Welcome to the Worlds Worst Urban Places and Spaces - a sister site to digitial urban.blogspot.com this site is dedicated to exploring the worst examples of urban planning and architecture in the world.
As such its content is down to you and it is easy to submit via our own Flikr Group. Simply add your photograph along with a short description between 100 and 250 words to the Worlds Worst Urban Spaces and Places Flickr Group.
As a kick off the prize of first post in Worst Urban Place and Space goes to the Millennium Dome in London. Designed by Richard Rogers the Dome has come in for a considerable amount of criticism. It should however be noted that it has contributed to the regeneration of the local area - but considering it cost 50 Million (UK) to build that should go without saying.
The dome was sold to US Anschutz Entertainment Group (AEG) and reopened in July 2007 as the O2, an entertainment complex including a 22,000 seat concert and sports venue, cinema, music club and exhibition spaces.
The fact that London won the Olympic bid for 2012 has given the Dome a new lease of life but the fact remains it stands out on the London landscape as an embarrassing example of both architecture and urban planning.
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6 Responses to Welcome to the Worlds Worst Urbans Places and Spaces
Gasp! No! I love the dome. Sure it's an oddly empty building far from anything, but that's its charm. And it's great for photos.
I love the Dome too. It's an utterly magic and fantastical building - when you see it as you emerge from the Blackwall Tunnel, it's huge, like the mothership - a big, scary invader. But as you approach it, it seems to shrink and become friendly and welcoming. It changes in all weathers - in the rain, it's a big wobbly jellyfish, reflecting the twelve yellow towers that support it a bit like the candles on a birthday cake. And bearing in mind how cold and windswept the peninsular where it's located is, what a good idea to put a huge canopy over such an enormous space - when it does reopen as a concert venue, I'm sure it will have all sorts of interesting shops and exhibitions and eating places - there's so much space inside it that you can wander from place to place without getting wet, and yet when you're inside the Dome, you feel as if you're outdoors rather than in a mall, because the roof is so far away. I tend to think people will grow to love the Dome in time, but I think people are scared of anything that's a bit different, and the Dome was different, and ambitious, but I love it very much.
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worse than the dome must be the white elephant that is the nearby Stratford International
I can do no better than refer you to the diamond geezer...
http://diamondgeezer.blogspot.com/2007_09_01_archive.html#3698622162325982483
A Link
Erm, I'm sorry to have to tell you this, but it cost £850 million. In 1999. If you'd put that in the bank for the last 8 years and converted it to US dollars today, you'd have 2.2 billion of them. The trickle down to the local area is very trickly.
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