Civic Trust.

smoggie - a move from the Pompey chimes to the Bow Bells eh! For the positive indeed! Am one minute from St Pauls and Cheapside. Perchance we should do a Leeds meet in London Village?


Hey Jimbo! Yes I've hit the smoke, working on Fenchurch Street with a view of Tower 42, Lloyds and the Gherkin all lined up in a row for my delight and pleasure! Just the minor detail of a 4 hour return commute :( until I move to sunny Bermondsey next weekend! :cheers:

London beerage sounds good! Will PM you when I get moved in.

Nobody is knocking Leeds for shopping but people seem to constantly saying that its losing out to rivals, and going down the shopping list and whatever...

As for The Light, I think its a fantastic building but there isn't really much in there. Not that many shops. The cinema is the main attraction really.

I expect the Trinity Qtr. to be a similar standard to Glasgow's Buchanan Galleries (if you've ever been in there). Its basically a modern but high quality shopping centre, really good shops in there and quite smart. Nothing architecturally stunning but for a shopping centre, pretty good IMO.

Excellent debate though. Personally, I think we should have a group membership to the Civic Trust.

Yes, even though I seem to be at variance with most contributors on this, it is an excellent debate. Incidentally, I am a member of the Civic Trust and have been for some years. My simple motto would be "conserve only the best and build new only the best". (what really mystifies me is that, here we are on a forum which lauds skyscrapers - a totally new venture for Leeds and some would say completely out of character for a city which is essentially low rise, and yet so many, at the same time, want to keep what is truly grotty property - of poor quality even when it was first built)

I can't see any new development happening in the core centre anyway, particularly not of buildings like this. I think most of the really good new developments will be on the fringe of the city centre. The city centre is extending south and east with quite a bit of density- Whitehall quays, Wellington Place, Venture, for example.

I can't see any new development happening in the core centre anyway, particularly not of buildings like this. I think most of the really good new developments will be on the fringe of the city centre. The city centre is extending south and east with quite a bit of density- Whitehall quays, Wellington Place, Venture, for example.


All to the west/ south west not east ! However there is a lot of development due eastwards along East Street.

there are no major expansion plans in the west though, but towards the east the city centre is extending out with the Harewood/Eastgate qtr, Quarry Hill, Leeds market redevelopment which links on to the Gateway and Clarence Dock.

there are no major expansion plans in the west though, but towards the east the city centre is extending out with the Harewood/Eastgate qtr, Quarry Hill, Leeds market redevelopment which links on to the Gateway and Clarence Dock.

Well I would call Wellington Place a major development in the west and I am sure there will soon be more goodies to come along Kirkstall Road.
Regarding the east, what about proposed expansion beyond Gateway ? Look at my #257 in the Leeds Building List thread.

Eastgate apartments - there is a CPO application in place, though this has yet to be agreed (IIRC)
Town Centre Securities (potential developers of the Harewood/Eastgate qtr?) are approaching apartment owners to try and secure the purchas e of some of these apartments before the mandatory market price + 10% that comes with a CPO.

From the Manchester-based David Ward.

Discord over music venue

David Ward
Thursday September 29, 2005


Leeds wants a concert hall - or, at least, a music venue, which is not quite the same thing. It has looked at Manchester, Birmingham and Gateshead, and concluded (perhaps with a touch of wounded pride) that it has missed the boat by not commissioning a prestigious architect to design a landmark building.
On the other hand, Leeds is not absolutely certain that it wants a Bridgewater, a Symphony Hall or a Sage. This is Yorkshire, where people know that halls like that cost a lot of brass: the Bridgewater, which opened in 1996, cost £42m. Something similar in Leeds would cost around £75m today. You can almost hear the winces.

After a bit of dithering, the city commissioned a feasibility study into "new cultural facilities". The newly-published study rejects the idea of a concert hall in which symphony orchestras, jazz combos and world music outfits could play to audiences of up to 2,500.
Instead, it says "an arena development to seat about 13,000 people" would be "commercially viable with significant demand, plus developer and promoter interest", and would cost around £50m. In other words, a cheap concrete shed for rock gigs.

