Bradford's uniqueness comes from its Asian community - perhaps that's where economic development should begin?

“I have always been struck by how while every company tries to convince you of how different it is than every other brand, every city tries to convince you that it is exactly the same as every other city that is conventionally cool,”

You'll be familiar with this - "Shoreditch of the North" or similar is a common cry from city leaders as they scrat about for a positioning statement (Bradford and Halifax have both laid claim to this particular tag making it all the less individual). Places need to be more like Barcelona or Amsterdam or Montpelier. The result, as Aaron Renn whose quotation opens this piece, observed is that city marketing videos all seem the same:

“...pictures of the hip creative class, some startups, something about the local fashion and food scene, some people on bicycles going through the center of the city"

I recall, for work on my masters degree, reading the 'innovation strategy' of every English Regional Development Agency (RDA). They were, references to specific places or businesses aside, pretty much identical - except that is for the London and South East RDAs: they didn't have innovation strategies, just lots of innovation. Economic development has become - perhaps it was always so - something of a search for a safe sameness. Today every local or regional economic strategy stresses something called "inclusive growth" and proclaims that this is somehow new or different (without, it seems to me, ever really defining what "inclusive growth" means). Nowhere - least of all the places that struggle - is taking Aaron Renn's advice and seeking out individuality, difference, a unique selling point as us old fashioned marketers put it back in the days of big hair and nice suits.

Is any struggling city taking Michael Porters advice about branding?

“Competitive strategy is about being different. It means deliberately choosing a different set of activities to deliver a unique mix of value."

The answer - at least from looking at the North of England, is a clear 'no'. Bradford wants to talk about 'technology', about 'levering land values', about tourism and about retaining graduates. Don't get me wrong, these are all excellent things but Doncaster and Wakefield and Hull and Salford and Gateshead and Barnsley and Sheffield say exactly the same. And, after decades of investing time and money in this ideas, what have we got to show for it all?

Much of what we do, quite understandably, is to point at what we have got that's working (in Bradford's case City Park, The Media Museum, Saltaire and high tech manufacturing in Airedale) and say things like "we're on the up". Again there's nothing wrong with this, it's just not enough. At the same time we are making strategic decisions based on the assumption that the economic fundamentals (things like land values, for example) are the same in Bradford as they are in Shoreditch.

Currently Bradford city centre has a few short of 2000 planning permissions for residential units yet to be built. We know (because the Council keeps bragging about it) that there are more applications in the pipeline. The problem is that in 2016/17 just 95 of these units were built out. And there's a reason - it probably costs something around £50,000 to built an apartment unit (more if we're talking about high rise buildings or heritage conversions) but you can buy a 2-bed flat in a (relatively) new build complex for £48,000. This tells me that land values in the city centre are pretty close to zero.

The classic regeneration approach is to use actions ('levers' is a favourite word) to raise those land values so it becomes viable to build speculative apartments or even offices. Those levers involve things like anchor institutions - one reason why so many places have chased Channel 4 so hard is because those 300 jobs will act to make wherever they end up "sexier" thereby raising values. If there aren't the anchor institutions, local authorities nationalise risk by using public borrowing to secure investment, either as a package of public and private funding (as with the former Bradford Odeon) or as, in effect, a straightforward commercial loan (Bradford did this successfully to secure the HQ of Provident Financial and less successfully with rugby league club, Bradford Bulls).

The thing is that this mix of funding does not seem to have made much of a difference - a listed former bank building in the best part of the city centre sold recently for a value indicating again that the land on which it stands is worth nothing. The Council has set aside (or more precisely indicated its willingness to borrow) something of the order of £87m in the transformation of the city and as part of a wider asset strategy. It should worry us that the Council is planning on buying up essentially valueless property in the hope that its involvement and investment will transform land values. I hope I am wrong in saying I really don't expect the city to get any real return from this spending nor to I anticipate that it will trigger some sort of investment boom in the city centre.

I've said, in remembering architect Will Alsop, that we should look again at his masterplan for Bradford. I described Alsop as a prophet for recognising that the city centre is too large and too dispersed. Moreover, Alsop set out an alternative - anti-development I dubbed it - approach of knocking down all the rubbish and replacing it with open space. We, almost reluctantly, did a little bit of this with City Park (where there wasn't so much to knock down) but everywhere else the plan is still to 'lever' those non-existent land values. With the emptying out of the 1960s/1970s part of the city centre we have the opportunity to do that clearance, to create new open space but instead the intention is to knock down the top of town, relocate the (admittedly struggling) John Street Market and create a site for, you've guessed it, more housing that nobody wants to build because there's no value.

