Leicester is nothing special, just an average English looking city. Personally I think Nottingham is much nicer (by the way you can get shot for saying that :lol::lol::lol

. On the other side it has really nice leafy suburbs though, especially around Leicester University.
I have the same impression but I think this is the english way, the way their smaller cities are.
But Im not an England-expert...
You get a rigt mix of cities. Some really nice, some :drool:
Midlands are quite industrial plus most of the cities been redeveloped during the 50-60s losing much of their Victorian and Georgian buildings (Birmingham, Coventry etc). Nice middle size (300-500k) cities in UK are Cardiff, Bristol, Newcastle, Edinburgh,,,