URBLOG

Sold off cities

Public spaces in Britain's cities fall into private hands

Over the past decade, large parts of Britain's cities have been redeveloped as privately-owned estates, extending corporate control over some of the country's busiest squares and thoroughfares. These developments are no longer simply enclosed malls like Westfield in White City or business districts like Broadgate in the City of London – they are spaces open to the sky which appear to be entirely public to casual passers-by.It appears from the scale of the change that privatisation of space is now the standard price of redevelopment.

Guardian to create a map of privatised public spaces in Britain to see how much land is under corporate control

Change in Bradford

Living through change: The effects of global, national and local change on people and places in Bradford

A review of recent reserach by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation on the  effects of change in Bradford,  identifing ongoing fears within the local community surrounding spending cuts and makes key recommendations about ways in which Bradford can thrive economically and at a community level.

 

London planning futures

Just Space - Urban Salon Conference flyer June 2011

Thursday 9th June 2011
10am-5pm
Venue: UCL Department of Geography,
University College London,
26 Bedford Way, London WC1H 6BT
This year over 50 community organisations played an unprecedented role in challenging the strategic plans for London, encouraged and supported by the Just Space Network. One aspect of this work has been to enlist support from the academic and research communities in London. This has connected with debates about the role of academics outside the academy.

50 years of Death and Life

Jane Jacobs : seer of the modern city

Jane Jacobs' classic book on urban living is 50 this year. Our current leaders would do well to read it.

"Jacobs was there first, and with a hard-headed, modern understanding of the sort of relationships that are needed in modern life, and the sorts of community that contemporary cities can offer. Her belief that urban planners and architects should not be realising visions, but creating and preserving resilient, inclusive and adaptable neighbourhoods – places which can largely look after themselves – still resonates."

Saving Excalibur

Largest postwar prefab estate to be demolished 

Excalibur's castles built from postwar dreams must not be demolished

The Excalibur prefab estate in south London may be scruffy, but it's a precious chapter in the nation's story worth preserving,  according to Simon jenkins.

'The whole enclave is an anarchic contrast to the anonymity of the system-built deck-access slabs that usually supplanted the prefabs, now being demolished as uninhabitable and impossible to maintain. The tenants of the vast Aylesbury estate across south London scream, "Get us out of here", but their salvation is expensive and endlessly postponed. Yet no ideologues are so dyed-in-the-wool as Britain's public housing officials, who have long regarded the chaotic individualism manifest in the prefab as intolerably antisocial and to be "designed out".'

'The government has meekly listed six of the 187 for preservation, but none is worth preserving on its own. It would be like listing six houses in Belgrave Square. English Heritage has also refused to introduce conservation area control, on the strange grounds that "this would be imposing our view from above". Surely that is its job.'

'Excalibur is scruffy and working class. It probably offends a Niagara of government regulations. It costs someone's money to maintain and can, I am sure, evoke a pundit to say it is a reminder of a bad past. These arguments were used in the 1970s to fill in Southwark's Grand Surrey Canal with rubble, wiping out a slice of its people's history and an invaluable future amenity. The people of north London apparently merited a canal, but that was too dangerous for south Londoners.'

 

Aylesbury Estate faces uncertain future

Chill wind of new political climate hits urban housing

The Aylesbury estate in south-east London was chosen by Tony Blair in 1997 to launch Labour's social exclusion unit and urban regeneration plans. 13 years later the planned regeneration of the estate is suddenly uncertain.

 

Naked City at LSE

 

 Renowned sociologist Sharon Zukin will discuss her latest book, The Naked City: the death and life of authentic urban places, which explores the gentrification of cities.

LSE Cities and Department of Sociology public lecture

Date: Monday 17 January 2011 
Time: 6.30-8pm 
Venue:  Sheikh Zayed Theatre, New Academic Building
Speaker: Professor Sharon Zukin
Chair: Dr Fran Tonkiss

Sharon Zukin is professor of sociology at Brooklyn College and City University Graduate Center.

A Guide to the New Ruins of Great Britain

Owen Hatherley in The Guardian

For all their bright colours and cladding, the new urban regeneration schemes of the last property boom represent a new kind of bleak.

Here in the UK, with a tiny handful of exceptions, we've been keen to parcel off these spaces to the cheapest available firms, and to let the property developers lead the way on what was, for the most part, publicly owned land, out of the fear that they and their money might disappear if they were in any way challenged.

Participation, Community and Cohesion in Bradford

Three reports fom the Joseph Rowntree Foundatioin examine thechalleges of connection and sustainable change across the city.

Participation and community on Bradford’s traditionally white estates examines how residents on two traditionally white estates understand their communities and participate within them, with the emphasis on residents' own views.

Muslims and community cohesion in Bradford examinesfactors that either enhance or undermine community cohesion in areas with established Muslim communities and into which Muslim migrants have recently arrived.

Women, faith and social cohesion  Uses a participatory approach with women from diverse backgrounds in Bradford, to examine the role of women and faith in building cohesive communities.

 

Rebuilding Handsworth

Born in Flames from The Guardian

Twenty-five years after riots erupted in inner-city Birmingham, locals say investment in the area is beginning to pay off. But there are fears that progress could be under threat.....