Pang Designs: Week 1 review

The first week of has been very interesting. Meeting the traders and citizens of York has been very fun and raised some interesting points. On the whole, York is a very well established tourist city and a large part of the city centre and the vibrancy around parliament street. It is quite clear there are two parts of the centre; There is the highstreet stores down Coney street and Parliament street. Then there are the small local businesses radiating around.

From scouting the area and also past experiences, there is clearly a large number of tourists travelling to and from the train station via Lendal bridge towards the York Minster. Then I notice that they reach the minster, then turn into Stonegate or Low Petergate, and then finally spreading and filtering towards Parliament street and Spurriergate. Across the street from York St. John, there is a coach parking from travel agents such as Megabus that frequently bring visitors. These visitors tend to mostly go down Gillygate to get to the Minster.

From feedback I got from a few hours of talking to people about York, I have discovered a few issues:

Streets are not clean and tidy
Central fountain is unappealing
Newgate market is not attractive
Signs are confusing
Residents feel neglected by council
Poor communication of city changes
Overpriced parking charges

Evenso, there were plenty of compliments given to York as a city and that York really isn't swamped with issues. Many people I talked to loved the city, its friendliness and character. Residents take pride in their historic city and talk enthusiastically about it. Everytime, I walk into York I see something different or interesting. For example, there are very unique buskers in York that make this place special. There used to be a purple statue man, a one man band and his dog, electric violinist and an entertaining ventriloquist to name a few. This is the same for the street traders in York. There are street traders that I see every year, such as the roasted chestnut trolley, the lemonade wagon and the turkish wraps man. It all give York a very homely feel seeing them there as a resident. Eventho, I do not visit them all, I do enjoy the Turkish wraps every now and then.

Overall, York is a very welcoming city for tourists, and for the residents, there is still a lot to offer. You are able to visit the high street shops as well as the small local business in the more historic sectors of the city. The best part is that they are not more than 10 minutes walk away. Being able to see the diversity is interesting and I think helps to brings visitors and residents together.

Please help contribute to my Uni project by completing some questions:

Here's my survey for anyone who has visited York :)
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/9CJ96WK

if you are a resident. please help me by doing this survey:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/6ZSXDR7