Leeds does not have a symphony orchestra (the Orchestra of Opera North spends most of its time in the pit at the Grand Theatre, which is now closed for renovation), but it does host a concert season of performances by visiting orchestras.

The feasibility study is happy for them to go on playing in Leeds town hall, a magnificent pile of civic pride. The consultants concede that the venue is not ideal, but proposes investment of up to £20m to provide "the best, most appropriate and affordable classical music venue for the city". It is also the best, most appropriate and affordable fudge the study could come up with.

Yorkshire's music lovers are not happy, and neither is Lord Harewood. In a letter to the Yorkshire Post, he denounces the consultants' advice on the town hall as "not far from insulting".

Referring to acoustic improvements made over the last few years, he adds: "The music now sounds a bit better than it used to if you are sitting downstairs, but nothing else has improved from the audience's point of view.

"A few years ago, I was asked to canvas the opinion of artists I knew well about Leeds town hall. Without exception, they wrote to say that it was the worst town hall they [had] played in anywhere, and that Leeds undoubtedly deserves better."

Why, he asks, is the city council "pusillanimous and unwilling to act"?

The controversy is bubbling on as Marketing Leeds, an outfit backed by the city council, the chamber of commerce and the city's two universities, unveils a new slogan to complement Leeds's existing status as Visitor City of the Year and Britain's Sexiest City (what does that mean?).

The Yorkshire Post says the slogan forms part of a £150,000 PR campaign "to get more people to sit up and take notice of the great Yorkshire city ... the main target is to attract British-based visitors rather than people from other parts of Europe". An extra £100,000 from the city council will keep the PR campaign going.

And what is this slogan? Wait for it: Leeds Live It Love It. Just like that, apparently - no punctuation, but all initial capital letters. What can you say? It's very alliterative. And it's certainly not as bad as Manchester's Up And Going, the derisory and faintly obscene slogan that Manchester came up with a few years ago. But that's not saying much.

Writing in the YP, Kevin Johnson, the chief executive of Marketing Leeds, admits that his city lacks "the cultural icons of other major cities such as Newcastle and Gateshead, Edinburgh, Birmingham or Liverpool".

"We need to focus on one of [Leeds'] key attributes - its people and their warmth ..." The next quality he mentions is "friendlessness" - not something you would think you would want to shout about - and people's "down-to-earth nature and, above all, their daring and creativity".

Just a question - what is Liverpool's great cultural icon? or Birmingham's for that matter? Is not the West Yorkshire Playhouse a more culturally valuable asset than the Baltic, which, for the visitor, is ridiculously low on content.

Anyway, maybe it tells you a lot if the council are parsmonious when it comes to funding cultural facilities, but not when it comes to public relations and marketing (he said depressingly) :)

I hadn't known about Lord Harewood's letter before, but I do agree. A recent article quoted pianist Alfred Brendel's opinion of the Leeds Town Hall as being "hideous, visually and acoustically". Although he said this some ten years ago, I don't think that the £9 million spent on it since has made all that much difference. It is interesting that in 1996, the cost of Manchesters' Bridgewater Hall was exactly the same as the Royal Armouries Museum opened in that year in Leeds. At the time I wrote to the YEP that I wished that Leeds too had a new concert hall dedicated to one of the great arts, instead of a museum dedicated to the history and glorification of fighting and war. I hope btw that the proposed arena , which I am sure will be, eventually built, will not end up being "a cheap concrete shed for rock gigs".

I seriously doubt, that in the list of attributes of Leeds, 'friendlessness' was mentioned.
Surely it is the more likely'friendliness' !!

BTW who is this David Ward and where did his piece appear ?

[QUOTE=di Livio]A large site known as 'Brunswick Terrace', very close to Tower House and the Plaza and including LMU's Brunswick building, is up for sale in Estates Gazette.

http://www.leedsmet.ac.uk/about/imagesofleedsmet/images/city_campus_brunswick.jpg

It says on it 'Offers for stage 1 - now closed'

Presumably they have had a few offers in then! This site is begging for a 25+ tower on it as it is next to Tower House, Plaza and Wade Lane. And I bet the Met. will want maximum price for this land.