The proposals are only made possible, just as is the crazed idea of building a new office block on part of that successful City Park, by the readiness of the Council and Combined Authority to bung loads of (borrowed) public money at these developments. In a city ringed with empty office blocks, surrounded by cheap rents and filled with empty flats it seems entirely the wrong strategy to build more. Yet that is what orthodox economic development tells us, all in the essentially vain hope that the result will be like Shoreditch rather than just more empty offices and poor quality flats. The problem is (and I hate to break it to Bradford's leaders) that our city centre isn't fifteen minutes walk from the City of London.

Having a city centre with zero land value is an advantage but only if we use it. Putting in parks and open space is a start but we also have the opportunity to look at creative approaches like homesteading or similar based on giving people free rent or free land in exchange for living and working there. We can learn from successful retail models in Bradford like the bazaars run by Asian entrepreneurs at Great Horton and Thornbury. The irony is that, while the traditional municipal markets are declining, these market-style bazaars (including one in what was a temporary building created during the botched relocation of Bradford's last specialist fresh food markets) are thriving. Alongside the Bradford Curry, these developments play to the city's uniqueness - the UK's biggest Kashmiri community at over 100,000 may not be without its problems but it does set the city apart from those other Northern cities. The first time I heard the term 'Bradistan' was from a Pakistani colleague in Manchester - her and her friends were frequent visitors to Bradford partly for reasons of family but also because of the offer to smart Pakistani women. Just not the city centre.

Looking at what we might call the 'old' city (Bradford pre-1974), the only thriving culture is, in the main, that Pakistani culture of bazaars, takeaways, sweet and pudding shops, grills, restaurants, cloth shops, and wedding halls. Us white residents get only occasional glimpses of this world but it's there and it's thriving. Perhaps, instead of pretty much saying "shh don't mention the Asian stuff", we should listen to what Aaron Renn said about Brooklyn's imported mid-west culture and Nashville's celebration of once-naff country music and become British Asian's capital?

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Offering folk stuff to buy isn't enough for a place to work - you have to entertain them too!

Retailing as entertainment

The long-term transformative effects of ICT cannot yet be fully appraised in part because technology uptake is rapid and unpredictable. Nevertheless, in one aspect – urban design – a synergy has emerged between bricks-and-mortar merchants and planners, in reaction to virtualization. Their complementary efforts, when successful, imbue commercial space with interaction-based vitality. The human instinct for sociability further supports these efforts, evidence that there is no substitute for many of the benefits cities offer. Lives are arguably better in proximity, a point supported by decades of agglomeration and anthropological research. The challenge for planners, therefore, is to create space for meaningful experiences inimitable in the virtual realm.

OK it's a little bit wordy (as we'd expect from an American academic) but the point being made is central to the business of regeneration and the future direction of 'place-making'. The critical issue is that the 'field of dreams' approach that tended to dominate town centre development no longer applies - just because I build a shopping centre doesn't guarantee that people will flock to its hallowed halls. If all I offer is stuff to buy, the consumer has the choice of sitting on her step with a smartphone flipping through a vaster and more exciting range of stuff to buy.

Pay a visit to a recently developed shopping mall - say the Trinity in Leeds, for example - and check out the shopping. Isn't the most striking thing just how little of this there actually is in the new mall? There are dozens of places to eat and drink, there's a cinema, and there are shops - run by brands like Apple, Bose and Superdry - that are as much as branding and market positioning as they are about actually selling you stuff. We were in the Bose shop getting a demonstration of their TV (unsurprisingly the sound quality was beyond awesome although this didn't make up for its lack of smartness) and, in chatting to the sales assistant, we discovered that she wasn't incentivised to sell us stuff. No commission, no sales bonus - because the shop was there to promote and position the Bose brand.

If we want places to succeed then there has to be a reason for people to visit them - if what they offer can be perfectly replicated on-line (or, in some cases, imperfectly) then the chances are that people will access the offer through the web rather than by visiting some place. What places need to do is threefold.

