URBLOG

Parkour at Portsmouth Cathedral

Urban sport takes over sacred space

Parkour  will be performed with organ music at Portsmouth Cathedral as part of a nine-day celebration of arts across the city.

Travellers, land and home

Our view of house and home allows no place for Travellers

Libby Brooks in The Guardian:  considers the 'land grab  hysteria' and concerns of identity and home in the traveller community. "Settled people are told all they need is a house, and to encounter those who don't share that absolute can be baffling."

REGENERATION: PEOPLE & PLACE MATTER

Neighbourhood identity: people, place and time

Report from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation finds: “How communities are planned, then established, sets a physical and social template that has a long and sustained impact on neighbourhood identities. Crucially, this study has shown how place identity can act against the stated ambitions of renewal projects and cause social segregation.”

"Regeneration does not happen overnight..."

A £50m regeneration scheme changed little, say residents of a deprived estate, so this time they want to do things their way. Guardian report on Marsh Farm, Luton.

REINVIGORATING COMMUNITY

The Power of Place

Richard Best's presentation to the Smith Institute raises critical questions about housing and regeneration policy as he emphasises the importance of an understanding of place as policy makers seek to tackle the giants of Want (or poverty), Disease, Idleness (or worklessness), Squalor and Ignorance.

DOUBLE TAKE in Leeds

Strangely Familiar: an exhibition of two photographers who have captured the transformation of Leeds over the last 40 years shows how the city's landscape has changed - from factories and mills to cappuccino bars.

Guardian article by Chris Arnot

Photo Gallery

Strangely Familiar, by Eric Jaquier and Peter Mitchell, is at the PSL Gallery, Leeds, from February 27 until April 26.

Drinking places: where people drink and why

JRF compares urban and rural drinking

A new report from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation investigates where people drink alcohol and why in two contrasting communities, one urban and one rural.

"It is clear then that drinkatainment is seen by local authorities as an opportunity to pursue economic development and urban regeneration. A perceived cost-benefi t analysis of alcohol-led regeneration clearly comes down to economic and cultural activity versus concerns over perceived levels of increased violence and disorder."

What makes a good community?

York Diocesan study course

What makes a good city? has been a widely debated question following the Faithful Cities report. Bishop Martin Wallace takes the question into a wider setting with partnership, inclusion, location all examined as part of this study course for local churches, available as a pdf download.

The City of the Future

Patrick Keiller at the BFI

The City of the Future is an exhibition that sets out to explore contrasts between the familiarity of old city fabric, the strangeness of the past, and the newness of present-day experience.  A virtual landscape composed of 68 early actuality films from the years 1896-1909, arranged in the gallery on a network of maps from the period.

Harlem takes on university

   Higher education and urban transition ignites New York, as planning committee consider plans for university expansion in West Harlem.

"What we are talking about is change. Manhattan is changing and when that happens somebody loses out."

"People like me came here because we saw Harlem as the spiritual centre of African America, but also because we had a vision of the vibrant area it could become. Now we've realised that vision, but the nightmare is that now we are not rich enough to enjoy it."

"I have seen the university systematically erode diversity by driving out people of colour and the poor, and replace it with a sterile conformity of white upper middle-class students and faculty."

What makes new housing developments communities?

The government wants 3m new homes by 2020. But will they be user-friendly houses or soulless boxes?

Patrick Barkham on two developments in Kent.

"Developers spend far more time thinking about whether they are using Italian granite in the bathroom than thinking about what kind of place they are creating..."