BTW who is this David Ward and where did his piece appear ?

It was on the Guardian website. David Ward is also responsible for some disparaging albeit light-hearted comments about L-town.

It was on the Guardian website. David Ward is also responsible for some disparaging albeit light-hearted comments about L-town.


I get the drift. Presumably burglaries never happen in Islington or Notting Hill !

You lot seen these?

http://www.leeds-cityscape.co.uk/bridgewater_place.jpg
http://www.leeds-cityscape.co.uk/bridgewater_place_new.jpg

Looking back at this.


They're renderings of 2 different designs.


Which one is being built?

The bottom one.

They're up to the 8th floor and the tower part at the moment and probably close to the top on the plinth.

Thanks.

I prefer the shorter building in the top one...but the tower in the bottom one.

Yes so do I, but I don't think the 2nd render does it much justice really- all the images seen at www.bridgewaterplaceleeds.com are renderings of what is being built. I suppose the 2nd is best anyway, as it is large therefore increasing space.

[QUOTE=di Livio]A large site known as 'Brunswick Terrace', very close to Tower House and the Plaza and including LMU's Brunswick building, is up for sale in Estates Gazette.

http://www.leedsmet.ac.uk/about/imagesofleedsmet/images/city_campus_brunswick.jpg

It says on it 'Offers for stage 1 - now closed'

Presumably they have had a few offers in then! This site is begging for a 25+ tower on it as it is next to Tower House, Plaza and Wade Lane. And I bet the Met. will want maximum price for this land.
Given the projects scheduled for Leeds so far, the Bridgewater Place at 32 storeys suddenly doesn't sound quite so tall these days. So how about a 35-plus storey Brunswick Tower?

[QUOTE=mike68]
Given the projects scheduled for Leeds so far, the Bridgewater Place at 32 storeys suddenly doesn't sound quite so tall these days. So how about a 35-plus storey Brunswick Tower?


Wouldn't surprise me. Moreover it would certainly look higher than BWP being on higher ground. :)

Liam,

I do actually quite like Leeds, and wrote an article a few weeks after
that one which pointed up some of its nicer points. The phrase
"two-track city" seems a useful one... I come from Hamilton, Ontario, a
former steel town that has a similar structure -- a lot of prosperity
around the perimeter, and some troubled neighbourhoods in the centre.

You are right that the views I detected in London right after the
bombings were not exactly reflective of the larger picture. Emotions
tend to run high, and feelings tend to be exaggerated, in the days right
after a violent event. Also, I used the BNP only to point out that it
is not only the brown-skinned residents of bad neighbourhoods in Leeds
who get pulled into extremism. Yes, the BNP is a fringe organization,
but so is al Qaeda -- both have only tiny circles of support. What I was
trying to say, and I acknowledge that I could have been clearer, is that
the small minority who fall over the edge into extremism find themselves
tempted by similar groups with similar messages, even if they are
seemingly on complete opposite sides of the spectrum.

In any case, I feel quite sure that my next journalistic visit to Leeds
will be to report on something more positive and optimistic -- there is
no shortage of such things in the region.

Thanks,
DS



-----Original Message-----
From: Liam Joyce [mailto:lcjoyce@gmail.com]
Sent: Monday October 10, 2005 6:50 AM
To: Saunders, Douglas

- Hide quoted text -
Subject: Re: Terrorism article.

Doug,

thank you for your response. I stand corrected, and I suppose there was
an element of civic pride motivating my email. However, my main
objection to your article remains, that of Asians being a despised
minority and that Nick Cass is "one of the more successful
representatives" of whites in Leeds. I feel that this is deliberate
misrepresentation. You cannot deny that your article attempts to add
weight to the argument that there is a large element of racial tension
within Leeds. Nor can I agree with your conclusions your friends assume
on that "It was Leeds that attacked London." This is obviously nonsense.
This is not a widely held belief at all - check the numerous
anthropological surveys that were carried out after the London bombings.

