Paul Chatterton

University students and city centres – the formation of exclusive geographies: The case of Bristol, UK

Abstract This paper draws upon research which analysed the provision of popular culture for university students in Bristol city centre. The research suggests that the provision is aimed at a cohort of ‘traditional’ adolescent, middle- and upper-class students based at the University of Bristol. Popular culture provision for these students is undertaken within an infrastructure of student-focused venues which create ‘pathways’ of activity through the city. This infrastructure is constructed both through symbolic geographies of student life and actual interventions in the landscape, and through processes by which the ‘rules’ of student life are learnt and unlearned. There are a small number of privileged sites of consumption within this infrastructure, the use of which is motivated by a strong desire for association among traditional students. The temporal and spatial framework of this popular culture provision has important consequences for the city, especially at a time of further increases in the number of university students in Britain. In particular, traditional students represent non-exploratory, middle ground cultural actors and are part of a patchwork of groups whose activities are re-imaging city centres. However, in contrast to much recent work which examines city centre consumption by certain groups, I argue that the seasonal migration of adolescent and wealthy university students to many British cities is located within the trend towards the growth of segregated entertainment provision and the emergence of ‘geographies of exclusion’ in city centres.

Regional Development Agencies and the Knowledge Economy: Harnessing the Potential of Universities

The authors explore the bases for regional engagement by universities in the light of structural change within higher education and ongoing debates about the nature of regional economic development. They focus on the implications for a universitys relationship with its region of the New Labour policy environment within England as set out in a series of White Papers and consultation papers concerned with industrial competitiveness, lifelong learning and Regional Development Agencies (RDAs), and assess how far these new policy proposals address Old Labour issues of uneven development within the knowledge economy. The authors conclude the paper by setting out new procedures on the part of government departments, RDAs, and universities themselves for linking universities and regions in order to create regional learning systems.

Bringing Britain Together? The limitations of area-based regeneration policies in addressing deprivation

This paper is concerned with the extent to which the new tranche of area-based policy initiatives from New Labour can address deprivation. We argue that such policies are likely to meet the failures of previous initiatives as they continue to simplify the complex processes underlying regeneration: they arbitrarily draw boundaries around regeneration areas; they represent a continuation of place commodification; and, they continue to represent accountability structures which rest with statutory bodies rather than the community. Without reinventing the wheel, urban policy needs to revisit conventional wisdom relating to territorial development: namely, that local regeneration is determined by factors inside and outside particular localities.

Producing nightlife in the new urban entertainment economy: corporatization, branding and market segmentation

This article explores the production of the nightlife industry within a new urban entertainment economy. We do this by drawing upon debates about the transition from Fordism to post-Fordism, and the assumed shift away from standardized and mass towards more segmented and niche consumer markets. In contrast to some of the more self-congratulatory accounts of varied, flexible niche urban consumption, our starting point is to pursue more neo-Fordist interpretations which explore continuity as well as change and in particular stress growing corporate control in entertainment and night-life economies, the increased use of branding and theming, and the emergence of segmented, sanitized and gentrified consumer markets. These processes are illustrated and empirically examined in relation to changes within the UK nightlife sector which has undergone rapid restructuring, re-concentration and segmentation over the last 10 years. We discuss a number of implications which emerge from these developments, such as the erosion of diversity and choice, and the possibilities for alternative/independent and historic/community forms of nightlife production and spaces to coexist in such a context. Copyright Joint Editors and Blackwell Publishers Ltd 2003.

Autonomy in the city

This paper is about the emergence of social centres and their role in both the development of autonomous politics and the growing urban resistance movement in the UK to the corporate takeover, enclosure and alienation of everyday life. In European terms, social centres are not new and, as Montagna in this issue demonstrates, have played a particularly important role in the political and cultural world of Italys autonomist scene. Previously marginal in British radical movements, since the eruption of global anti‐capitalism in the late 1990s, the number of occupied or legalized social centres and other autonomous spaces in the UK has been on the increase, playing crucial roles in confrontational politics from reclaiming public space to mass mobilizations such as the G8 summit at Gleneagles. This paper, written by action researchers heavily implicated in the social centre movement, critically examines the experience of social centres so far and offers some thoughts on their future development.

