Belonging in Byker
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Belonging in Byker The Nature of Local Belonging and Attachment in Contemporary Cities Sophie K. Yarker PhD Thesis Submitted July 2014 School of Geography, Politics and Sociology Newcastle University Contents Contents List of figures vi Acknowledgements viii Abstract ix Chapter 1. Belonging in Byker 1 1.1 Do we still Belong? 3 1.2 Geography Matters 5 1.3 The Lure of the Local 8 1.4 Regenerating Local Identities 11 1.5 Summary 13 1.6 Structure of Thesis 14 Chapter 2. Geographies of Belonging in the Everyday Experience of Place 17 2.1 Nature of Belonging in Human Geography 18 2.2.1 Belonging and Mobility 20 2.2 The Lure of the Local 25 2.3 Theorising the Local 32 2.3.1 A Complimentary Theorisation of Place 33 2.3.2 The Production of Space 35 2.4 Theorising Belonging: How People Belong 37 i 2.4.1 The Everyday Experience of Belonging 39 2.4.2 How do People Practice Everyday Belonging 43 2.4.3 Everyday affects and ‘Local Structure of Feeling’ 47 2.5 Theorising Belonging: Why People Belong 52 2.5.1 Physical Environment 53 2.5.2 Social and Socio-demographic Factors 58 2.5.3 Cultural Factors 66 2.5.4 Auto-biographies 70 2.6 Conclusions 71 Chapter 3. Researching the Lived Experience of Place 76 3.1 The Byker Estate 76 3.2 Meet the Participants 84 3.3 ‘Getting at’ the Local 90 3.3.1 Looking 95 3.3.2 Talking 97 3.3.3 Walking 103 3.3.4 Listening 104 3.3.5 Summary of Methods 105 3.4 Reflections 106 3.4.1 Matters of Place 106 3.4.2 Positionality: Local, but not local enough 108 ii 3.5 Moving from Data to Theory, and back again 109 3.6 Conclusions 112 Chapter 4. Representations of Space in Urban Development 114 4.1 Byker and transitions in UK Urban Policy 115 4.1.1 Modernisation and ‘The Brasilia of the North’ 115 4.1.2 Redevelopment in Byker: ‘Byker for Byker People’ 118 4.1.3 Lived Experience of Urban Planning 122 4.1.4 Urban Renaissance 126 4.1.5 Summary: From Modernisation to Renaissance 135 4.2 Northern Identity 136 4.2.1 Local Identity in Byker 137 4.3 Contemporary Byker: ‘The Embodiment of the Big Society?’ 138 4.4 Conclusions 140 Chapter 5. Comfort, Commitment and Critical Distance 141 5.1 Being Comfortable and feeling Confident 144 5.2 Commitment, Care and Contribution to Place 156 5.2.1 Love thy Neighbour 158 5.2.2 Stewardship of Place 161 5.3 Irony and Critical Distance 167 5.3.1 Nostalgia and ‘the good old Days 168 iii 5.3.2 Community? What community? 170 5.4 Territory in Relational Constructions of Place and Belonging 172 5.5 Conclusions 179 Chapter 6. The Capital to Belong 182 6.1 Can we Predict Local Belonging? 184 6.2 Biography and Extent of ‘Roots’ in Place 188 6.3 Social Networks and Cultural Capital 195 6.3.1 ‘The Other’ 196 6.3.2 Good Neighbours 205 6.4 Local Structure of Feeling 209 6.5 Conclusions 212 Chapter 7. From the Tangible to the Intangible in Urban Regeneration 214 7.1 The Meaning of Urban Regeneration 217 7.2 Importance of the Lived Experience 223 7.3 Appropriation and Affect of Urban Regeneration Spaces 224 7.3.1 Architecture or Society? 232 7.3.2 Role of Memory 234 7.3.3 Atmospheres of Regeneration (or degeneration) 238 7.4 Local Structure of Feeling 242 7.5 Conclusions 246 iv Chapter 8. Becoming ‘Native’ to Byker 248 8.1 Characteristics of Local Belonging and Attachment 248 8.2 Circumstance that influence Local Belonging and Attachment 250 8.3 Local Belonging and Attachment in the context of Urban Change 252 8.4 The Nature of Local Belonging and Attachment in Contemporary Cities 254 8.5 The Virtue of Belonging? 263 8.6 Reflections on the Study 265 8.7 Contributions 266 Bibliography 269 Appendices 291 v List of Figures & Tables Figure 3.1 Byker Ward Map 77 Figure 3.2 Byker Estate Map 77 Figure 3.3 Former Terraces in ‘old’ Byker 78 Figure 3.4 Perimeter Wall in ‘new’ Byker Estate 79 Figure 3.5 New housing in Byker Estate 79 Figure 3.6 Byker Redevelopment Street Plan 79 Table 3.1 Percentage of ward population identified by ethnic group 80 Table 3.2 Indices of Deprivation 2000 82 Table 3.3 Change in Household by deprivation dimensions 2001-2011 82 Table 3.4 Socio-economic demographics in Byker 2011 83 Figure 3.7 Overall crime rate 83 Figure 3.8 Crime rate by type of crime 84 Table 3.5 Overview of research participants 89 Figure 3.9 Flyer for recruitment of participants 93 Figure 4.1 Byker ‘ornaments’ 