A post-industrial revolution on the banks of the river that has seen everything

The relationship between Newcastle and Gateshead, proud communities separated by a majestic stretch of the River Tyne, has never been harmonious. J.B. Priestley may have come from Bradford, but he spoke for most of Newcastle when he remarked that Gateshead ‘appeared to have been invented by an enemy of the human race’. Until recently Gateshead’s major tourist attraction was the dingy multistorey car park that featured in the 1971 cult gangster film Get Carter and still towers over the town like a malignant ghost. One Newcastle grandee contemptuously referred to Gateshead as ‘that heap of rubble across the water’.

So can we assume that the rebranding of the city as NewcastleGateshead has gone down like the proverbial lead balloon on the north side of the Tyne? Not entirely — and that’s not simply because most people ignore this expensive piece of marketing nonsense and still call Newcastle Newcastle. No, it’s because Gateshead, or at least Gateshead Quays, is busy reinventing itself as a seriously important business and leisure destination.

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The catalyst for this renaissance, ironically, is the development of Newcastle Quayside and the impressive Millennium Footbridge which links the two. Earlier this month Gateshead Council announced plans for the £100 million GQ2 site, featuring a new cinema, four-star hotel, shops, restaurants and 324 apartments. The development — which sits between two iconic buildings, the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art and the Sage international music centre — is the next stage in the transformation of Gateshead Quays. At the same time, work on the Baltic Business Quarter by a developer called Terrace Hill has just begun, creating a brand-new office park on the south side of the river. Tim Evans of property consultants Knight Frank told me that Newcastle Quayside has ‘stood the test of time’ and that without the vision and quality of design that has been realised on the north bank, ‘it’s unlikely that Gateshead Quays could have succeeded in the magnificent way that it has’.