Places features

Martin Wainwright was born and raised in the northern suburbs of Leeds. Growing up in Cookridge and Adel gave him a suburban perspective on Leeds that is sometimes at odds with the cliché of the hard, northern industrial city. His Leeds is a city of contrasts.

He went to college in Oxford, and after his graduation became a journalist in Bath (two of Southern England's architectural jewels!). He returned to the North of England to work on Bradford's Telegraph & Argus newspaper before becoming the Northern Editor for The Guardian.

Martin Wainwright

He's been back in the North for more than twenty years, and feels that his experiences elsewhere in the country have given him a unique view of his home city and now he's joined forces with the publishing arm of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) to write "Leeds: Shaping The City", about how Leeds has embraced change and become a very modern city.

"I suppose my early memories of Leeds can be divided into three areas. I remember the city centre mainly for its arcades -  as a lad you could cross the city through its arcades and often through offices that had back doors, and not get a single drop of rain on you! Also, my family had connections to Gipton Methodist Church, so we would go there quite often and my third memory of my early years in Leeds was as a Meals On Wheels volunteer which gave me a very good grasp of the geography of the whole city."

"Back then, the city rivalry was between Leeds and Sheffield. Manchester seemed so far away in the days before the M62. Leeds always seemed to be exemplified by a postive can-do spirit, whereas Sheffield was more self-deprecating and even downbeat."

"I think that Leeds' positivity is what has helped the city regenerate itself over the past two decades. But that regeneration takes us back to the Leeds of the Victorian era -  a playground full of pubs, theatres, music halls and arts clubs. The modern renaissance has embraced music and the performing arts as a crucial part of rebuilding the city."

"It's great that so many of Leeds' fine old buildings have been revamped to sit proudly amongst the new developments - mixing the old and the new. Memories of Leeds' architectural past glories are still there if you raise your head when you wander around. There are curious sculptural details on many buildings, including owls (the symbol of the city) which pop up all over the place."

"Leeds has been quick to trumpet its successes and the possibilities, and the outside perception has changed immeasurably with a plethora of new shops, bars, restaurants, pavement cafés as well as the return of a living population to the city centre in dozens of new apartment blocks. Add to this, the expansion of the two universities and other colleges and you have a vibrant student population who had no preconceptions about the city."

"John Thorp is one of the last civic architects in the country and I think his policy of "urban dentistry" (filling in the gaps by developing brownfield sites while maintaining an impressive amount of green space) has been a sensible approach, balancing the major projects with lots of smaller ones to improve the city as a whole and now the development is spreading to the inner suburbs like Armley and Chapeltown."

"The river and canal have been cleaned up no end and the development means that areas like The Calls (a bit of a no-go area in my youth) have become very desirable places to live, as the previous reputation for vice has disappeared. Overall, I think there are so many great projects that have helped transform Leeds but the law of averages means there are one or two dodgy ill-thought-out developments but you can't get it right every time, can you?"

 'Leeds: Shaping The City' written by Martin Wainwright is published by RIBA Publishing.