Town centres: Voids, antheaps, and covered markets

A week ago, a walk around central Birmingham could have confirmed my many metropolitan prejudices, especially as spent a long time not finding an open photocpying shop, but finding many many closed chinese resturants instead. A week later a triple night bus ride across central London showed that it seems to be changing into a 24 hr city as jolly revellers mingled with the morose and knackered leisure industry workers who had been servicing them.

But whilst London now has hosts of Rickshaws clogging its night arteries like pedalled cholestrol, Birmingham, which seemed to lack covered bicycles , does have several covered markets, which seemed to have the convenience of modern malls with none of their bland characterlessness.