However, I do appreciate your reply and hope your stay in Leeds wasn't
too depressing!

Cordial sentiments,

Liam Joyce

On 10/10/05, Saunders, Douglas <DSaunders@globeandmail.ca> wrote:
> Liam,
>
> I was just in Leeds last week, invited by a group of scholars there
> who agreed with my interpretation of the social conditions that turned

> it into an al Qaeda recruiting centre. You are correct that there were

> some municipal boosters who didn't like my coverage (or that of the
> New York Times, which painted an even more stark picture of Leeds's
> deep social divisions). Troubled cities are often very boosterish -- I

> lived in Los Angeles during its tough times, and there was the same
> sense of denial among the better-off residents. Leeds has now gone so
> far as to hire a company to launch a "re-branding" campaign, which
> seems an unfortunate example of papering over deprivation rather than
dealing with it.
>
> However, I'm pleased to see that not all of Leeds is in denial about
> its troubles. Actually, the city council agrees with my interpretation

> of Leeds. Read again, below, the words of the city's own authorities.
> Do these factors have nothing to do with Leeds becoming al Qaeda's
> preferred British city. If they don't, then can you offer a better
> explanation as to why children from moderate, secular families turn
> get turned into al Qaeda suicie bombers in Leeds?
>
> "It can be said that Leeds continues to be a two-track city, with
> great disparities in quality of life between different wards...
> Deprivation, social exclusion, and other issues to do with quality of
> life thus form an integral part of the state of the environment."
>
> 41 per cent of the city's households live in "non-decent housing,"
> Leeds has "the third highest region in England for workless
> households," "over 40 per cent of households are on low incomes, 18
> per cent or more households are classified as 'workless households',
> and over a third of children are in households where no-one works."
> (The Leeds Initiative)
>
> "Leeds is something like a doughnut but there is something nastier
> than jam in the middle. . . . The major cause is the fact that 200,000

> people [half the population of Leeds] live in deprived inner city
> areas with all that implies for their health and well being. The areas

> are populated by disempowered people who lack access to services. . .
.
>
> "When you have extremely affluent communities side by side with
> communities who have no influence or control over their own lives it
> only worsens the health of people to live with these differences day
> by day." (Leeds health authority)
>
>
> =========================
> Doug Saunders
> European Bureau Chief
> The Globe and Mail --- Canada's National Newspaper
> 43-51 Great Titchfield Street, London UK W1P 8DD Phone +44 (0)207 697
> 9820 Fax +44 (0)20 7504 3614 Mobile +44 (0)784 163 1458
> dsaunders@globeandmail.ca
>
>
>
>
>
>
> From: Liam Joyce [mailto:lcjoyce@gmail.com]
> Sent: Monday October 10, 2005 5:34 AM
> To: Saunders, Douglas
> Subject: Terrorism article.
>
> Dear Doug,
>
> I have recently read your article (dated way back in July), regarding
> the city of Leeds. This article has become something of a joke in
> my office, what with Leeds being the a very prosperous city in
> Britain, coupled with years of sustained growth and low unemployment
> rates. Indeed, you clearly know very little about the city. The fact
> is that the picture you so eloquently paint for your unfortunate
> readers is of a deprived and backward mill town, with whites voting
> for a neo-Nazi party and the poor Muslim community are trapped in
> appalling conditions, goading them into extremism.
>
> For example, you could refer to Leeds being home to the most recent
> race riots, but if you saw the amount of people involved (20), you
> would understand that this is a criminal matter, not a huge racial
problem.
> Having grown up with Pakistani and Indian neighbours, I have a hard
> time finding the Leeds you describe.
>
> Your report is damaging, insulting, and worst of all for a journalist,
> erroneous. It is exactly the kind of journalism I would expect from
> Fox News. I sincerley hope that you visit Leeds someday, and see 'just
> how bad' we have it here.
>
> Yours Sincerley,
>
> Liam Joyce.
>
>
> You wrote:
>
> Welcome to Leeds, home of poverty, hatred and alienation
>
> By DOUG SAUNDERS
> Saturday, July 16, 2005
>
> LEEDS -- What is it about England?
> At first, people asked this question with a sort of awed bewilderment.
> Where were the riots? How could it be that racial attacks in London
> actually declined after the bombings, to below their June level? How
> could people just go on with their daily business? Did these people
> really not care? Did they not bleed?
>
> My favourite expression of this came from the Madrid newspaper El
> Correo, whose London correspondent expressed his befuddlement with the

