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The stolid Victorian charms of Leeds and Bradford remain intact despite some horrendous redevelopment
OWEN HATHERLEY
Will Alsop's proposal for a northern Supercity was the boom's only good idea. Stringing public infrastructure along the "M62 corridor" to create a 21st century metropolis out of Victorian industrial towns, Alsop placed the North at the centre of the UK, with the seeming support of John Prescott.
Yet Supercity was easily reduced to cliche: Tuscan hilltowns and signature buildings rather than travel networks, piers and viaducts. The "West Yorkshire Urban Area", a conurbation of up to 2.5 million people, exemplifies what exists instead. Despite having two great, and greatly contrasting cities at its heart - Bradford and Leeds - and a multitude of smaller but often equally architecturally rich towns packed close together, the West Riding is far from unified. Disparities are both its weakness and its greatest strength.
Leeds is the area's boomtown, and now a synonym for the fall, with the many tall flats built over the last decade frequently lying empty. Yet in 2006 Simon Jenkins hailed it as a traditionalist exemplar for the rest of the country, curiously given its inner urban motorway and many towers. Looking round the immediate centre, you can see why. Civic grandeur and commercial opulence make decidedly comfortable partners, giving streets a similar feel to Regent Street or Deansgate - but fittingly given the weather, the enclosed spaces are special. Leeds' Arcades, mostly restored to an almost suffocating level of opulence, are fantastical things, as is the Edwardian megastructure of the City Markets. The 1930s concourse of the City Station, restored by Carey Jones, is a more calm version of the same principle. Within the ring road, Leeds is as elegant as it is proud.
As soon as you step outside it you are faced with what is indisputably the worst new architecture of any major British city, and what makes it even more worrying is its massive, unavoidable scale. The most recent tower, Carey Jones' Sky Plaza, is exemplary. The plan is hugely ambitious, pulling together several blocks of student flats to form a skyline - and it fails on every possible level, with its mean, tiny windows, its chillingly blank facade, its desperate boredom.
Nearby are several...