1. Offer those things - chiefly around 'human sociability' - that can't be done on-line (even if they can). 'Live' music is only really live music if you're there - yes someone could stream it live to the smart TV in your lounge but is that the same? I would argue it isn't - we want the live because of the whole experience, the beer, the slight crush of the crowded venue, the sense of sharing a great experience with others. The ability to say 'I was there'. Just having a bar or foodstop isn't good enough - it needs a purpose beyond that mundane fact, a presence that can't be replicated with a bottle of wine from the supermarket and some home cooking.

2. Connect with the on-line world. We went to the Prado in Madrid and, unplanned, bought an offer to guide us round from a smartly dressed gentleman. He showed us 10 - just ten - pictures from the thousands in the gallery. And these pictures taking us from the middle ages to the 21st century told us a story of art down those ages. We could have hired one of those clunky electronic gadgets as a guide but wouldn't it be more interesting if a little smartphone app could replicate the sort of offer that gentleman made for us?

3. Focus on the occasion, the event and the demonstration rather than just the sale. It's true that the value of the place comes in part from the value that consumers invest in that place - and much of this is, inevitably, a cash value. But, as Apple, Bose and many other brands have shown, the value of a public presence needn't be about selling you some stuff. Rather it's about showing you what that stuff can do, reminding you that the stuff in question is popular (why else would there be a big shop fill with other people looking at that stuff), and reinforcing your decision to buy it.

I'm quite excited about the future for town centres, malls and other shared places. Partly this is because the domination of public space by retail is nearing its end but mostly it's because the evidence right now is that successful places are places where the special stuff - the things that make them work - are made by the people visiting rather than for the people visiting. A new generation of entrepreneurs are creating new approaches to public fun and games - from political debates in a pub to cheese tasting and street parties.

And where there are lots of people having a good time there's the opportunity to enhance that good time by selling them the stuff they want (even if they didn't know they wanted it until just a minute of so ago). For public authorities there's a difficulty because of an instinctive discomfort with things that disrupt existing markets and existing expectations. Excuses will be used to prevent or slow the initiative of these new ideas - the street vendor or market stall undercuts the shopkeeper, selling alcohol in the street encourages anti-social behaviour and your funky flea market needs a "markets licence" for some bizarre reason.

What we know is that many of the best examples of this new place-making reflect this development. I prefer to call this consumer-led but, if you're uncomfortable with the idea of being a consumer, citizen-led works just as well:

Authentic urban transformation relies more on citizen initiative than the influence of global capital, and may be facilitated by ICT but not defined by it; this can be seen in the quiet regeneration of urban neighborhoods. Global capital may underwrite loans for acquiring properties and developing land, decisions in such neighborhoods are often made locally and in the type of fragmented manner that generates a bricolage of uses and styles. Examples in the United States include East Nashville, Kansas City’s Crossroads district, and Oakland’s foodie Temescal and KoNo districts. None displays the architectural shock-and-awe of emerging global mega-cities, but each embodies a citizen-level developmental determinism that shapes their design and atmosphere. They are literal incarnations of the unique priorities of citizens at that time and place, independent of global trends that often result in regression to an aesthetic mean.

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The most striking thing about these figures is how low they are...

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Bradford's Telegraph & Argus has revealed the findings from a 'freedom of information' request relating to the number of offences recorded at individual licenced premises in the city. Now we should note that the approved narrative when discussing crime and drinking is to use terms like 'drink-fuelled violence and anti-social behaviour' accompanied by a load and judgemental implied 'tut'.

So how much crime is there - of any sort - recorded at Bradford's busy city centre pubs and clubs? The answer - although the newspaper doesn't report it quite this way - is close to bugger all. The worst venue - a busy bar/nightclub - witnessed a staggering 23 offences during the year to 26 March 2015. That is less than one a fortnight. Given the bewildering array of possible offences (at times it seems the police can arrest anyone for anything) available to the enforcement authorities we should, rather than tutting about crime, be celebrating just how incredible safe Bradford's night life has become.

The truth is that, with violent crime at the lowest levels since the 1970s and consumption of alcohol (whatever the health fascists want to pretend) at similarly low levels, going out on a evening in a place like Bradford is pretty safe. Of course this isn't the same as saying it's pleasant but that's an aesthetic judgement not a matter of personal security - there will be plenty of swearing, oodles of testosterone and plenty of drunkenness but what there won't be is that violent crime the police and other assorted nannying fussbuckets want you to believe is inevitable wherever people (and especially young people) gather to party.