> British this way: "The feeling that people had reacted in an orderly
> manner was a point of pride in people's conversations in a country
> where the word 'emotional' is used to indicate a personality defect."
>
> In Leeds, that personality defect seems to be afflicting a lot of
> people. Here is the other side of that beloved English sang-froid: a
> degree of mutual mistrust, neighbourly alienation and social isolation

> that can push people, large groups of them, into outrageously radical
> positions.
>
> There is a growing feeling among many of the Londoners I know that it
> was not so much radical Islam that attacked them, or al-Qaeda or some
> deranged youth cult. It was Leeds that attacked London. Here was the
> other England, the impoverished, hateful, culture-devoid England,
> attacking the country's much more successful, happily pluralist urban
> pole.
>
> Enough has been written about the brown-skinned Muslims of Leeds, and
> the social conditions that somehow caused a violent and effective
> terrorist group, and the beliefs behind such a group, to foment among
> its youth.
>
> Let us turn for a moment to the white people of Leeds. To understand
> them, I dropped in on one of their more successful representatives, a
> 31-year-old retired squash pro named Nick Cass.
>
> Mr. Cass, a red-haired giant, is the Yorkshire organizer for the
> British National Party, the most successful of Britain's far-right
> political parties. It has been enormously successful in this part of
> England, electing city councillors and pulling strong results in
> national elections -- to the point that the Tories actually parroted
> the BNP's anti-immigrant line almost word for word in the May
elections.
>
> And the BNP has used last week's bombings to its great advantage,
> distributing leaflets all over England showing the exploded Number 30
> bus below the words "Maybe it's time to start listening to the BNP."
>
> The BNP, unlike al-Qaeda, does not actually advocate killing its
> enemies. Supporters who opt for that kind of solution, Mr. Cass told
> me in his living room in the Leeds suburb of Wayfield, are sent over
> to the more radical National Front.
>
> No, the BNP has managed to become the voice of a great many white
> people in Leeds with its less-skinheaded sort of utopian plan.
>
> "We've always said it's not about individual cultures or races or
> religions. We just think that when you put them all together in the
> same space, it doesn't work," he said as his infant son burbled away
> in the playpen beside him. "It never has worked, not in any country in

> the world."
>
> Osama bin Laden could not have put it better. Infidels out! And Mr.
> Cass has a plan to get them out. Yes, he said, it did complicate
> things that three of the bombers were not actual immigrants, so his
> party's back-on-the-boat argument would need some refining. There
> would be a government program, a very expensive one, to pay people of
> Indian and Pakistani descent, along with Jamaicans and Africans (I
> didn't ask about Welsh and Scots) to return to their motherland.
>
> After all, he explained, this is just how things are in Leeds. This
> business of racial harmony is strictly poncy London stuff.
>
> "There's never been any integration in Leeds," he said. "Except on an
> individual basis by a small number of people, not as a community.
> There's been no effort to integrate from either side of the community,

