Nobody is celebrating the self-destruction of the Tithebarn dream, because it has damaged Preston so much.
We need to learn from the mistakes of the past, rather than continuing with them.
The sad reality is that we let developers run our city for the last 12 years, deliberately holding back other developments because of the prospect of a Tithebarn Shangri La. Our supine approach to the developers got us nothing, it has actually held back and damaged our city.
We need to start differently this time round, beginning by 'throwing open the doors' to Preston people, finding out what they think is important, where they want their city to go, and then building from there.
If we'd done this 12 years ago, the Tithebarn plans might have been more sympathetic, proportional and realisable. Democracy and involvement seems expensive and time consuming, but look at how much cost and time has been lost because we froze out the people.
But according to today's LEP, spearheading the search for 'plan B' will be a group of local businessmen, including those who were behind the now infamous Preston Vision Board.
It was Einstein who defined insanity as when you keep doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting different results. Here we see the council planning to do exactly the same thing, with the very same set of people as before.
The Vision Board revealed it's deep incompetence and lack of grasp of reality with their mad Ribble Barrage scheme, which failed. They compounded this and made themselves a laughing stock with their ludicrous Winckley square scheme, which failed. Now we've experienced the biggest failure of all, with their overblown Tithebarn scheme, yet we're still planning to use the same people and the same methods for 'Plan B'.
The people who live and work near Winckley Square rejected the council's plans, with it's hanging letters, totem poles and fibreoptic lighting displays, and are now meeting together to plan their own much more sympathetic plan for the Square. This is far less likely to fail, because it has buy-in and ownership from the people who care most about the fate of the square, rather than businessmen and consultants who only see the city through the windows of the Tickled Trout hotel.
Is it too much to suggest that this could be done on a far larger scale, involving the people who live and work in the city directly in it's planning journey?
At some point there has to be some leadership, leadership that says 'leaving it all to the men in suits (and particularly to these men in suits) has failed. Let's try something totally unprecedented, like involving the people of Preston themselves in the destiny of their own city.
47 minutes ago
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You're wrong to think that nobody is celebrating the demise of the Tithebarn scheme; I imagine there's quite a few raising a glass at the wake of a monster which has frozen the heart of Preston for more than a decade, induced fear in our neighbours, cost many millions of pounds of public money to achieve precisely nothing, and driven many small business people who found themselves in its shadow to despair and ruin.
Celebrate? You bet!
As you say, Tithebarn was wrong from day one. It was all about making money, nothing about making a community; all about brutal commerce, nothing about culture. Is the legacy we leave to future generations really to be yet another place to buy overpriced coffee while shopping for fashion and white goods? No thanks!
But you're quite right to say we Prestonians must learn the lessons. The world has changed since the ugly Tithebarn egg was laid in the money-men's offices, and now we can only thank Blackburn and Blackpool for throwing their outrageous spanner in the works and delaying it long enough for it to hatch, ill-formed and mutated as it would undoubtedly have been, and leaving the city centre in an even worse state than it is now.
Preston has been given a second chance, but no-one involved in promoting the Tithebarn debacle should be allowed anything at all to do with cooking up a Plan B.
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