I visited Plymouth last year, for the first time ever. On the way in, some kid threw a pram in the road in front of us (Pikey Mum slapped kid). We found an ugly car park that offered views across the city centre. I was absolutely amazed at how - even on one of the sunniest days of 2006 - the place looked so dreary and lacking in any character - very grey, with characterless boulevards of concrete & cheap looking glass buildings.

Despite this, I quite liked it after a wander around - the "old bit" around the Barbican is very nice, and Plymouth Hoe is absolutely wonderful - it more than makes up for the dreary post war stuff, which seems to have just been done on the "grid with dual carriageway" model.

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View from the car park - typical low rise, dual carriageway type of street.

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Another car park view - very little Streetscape or frontage continuity.

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Car park again - horrible shops lining a dual carriageway. Beyond, some of the most uninspiring architecture I've ever seen.

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More blandness.

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Just a random jumble of service areas, low rise shops & mid rise offices. Seems to look like a huge service area.

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By way of a contrast - around the Barbican area, it's quite wonderful - atmosphere, streets, some old buildings that survived and some nice legs.

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An old house in the Barbican area.

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Admiralty building on Plymouth Hoe.

Overall, it's worth visiting. The Barbican area & Hoe are brilliant and you forget that the rest of the city centre is so characterless. There are some other old buildings dotted around, but nothing great. Apart from the Barbican, the city centre is very open and low, with precincts of civic buildings and squares that look very tatty and soulless. I thought it would be like Coventry, but Coventry retained its medieval streetplan and is much more built up, and not reduced to a grid.

Taken from HERE (http://martinnike.fotopic.net)

horrible.

It was in the news recently about cruise liner tourists feeling ripped off when visiting Plymouth, the brochures made out it had a lot more historic buildings. Nevertheless, I liked the place when I visited in late 80s, but then again I like ships

The place is a complete dump, DO NOT VISIT!!

The place is a complete dump, DO NOT VISIT!!

I'd disagree. It's not a particularly nice looking place, but there is some interesting stuff there and the Hoe is magnificant - how many other large UK cities have a seafront like this?

I left Plymouth for America. What blew my mind away was coming home to England and discovering Manchester, Birmingham, and our great regional centres that our packed with such awesome architecture in comparison to the dullness found in Plymouth.

The waterfront is stunning, and there is real potential here... but it is a matter of marketing. What are plymouth's assets, can it be run like a business?

Plymouth was rebuilt by Abercrombie the architect for London, who did the London plan afterwards. It was all very socially minded and everyone on the street was generally excited by what they saw (joe public actually bought copies of the plan from all of the local bookshops! Imagine that happening today!). Before the War Plymouth was a typically evolved medieval City with the usually problems of poor quality dense housing stock and traffic congestion in the centre. What he created was a quite a strong visual experience with axis running down from the Hoe to the Railway station and across for the main shopping street, almost akin to the grand boulevards in Paris, very open, clean air etc. Abercrombie also realised the need to retain any historical building that survived the bombing, namely the area around the Barbican.

However, especially in the centre, the plan was very zoned, no residential or industry inside the centre, only retail and the post war obsession with building the environment around the movement of the car is very visible here where a dual-carriageway ring road almost acting as a straight-jacket around the town centre, this aspect really hits you when you visit. To maintain the strong axis down to Plymouths greatest asset, the Hoe, means crossing a dual carriageway... and yes you guessed it... down under a subway! Crazy. The same fractured experience occurs when approaching from the University campus or residential areas and Barbican.

Abercrombies work is of huge historical importance and therefore is likely to be protected in the future... but what do you protect? The buildings? The layout? The trouble with the buildings is that they are almost purpose built for retail, perhaps you could put housing in the upper storage floors? Not ideal.

I think that the initial aesthetics of the centre and the lack of activity after shopping hours wouldn't be so damaging if subsequent developments actually tried to address the flaws and were as strong as Abercrombies work. Subsequent development have been very piecemeal, parasitic and unsympathetic to the vision, especially the 1960s and 1970s (which dont seem to relate to anything!) and have done nothing to address the destructive road and single-use centre.

The greatest disappointments are the new developments today which are merely glossing over the aesthetics of previous plots. Plymouth really needs to grab the bull by the horns and sort out the areas and links between the centre, the university, the residential hinterland, barbican and Hoe: Intelligent quality urban design to merge them together for a worthy holistic experience, not large wholescale redevelopment. A vision as strong as Abercrombies combine with our new urban understanding could create something truely wow.

Plymouth was rebuilt by Abercrombie the architect for London, who did the London plan afterwards. It was all very socially minded and everyone on the street was generally excited by what they saw (joe public actually bought copies of the plan from all of the local bookshops! Imagine that happening today!). Before the War Plymouth was a typically evolved medieval City with the usually problems of poor quality dense housing stock and traffic congestion in the centre. What he created was a quite a strong visual experience with axis running down from the Hoe to the Railway station and across for the main shopping street, almost akin to the grand boulevards in Paris, very open, clean air etc. Abercrombie also realised the need to retain any historical building that survived the bombing, namely the area around the Barbican.

However, especially in the centre, the plan was very zoned, no residential or industry inside the centre, only retail and the post war obsession with building the environment around the movement of the car is very visible here where a dual-carriageway ring road almost acting as a straight-jacket around the town centre, this aspect really hits you when you visit. To maintain the strong axis down to Plymouths greatest asset, the Hoe, means crossing a dual carriageway... and yes you guessed it... down under a subway! Crazy. The same fractured experience occurs when approaching from the University campus or residential areas and Barbican.

Abercrombies work is of huge historical importance and therefore is likely to be protected in the future... but what do you protect? The buildings? The layout? The trouble with the buildings is that they are almost purpose built for retail, perhaps you could put housing in the upper storage floors? Not ideal.

I think that the initial aesthetics of the centre and the lack of activity after shopping hours wouldn't be so damaging if subsequent developments actually tried to address the flaws and were as strong as Abercrombies work. Subsequent development have been very piecemeal, parasitic and unsympathetic to the vision, especially the 1960s and 1970s (which dont seem to relate to anything!) and have done nothing to address the destructive road and single-use centre.

The greatest disappointments are the new developments today which are merely glossing over the aesthetics of previous plots. Plymouth really needs to grab the bull by the horns and sort out the areas and links between the centre, the university, the residential hinterland, barbican and Hoe: Intelligent quality urban design to merge them together for a worthy holistic experience, not large wholescale redevelopment. A vision as strong as Abercrombies combine with our new urban understanding could create something truely wow.

All these problems happened in Coventry - zoning, dual carriageways, and tracts of land filled with retail units that are no use (And the upper precinct is 6 storeys, the upper 4 of which seem to have always been empty.)

The main difference is that Coventry's planning department seemed to fall out and the original plan - that was much more like Plymouth's - ended up being tweaked quite a lot to fit around existing medieval street plans, and Coventry took advantage of the relaxation of building height and added a number of tall structures to the city centre, which definitely helps to create a sense of "place" even if they are crap.

The aquarium is amazing! But the rest is a shithole.. so stay away!

The aquarium is amazing! But the rest is a shithole.. so stay away!

Me and Wife thought the aquarium was rubbish - you could hardly see the sharks & the tanks were all so dirty you struggled to see in them. The one in Edinburgh was much better.

The aqarium was average. I stayed in a B'n'B 5 minutes walk from the waterfront, the streets here were lovely and the Hoe looked amazing on a sunny summer's day. On the other hand driving in, the roads were crap, awful multi-storey car parks and tonnes of chavs who are not shy in giving outsiders a piece of their (very small) minds.