We should be celebrating - with a large drink, of course - the fact that licensing reform and the promotion of sensible drinking has resulted in a turnaround in the safety of our town centres. Instead newspapers in search of a cheap headline, scaremongering politicians and assorted fussbuckets still present it as if our town centres are places of untrammelled behaviour, dangerous places of utter chaos. This is complete nonsense. But I guess that's always sold newspapers!

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What to do next? Is Sheffield City Council making the wrong decision?

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Town and City centre developments are looking pretty fragile as business propositions, us folk in Bradford still sit, fingers crossed, awaiting action from Westfield over the Broadway site. And meanwhile in Sheffield:

Developer Hammerson today announced it was pulling out of long-awaited plans for a new retail quarter in Sheffield.

 The company said it has agreed with Sheffield City Council that it "would end its development agreement" on proposals for the Sevenstone scheme.

The scheme - just cracking open the egg when I was in Sheffield doing my Masters - has been stalled since 2008 "because of the recession" (no mention of the longer-term trends in retail here). It seems to me that this decision from Hammerson reflects the reality of retail investment - other than in exceptional circumstances it's simply not viable right now.

However, Sheffield City Council, wedded to the 'shiny regeneration' model like most big city councils has this to say:

Leigh Bramall, the city council’s cabinet member for business, skills and development, said the authority was still committed to developing Sevenstone.

He said: "The people of Sheffield have waited long enough for a new retail quarter.

"We have the land assembled, utilities in place, have established the level of funding available, and methodology to inject the funding to undertake supporting public works.

"We have confirmed a scheme is viable and so we will now be seeking a new development partner to move the project forward in the shortest time possible."

I wish the city luck with this approach and, knowing the politics and institutional myopia that so restricts regeneration, hope they find a new development partner.

My question is this. If Hammerson - not exactly a small or insignificant developer - can't make the development stack up with an anchor like John Lewis and the promise of £45 million in public subsidy, what makes the Council think another developer will fill the void?

Perhaps a different approach would help us all rethink the regeneration of City centres?

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A brief comment on the former Bradford Odeon

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As the echoing sounds of "I told you so" bounce off the buildings around City Park, thoughts turn to the future of the Odeon now that Langtree - the developer with a permission to knock it down to build flats and offices - has decided to scuttle away from Bradford with its tail firmly between its hind legs.

First a little correction of this statement from Dave Green, the Council leader:

...given the current financial situation and funding cuts to the Council, the authority had no money to buy the building from the HCA.

I'm not saying the Council should hand over cash to the HCA for the building but, unless its value has sky-rocketed overnight, Bradford Council does have the resources to make such a purchase. The Council has £180 million in reserves after all.

I have said before that the solution lies with a local initiative rather than some white knight galloping into town upon a great charger waving plans for...well I don't know what. However, the City needs a new central library, the West Yorkshire Pension Fund needs better offices and, even after restructure, the Council still has staff littered across the District. These opportunities - and perhaps others - should be put on the table rather than left in the vague 'the Council will do everything to assist'. There's perhaps a discussion to be has with the Science Museums who have the wonderful Media Museum next door?

Finally the structural reports on the building suggest that any development that preserves all or part of the building will only come about if there is public 'investment' (this is the Gordon Brown definition of 'investment' - esssentially subsidy). The Council and HCA need to be prepared to discuss this sort of intervention. The rescuing of Manningham Mills required English Heritage funding and there was a significant grant element in the spending from other bodies including the Council. We should be prepared now to adopt the same approach to the Odeon.

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I wonder what's in Bradford Council's rather secretive "markets review"?

Solly's Fruit & Veg - from John Street Market but here on tour in Haworth

Way back in May 2000 I became Bradford’s Portfolio Holder for Regeneration succeeded the current leader of council in that role. At the time there was a great long wish list of projects – it seemed that hardly a community in the City hadn’t been promised some miraculous regenerative cure.

Amongst all these promises were records of a series of discussions with a large Bradford-based supermarket chain. Some of these discussions related to the relocation of Morrison’s headquarters from Thornton Road to Gain Lane at Thornbury (the land there was in Council ownership). However, some of the remaining discussions related to the “regeneration” of Bradford’s markets – the John Street Market in the City centre and Keighley Market in the centre of that town.

