Cathedral Square “A Drab Place”

Press, Volume CV, Issue 30959, 15 January 1966, Page 1

Cathedral Square “A Drab Place”

Cathedral square was a “drab, dangerous, and noisy place,” said Professor Colin Buchanan in his report to the City Council last evening.

The traffic needed to be sorted out, and the Cathedral needed to be seen to be standing on a broad paved area which, over part of the Square at least, flowed right up to the base of the buildings.

“We must confess to considerable uneasiness at proposals to 'make the Cathedral in effect the centre-piece of a traffic roundabout, though we doubt whether traffic can be excluded completely.” The consultants’ report favoured a “new look” at the Square’s problems; and Professor Buchanan

said that he and Mr Crow were doubtful about the idea to resort to pedestrian subways. Cathedral squares, by long tradition, were places of pedestrian concourse, and they thought it should go without saying that pedestrians should have the freedom of the Square. The council should try to work out a redevelopment Plan for the centre of the city, and this involved the Square, he said. “If you build any more of those great Government Life buildings you will get so much space in them that you will kill the incentive for redevelopment elsewhere. The city will be left with a central area consisting of two or three clumsy blocks and little else.”