commonsbuilder

Campaign Story

In the 1960’s and early 1970’s the ‘city in the sky’ vision was to separate out traffic from pedestrians. With increasing car ownership, towns and cities were becoming dominated by traffic and there was growing awareness of the associated pollution. The idea was that people would be able move around the city on an ‘upper deck’ level, with traffic moving below on a ‘lower deck’. Examples of this implementation are the walkways above John Dobson Street, Princess Square and Bewick Court. Some of the developments were done as part of T Dan Smith‘s vision for modernising Newcastle, when he was leader of Newcastle City Council. Many of the developments weren’t realised – sparing many of the 19th century buildings in Newcastle city centre from potential demolition.