The Cultural Role of Universities in the Community: Revisiting the University—Community Debate:

In this paper the interaction between the university and the community is addressed. Whilst previous work has concentrated on the economic roles of universities in the community, insufficient attention has been paid to their cultural roles. Drawing upon fieldwork undertaken in Bristol, United Kingdom, I highlight a number of cultural roles which universities undertake in the community. In particular I outline the historical development of the cultural role of the university through a shift from the high-cultural role of the elite university to a broader cultural role for the contemporary mass university. A new environment for universities, including the declining influence of national structures, the interplay of processes of localisation and globalisation, and the emergence of new regional governance structures in Britain, is reshaping the cultural relationship between the university and the community and is opening up new possibilities for the creation of a closer, and more equal, relationship between them. This in turn could open up new possibilities for a greater sense of a shared public culture and address the evolving idea of the university. However, concerns are raised in relation to how these are affected by the introduction of globalisation practices and discourses into the university.

Towards an Agenda for Post‐carbon Cities: Lessons from Lilac, the UK's First Ecological, Affordable Cohousing Community

This article explores an agenda towards post-carbon cities, extending and deepening established debates around low-carbon, sustainable cities in the process. The label post-carbon builds upon issues beyond those of greenhouse gas ( GHG) emissions, energy conservation and climate change, adding a broader set of concerns, including economic justice, behaviour change, wellbeing, land ownership, the role of capital and the state, and community self-management. The article draws upon a case study of an embryonic post-carbon initiative completed in early 2013 called Lilac. Based in Leeds, Lilac stands for Low Impact Living Affordable Community and is the first attempt to build an affordable, ecological cohousing project in the UK. Its three aspects each respond to significant challenges: low-impact living and the challenge of post-carbon value change; affordability and the challenge of mutualism and equality; and community and the challenge of self-governance. I conclude the article by exploring six lessons from Lilac that tentatively outline a roadmap towards post-carbon cities: the need for holistic approaches that deal with complex challenges, prioritizing self-determination rather than just participation, engaging with productive political tensions, adopting a process rather than an outcomes-based approach, developing strategy for replicability, and finally, embracing a non-parochial approach to localities.

So What Does It Mean to be Anti-capitalist? Conversations with Activists from Urban Social Centres

This paper is about autonomous urban social centres and attempts to show how the everyday lives, values and practices of participants within them give shape and meaning to the idea of anti-capitalism. This is done by reference to five areas: a politics of place, where local space constitutes anti-capitalist practice; political identities based on impure, messy identities; social relationships which prioritise emotions and collective working; organisational practices based on self-management and experimentation; and political strategies which stress the need to cross boundaries beyond the activist ghetto. Overall, social centre participants demonstrate that anti-capitalist practice is not just ‘anti-’, but also ‘post-’ and ‘despite-’ capitalist; simultaneously against, after and within. Just like capitalist social relations, its antithesis anti-capitalism is constituted through ordinary everyday practices. It is this reconceptualisation of anti-capitalist practice as experimental, messy, open, everyday, collective and grounded politics which has the potential to make this kind of contentious urban politics more legible and feasible—in times when we need it most.

Seeking the urban common: Furthering the debate on spatial justice

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“Squatting is Still Legal, Necessary and Free”: A Brief Intervention in the Corporate City

Squatting is a solution to homelessness, empty properties and speculation. It provides homes for those who can’t get public housing and who can’t afford extortionate rents. Squatting creates space for much-needed community projects. Squatting means taking control instead of being pushed around by bureaucrats and property owners. Squatting is still legal, necessary and free.(Advisory Service for Squatters 1996:1) What follows is an account of a brief intervention in the contemporary urban landscape in an English city, Newcastle upon Tyne. It is an account of a group of people who squatted a building as a response to the increasing dominance of corporate organisations and the declining accountability of local authorities in cities.