In the Archives: Alternative Livingston Town Centres



Livingston was, largely, a town planned from scratch. There were a few villages, but there was nothing that you might call a town centre with shops, services, leisure facilities and the rest.  Clearly, quite a lot of what defines a town is this centre.  One of the more interesting challenges for those first town planners, who decided what Livingston was going to be like, was how to design a town centre that meant had character. It must have been quite an exciting challenge to design something so monumental from nothing. However, it was a challenge that soon ground on beyond endurance for most, the planning stages lasting over six years, and the shopping centre at the heart of the town centre not opening until 1977 – some 15 years after ideas were first put forward.

Early design concepts for Livingston town centre. c.1965.

 It was a task complicated by the designation of Livingston town centre as a regional centre – there had to be a massive shopping centre incorporated into any plans for the new town. Unsurprisingly this shopping centre, known today simply as The Centre, has come to dominate the town.

The evolution of plans for Livingston’s town centre can be traced in the archive. There are some quite interesting alternatives to the final scheme which I want to look at here. Today, Livingston’s town centre is found south of the River Almond in on a site that is contained in a rectangular grid of roads, just off the A889. It is quite a simple, utilitarian design that gets the job done.





Initial plans for the town centre were more ambitious. Plans to build the town centre on both sides of the River Almond were quite far advanced. The town centre was to be linked across the river by a series of bridges and was to include a number of river side squares and shops – there was also to be completely segregated pedestrian zones. This scheme was thwarted by the extra deep glacial silts surrounding the River Almond – these silts required deeper than average foundations, which made what was quite a nice sounding idea too expensive.  On a more fortunate note, the town centre was originally planned to incorporate high rise residential flats, these were dropped at a late date and there are no high rise dwellings at all in Livingston, having been developed a little after these fell out of architectural favour.

A second idea was to damn the River Almond to create two artificial lochs, which could be used at the heart of a park and to create space for boating and fishing etc. This was too expensive as well.



A plan from when artificial lochs were still envisaged (c.1966)



A final nail in the lid of any kind of imaginative town centre design came in 1971. The Livingston Development Corporation had wanted to fund the building of the town centre itself. This would have allowed the town to be built in phases across a number of sites over a number of years.  In 1971 the Scottish Development Department decided that the shopping mall had to be funded by a private company. This meant that the plans for various phases and sites had to be altered, to allow the private developer a single site for the new shopping mall. In the end, despite 6 years of planning,  the shopping centre project was sent out to tender in 1972. Ravenseft Properties won the bid with a plan that would create one of the largest indoor centres in the UK. The shopping centre was also to include Scotland's largest superstore. Almondvale Shopping Centre was opened in the autumn of 1977, with 320,000 sq ft of retail space available. This was subsequently known as Phase I.



 As early as 1979 plans were explored to expand the shop

A model of the 'regional centre' when its planning had become more concrete



ping centre in Almondvale Phase II, but difficulties in funding, and proposed rival 'mega' shopping centres in Bathgate and at Gyle in the suburbs of Edinburgh, delayed the expansion of the shopping centre until the 1990s. Ravenseft, renamed Land Securities, and owners of Phase I, agreed to fund Phase II developments by Amec and the Safeway group. Phase II was opened on the 17th August 1996 and contained three department stores and an additional 41 shop units. The Centre continued to develop after the dissolution of the Corporation. Phase III was completed in 2008. As of 2012 retail space at The Centre is now over 1 million sq ft and dominates Livingston's town centre.



Livingston town centre under construction, 1970s







Phase 1 of Livingston Regional Centre complete, c.1977







August – general comments – housing visitor Ladywell & Howden

Complaints again centred on shops and buses. Commercial entertainment has been mentioned by most of the new tenants (they are nearly all employed people and have a bit more money than the last influx) and I wondered if the possibility of a Chinese restaurant for the town had been considered. I have mentioned this to tenants and they seem to think it would be popular. In particular it might help with the problem of entertainment for young people since this would be a night out which they could afford. I have mentioned these findings to Mr Pollock in Estates, and it seems possible we may have such a facility in Knightsridge.

People are content with waiting for the major shopping development and the prospect of Knightsridge shops helps here – if possible, more information on plans, timing etc. – especially about the Regional Shopping Centre, would be appreciated by the tenants. Most people in the town go to Bathgate, Broxburn, Pumpherston or the major cities once a week at least to shop at present and this is not so much a reflection on the number and range of shops but on their poor quality and high prices.

