Living and Working: Aberdeen

Light Up Your Life
The Granite City may have acquired the title ‘Oil Capital of Europe’ but many believe it to be Scotland’s ‘quality of life’ capital…
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Aberdeen is home to a population of 212,125 and is a thriving, cosmopolitan port in the North-east of Scotland. Built at the mouth of two major rivers, the Dee and the Don, and covering an area of 184.47 square kilometres (71.22 square miles), the Granite City owes its distinctive appearance to the world famous, locally quarried (and widely exported) stone.

Traditional industries such as fishing and farming still flourish in and around the city but Aberdeen’s buoyant modern economy – reflected in unemployment rates consistently under 2% – is fuelled by the oil industry, earning the city its epithet as ‘Oil Capital of Europe’.

With bustling shopping malls, a wide variety of entertainment and leisure amenities, and a vibrant arts scene, Aberdeen is a major retail, leisure and cultural centre. First class road, rail, sea and air communications – London is only an hour’s flight away – ensures the city, though Northerly, is not isolated. Its most striking aspects are its beauty, the vivid contrast of beach, cliff and harbour, rivers and woodland, ancient buildings, silver granite and flowers in their thousands. It is also a university town and research centre, the main shopping place for the region and a major seaport. It also has excellent social care facilities.

The city is rich in its provision of sporting facilities so whether you want to try aerobics or abseiling, rowing or rugby you’ll find the city offers plenty of opportunities both for residents and for visitors who come from far and near to attend major national and international sporting events in the city.
One of the fastest growing activities in Aberdeen at the moment is golf – thanks to Paul Lawrie’s success in the 1999 British Open. In partnership with Paul Lawrie, Aberdeen City Council set up the Paul Lawrie Golf Development Programme. The programme offers under 18s the opportunity to play golf and they have the chance to try out the sport, followed by a series of indoor and outdoor competitive and non competitive experiences. The programme is sponsored by the Craig Group and, judging by the numbers who have gone on to take further lessons after their initial introductory session, it certainly seems to be working.

Scotland has long held a reputation as a world leader in terms of educational standards and nowhere is that reputation more deserved than in Aberdeen. Home to two universities, a further education college and a range of schools and centres, it retains consistently high standards and enjoys its reputation for being at the forefront of new developments.{mospagebreak}

Aberdeen City Council provides educational services for more than 29,000 pupils aged from three upwards as well as for thousands of adults, young people and children through its continuing education programmes. The authority currently has 61 nursery, infant and primary schools, 12 secondary schools and more than 50 community centres. A major improvement programme, approved by the Scottish Executive in March 2003, will see 10 of these schools – two secondary and eight primary – being rebuilt over the coming years.

The Council was allocated £80 million to begin the 3Rs project (Reorganise, Renovate and Rebuild). The schools involved will all be developed in line with Aberdeen’s pioneering community schools programme in which the school is used as a base to provide a range of other council and non-council services such as social work, health improvement and community learning and development.

Partnership working is an increasingly significant factor in the delivery of education services which provide the very best for our children. A good example of this is the introduction of a number of healthy eating initiatives in conjunction with Health Improvement.

Aberdeen also offers many opportunities for more specialised education, including provision for Gaelic education at nursery, primary and secondary levels and programmes which provide partial immersion in foreign languages at primary school level.

Union Street, in the heart of cosmopolitan Aberdeen, is the main boulevard and the gateway to shops, restaurants, bars, nightclubs, and cultural and leisure facilities along its ‘Granite Mile’ and in adjacent streets. It’s the main focus in a city which has over 800 shops, seven department stores and six indoor malls. The choice and quality in the retail sector reflects not only the demand by Aberdeen and the strong economy, but also the city’s role as a regional – indeed, international – centre for shopping.

Packed with well-known high street names are the malls: the award-winning Bon Accord Centre; the smaller, but equally interesting St Nicholas Centre; and the refurbished Trinity Centre, plus three specialist locations – the Academy, with its Italian-style piazza; the Galleria in the West-end; and the indoor Market Hall.

A huge selection of high quality shops, selling designer fashion, jewellery, shoes, gifts, delicatessen fare and lots more, can be found in the many side streets leading off Union Street. In the Belmont Street area – greatly improved in recent years – the attractions include the Academy Shopping Centre, the Belmont Cinema and a superb Country Fair market on the last Saturday each month, plus every Saturday at Christmas-time.{mospagebreak}

When it comes to health and healthcare, Aberdeen has among the best facilities and expertise in the country. It’s also at the forefront of joint-working between the NHS, the local authority, other public and voluntary sector organisations, the business sector and all the city communities – striving together to build a healthy population in a health-promoting environment which offers a quality of life second to none.
NHS services in Aberdeen are provided by NHS Grampian, and overseen by the Grampian NHS Board, which is responsible for improving the health of the population and for delivering the healthcare required. This is strategically driven by a local Health Plan, the success of which is dependent on close partnership with all partner organisations. These include, in addition to local authorities, the higher education sector and internationally-renowned research institutions. NHS Grampian is very closely linked with both Aberdeen University and The Robert Gordon University, especially in the fields of research, workforce planning and the training of doctors, nurses, pharmacists and other healthcare professionals.
The city’s transport infrastructure is being massively improved with a new bypass now approved with the target date for completion of 2010. Transport links are the key to Aberdeen’s prosperity – past, present and future.

From the 13th century Aberdeen harbour was the gateway to prosperous trading links with ports around the North Sea and Baltic. More recently, in the 1960s, the oil and gas industry chose Aberdeen as its North Sea base largely because of the city’s harbour and airport facilities.

For a city of its size Aberdeen enjoys exceptional links with other parts of the UK, Europe and beyond and its international air services include Amsterdam, Bergen, Dublin, Esbjerg, Paris and Stavanger; passenger and freight ferry services by sea to Orkney and Shetland, Amsterdam and Rotterdam; and direct intercity rail services to Edinburgh, Glasgow, London and Cardiff.

Aberdeen also enjoys one of the most modern fleet of buses anywhere in the UK through the main bus operator First Aberdeen. Its parent company, the international transport operator First Group, was established in Aberdeen and continues to have its headquarters in the city.

Commuter rail services into the city are also being enhanced through the incremental development of an Aberdeen Crossrail service between Inverurie-Aberdeen-Stonehaven. Many existing intercity services from the south already extend beyond Aberdeen to Dyce next to the airport.

The motto of Aberdeen is Bon Accord with the words ‘Happy to Meet, Sorry to Part, Happy to Meet
Again’. Residents will tell you that this is a sentiment that is put into practice time and time again.