Reviving Our Town and City Centres Conference

[Leo Borwick]

If you want to see the presentations, the recording is here:  https://youtu.be/Q1L8nD55XR8.

My summary: surprisingly close to total consensus that the town centre needs to be made a nicer place, that past road schemes have been to blame for stopping the central area being a "15-minute town", e.g. Star Lane gyratory, and that more cycling and walking is a big part of the solution.  Paul Clements (CEO of Ipswich Central) summed it up with "it needs to be people first".

All great, but you can probably smell a "but..." coming.  Well, if there is one, it is that there is so far a lack of any clear or detailed plan for making all this happen, as far as I know. The conference was produced by Ipswich Central,who are a "Business Improvement District" collaboration amongst the main political players (SCC, IBC, Tom Hunt, et al), but does not commit them in any formal sense to doing anything.  So let's not hang up our campaigning boots just yet!

Leo

[David Penny]

Yes Leo. As far as this conference goes, the challenge is to get Ipswich Central et al themselves to take on board and act on what their own main speakers had to say. Personally, I didn't get the impression either Terry Baxter or Paul Clement properly understood what people first means.

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From: cycle-...@googlegroups.com <cycle-...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Leo Borwick <leobo...@gmail.com>
Sent: 13 April 2021 17:16
To: cycle-...@googlegroups.com <cycle-...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: [cycle-ipswich] Reviving Our Town and City Centres Conference

 

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