It’s January and it’s cold. So I’m sat at sat indoors, at my desk, showing you my favourite Google Streetview before-and-after sequences from across the UK’s biggest cities outside London: Bristol, Birmingham, Liverpool, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Manchester, Sheffield, Bradford and Leeds.
Do you have anywhere you’d like me to check out in a future video? Let me know in the comments below!
If you enjoyed this video and my other videos please consider supporting me via the links below if you’d like! I’ve loved seeing your messages of support. And don’t forget to suggest some ideas for future videos:
buymeacoffee.com/CityEd
patreon.com/CityEd
Chapters
00:16 – Birmingham
02:56 – Liverpool
04:37 – Manchester
06:37 – Sheffield
07:20 – Bristol
08:56 – Leeds
11:10 – Bradford
12:45 – Edinburgh
14:20 – Glasgow
More information on Sheffield’s fantastic Grey to Green scheme: https://www.greytogreen.org.uk/
Soundstripe:
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TWWLLD0RFKZVPY5Y
APKSAI1IKZAPT5JX
529Q0O2TTETUKH3A
#urbanism #edinburgh #manchester #birmingham #liverpool #sheffield #bradford #leeds #glasgow #bristol #urbanplanning #regeneration #uk #hopecore
25 Comments
Every city street should have plenty of greenery. People benefit from trees being around. It isn't natural for us to be living in a completely 'concrete jungle', so it makes me happy to see in a lot of these before and afters that's something that is being addressed.
00:01 I’m m sitting maybe five hundred yards from Digbeth High Street as I type this and the tram still isn’t running down there as it cannot be connected to the rest of the network because it’s needs to pass through a HS2 worksite at Curzon Street (the Birmingham terminus) and they’ve been denied access for years.
There has been a push to incorporate Digbeth into the city centre for a while now. It was an area full of factories and warehouses on the very edge of town, not unlike Shoreditch I guess, and deindustrialisation left it feeling abandoned. They moved a university campus down there from Perry Barr about ten years ago in an attempt to fill the place with students and nightlife but it feels like the kind of place where you can pay £9 for a pint and still get mugged on the way home. They desperately need to finish HS2 and the tram for it to really work as an area so check back in ten years I guess.
Something I would be interested to save from you is what I do. You have the cities like? What would you do if you were designing a city? How would you do it? And what would you do?
None in London?
30.2K subscribers!! Congratulations! I was there when I watched your first google street view video, it's lovely to see you grow (and in stereo audio yay) and always be so positive about highlighting nice things happening around us. Hope we could bump into one another in London some time 🙂
Props to Sheffield because those changes are big!
Re: Leess: I'm interested in national public transport and this development is all the more reason why the Eastern Leg of HS2 should NEVER have been curtailed. All the key cities need linking up in some way. The Transpenine Route Upgrade is a key piece of infrastructure that in progress right now for the region but nationally HS2 needs to happen to provide the direct routes across the country.
Funny seeing Avon Street – my Sister used to live in a flat on that road in the 2020s: unbelievable how different it is now compared to 2012!
maturing is realising that the yookay is having zero glowups because the entire country is getting browner across the board
It's nice to see the investments into cities outside of London!
It’s about time to
I don’t know where I sit though when it comes to just narrowing roads. Yes it looks pretty but disadvantages should be acknowledged.
In the area I grew up in, the east end of London. The main road that connected two towns, got narrowed in the aim of improving pedestrian infrastructure. All it caused was significant congestion. It didn’t discourage driving in the way it probably was meant to. It just meant that buses couldn’t be overtaken, emergency vehicle access was made significantly more difficult and it made it impossible to live there because of the traffic. I think increased pedestrianisation, narrowing roads can be aesthetically pleasing, but there’s got to be a balance.
Brilliant video and great idea.
Leeds would be a great city with better transport
Well done for all of your hard work and the 30K too – well deserved. 😊
I love this video. Great taster type thing. Would like to see more. Quite inspiring to see cities and towns making themselves better places to live. A little town near me has undergone a pretty big transformation. Was run down and tatty. But lots of good indy shops. A derelict building in the high st. The derelict building got knocked down and turned into a park with a mural. Loads more murals. New paving and rejig of town square. Ramsey Isle of Man.
I feel like the Liverpool should have gone down the Birmingham route. Easily could have filled that central reservation with more greenery, a narrow long pocket park.
Opens with, "…at least five lanes of traffic.". Whilst showing a picture of a three lane junction approach.
Come to Glasgow for the commonwealth games, they have been doing so much road work across argyle street sauchiehall street and george square in preparation for the games, you can watch some of the activities and have fun. All in all a good excuse to visit Glasgow
Love the channel and your videos, but remember apartments is a americanism and Flats is UK English. I know developers like using the word apartment because believe that it sounds more prestigious.
An area to check before and after could be Salford?
Albeit a Dutchman, I lived in the UK for 31 years. I loathed the car-centric city centres with their off-putting wide roads and railings. The recent improvements warm my heart; one can now delight in these places with their myriad of stunning architecture.
Riverside Sunderland deserves a mention or even a video! Truly amazing transformation!
I don't wholly agree with the criticism of the cycle lanes on Leith Road being too wiggly; that looked like a planned bus stop bypass to me — arguably the best option for bus passengers and cyclists alike.
The changes at Charter Square in Sheffield are insane, I can't wait for your video on Sheffield