[B]New powers to breathe life into England's cities[/B]

[alonzo-ny]

I must be blind. Even all the way to Edinburgh?

[Sweet Zombie Jesus]

Originally Posted by Core Rising

I'd want to go on the Subway just to see what its like compaired to the London Underground.

Small... in terms of overall network as well as individual train sizes, thanks to an unusual guage. It'll also have a fantastically retro 70s feel, if you jump on in the next year before modernisation of stations and new trains come in. Still takes a lot of strain off the roads from people who would otherwise use cars, taxis and buses.

Funnily enough the Glasgow Subway was also privately funded and built during the late Victorian boomtimes, and brought into public ownership just as public transport started being uncool and the city was being depopulated by anti-urban policies, hence the networks frustratingly tiny size.

Here it is, 2 years after San Francisco opened its 'Space Age' BART system in 1972. Note the guy at 25 seconds in with a fag and a can of McEwans. Times have changed.



...

Oh yeah, the topic that's much more interesting.

[Core Rising]

Wow, that is beyond retro. Shame they modernised the trains at all, If they still had the ones from that video it would be quite a tourist attraction these days!

[MattN]

Originally Posted by alonzo-ny

I must be blind. Even all the way to Edinburgh?

I'm afraid so!

[ill tonkso]

Indeed, but that is not its purpose. Can you imagine traveling on London Underground stock from that era, every day?

[GollumGollum]

I've always thought that Northern England, being polycentric, could become like Germany - a country which is incredibly polycentric. Southern England is more like France - dominated by a single large metropolis - Northern England is more like Germany, with a shotgun-like spread of big cities.

The metropolitan regions have the following populations:

- Manchester metropolitan area: Pop. 2,556,000 (3rd)

- Leeds metropolitan area: Pop. 2,302,000 (4th)

- Liverpool metropolitan area: Pop. 2,241,000 (5th)

- Sheffield metropolitan area: Pop. 1,569,000 (7th)

Total Population:

- 8.5 million people



Northern England needs to unite the equilateral triangle of Manchester-Leeds-Sheffield - creating a triangular shaped corridor of high speed rail and big-lane motorways - burrowing through the pennines like the Swiss if neccecary. By linking them so closely with state of the art infrastructure, they would feed off each other, and boom. Then, they need linking to ports - the closest, on each side of the pennines are Liverpool and Hull respectively.

They resemble the Rhine-Rhur region in Germany, which contains similarly-sized, but far better cared-for cities like Düsseldorf, Dortmund, Cologne, Essen. Some of the best cities in the world to live, are regional German cities.



Northern England and Rhine-Rhur are part of Europe's 'blue banana' - an area of highly-urbanised cities with high-population density, which forms the core of the European Union's population:







Then afterwards, two high-speed rail links from London to Edinburgh and Glasgow, going through Nottingham, Birmingham and Newcastle, would turbo-charge the country. Ideally, one super-fast rail line for each side of the pennines, linking the country like a spine. The Northern Megacity would be able to export out of nearby Liverpool and Hull - but would also be super-connected to the South-East and Scotland, to facilitate business links.

- Newcastle metropolitan area: Pop. 1,599,000 (6th)

- Nottingham metropolitan area: Pop. 1,543,000 (9th)



The other link:



I remember an article from a while ago saying that these two lines would easily recover their investment over the long run. So the only thing preventing this part at least, is, as always, lack of political will, and lack of confidence in ourselves as a country.

It remains to be seen whether any of these devolved powers will benefit regional cities in any way - it will depend on what they entail. But investment, coupled with more control over the right things, could have a dramatic effect.

[kids]

Good idea. Needs more giant teddy bears though.

[WatcherZero]

Originally Posted by kids

Good idea. Needs more giant teddy bears though.

Already covered

image hosted on flickr

[GollumGollum]

That's less of a teddy-bear and more of a teddy-hominid.

[Aaronj09]

Dortmund is absolutely shit.. that entire area of Germany is just.. bleak. Cologne ain't pretty.

[Crash_N]

Apart from maybe Dusseldorf, the entire Ruhr area ain't exactly pretty, and certainly not as wealthy as the southern Germany or Hamburg.

[alonzo-ny]

I think a north England mega region is a great idea.

[Restless]

Urban research
The laws of the city
http://www.economist.com/node/21557313

===

A city twice as large as its neighbour is likely to be 15% richer. The mix of green space and built-up areas tends to be equal everywhere.

