Reading is a seemingly ever-changing town. If you look around, you’d see plenty of evidence of this.
The Station Hill development is revitalising a run-down area. New leisure centres are springing up at Rivermead and Palmer Park. Preparatory works for a new Reading West Station are underway.
A landmark new Council housing development is being built on Wensley Road.
The former Arthur Hill site is being transformed into key worker housing.
A family activity centre is on its way in Prospect Park. Huge numbers of roads continue to be resurfaced across the town.
You can add to this a list of past successes and future plans.
We have bus services that are literally the envy of every provincial town and city.
The Dee Park regeneration has delivered so much already and is now moving forward again, with a new community centre open soon.
Green Park Station is almost complete, and I can now scarcely remember what the old Reading Station was like.
Families are fully settled in our Conwy Close Council homes. Playgrounds are to be revamped across Reading.
I can’t wait to get the Minster Quarter development properly moving along (where the old Civic Centre was).
I’m proud of the Council’s role in all these projects, but not because of the things you can reach out and touch. I like a nice built aesthetic, of course, but it’s what this all means for people that really matters to me.
Playgrounds are nothing without play, well-designed houses are only meaningful if they’re homes, and a flagship leisure centre needs to be a community facility.
My point is that, despite the prominence of the financial investment and development, what truly makes Reading more than just a town – what makes it our home – is something else entirely.
The real essence of Reading is that it has somehow maintained a small community feel while being a growing place. Despite all the people who move here, all the businesses, and all the construction, we’re still a ‘little big town’.
That sense of being a tight community that punches above its weight is an important one, and we need to hold on to it.
It’s what allows us, for example, to have an incredible voluntary sector and flourishing cultural institutions.
It makes us open to the world and establishes us a place of sanctuary for those seeking to build a new life – this will be a quality in great demand in the coming months.
If you’ve never lived anywhere else, you might not know how unique Reading’s civic pride and community spirit is.
I’ve had the displeasure of living elsewhere.
Take it from me that, in a part of the world characterised by dull commuter towns and neighbourhoods full of what are essentially dormitories, we’re very lucky indeed.
Cllr Jason Brock is the leader of Reading Borough Council and a councillor for Southcote ward
