South Ayrshire Passes Pointless £16 Million "Redevelopment" Project

 

The sun always shines in South Ayrshire Council meetings...

This is what South Ayrshire taxpayers are going to get for £16 million (assuming it stays within budget). Yes, the "new look" of Burns Square will involve less roads and more trees. Are you excited? I'm not.

On paper (or computer simulation) it looks OK, I guess. In fact, if this was sunny California or the South of France, a pedestrianised "plaza" with a few trees for shade would look quite nice.

By the way, I count eleven trees, which puts each tree at over a million pounds (optimistically assuming the whole thing stays within budget)!!!

But this is not Southern California (average annual temperature 18–19°C) or the South of France (15–16.5°C), this is the South of Ayrshire (9.5–10°C). 

Remember we are not talking about a particularly sunny or salubrious part of the world here, or you wouldn't be jumping on an EasyJet flight every chance you get. While Southern California gets 3,050–3,250 hours of sunshine per year, South Ayrshire gets just 1,350–1,440 hours per year — and the sunshine is a hell of lot colder and lower angled, which means the even low buildings can block it out.

Yes, we are a drab, rainy, dreich country. Let's just admit it!

So this overpriced tinkering with the square would maybe work in California but it is ridiculously "optimistic" for the West of Scotland. The trees won't stop the rain (especially in winter when the leaves will drop off and turn to uncollected gunge). They will however "take out" some of that occasional sunshine we get in the summer.

Better to spend that money on fixing what we already have — cleaning up litter, fixing potholes, maintaining paths, etc —  or paying off debts so that we are not wasting tax money on interest payments.

Also, if the Council suddenly is debt-free and has shit-tons of money spend it on, then I would suggest something that is weatherproof, like a Winter Gardens. Something like this:
 

Blackpool

Or this: 

Glasgow