===

Back in the 1940s, George Zipf, an American researcher, noted that a city’s population is inversely proportional to its rank in a country. His law holds that the largest city is always about twice as big as the second largest, three times as big as the third largest, and so on.

===

For a metropolis twice the size of another, the length of electric cables, number of gas stations and other bits of infrastructure decrease by about 15% per inhabitant. But beasts do not enjoy the cities’ rising returns to scale. Income, patents, savings and other signs of wealth rise by around 15% when a city’s size doubles. In short, urbanites consume less but produce more.

===

In Portugal, if a city is twice the size of another, people make 12% more phone calls per head. This gives weight to what urban theorists such as the late Jane Jacobs have long argued: that cities foster the exchange of ideas.

[WatcherZero]

Or the seperation of families....

[larven]

Originally Posted by GollumGollum

Northern England needs to unite the equilateral triangle of Manchester-Leeds-Sheffield - creating a triangular shaped corridor of high speed rail and big-lane motorways - burrowing through the pennines like the Swiss if neccecary. By linking them so closely with state of the art infrastructure, they would feed off each other, and boom. Then, they need linking to ports - the closest, on each side of the pennines are Liverpool and Hull respectively.

Yes....yes....YES!!!

[EuxTex]

Originally Posted by WatcherZero

Or the seperation of families....

That is what capitalists claimed communism did, however, evidence shows that it is capitalism that divides families and socialism unites them.

Remember the claim that steam power in the mines would lessen the toil of the miner? Well it did, it made him redundant in favor of his smaller, weaker and, cheaper, offspring. Modern version is that "out-sourcing" to third world locations lowers the cost of manufacturing thus lowering the price to first world consumers. But only those first world consumers who have not lost their jobs to "out-sourced" third world countries. Outsourcing increases profits.

Originally Posted by GollumGollum

Northern England needs to unite the equilateral triangle of Manchester-Leeds-Sheffield - creating a triangular shaped corridor of high speed rail and big-lane motorways - burrowing through the pennines like the Swiss if neccecary.

But, in the case of the Pennines, totally unnecessary. The Pennines, unlike the Alps, are very easily scalable with, on most routes, a little more than a steep incline through and over the range.

Originally Posted by GollumGollum

I've always thought that Northern England, being polycentric, could become like Germany - a country which is incredibly polycentric.

Germany benefits from being a federated state, the UK suffers because it isn't.

[Octoman]

Originally Posted by alonzo-ny

Can anyone answer this? Or are the projects in London in fact the most needed?

I can't think of any other place in the UK that has a more pressing need for transport upgrades right now than London. I have travelled on commuter trains in quite a few different UK cities and although they can be busy nothing comes close to the lunacy experienced on the Waterloo trains for instance where you have people waiting 8 deep on the platforms and passengers literally tumbling out of the doors when they open because of the crush.

London should have a major upgrade of it's suburban rail network as a national priority. Ideally Crossrail will be the start. I think we need 3 or 4 other lines to create something like the Parisian RER service before we are on top of capacity issues.

[GollumGollum]

Originally Posted by alonzo-ny

I think a north England mega region is a great idea.

We could break England into three mega-regions:

- The North

- The Midlands

- The South

And have each of them as states in a federal UK maybe

[kids]

Originally Posted by EuxTex

That is what capitalists claimed communism did, however, evidence shows that it is capitalism that divides families and socialism unites them.

Remember the claim that steam power in the mines would lessen the toil of the miner? Well it did, it made him redundant in favor of his smaller, weaker and, cheaper, offspring. Modern version is that "out-sourcing" to third world locations lowers the cost of manufacturing thus lowering the price to first world consumers. But only those first world consumers who have not lost their jobs to "out-sourced" third world countries. Outsourcing increases profits. But, in the case of the Pennines, totally unnecessary. The Pennines, unlike the Alps, are very easily scalable with, on most routes, a little more than a steep incline through and over the range. Germany benefits from being a federated state, the UK suffers because it isn't.

So why is there no motorway between Sheffield and Manchester?

People underestimate the Pennines, they're often completely snowed over during the winter and impassable as a result.

[Squirrelking]

Originally Posted by Aaronj09

Dortmund is absolutely shit.. that entire area of Germany is just.. bleak. Cologne ain't pretty.

Originally Posted by kids

So why is there no motorway between Sheffield and Manchester?

Because there's a national park in the way? Do you know how hard it is to do anything in a national park never mind laying a 20 mile strip of tarmac across one?