IT’S Saturday, August 15, 10pm in the middle of Newcastle following a week of rioting in cities throughout England.

Thousands have gathered on the Quayside, many drinking. There is the smell of burning, loud noises and a car alarm going off. Had this been the 1981 recession or even the 1992 recession the assumption would be that Newcastle had joined the masses in rioting and looting.

However, as it is 2011 it was actually the Bridges Festival, a celebration of the bridges of the Tyne organised by NGI. The people drinking were at a VIP reception. The burning was the small of cordite from the fantastic firework display and the car alarm had be inadvertently triggered by the noise of the fireworks.

While the Bridges Festival had been organised and planned, it became an excellent tonic to the shocking scenes elsewhere in the country.

Back in 1981, the Newcastle side of the Quayside ended at Flynn’s Bar. There were no Law Courts, there were no offices or developments stretching to the Ouseburn and it would have been highly unlikely to find a dozen people on the street, never mind thousands.

On the Gateshead Quayside there was the promise of the cosmopolitan Tuxedo Princess – the first floating nightclub in Europe, but not a lot else.

In 1992 the Law Courts were fully operational, plans had been laid for the Newcastle Quayside development and the Baltic, but the Gateshead Millennium Bridge, The Sage Gateshead and the Hilton were still dreams. There were brief flare-ups of violence and while Newcastle and Gateshead were improving, it was still a work in progress.

Now, with the help of many Government funded agencies (such as NGI) Newcastle/Gateshead is viewed as the eighth best party city in the world.

TV coverage has played a huge part in bringing the horrors of the riots to people’ homes and yet there was no TV coverage of the Bridges Festival. Deprivation due to lack of public sector investment has played its part in the recent riots and yet the Quayside is demonstrable proof that responsible public sector spending can completely transform the physical look of an area and the expectations of the people who live and work there.

:: Neil Warwick of the Kudos department at Dickinson Dees