The Real Big Picture
 Leicester City Council has their "Big Picture" campaign.
The real big picture however for development and regeneration in Leicester has to extend beyond the city centre ring road to the areas where people actually live.
Even though it is the likes of John Lewis's and Hammerson Plc who are driving that regeneration it is the tax payer who is funding much of the peripheral work that is paid for by Leicester City Council. The tab for this peripheral work amounts to millions upon millions of pounds.
St Peters needs the same level of effort, imagination and vision applied to resolving the issues in St Peters as have been applied to regenerate the city centre. 
Otherwise the whole thing is a sham and the visitors to Leicester's Highcross Quarter or highcross Leicester and Cultural Quarter are seeing no more than what amounts to a hollywood film set... all false facade underpinned by spun spin and imaginative rhetoric.
The Real Big Picture.
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Leicester - St Peters
Neighbourhood Monitoring
Public Spaces of Private Multi Occupancy Buildings - The standard by which we must judge.
The fact that the multi occupancy buildings in which many of us in St Peters reside are council managed should not mean the standards of upkeep are lower then if they were privately owned like the buildings shown here on this page.
Yet the reality is that there is enormous disparity between the prevailing standards in each.
If we can agree that the prevailing standards we have delivered day in day out here in St Peters in Leicester are not acceptable standards it does then beg the question as to what standards we would find acceptable.
What is good for the goose... 
Leicester city council are currently spending millions of pounds (19 of them in fact) of tax payers money on very high profile city centre regeneration projects. This is just part of the 5 billion pound (and no the B on the billion is not meant to be an M) total spend on redevelopment in the city centre. Most of this 5 billion is private funding.
- Highcross
Quarter Leicester - Mixed Use - Hammerson PLC - £354 Million
- St Georges Tower - Mixed Use - Hammerson PLC - ?
- Westbridge Hotel Tower - Mixed Use - ?
LCC are spending a further 0.5 Million pounds telling us about Leicester City's Council's role in this city centre regeneration. This campaign they have labeled "The Big Picture".
The standards they are working to on these projects like the Streets & Spaces project are almost unprecedented in civil engineering in this country. So much so in fact that granite has been rejected and sent back to china and the tolerances and degree of accuracy in the construction of the paved walkways lead to time overruns.
 These are the very same standards that we expect here in the streets and spaces of St Peters just on the other side of the ring road from where all that construction is taking place. If that sort of quality is good for the goose then it is good for the gander. Especially as it is the gander who is paying for a big chunk of it.
The Real Big Picture
Article Written by Mel
Photography by Mel
Date Written Feb 29th 2007
Date last Modified March 3rd 2007
Status: Article In Progress
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