Hollowed Out. Derelict and damaged heritage road

TWO BAD MICE: the food was made of plaster and was inedible

YORK The Shambles

Little Underbank is currently a functioning road that has more street furniture than 1966 but has not changed in its function as the lost route to Lancashire Hill and Manchester. It is the old A6. A failed road of the worst kind: uninhabited, unpredictable, unsafe and in the process of disintegrating because empty buildings are always at risk. Stockport is very deprived of public space and this road could be easily converted into safe, welcoming strip piazza with little investment.
Much credit to the surviving retail spaces that patiently await customers, like modernist "parades" of shops that flank the roads of Britain. Ironically the blame for this urban neglect is usually ascribed to the lack of transport access or "parking" (which nearby Merseyway does very well without). No cars pull up in front of Primark or M&S. It is the presence of private motor vehicles that continues to confuse the identity of this place as neither roadway, route nor pedestrianised heritage "Shambles" as might be visited in York. Recent commissioned reports have only replaced old buildings with new ones but have not been able to tackle the need for comprehensive place making, safe for children. All the recent reports accept the "need" for motor vehicle movement when it is clear that it would be easy to exclude them. This car free solution is considered far less desirable than sustained urban devastation. Like war is better than peace.

Little Underbank. Three empty retail units pretending to be flourishing urban economy. At least the real bollards prevent parking for customers who might want to purchase flowers, cheese or bicycles from fake stores. What sort of urban authority invests in fictions like this instead of comprehensive pedestrianisation? Maybe they think we are all Beatrix Potter's Bad Mice? Hungry for fake foodstuffs?