Economy
Dumfries has a long history as a county town, and as the market town of a surrounding rural hinterland.
Dumfries is a relatively prosperous community but the town centre has been exposed to the centrifugal forces that have seen retail, business, educational, residential and other uses gravitate towards the town's urban fringe. This was started in the 1980s with the building of the Dumfries bypass. The immediate effect of this was as intended the diversion of traffic away from transiting via the town centre. This brought with it an accompanying reduction in economic input to the town centre. The second effect of this has been more pronounced. Sites close to the bypass have attracted development to utilise the bypass as a high speed urban highway without the bottlenecks of the town centre and without the constraining limited town centre parking.
In a bid to stimulate development in Dumfries town centre, both economically and in a social context, several strategies have been proposed by the controlling authorities.
Read more about this topic: Dumfries
Famous quotes containing the word economy:
“The counting-room maxims liberally expounded are laws of the Universe. The merchant’s economy is a coarse symbol of the soul’s economy. It is, to spend for power, and not for pleasure.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The aim of the laborer should be, not to get his living, to get “a good job,” but to perform well a certain work; and, even in a pecuniary sense, it would be economy for a town to pay its laborers so well that they would not feel that they were working for low ends, as for a livelihood merely, but for scientific, or even moral ends. Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)