Those Who Were Teenagers At The Time Blamed Their Indifference On Their Age,

Those who were teenagers at the time blamed their indifference on their age, as one person explained:
I don't think that when you're that young you read the papers as much as what you do when you're older, if you see what I mean. Me Mum and Dad used to discuss it I know. I don't think when you're that age you're that much interested, are you really?
In the immediate post-war years, however, this sort of excitement was the exception. Ambivalence about the redevelopment was much more widespread, with feelings of optimism and excitement tempered by feelings of loss or simply disinterest. As the redevelopment unfolded, punctuated by notable events such as the completion of Broadgate House (1953) and the opening of the Upper Precinct (1955), it became clear that the planner's vision was not shared by all residents of the city. Criticisms of an architecture of concrete and breeze blocks, with eye-like windows in iron, battleship doorways, and cocktail lighting began to be articulated in the local press, and the inclusion of public art in the redevelopment ridiculed: They kept putting little flower plots and raised beds but it was only to break up the concrete. It was a concrete city centre. Official responses to this included a council notice board in the precincts designed to explain what the art around the city centre symbolised, and articles in the local municipal newsletter Civic Affairs proclaiming the virtues of the new buildings.
What perhaps symbolised the dissonance between planners conceptions and residents lives most clearly was the way the new spaces of the city came to be used. For instance, the new Broadgate traffic island was intended to be consumed visually, although people recalled many examples of people sunbathing or picnicking on it before the council erected railings around it:
When that island was developed that was sacrosanct. You never walked across the grass. I think if anybody did they were likely to be arrested for the breach of the peace. I remember that at some point during either a carnival or something somebody got up on to the statue and put various things on it. Oh dear, outcry in the newspaper.
Reluctance to use the upper level of the new precinct, resulting in its virtual abandonment by retailers, was also reported by many of our respondents, who instead preferred to use the Old Barracks market to the chain stores in the newly-completed Precincts. The provision of the City Arcade in the 1960s was one response to this, an attempt to provide space for smaller and specialist retailers displaced by the redevelopment of the Precincts (and official recognition that retail provision in the city did not match demands). More widely, the tendency of children and teenagers to hang out and meet friends in the Precincts highlighted obvious limitations in Gibson's planned zoning of the city.