Geograph - photograph every grid square

A 1960s vision for Newcastle City Centre to separate traffic from pedestrians by creating a network of concrete walkways above access roads and traffic routes of the existing streets.
Geography reverses the situation somewhat at the Swan House roundabout which merges traffic coming off the Tyne Bridge with that from the Central Motorway and the City Centre. Here pedestrians are moved below the roads in subways but emerge again above the deep valley of Side under the Tyne Bridge.
The vision would have included Northumberland Street (where some new stores were built with shop windows at what is now first floor level), and further, but eventually money ran out and it was realised that too much of architectural merit would have to be sacrificed.
The development of the city in the 1960s and 1970s was marred by a corruption scandal involving a local politician, T. Dan Smith (aka 'The Mouth of the Tyne), and John Poulson, a property developer. Echoes of the scandal were revisited in the late 1990s in the BBC TV mini-series, 'Our Friends in the North' Link
The 'streets in the sky' concept is explained in the Urban Translation Tour Link
Plans of this and other Newcastle developments are discussed here Link

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