The Great Pier, speculative proposal © ‘Revealing the Castle’ Live project, SSoA, 2016
In the case of Castlegate, the academics’ and students’ expertise and knowledge have sped the process of urban regeneration in an overlooked area and kickstarted urban projects on a shoestring budget. It must be emphasised, however, that the innovative approach taken by university academics has only been able to flourish due to the lack of financial power and appetite by public and private bodies in the area. A danger persists that the current values in establishing Castlegate as a quarter of cultural interest can be appropriated by the council and landowners in the area for capital gains. The systematic engagement with local stakeholders and citizens could easily be disregarded if a large scale developer takes a strong financial interest. Such threats can already be observed by the changing nature of businesses in the area. Market traders, second hand shops and low-value retailers are being pushed out of the area, changing its urban culture and demographics. Low-income customers and long-term users of the area are the citizens most in danger of being written out of future narratives if the academics’ voice is lost.
The authentic city In her book the Naked City, Prof. Sharon Zukin explores the notion of ‘authenticity’ in the urban realm. Critiquing Jane Jacobs’s focus on preserving the physical features of the city, Zukin explores New York through the lenses of cultural multiplicity and social relations between citizens. Authenticity of an area is produced by the processes and interactions that embedded communities engage in. A crisis is therefore experienced in contemporary cities where a corporate or institutional rhetoric of growth clashes with the social origins of urban villages. ‘Authenticity’ according to Zukin becomes the social right of citizens to stay in place and access any part of the city they live in. In cases of university-led urban regeneration, it is the authenticity of a city that is at stake. The next UK City of Culture in 2021 – Coventry – needs to engage with this debate. In the city of three spires, high rise student residential blocks are transforming the skyline and demographics are rapidly changing. In the past year alone, more than 10 university residential blocks have been approved through the planning process in a city of just more than 300,000 citizens. Universities have invested heavily in urban realm improvements and hold significant economic and cultural power, however, they need to further recognise the authenticity of local residents and engage with them in a participatory and proactive manner. By empowering local residents, looking at other case studies such as Sheffield and engaging its academics in the process of regeneration, the city’s universities can ensure that the City of Culture project can be more than purely an economic and public relations exercise. Simeon Shtebunaev is a Young Urbanist and architectural and planning assistant at BDP 1. Dr Clare Melhuish and UCL Urban Laboratory’s University-led urban
Declining retail uses in the area
regeneration case studies are published on the urban lab website. 2. Naked City: The Death and Life of Authentic Urban Places , Oxford University Press,2010
42 Here & Now | AoU Journal No. 11 | Summer 2018