Abergele is a small, rural town in the county of Conwy in North Wales. Situated between Colwyn Bay and Prestatyn, lying between the coast and Snowdonia mountains and with great road and rail links, Abergele provides a great environment to live-in. All reasons why 750 new homes are planned to be built in Abergele over…
Maindee is an urban neighbourhood just over the river from Newport City Centre, in South Wales. To an outside eye it might seem beset by high levels of deprivation and a seemingly struggling high street. This belies the fact that on closer inspection, Maindee is also a diverse multi-cultural community, has a flourishing festival that…
I once asked a town team chairman and former trans-European business director, which of the two roles was the most challenging. Without a moment’s hesitation he replied that leading change in your own community is by far the bigger challenge. Leading a local revival is undoubtedly fraught with frustrations but can be rewarding personally and…
Is public wi-fi worth it? With the well-publicised failure of wi-fi schemes in towns like Swindon, plenty of people are asking whether the provision of public wi-fi is worth the effort. In this guest blog, Wendy Riley from Real Towns takes a closer look at public wi-fi and assures us that yes, it’s money well…
What turns a town or city centre in to a destination for visitors? And what even is the attraction of becoming an attraction? Those are some of the thoughts that went through my head recently as I have toured three town and city centres going through different transformations in the hope, partly, of putting themselves…
I wanted to find out how easy it is to share the love for markets on-line. Hopefully most markets have a Facebook page but fewer I found have a presence on Tripadvisor. Like me, many of you probably use Tripadvisor to find out about where to eat, stay or visit when going to a…
Businesses in Abergele, North Wales will have an opportunity to contribute to the Abergele Place Plan over the next few weeks and shape an approach that might become more widely used across Wales. Conwy County Borough Council has commissioned People and Places Partnership to spend time in the town, meeting members of the local Business…
Positive planning for the future of our towns and cities has to be much more than a two dimensional process. Whether through Neighbourhood Planning in the English context or as part of emerging Place Planning in Wales, the process needs to capture the current social and economic dynamism and distinctiveness of the community in question.…
Tomorrow’s Digital High Street is to be road tested on the streets of Gloucester and Cheltenham as part of a Government-backed programme to bring our town centres on-line. The digital high street programme is led by John Walden CEO of Home Retail Group, owner of Argos, with support from executives at IBM, Boots UK, Cisco, Google,…
An annual Town Team Review can be an invaluable tool in assisting the on-going organisational development of a local town centre ‘champion’. It need not be a complicated process and is key in ensuring that town centre regeneration is sustained . Organisational development is a gradual process but will also have key moments such as when leadership, staff…