I’ve always thought Bangor a rather unsatisfactory city. It’s got a fine university, which has traditionally dominated the city with the Edwardian gothic university buildings by H.T. Hare up on the hill and now with a new arts centre designed by Sir Nicholas Grimshaw PPRA and currently under construction (hence the crane in the photograph):
It’s got a decent cathedral, St. Deiniol, of very early (sixth century) foundation and containing the Mostyn Cross, a rare piece of late medieval wood carving:
But Bangor long ago allowed its town centre to be hollowed out with a high street of cheap shops and discount stores. No sense of civic presence, only a long line of discount warehouses out west beyond the railway station.
There are so many towns lacking said civic presence. This summer I did notice this in parts of the Nievre in France… a phenomenon, a virus, which, ebola-like, is killing the soul of too many urban places regardless of their size. One wonders at the laissez-faire attitude of city councilors and voters alike; at their lack of imagination, gullibility. Where does this passivity come from?