Sadly yes!

Bradford as a city centre is at the moment as dead as a dodo. I had the dubious pleasure of a night out in the town centre a few weeks back. Most of the pubs up near the west end were half full to empty, nobody seems to go out in town anymore. Barring the Pictureville and the odd curry house there is nothing there. I was struck with how dead the place was, why anyone would buy an apartment or stay in a hotel there is beyond me.

rlPick your favourite.rl

That's the entire vocabulary of a lot of people I work with

It's not all doom and gloom. Max is opening his new Gasworks club this Friday with Terrorvision as the opening night act. Hopefully he'll attract some decent bands as the Rios move to Leeds appears to be running aground. He deserves support in trying to inject some nightlife into the West End at least.

It's a step in the right direction for sure. Rios and Leeds never seemed a good match to me.

So you now have 2 big holes in Bradford.

I work in Local Government and I was glad to see some of my least-favourite Local Government speak on there, such as 'cross-cutting' and 'upstream'.

I've never been to Rios since it moved to Leeds, even though it would be a lot easier for me to get to Rios in Leeds than the old Bradford site, I've hardly been rushing to go there. The old place in Bradford was great!

Where is the new Gasworks club?
It would be good to see a decent band venue in Bradford.

The bit of Great Horton Road betwee the Odeon and Alhambra.

Leeds doesn't have everything it's own way... The 54 story Lumiere and its 30 odd story twin have been put on hold, Leaving a massive hole in Leeds centre also. This project has ben 'put on hold'. Not sure if it is actually put on hold or they just used that as a way to prevent panic.

I do believe though that Leeds is very responsible for Bradfords decline. You can't have 2 major cities thriving side by side. Theres Leeds so Bradford can't get a look in. It's the same with Nottingham/Leicester and Sheffield/Rotherham.

rlKnock yourselves out, urban decay fans.rl

Googling 'detroit abandoned' brings up some other interesting stuff.

That's world class. It's really added value to my day in a win-win sort of way.

Wakey have got a similar problem at the mo, our equivalent shopping precinct under construction has just seen all the workers down tools, because none of the banks will finance such big schemes at the minute.

rlA handy link.rl

Love it. Working in HE there's plenty of it. A word colleagues & I had not heard before but suddenly became fashionable in HE is pedagogy. Every seminar & training event had some academic wannabe using it. Nice woody word though.