Living the Good Life in Leicester, Environment City- CHAT Orkney 2016
Channel: Recording Archaeology
Date: 2016-12-14

Leicester’s prosperity in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was built on three core industries – hosiery, boot and shoe manufacturing, and engineering. These industries went into decline from the 1960s onwards, as production was increasingly automated and globalised, leaving the city to find a new post‐industrial identity. This arrived in 1990 with  the designation of Leicester as Britain’s  first ‘Environment City’ (soon followed by Middlesbrough, Peterborough and Leeds), and the development of Leicester as a model of best  practice with a commitment  to improving  the urban environment. Leicester worked  to  create and enhance  open  space in  the  city, and made efforts  to  foster  urban wildlife ‐ the greening of Leicester was singled out for praise at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio. Initiatives for the greening of the city included the construction of the EcoHouse, an environmental showhome built  of  reclaimed  materials  with  a  solar  thermal  system,  rainwater  harvesting,  and  on‐site composting. The aim of the EcoHouse, and its cafe that served food grown on‐site, was to encourage the  city’s  residents  and  visitors  to  make  green  and  sustainable  changes  to  their  own  homes  and gardens – a piece of the rural good life in the middle of Leicester.

This paper will look at how Leicester’s designation as an Environment City was played out  through innovations in the built and natural environment, the impact of the project more than 25 years later, and how the city’s green identity has been overtaken by other narratives.

Emma Dwyer (University of Leicester) & Hilary Orange (University College London)

Session 3: Urban | |  Rural
CHAT Annual Conference - Orkney 2016: Rurality