Keighley folk may recall the debate about the possible relocation of the market so as to give Morrison’s a frontage on Low Street (right opposite the shopping centre where the market entrance is located). What Bradford folk don’t appreciate is that the Council had been in a similar conversation regarding John Street Market. And bear in mind that Cllr Green had already presided over the demolition of Rawson Market, Yorkshire’s last specialist municipal fresh food market – ostensibly for reasons of “health and safety”.

By 2000 it was too late to save most of the fishmongers, many of the butchers and most of the greengrocers decamped from the knocked down Rawson and James Street Markets – dozens of long established businesses sacrificed on the altar of “regeneration”. But we could – and did - put a stop to the idea of tucking the markets away behind a supermarket. And we did rebuild John Street market (I remain unsure about the rebranding as the Oastler Centre although this was done for good reasons and with positive intent).

I’m saying all this because I fear that we may be back defending the District’s markets. It has already been reported that the Shipley outdoor market is threatened with relocation – away from the car park, away from the centre of the town. What we don’t know is the full detail and content of the “markets review” ordered by the Council’s regeneration chiefs.

I fear – and I know some traders do too – that the Council fancies the chance to close down John Street Market (they’ll call it consolidation or merger with Kirkgate Market). After all the advocates of shiny regeneration that dominate our local agenda have never liked markets. Untidy places filled with cheap stuff, immigrants and poor people – not the sort of folk we aspire to in our wonderful city centre! A supermarket would be altogether neater and think of the capital receipt from selling the John Street site!

The markets review is being driven by the desire for savings – yet the markets generate a healthy surplus after all their costs are accounted for. The wonder of these places is ignored. The chance to invest, to grow and to improve is not taken. And the fact that markets make a place far better than shopping centres, public art or supermarkets is simply dismissed.

I may be proven wrong about the markets review – although the Council’s leadership is remarkably coy about the very existence of the review, let alone its content. But if Councillor Green returns to his 1990s habits of trying to knock down successful markets, it will make the Odeon debacle seem like a walk in the City Park.

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A playground for people not a showcase for developers - thoughts on Bradford City Centre

I spent a pleasant hour talking to Jim Greenhalgh from the T&A this afternoon. He’d rung me with a question along the lines of: “so how did we end up with Bradford Centre Regeneration?”

The result was that long conversation – we started with Odsal (remember “Superdome”) where I remarked that we had a scheme, it was funded, we’d given it planning permission only for a certain John Prescott to refuse permission because of the proposed Tesco supermarket that made the finances stack up. We got the Tesco – it’s at Great Horton less than a mile away from Odsal – but we never got the new stadium, not even while Gerry Sutcliffe the local MP was Sports Minister.

But the real conversation was about the City Centre. I don’t know what Jim will take from our chat or indeed what he’ll write but these are the things that stood out for me:

1.       We need to look at the Alsop masterplan again – not at the teddy bears or the weird architecture but at its essential principle. Alsop gave us an “anti-development” masterplan, something of a reverse field of dreams. Knock down all the 1960s rubbish and replace it with a park. And then see what happens. It took me five or so years to realise just how insightful this vision was – with a future where town centres have to change with our retail habits, this ‘wait and see’ approach now seems very wise.

2.       Think more about Bradford’s changing demographic rather than trying to attract a specific trendy middle-class audience. Over the past twenty years, Bradford’s middle-class has become less white – we now have a significant and important Asian middle class and the City Centre needs to reflect their preferences, what entertain them as much as it does the white population in places like Cullingworth. You only have to take a peek at the queues for iPads to understand the significance of this Asian demographic.

3.       Take control of our own destiny – for years we’ve wrapped ourselves in complicated developer-led schemes that, with one or two exceptions like Eastbrook Hall and Manningham Mills simply haven’t materialised. The Council needs to take command for once rather than hiding behind other bodies and assorted “special purpose vehicles”. Right now there’s the chance to build on the success of the Council-funded City Park – perhaps working with the Media Museum to complete a wonderful set of developments around that museum, the Alhambra Theatre, the old central library and the former Odeon. And we can put up much of the funding ourselves – Bradford Council has £180 million in reserves and an annual income of over £1.3 billion.

4.       Assume there won’t be any “funny money” – for twenty years the City has sat waiting for the generosity of central government or else the good fortune of lottery or other “bids”. This is a regeneration strategy akin to using the 4.30 at Kempton Park as an investment strategy. It might work but the chances are it won’t!

