title: Reurbanisation Through Cultural Flagship Strategies: The Attitude of and Effects on Residents in Regenerated Areas of Glasgow and Manchester
Creators: name: Seo, Joon-Kyo
Publisher: name: Goldsmiths, University of London
Year: 2000

description: The thesis takes its inspiration from the current debate over urban cultural policy and its effect on urban regeneration. In the 1960s and the 1970s, most older industrial cities in Europe suffered from massive economic decline along with social unrest. The cities of Glasgow and Manchester were two of the older industrial cities in Britain, which suffered the worst urban decline. In order to overcome such urban decline, many European cities have adopted new means of urban growth strategies. Cultural flagship development strategies were begun in the US, but the strategies have become a focal point in urban regeneration policies of many European cities. The cities of Glasgow and Manchester have used cultural flagship development to endeavour to transform their city's overall image and the strengthening of their economic base. In spite of extensive literature debating the issues of cultural flagship strategies, there is a lack of empirical studies on residents who live in cities which have employed the strategies for their city's development. This empirical study examines residents in some parts of Glasgow and Manchester (Crown Street &amp; Merchant City in Glasgow and Hulme (Royce Place) &amp; Whitworth Street in Manchester) where housing regeneration has taken place. The study focuses upon residents' reasons for residential relocation in the research areas, and their view on the perceptions of the cities of Glasgow and Manchester and on the use of cultural flagship strategies to improve their city. By analysing residents' points of view, one can gain insight into what the cities of Glasgow and Manchester have achieved over a decade through the use of cultural flagship schemes. The thesis advanced is that it explains factors that stimulated the process of reurbanisation in the four chosen areas of Glasgow and Manchester. The thesis also dismisses the fundamental hypothesis that there would be highly contrasting opinions on cultural flagship strategies between residents with different social and economic backgrounds in the survey areas as the strategies would seem to be likely to benefit economically better-off residents more than economically worse-off residents. However, the thesis found that both types of residents in the areas showed a very positive attitude toward the strategies and the current developments of Glasgow and Manchester. The changes in the perceptions of Glasgow and Manchester were seen in the eyes of residents as largely a result of cultural improvements in the cities. However, it seems to be inevitable that there is an unequal distribution of benefits from cultural flagship developments among the residents in the survey areas since cultural flagship developments were largely designed to attract businesses and wealthy residents. The main benefits generated by cultural flagship strategies largely went to those residents in the central city areas with high household incomes. Moreover, the cultural flagship strategies seem to deepen the polarisation in the cities of Glasgow and Manchester between, on the one hand, residents with low-income and who are unemployed and, on the other, residents with high-income and secure occupations. Nevertheless, an interesting factor in the study is that a vast majority of the residents in the survey areas reacted positively toward cultural flagship developments of their city.