thesis

Conclusion: PlaceMaking and Un-Making If our city centres are to survive as the social and economical focus of our cities in the future, their purpose and function must evolve. With forces beyond the control of local or even national governance, change must be embraced rather than challenged. Plans for the future of Coventry city centre must recognise and respect developing and transforming cultures, values and ways of life of the people of the city if they are to have any longterm success.

Although plenty of lip-service is paid to ‘sense of place’, ‘character,’ ‘community’ etc. in written proposals for the new masterplan, values of ‘place’ described by the images represent only the ‘official’ imported Jerde version of what Coventry should be. Humanist observations of figures like Jacobs, Lynch and Whyte have been skewed and contorted into a contrived set of standardized criteria for how to make a city. Although arising from critique of the failures of post-war planning, this set of artificially worthy ‘placemaking’ principles ultimately amount to a similar thing, proposing a newly manufactured future to paste over an undesirable present.

In this ‘wipe clean’ approach, Coventry’s problems have tended to be exaggerated and consolidated into one overall ‘city problem.’ This ‘city problem’ is automatically brushed over all associated physical architecture to the extent that the entire city fabric becomes the offending article. Any ageing, ‘out-dated’ or abandoned spaces are automatically blamed, so must be wiped out. Aspects of the city, not considered ‘desirable’ are either dismissed, ignored, or prevented from developing altogether, through demolition and ‘improvement,’. This overlooking of the existing condition has lead city council and planners to repeated erasure of what in fact might be the most interesting and potentially promising aspects of the city.

Though mistakes have undoubtedly been made in past planning decisions in the city, an attempt to simply erase ‘failed’ architecture denies and dismisses any of its successes. This architectural pasting-over demolishes existing social and psychological structures interwoven with a place, and repetition of this consequently destroys, rather than creates ‘sense of place.’ Coventry’s perceived lack of ‘sense of place’ therefore is not simply a result of the (frequently blamed) ‘failed’ architecture of the past but has in fact occurred through this self-perpetuating quest for new artificial identities.

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