Without in anway diminishing any part or sentiment of the above post.
The cities in England that faced the biggest wartime losses still have the highest levels of poverty.
www.bbc.co.uk
This needs to change.
I agree but it'll be due to a number of factors.
Firstly, large urban areas are far more likely to be deprived anyway and as they were the targets of blitz the connection is easy to see. Also they have the biggest disparity of wealth. London was easily the most blitzed city and has areas of extreme poverty, but it's also got the wealthiest areas in the country as well.
Secondly, Coventry became a boom town later on seeing large population growth, high employment and good wages. So it's not like "they were blitzed and have been run down ever since". Those industries have fallen away and the same can be said of many others. it's part of the economic cycle and the UK as a whole has lost some of its economic power to emerging economies which will be seen in its towns and cities.
Thirdly, the rebuild of many of these cities were done along design philosophies and principles like modernism and the layout/structures are no longer fit for purposes and/or are in need of replacing due to age (as well as being built 'on the cheap' with few resources or funds). But we are in an age where someone somewhere will want something saved for posterity, preventing redevelopment on top of the already onerous costs of doing so.
This is also at a time when public funding is being cut to enable such work to happen and it doesn't look like that is changing any time soon. Any development that happens tends to be privately led and therefore profit driven, resulting in cost-engineered buildings built to meet a demand that already exists rather than speculative builds that might improve the situation. Look at how quickly we've had large student blocks go up yet over a decade we've seen a single office block built on the train station development site (and that was only cos the council agreed to move into it). So you end up with a vicious circle or "there's no demand so we won't build it" and "there's no demand because it hasn't been built".
