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I grew up in Crawley deeply embedded in the middle of Sussex, halfway between London and Brighton and it exploded in size in the 50's.
I hated it, having moved over from Belfast via Hounslow at primary school age, I never really felt connected with the place and it's sprawling concrete.
It also felt like an overspill of south London, with Gatwick airport on the doorstep it was never short of jobs hence it's popularity. The estates of Broadfield and Bewbush were like rabbit warrens and are pretty ugly.
It has its good points, and I still have family there, but I'd not move back even if I could afford it.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Black pudding is blood sausage. Andouillete is tripe sausage. Haggis is basically sheeps' lungs and stuff sausage.

Bismark, the Iron Chancellor said "Laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made."

Bismark is a blight upon history.



Automatically Appended Next Post:


kinda too homogenus for me, to flat aswell, then again i am biased in such a case, altough by far not the worst thing i have seen in regards to buildingsins.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Only been to Milton Keynes.

I appreciate the design ethos. But having grown up in Edinburgh, and loving The New Town?

-imgsnip-

Then living just off The Pantiles in Tunbridge Wells

-imgsnip-

The aesthetic of Milton Keynes

-imgsnip-

Is alien to me, and not to my taste. I'm a Georgian Boy, and would be a Dandy if I thought I earned enough money to justify it!

What's interesting is the New Town could really be considered one of the ancestors of the philosophy behind city layouts like Milton Keynes. Designed in one go with a consistent architectural style, neat and orderly grid layout, intended to provide and promote a more modern & sanitary way of living - I wonder if we'd look a lot more fondly on the modern lowercase new towns if they'd been given as much green space and as substantial provision for amenities as the New Town was.

Of course, Edinburgh's New Town was a way for the wealthy to escape the reeking warren of the Old Town, so budget was somewhat less of a concern

 r_squared wrote:
I grew up in Crawley deeply embedded in the middle of Sussex, halfway between London and Brighton and it exploded in size in the 50's.
I hated it, having moved over from Belfast via Hounslow at primary school age, I never really felt connected with the place and it's sprawling concrete.
It also felt like an overspill of south London, with Gatwick airport on the doorstep it was never short of jobs hence it's popularity. The estates of Broadfield and Bewbush were like rabbit warrens and are pretty ugly.
It has its good points, and I still have family there, but I'd not move back even if I could afford it.

I live in Crawley now after growing up in one of the more picturesque nearby small market towns due to lower house prices and convenience for cinema / shopping (my wife is originally from just outside Belfast). We do live in one of the, relatively, nicer areas Ifield which was originally a separate village which was later absorbed by the new town, meaning we have a mix of old houses and new estates. For the most part Ifield is okay but there are a couple of areas that are like rabbit warrens, I can walk five minutes from my house and end up walking through farmland which is nice. Broadfield and Bewbush are especially bad and not somewhere I would like to live (I will run around Bewbush if it’s light, I won’t run around Broadfield at any time of day).

I don’t think Crawley town centre is as bad as some of the new towns as there was already a decent sized town established before the new town grew around it so we do have a historic old high street and road layout. Some of the worse concert new town editions have been, or are in the process of being, replaced with modern buildings which is helping approve the aethestetic of the town and the upgrades they are giving to the pedestrianised shopping areas are helping to remove the 70s vibe the town centre had.

As you said, it’s great for work with Gatwick airport which has also given us a much better bus and train service than most towns would have.

I used to live in Russia. There is a lot of the same kind of post-war concrete blocks there (much more so than in Britain). Britain seems to be doing a good job of making these areas into nicer, more modern places.
But they'll never have the soul of a proper old town. New cities tend to be the same the world over, they tend to feel empty and lack the identity, beauty and coziness of a place that has grown organically over centuries rather than being designed from the ground up.

Aeneades wrote:
We do live in one of the, relatively, nicer areas Ifield which was originally a separate village which was later absorbed by the new town, meaning we have a mix of old houses and new estates. For the most part Ifield is okay but there are a couple of areas that are like rabbit warrens, I can walk five minutes from my house and end up walking through farmland which is nice.

By the sounds of it you live quite near my parents in Ifield, they moved there after I moved out years ago. We lived in Southgate West for the most part which was handy for the town centre. But where they live now is much better. I used to play cricket as a kid at Ifield, and they live pretty much right next to the cricket fields. Tbf, it's nice to go home to that part, Ifield has some history and around the old barn theatre, church and pub is one of my favourite places to visit when I do go back.
Crawley itself has had some pretty substantial changes over the last 30 years, and yeah, there are some good parts but if I'm honest I still don't like the place much. There's a bit of an attitude about Crawley which I never really got on with, it's convenient for places, and it's a place to rest your head, but it'll never be a destination to visit of itself. It doesn't really have any charm, most of the old parts have been flattened or redesigned.
I know some people love it there, one of my old teachers even had a book published about the town, and he loved the place to bits, but I'm not sold. When my family leave, it's likely I'll never go back.

 Iron_Captain wrote:
I used to live in Russia. There is a lot of the same kind of post-war concrete blocks there (much more so than in Britain). Britain seems to be doing a good job of making these areas into nicer, more modern places.
But they'll never have the soul of a proper old town. New cities tend to be the same the world over, they tend to feel empty and lack the identity, beauty and coziness of a place that has grown organically over centuries rather than being designed from the ground up.

Give it a century or two. After all, Edinburgh's New Town and the city of London started out as homogenous new-builds.