Sorry to ruin the thread by coming back to the original post but my memories of the Blue Orchid and, later, the Black Sheep (yes, I have a broad music taste) are probably not in keeping with the rest of the thread.

I left the UK pretty much for good in 2016. Didn't realise it at the time, thought I'd be back in two months, but the post-Brexit downturn killed some chunks of IT and a lot of IT companies prefer to hire somebody highly-qualified to come over from India and work for less, which pays for their visa. Not getting on a UKIP high-horse or something, just dealing with the reality of being on the career scrapheap at 40 and feeling like you have no options.

I grew up in Beckenham and lived in Croydon with my friend when I was older. I can see how people in the borough would be happy. The south of the borough is still very beautiful and if I ever went back, I would happily live in Purley or Coulsdon. The A23 is an issue but unless they can expand capacity somehow (putting the chunk between the end Purley Way to Smitham in a tunnel?), it will always be an issue.

However, much of the rest of the borough seems to have become markedly worse. Central Croydon always used to get a bad rap IMO but the town centre's footfall was in slow decline for years. I think that part of the issue is Croydon Council, their constant interference in the natural development of the town and their relationships with property developers.

Residents killed the Black Sheep because the office building above the bar had converted into flats. Realistically, flats should have been kept to the other side of the flyover, where places like the Litten Tree had already shut down.

And I think there has always been a problem with urban planning in central Croydon. I think my wife put it best when she said that Croydon feels like they tried every new scheme going and then never finished any of them. Godawful eras of architecture sit next to each other (50s/60s/70s/80s/90s) and completely obscure the actual architectural beauty that is in Croydon.

So there's a ring road that only has three sides and doesn't feel like a ring road. There's the "urban motorway" Wellesley Road that they've spent three decades trying to make pedestrian-friendly. Now they're stuck being nothing. One administration wanted it to become a city, they wanted to encourage centralisation and try to attract the sort of quirky businesses that Croydon was losing. However, the next plan was to make it a bedroom community for the West End. Meanwhile, West Croydon would become more dangerous and undesirable by the day but their thought process was to increase the council tax base to fix up other parts. At this point with the Care Act, something which desperately needs to be reversed, none of that even matters.

It was a bizarre place to live. I used to love the old-fashioned shops in Lower Addiscombe Road that I used to visit when my nan lived in Shirley when I was a boy. Those things are still there but I'm not sure if I want to live in Addiscombe because it can be vastly different from road-to-road. Live on the right road, you're living in a lovely little place. Live on the wrong road and it's a living hell.

I'm not one for "let the markets do what they do" but the council has made things generally worse by trying to fix things that have "unforeseen circumstances". Posh Croydon is gone, Quirky Croydon is gone, Party Croydon is gone. The borough still has excellent bits but I've no idea where to go with the town centre. It needs to hit rock bottom and there is still some way to go.

Edited by mjfarrow (03 Mar 2021 2.50pm)

Wow. That name brings back memories that I'd long forgotten. I worked in an office block in Wellesley Road from 1966 to 1970 which was opposite the Alhambra pub.

I changed job in 1970 and worked in Rothschild House in the Whitgift Centre for the next eight years before moving to a new company in Haywards Heath never to return to Croydon apart from passing through on my way to Selhurst Park

We all know Croydon is in decline .But what do we think the end result will be ? Regarding shops housing, and affordability ?

end result ? Croydon will be like Baltimore in the US