weekFAN39_2007-09-29

a very short history of plymouth
I do not know too much about the history do far. all I know at the moment is what I picked up wile talking to people here.
as the image shows there has been three towns in this area. STOKE, STONEHOUSE and PLYMOUTH. over the years they grew together and only the name plymouth remained. the others are still in use as area names an boroughs?
in the 20s it was quite a known place for leisure activities. it had a big pier and a lot of intercontinental cruise ships from overseas coming in (people traveling between e.g. new york and london - before the air-connection was competitive with prices - from here they changed to a rail service to london.)
it was badly hit in the second WW mainly because of the royal marine base here. almost completely destroyed.
rebuilt with a "fancy" (sorry but there will be a lot to write about this plan. this design influences still mainly every day activities...) plan.
the army base was in the last century the main employer for the whole plymouth region. the number of work places have been dramatically reduce in the last ten or so years. this is obviously a major loss for the region and they're struggling economically ever since.
the university is a really big thing for the city beside the army. almost 30'000 students and 3000 staff (not sure about the staff figure, because UCL has 1:6 staff:student). at this time the campus is growing substantially because of the move of the exeter campus (was located in an other town) to the main campus here in plymouth. so a lot of construction work is going on here.
the council has set up a strategy for the future. there is a plymouth development plan for 2020. this contains an urban regeneration and activation plan by david mackay another "fancy" plan called "a vision for plymouth". nice