I was born in Manchester in 1962 but moved to Moortown in Leeds with my family three years later. In 1967 I started school at the tiny Moortown Primary built in 1883, where half the children were Jewish. Every morning the Jewish children went next door to their own assembly at the synagogue, just as well as the school hall could only take half the pupils. Everyone got on fine and I had many Jewish friends but my early impression was of a society divided evenly between Jewish and non-Jewish. Only later did I learn that this was not typical. One day in assembly, the headmaster told us that our school was under threat as it was deemed too small and old. It was a sad day but a brave new world awaited us.

A new school had just been built, Middlethorne Middle School, where I was part of the first intake in 1973. It was a fantastic school, very progressive and I enjoyed my days there even more than at Moortown, which somehow avoided closure. Little did I know that the fates of the two schools would be the opposite of what was expected. Many years later in 1992, falling rolls led the Council to scrap middle schools although I voted against it as I was by then a city councillor for Moortown. Despite being one of the most modern schools in Leeds, the 20 year old Middlethorne was closed and demolished to make way for a housing development. Victorian Moortown returned to being a 5-11 primary and I became a school governor there, when it seemed even smaller whenever I visited. However, it has continued to thrive to this day when it is 140 years old.

In 1975 I moved to Allerton Grange High School which seemed vast compared with Middlethorne and must seem more so to children moving from tiny Moortown Primary. We started in portable classrooms on the tennis courts due to problems with High Alumina Cement used in the construction of the school buildings in 1953. We moved into the main building in 1976 and I went on to take my O and A Levels at Allerton Grange, leaving in 1980. The old school complex was reunited in 1992 when the middle and high schools merged. The original Allerton Grange School lasted until 2009/10 when it was demolished and rebuilt as part of ‘Building Schools for the Future’.

I stayed in Leeds to study Town Planning at Leeds Polytechnic in 1980. The School of Town Planning was based in the new Brunswick Terrace building, opened in 1979. The Polytechnic ran out of money so one end of the building was left a mess of concrete and metal overlooking a car park. There was a maze of corridors in the basement where water leaked into well placed buckets but otherwise it was good to study in a new building. Little did I know that history was to repeat itself. I graduated in 1984 and would often pass my old haunt but I had left Leeds by the time that Brunswick Terrace was closed by Leeds Metropolitan University.

The 30 year old building was demolished in 2009 to make way for the Leeds Arena and almost all the neighbourhood has gone too, replaced by high rise student tower blocks and a pub. The 46 year old Yorkshire Bank building awaits demolition and there will soon only be the Merrion Centre and Tower House (now Arena Point), both almost 60 years old, left to remind me of my student days. There is a certain irony that a School of Town Planning should itself fall victim to urban regeneration and it is a sign of the vitality of Leeds that new buildings keep appearing.

I remain saddened by the waste of buildings that should have enjoyed a much longer lifespan, certainly at Middlethorne and Brunswick Terrace. It is difficult to plan for the long term when future trends are hard to envisage. I cannot revisit three of the buildings where I was educated although Allerton Grange still exists as a school. Victorian Moortown Primary School has somehow survived all the changes and trends over the decades and today’s children still play in the same playground where I began my schooldays 56 years ago.

I often used the 2/3 bus route into town through Chapeltown, which introduced me to Black Caribbean people who were rarely seen in Moortown. By the time the bus reached the top of Chapeltown Road, a white person usually occupied every window seat. Black people then got on as we passed through Chapeltown and sat on all the aisle seats. This gave a strange illusion of racial harmony with black and white sat next to each other as the bus continued through the wasteland of Sheepscar until it reached Vicar Lane where most passengers got off.

The first house I bought resembled some of the slums cleared earlier, a back-to-back in Chapel Allerton which cost me £39,500 in 1989. It was a good basic starter home and the area became increasingly trendy after I sold it in 1999. Some people think that back-to-backs exist only in heritage museums but they remain popular in Leeds where many have been modernised, those in Chapel Allerton being worth around £300,000. I left Leeds in 1999 to be close to my work but look forward to returning to the city soon now that I am retired.