Promenades and Ringroads - Konrad Smigielski and 1960s Leicester

In 1962 Leicester became only the second city in England to appoint a full time city planning officer. His name was Konrad Smigielski and his period in office, from 1962 to 1972, saw some of the most radical changes to the built environment in Leicester's history.

To this day many people in Leicester recall Smigielski as the man who destroyed old Leicester. This short film explores whether this assessment is fair and asks how the planning decisions made in the 1960s impact on the city of today.

For further information about Konrad Smigielski and his time in Leicester you can listen to radio programmes online at 'My Leicestershire History' in the BBC Radio Leicester section - http://www.myleicestershire.org.uk/ .

Professor Simon Gunn of the Centre for Urban History has written about Smigielski in 'Between modernism and conservation: Konrad Smigielski and the planning of postwar Leicester' in Rodger, R. ed., A History of Modern Leicester Lancaster: Carnegie Press (forthcoming 2012), as has Ben Beazley in 'Postwar Leicester', Sutton Publishing Ltd, 2006.

The Centre for Urban History - http://www2.le.ac.uk/departments/urbanhistory

East Midlands Oral History Archive - http://www.le.ac.uk/emoha/

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Leicester
• Leicestershire
• City Planning Officer
• Konrad Smigielski
• Town Planning
• Built Environment
• Leicester City
• Town Hall Square
• New Walk
• Modernist
• Conservationist
• Colin Hyde
• University of Leicester
• Centre for Urban History
• Guildhall
• Leicester Market
• Clarendon Park Road
• Housing Action Scheme
• Public Consultation
• St Nicholas Circle
• King Street
• Clocktower
• Haymarket Shopping Centre
• Highcross

[chap666ish]

@ntrifle I think I was the the second person (after a school friend of mine) to swim in the pool at that Holiday Inn. It was the summer school holiday and the hotel was almost finished.

[chap666ish]

I remember seeing the proposals for the Haymarket Shopping Centre and I remember the underpass being built. The destruction of the shops, school and houses on one half of King Richards road and the demolition of the grand houses in the Dane Hills area robbed the residents of their inheritence.

[ntrifle]

This is a good start for a serious re-evaluation of Smigielski but the oft-repeated claim that a "large part of Medieval Leicester...was buried" under the Holiday Inn needs further examination as it the crux of most people's criticism. All the pictures I've seen of the area show Georgian and early-Victorian buildings. Most of medieval Leicester had already gone by the turn of the nineteenth century rather than the 1960s. Its possible medieval buildings were lost I just haven't seen the evidence.

[michalo2able]

To little information , no opinion about his job , no actual list what hi has been done