Tale of two cities

What's it all about then?
Two SSF geezas biked from one side of Sheffield to the other last week, snapping away with a digital camera en-route.

We took photos that had views across the city: eventually, these views will go into a website where you'll be able to click within the picture, and travel from one side to the other in an instant.

Sheffield's hilly views offers a fantastic chance to visually get a handle on how separate different parts of the city are.

The ultimate aim is to (somehow) have a website where people can:


 * upload their own photos
 * write something about their area
 * compare stats across the city

For now, we'll carry on doing photo trips across Sheffield. The journeying connects the real and the virtual in a really, sort of, y'know - cool way.

For anyone that wants to join in - beg, steal or borrow a bike. It's the only way to do it, man.

The writing could be done in conjunction with the indymedia writing workshop - if that ever gets going properly.

For now - here's some connected bits of writing:

-

'Rich Kids' propelling Hallam up ranks
(from this Star article)

The best thing about this article is Richard Allan' and Anne Smith's views -

RICH kids earning megabucks have propelled Sheffield's Hallam constituency up the list of the wealthiest parts of Britain.

The area is already the most affluent outside London and the South East - but figures released today show that it's catching the nation's richest thanks to the boom in the number of under 30s coining in more than £60,000 a year.

Those in their teens and 20s earning salaries the rest of Sheffielders can only dream of DOUBLED in the last 12 months, according to a survey by Barclay's Bank.

The bank discovered that 3.6 per cent of its current account holders aged under 30 in Hallam are earning more than £60,000 – up from 1.3 per cent last year.

Hallam MP Richard Allan welcomed the figures and said the constituency's wealth was for the good of Sheffield as a whole.

He said: "The South West of Sheffield continues to be one of the most attractive places in Britain to live. We should be proud that it attracts people at senior level many of whom are in public service, in the council, universities and hospitals.

"The challenge is to make sure all Sheffield works together to achieve the same sort of success in other parts of the city."

Conservative councillor Anne Smith, who represents the Dore area, added: "It shows that Sheffield's regeneration is working and that Hallam is attracting high earners. I hope that all this wealth does not remain in Hallam but is spent across the city so that everybody can gain.

"However, we must protect Hallam from overdevelopment or we will kill the goose that attracts people to the area."

-

Statistics show that health differences correlate to the differences in wealth with the average burngreave resident living seven years less than the average hallam resident.

Shows that Sheffield's regeneration is working for hallam(!) but is that it's purpose? Is this good for Sheffield as a whole?

Interesting: I went to parts of Burngreave I'd never seen before. The same as for most ex-students, and for - I imagine - the vast majority of residents in Hallam, I've been more familiar with the rich parts of other cities than I have with places not five or ten miles away within my own.

The aim of the 'two cities' project is to shine a light on the differences: how can anyone claim that a sudden growth in rich kids has anything to do with regeneration?

It seems that in sheffield most of the new developments (or "regerneration") is about attracting the 'rich kids'. A key example is the new developments around devonshire green, they are in the main self contained appartment blocks that contribute nothing to the local community but profit from the high paid "proffessional" jobs that development agencies hand out.

One other example is that new deal tends to give a large proportion of its jobs to the "experts" who live outside the area, this leads to the money not going into the local economy. This is especially prevelent among the higher paid jobs or so I've been told.

Perhaps those in the poorer parts of Sheffield should wait for the trickle-down...

"Just to add this link: http://pretentiousartist.com/ this is where not just myself (mozaz) but others such as 0742 have created a place for our moveing images. Follow the pointers to each image, here is one we creted useing images from the now demolished woodside: http://pretentiousartist.com/16/index.html.. they are all done by hand i.e. copy and pasteing each image onto each other in gimp then saved as gif, which in turn makes them move.  Some like our new one: http://image.lowtech.org//0742/ just took a few hours others like this took days http://pretentiousartist.com/39/index.html a total of 14 in fact.  We would be well up for helping out useing this talent?"

mozaz


 * Tale of two cities - pictures :