> white or Muslim, which tells me that people don't want to integrate."
>
> Then I asked Mr. Cass about his party's policies on matters not
> related to immigration, and he said they reflected the heartfelt
> feelings of the area's white people:
>
> "We need to get politicians and MPs that won't take us into wars with
> Iraq and murder half a million Iraqi children just so [U.S. President
> George W.] Bush can get his oil," he said. "We won't support Israel
> just so we can cripple Palestinian kids. We won't poke our nose in
> anyone's business. We'll pull our troops out of Iraq."
>
> That, almost word for word, is what the bearded Pakistanis of Beeston
> told me about their view of the world. In fact, it is almost
> impossible to find any major difference between the BNP's
> one-dimensional politics and the politics of radical Islam. I
> certainly know plenty of well-off Londoners who have equally boring
> politics, but in Leeds there seems to be no other option. It is a
> political ecology that has been sapped of its nutrients.
>
> The bold-minded young Muslims of Leeds and the more adventurous white
> people of Leeds seem to have developed appetites for two nearly
> identical variants of fascism, in complete and deliberate isolation
> from one another. And it is a conclusion that differs 180 degrees from

> the one reached by London, and expressed so well this week by their
mayor.
>
> So what is it about England? What is it that can create, at the same
> time, the most successful and co-operative multicultural society in
> the world and one of the most hateful and racially segregated places
> in Europe?
>
> This is something that the English try to avoid discussing.
>
> The people of Leeds, a post-industrial mill town with little viable
> economy today, are poor. This is not simply an economic matter, but a
> cultural one. The living conditions of England's poor have improved
> materially over the past generation (although not as much as the
> conditions of the middle and upper classes). The current government
> has been successful in redistributing wealth from rich to poor. But in

> cultural terms, something serious has happened.
>
> Class mobility, which I believe is the most important measure of a
> society's success, is virtually nil in Britain. In Canada, if you're
> born among the lowest 10 per cent of income earners, chances are
> better than half that you'll end up in the upper 50 per cent. In
> Britain, according to the London School of Economics, that number is
> below 20 per cent, and falling.
>
> The poor and the not-poor in Britain are fixed, isolated worlds. If
> you're well-off, as Londoners tend to be, you get to have the most
> tolerant and resilient community in the world. If you're not, like
> both the brown people and the white people of Leeds, you get a
> permanent isolation cell of mutual, deepening hatred.

From the Manchester-based David Ward.



Just a question - what is Liverpool's great cultural icon? or Birmingham's for that matter? Is not the West Yorkshire Playhouse a more culturally valuable asset than the Baltic, which, for the visitor, is ridiculously low on content.

Anyway, maybe it tells you a lot if the council are parsmonious when it comes to funding cultural facilities, but not when it comes to public relations and marketing (he said depressingly) :)


"Just another concrete shell for rock concerts." Hmm, maybe so, but that IS after all what people want. It's pretty poor to say the least a city of our size cannot stage medium/large indoor concerts.
Provide facilities for Jazz or world music, and you appeal to a small percentage of the population. Leeds has great cultural assets, as is rightly pointed out above (West Yorkshire Playhouse). A decent venue for bands to stage concerts in IS a cultural asset, and broadens the appeal of Leeds to neighbours and to potential students. To dismiss a concert hall is elitist and narrow minded, and quite frankly not very democratic.

Interesting correspondence with the loveable Doug Saunders. Perhaps Doog hasn't noticed, he's changed his position so many times it's hard to understand just what it is he is trying to say.

... and it isn't just his capacity for invention that makes him a bad journalist; his syntax is poor (dare i say it)

This be the man (frame right)

http://www.ftlcomm.com:16080/ensign/desantisArticles/2003_800/desantis899/cover.jpg

But the council didn't agree with his article... they wouldn't have made a statement if they did, so more nonsense from DS. He also has motivated racism through his article, and the BNP are not succesful (or not as succesful as he tries to make out). Furthermore, I would not agree Leeds is a 2 track city. There are poorer areas like any city, but the poverty gap in Leeds is much less than in other cities, particularly London and Manchester. There are wealth permimeters in Leeds, but then the city centre is incredibly wealthy too. The inner city, that no longer exists in the Clarence Dock area now, is not that poor either. All these ares have regeneration plans, and Holbeck is sure to prosper with improved links to the city centre.

Methinks he looks like a young whippersnapper , still wet behind the ears!

But you are right Leeds No 1. Leeds is no more of a two track city than any city in the UK. Look only at London with the incredible wealth there is there, yet with the most deprived boroughs in the country.