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Pedestrianisation works well when it is nice, sunny, daytime, summery but when the market stalls pack up, it gets dark and cold (remember, we live in a country where the lights come on at 4pm in the winter) and the businesses pull down their shutters (to be tagged and never, ever cleaned because, hey, the business boss doesn't live there) and the street becomes lifeless, then it doesn't work. Councils in the seventies did a lot of pedestrianisation - it had a smack of the monorail about it - and anti-social behaviour, soullessness and lack of interest followed.

I read a study on this recently recently Nigello - specifically on the no go element of pedestrianisation after dark, and how the shopping centres of the 1960s and 1970s would lead to antisocial behavior once shoppers had left. There has been a trend back to people moving into these areas and those issues dissipating in that it was the lack of mixed use that led to the issues rather than the pedestrianisation itself. Both Northcross Road and Melbourne Grove have a mix of shops and residential so its likely that the lifeless problem wouldn't exist.


Do agree with the horrible shop frontage issue though - Glamorous Nails on Grove Vale for example is fully tagged and nothing is ever done about it - lots of the shops were on Melbourne Grove until very recently too.

Re teh shutters - I asked Cllr McAsh to look into it and some shops have either cleaned up their fronts or had the council do it. Please email him. The phone repair shop on the corner looks much better, as doe others, but some simply CBA as they lock up and go home.

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