Architecture feels designed to neuter historic heart of Bristol

OLLIE Fortune’s recent letter (‘Broadmead is fast becoming an uninspiring murky backwater,’ October 19) led me to reflect on the Bristol of my formative years during the late 1940/50s. Much of it has long gone, and what little remains is on borrowed time.

Those largely responsible for the wholesale decimation of the innercity include self-indulgent entrepreneurial mayors, who have seen the mayoralty as a vehicle for their own personal kudos and party political advancement.

Our current mayor Marvin Rees, to whom I would award the top prize, is no exception in using Bristol as a business model which is destroying our historic city.

Evidence for this is ongoing with the imminent demise of Marks & Spencer, which was built when I was seven years old in 1952.

Other traditional stores which have been lost include in no particular order: Debenhams / British Home Stores / John Lewis / Jackson the Tailor / Horne Brothers / Salasons Cameras / Hobbies Shops/ Woolworths / Littlewoods / Dunns the tailors, and C&A clothes.

These in my biased opinion were instrumental in helping to maintain a cultural connectivity between the actual people visiting the city and the retail trades.

Not anymore, most of Broadmead now consists of mobile phone shops and the frippery needed to ‘stay on line’!

Moreover, much of the traditional city architecture has been blasted away in favour of ‘reach for the sky’ office blocks and flats.

Indeed, what was once Bristol’s raison d’etre has given way to architecture designed to neuter the historic heart of Bristol. We have now reached the absurdity of electric scooters / fast food delivery riders buzzing our city, which exemplifies what Bristol has sadly lost!

R L Smith

Knowle