5.       Animate the City – spend more on events, on dance, on music, on street markets, on things that bring people into the City. Aim for a situation where Mr & Mrs Bradfordian wake up on a Saturday morning and discuss what to do that day concluding with “let’s go into Bradford, there’s always something on”.

We have been hesitant, over-reliant on private investment and lacking in the understanding needed to implement that masterplan we paid so much for. It wasn’t about developers and development. It wasn’t about retailers and office blocks. It was about a park, about creating a great place for Bradford’s people to promenade, to party and to play in.

Perhaps, after nearly ten years of pretending otherwise, we can get on with delivering that vision of a different kind of City centre. A City centre that’s a playground for people rather than a showcase for developers.

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Efforts to stop Bradford's Labour Councillors from their mission to kill the City centre

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Although Bradford's leader has graciously agree to put off killing Shipley, Bingley and Keighley town centres by announcing a two-year delay to the introduction of on-street parking charges, the 'let's raise some more cash' brigade are still winning in Bradford City centre.

We have called in the Labour's executive's decision to extend the City centre on-street parking charges mostly because it's a really stupid idea. Plus of course Bradford's good little socialist car-haters had every intention of ignoring any objection (from shoppers, shopkeepers and local businesses) since they'd spend £125,000 on buying the new parking meters.

The decision will be looked at by the Environment & Waste Scrutiny Committee at its meeting on 28th February in City Hall. The meeting starts at 5.30pm and should be an interesting occasion - I am hoping that the Committee sees sense and tells our Labour bosses that making it more expensive to shop in a struggling city centre really isn't the best way to go about regenerating that city centre.

The Labour executive will doubtless ignore this but it's worth a try!

In the meantime, the Telegraph & Argus have a little poll (you can vote here) that current shows 83% against the idea.

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Bradford's City Centre - five ideas to kickstart its regeneration

Yesterday I read two thoughtful pieces of writing about Bradford's regeneration - one entitled "Common Sense Regeneration" from the Bradford Civic Society, the other the City Life column in The Spectator.

"Common Sense Regeneration" sets out its stall as a regeneration manifesto for the City - an exercise in critical friendship. And in doing this Bradford Civic Society fails comprehensively to deliver - the 'manifesto' reads as an unstructured miss-mash of 'glass-half-empty' kicking at the Council, the ideas of local lobby groups - an inner city ring road and a grossly expensive investment in heavy rail - and the unquestioning promotion of sub-Victorian pastiche over good modern architecture.

But this is just my opinion - what I find completely underwhelming about the Civic Society's proposals is that they completely ignore economic realities. Not one moment of consideration is given to how the grand schemes might be built - who is going to finance a 3,500 seat concert hall, where they'll get the £200 million needs to link the two stations and how the £100 million or so to buy back the Westfield site will be raised. There is nothing new in the proposals, no originality, nothing that wasn't already in the public domain for discussion and consideration.

Very disappointing. In contrast outsider Robert Beaumont's City Life piece in The Spectator cuts right to the heart of the issue - the failure of Bradford Centre Regeneration & Yorkshire Forward to deliver on the vision for a new city centre, the slow transformation of some areas through considered private investment and the opportunities presented by Bradford's success stories - the National Media Museum, Saltaire, Lister Mills, Manningham Park and becoming the first UNESCO City of Film.

And the diagnosis - sitting waiting for the sugar daddy to fund transformation means it won't happen. We have to get on with the job!

So what could we do? Here are five, deliverable, transformational, proposals:

1. Commission a top architect to design a new Bradford Civic Centre - a new home for Bradford Council's dispersed departments (currently spread inefficiently across five or more locations) and built on the site of the current - and very ugly - Jacob's Well office block. This is deliverable because Bradford Council provide a strong covenant allowing a private partner to secure the finance to build a new, iconic building in the City Centre.

2. Construct the first section of a new Bradford Canal from Dockfield at Shipley to Lavers wood yard. Nearly all the land concerned is in public ownership and available now. Disposing of development rights along the line of the canal provides the covenant needed to raise finance. Public funding - around £2 million - is needed to complete the new bridge under the Airedale railway line but that should be achievable.

