LEAFY suburbia is still proving popular with Bolton's residents when it comes to choosing where to live.

And this is despite efforts to encourage town centre -- or urban -- living.

However, we can't say we blame folk.

While we agree there are enormous benefits to reap from urban living -- you only need to look at the thriving and prosperous cities of Edinburgh, Vancouver and Rome to see it can and does work -- we also believe that building a trendy apartment block in a city or town centre is not enough to bring people flocking there.

It's much more than that. Town centre living must encapsulate a whole spectrum of a lifestyle -- that means better round-the-clock policing and cleaner streets. The latter is something many a Boltonian will be familiar with. Who hasn't gingerly side-stepped a stomach-churning array of half-eaten kebabs, chips and curry sauce strewn across Bank Street on a Saturday morning?

And who would want to wake up on a Sunday morning with a windowsill full of empty lager bottles, pizza cartons and half-eaten kebabs? This alone would be enough to send urban dwellers scuttling back to leafy suburbia.

If town planners want more people to live in Bolton town centre then they must plan accordingly. Encourage more shops, restaurants and leisure centres to open up here. What about town centre cinemas -- are they now a thing of the past? People still enjoy a film then a meal, we know this because the retail parks are full of folk doing just that.

Perhaps people don't feel they could leave an unattended car in Bolton town centre -- which, of course, brings us back to policing.

To promote town centre living you need to promote a town centre lifestyle everyone will want. Until then, the leafy lanes of suburbia will always win hands down.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.