England
Sunderland high street after the empty units
The Wearside town that still has to invent a Saturday when the chain stores have already left.
A Saturday in Sunderland is no longer a guarantee. The streets that used to take a whole county on payday now take whoever still has a reason to come in. Some of the reasons are good. The rest are habit.
The argument on Fawcett Street is not whether the city should have a centre. It does. The argument is what a centre is for once the department stores have gone and the bus still dumps people at the same stop.
Wearside has been written off before. It has a habit of remaining. That is not a slogan. It is a planning problem, a wages problem and a winter-evening problem, and they do not get solved by a mural.