Litter has been mentioned to me and on going around I notice that it mainly consists of sweet papers round about bins outside shops and along the main footpaths from shops. Maybe a schools’ campaign might help. One tenant (who is probably going to buy in Bathgate) told me that her main reason for leaving the town is that the children all ‘run wild’ about the streets. I am afraid it seems to be a side-effect of segregated pedestrian areas that mothers can send even the very youngest children out for a whole day without worrying about them, whereas back in Glasgow they would have to watch the children carefully. As a result there are groups of children roaming about quite unsupervised. When we do get the play areas in Ladywell, might the possibility of a warden or two be considered? I noted that many children are writing a short piece on adventure playgrounds for the exhibition said that they would like ‘someone to look after us’ ‘someone to stop the bullying’ etc. Since the focal point for all these children during the day is not mother and her watchful eye, we might find another in order to prevent vandalism long-term.

It is reported that the ‘workers’ bus’ to Glasgow is very well used and numbers continued to grow. The passengers are counted on every journey and I hope the bus company will be so convinced of demand that it may run more buses.

It is notable that I spent time with 12 families last month whose problems resulted from broken marriages. Usually the main difficulty was housing a wife and children who had no household goods and communicating with D.H.S.S. on their behalf. I can see this problem continuing as do the S.W.D. and we do not see it as satisfactory that these people are being dealt with by all agencies rather haphazardly where a great deal of suffering  is involved. For instance, we have several times given a house to woman and children, leaving the husband living alone in a 4 apt house (or larger) with all the furniture. This is legally correct, but hardly a suitable solution, regardless of which partner is in the right ‘1/2 I feel it might be useful to meet with SWD on this perhaps bring up a few cases to consider responsibility for welfare. If DHSS could also be involved we might further clarification.   

ALmondvale Shopping Centre was opened in 1978. Before this date shoppers in Livingston had limited options as to where to go - 'The Mall in Craigshill was a popular choice. Now known simply as  "The Centre" - Almondvale Shopping Centre was expanded during the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s. The Centre now has over one million square feet of retail space.

In the archives: Livingston Skate Park

One of the few world class facilities that we have in Livingston is the Livingston “Livi” skate park, which in 2010 was ranked in the top 25 skate parks in the world (outside of the US) according to one Complex Magazine (see the web article here).

Given that Livingston has such a facility, and that is was built at the end of the 1970s, which fits in with the picture of Livingston we are trying to build up, I thought I would look at the history of the skate park in this post.



This letter from 1977 shows the Livingston Skate
Kats lobbying for a skate park in Livingston



Having grown up friends who were skateboarders, it feels like the sport has been around forever, but really skateboarding only reached the UK towards the middle of the 1970s. Following this rocketing in popularity, and the fact it outlived being just a craze - the Livingston Development Corporation began to look at building a skate park in Livingston – they were especially interested as the new town had few facilities for young people. In 1977 the Livingston skate club formed – The Livingston Skate Kats (who later changed the name to, more simply, “Livingston Skates”. The Kats, and especially founding member Kenneth Omond (who now sits on the board of Skateboard Scotland) were very good at communication and lobbying the Corporation about building a skate park. Considerations about pedestrian safety and road accidents  persuaded the Corporation that providing a skate park would be a good idea.

After several false starts the Corporation finally settled on a site near the newly developed Almondale Shopping Centre, near the River Almond in the centre of Livingston. The initial park consisted of an “outside rink of convoluted shape used for skating and skateboarding” with the layout being one bowl and one half-pipe run-off.  The half pipe was constructed with “100mm thick concrete skin sprayed on using Shortcrete System.”

The Skatepark proved a runaway success.  In September 1991 the Board of the Corporation heard that “the provision of skatebowl has proved to be a tremendous success, encouraging young people interested in the sport to develop their skills and enjoyment.” The site was repaired and upgraded in the late 1980s, and expanded in 1992 to ease congestion of spectators, improve water drainage and the adding of another bowl. The improvements were designed to give Livingston “the premier European Skate Park.” The Development Corporation put the costs of the original site in 1980 at £65,000 whilst the extension in 1992 cost £75,000. The skate park continues to this day as a world class venue and plans were announced by West Lothian council to spend £250,000 on upgrading it once again in 2012.  

Because the skate park was initally designed by the Corporation, we hold all kinds of maps, plans and technical data relating to the construction of the park. Even until the early 2000s we would get all kinds of enquiries asking about how it was built and for technical specifications from other areas keen to emulate one of the great successes of Livingston, something that was not even considered when construction began on the town in the 1960s - its skate park.