3. Building a new extension to the Oastler Centre using the soon-to-close Morrisons supermarket and spreading onto a newly pedestrianised John Street. Removing the ugly corner building opposite might not be affordable but, were it possible, a new open square could be constructed - similar in impact to the new Market Square recently completed in Bingley.

4. Changing the way we use City Hall - making it more of a building for the public than an impenetrable "public building". Meeting space, restaurants and a small auditorium would enhance the already successful Centenary Square and Norfolk Gardens open spaces. This transformation - linked to a new Civic Centre - would be funded either through that development or from the Council's capital budget.

5. Committing to a five year programme of events, occasions and celebrations in the centre. This animates new places, makes use of temporary spaces produced by developments and provides reasons for Bradford's citizens to come into the City Centre. The City should look to a revenue investment of at least £3 million a year (from its £1 billion plus gross budget) in delivering this programme of events and activities.

I don't think these proposals will solve all the City's problems - the sensitive matter of the Odeon and the stalled Westfield development remain. But in delivering these the City would show it meant business - and would instill some confidence in the private investors needed to deliver on these big schemes.

Let's get on and have some fun in Bradford City Centre!

For a while now I've banged on about the importance of events to successful regeneration. It's not enough to build shopping centres, parks, public squares or iconic buildings. These places and spaces have to be animated - they are made by what happens in them not merely by the fact of their existence.

Bradford City Centre is a case in point. On an ordinary day it leaves a deal to be desired, there's the semi-derelict former Odeon, the hole that will be a Westfield shopping centre some day and a central business district that splutters and struggles. But Bradford Council has done better than most in animating the spaces that is controls - I've written before about the success of the Bradford International Markets Festival and the recent Bradford Classic (featuring a Le Mans Jaguar and Aston Marten) repeats that success with a different audience.

And last weekend we saw Garden Magic - again a repeat but this year featuring a magnificent sand sculpture of Charles Darwin. As Julian Dobson put it in his Living with Rats blog by way of comment about the risible YouGov PlaceIndex:

"A jazz band was playing in Centenary Square outside the city hall as part of the city's Garden Magic week, while an artist has been carving a giant sand sculpture of that little-known Bradfordian, Charles Darwin (though you might mistake him for Titus Salt at a distance)."

Leaving aside that Darwin lived at Downe House in Kent, Julian's observation shows how important animation and activity is to delivering regeneration. And that animation - the events you put on - do not need to be pasteurised for middle-class sensibilities or to indulge the prejudices of Guardian-reading folk. They must have variety, edge and excitement. A sense of risk and a challenge to the normal expectations of a city centre event.

I am delighted that the Park at the Heart is now to go ahead - it will transform the centre of the city and will create a new stage for events, animation and excitement. I want to see a great bandstand - what else for a park - so we can feature Bradford's brass bands. After all, they are the best in the world. And also to feature new music whether jazz, indie, punk or the sounds of Bradford's young asians.

So let's not wallow in the grumpy old man, glass half empty, depressing, "It'll never work" attitude - let's get on and have some fun in our city centre!

New Victoria - the real question is "will it ever get built"?

Langtree Artisan have issued a new set of designs for the building to replace the empty, sad and semi-derelict former Odeon building in Bradford City centre. As with previous proposals there are sharply divided opinions between the very vocal and well organised Bradford Odeon Rescue Group (BORG) and the more quietly expressed views of what we might call Bradford's "establishment". I am not planning to enter this debate - although I will note that no opposition to demolition was raised when the previous private owners sought to build a night club, restaurants and bars on the site.

What I am concerned with is the prospects for the development - indeed any development. It is not simply that the current development market isn't delivering these types of multi-use developments but that the continued controversy acts to put off investors and lenders as well as undermining the interest of potential end users. More importantly, a scheme predicated on hotel and residential use raises significant doubts in my mind about deliverability. There are too many schemes - not just in Bradford - that await some mythic market shift so as to begin. In truth - and I hope those clever folk at Langtree Artisan can prove me wrong - the economics of this type of development simply don't stack up. Unless of course there's a copper bottomed hotel end-user already lined up! And do we really want more city centre apartments that don't sell?

The Odeon remains the big millstone round the neck of Bradford's regeneration - we are allowing the continuing argument about its future to disrupt the creation of a sensible approach that recognises the emerging role of city centres as places of leisure and pleasure rather than locations for commerce and shopping. The proposed scheme - now on-line - remains rather uninspiring, rather dated and chasing a past vision of the City.