120 Figure 4.2 Retention of buildings 120 Figure 4.3 Ouseburn 130 Figure 4.4 Renovated Toffee Factory, Ouseburn 130 Table 5.1 Categorisation of research participants 142 Figure 7.1 Decline of Shields Road 221 Figure 7.2 Closed department store 221 Figure 7.3 Exiting of Byker Link 226 Figure 7.4 Site of former smoking shelter 227 Figure 7.5 Use of Byker Link- ‘desire lines’ 227 vi Figure 7.6 South of Byker Link 229 Figure 7.7 South of Byker Link 229 Unless otherwise stated, all images are authors own vii Acknowledgements My first thanks must be to the participants in Byker who took part in this research. I will forever be indebted for their time, energy and commitment in supporting and indulging my curiosity. I hope this study does them justice. I would like to thank my wonderfully eclectic supervision team; Robin Humphrey, Andy Pike and John Tomaney for their unfailing and continually tested, patience and guidance throughout this whole process. Each brought their own insight, skills and knowledge to the project without which this work would not have been possible and for which I will always be grateful. I would also like to thank Keith Shaw and Jane Wills for examining the thesis and for their encouragement and helpful critique during the viva. I, and the production of this thesis has been fortunate in having the support of a host of people. In the Geography postgraduate office I consider myself hugely blessed in meeting and getting to know some wonderful people who I hope will be friends for life. In particular Dan Bos, Katherine Botterill, Jeff Chase, Francesca Fois, Anja McCarthy, Rebecca Richardson and Michael Richardson have all provided tremendous support, laughter and balance over the years and this process would have been a very different experience without them. I would like to also acknowledge my ‘normal’ fiends outside of the office; Elaine Heley, Emily Hick, Heather Laughton, Antonia Steven and Cissie Tsang who always took an interest, always listened to me going on about ‘it’ and whose continued support and enthusiasm has both humbled and meant the world to me. A special thank you must be reserved for my partner Matthew Rech, my love and my best friend. Thank you for always inspiring me to be better, encouraging me to have faith in myself, and for supplying me with food, wine and formatting assistance throughout. Finally, this thesis is dedicated to my parents, Janet and Terence Yarker and my brother Jonathan Yarker. This thesis would not have been possible without their unwavering love, support and belief. I could not have done it by myself. viii Abstract This study is about how we live in cities. It is about the nature of the relationships we have to the places in which we live, whether we feel a sense of attachment and belonging to local communities and what the nature of these attachments might be. Specifically it asks what are the characteristics of local belonging and attachment in cities today? What circumstance shape and influence these attachments and how are they affected by processes of urban change? Despite drawing on sets of literature from across the social sciences, the research demonstrates the value of a geographical lens in analysing these questions by demonstrating both the social and spatial nature of an individual’s sense of belonging. Located primarily within literatures from human geography, the work of this thesis seeks to move this discussion forward from relational discussions of mobility in everyday life, by acknowledging the importance of both place and mobility for understanding and explaining attachment and belonging. Based on the exploration of local belonging and attachment in a local community in Newcastle- upon-Tyne, two conclusions were reached. Firstly the nature of local attachments as being characterised by sets a set of three characteristics; comfort and confidence, commitment and contribution, and irony and critical distance and secondly, the basis of such attachments as unfolding as a process within the materiality of everyday life in place, pointing to both the territorial and relational nature of such attachments. In doing so, the research argues for an understanding of attachment to place as a process with affective dimensions as well as spatial practice within the everyday and secondly, to recognise the agency or the desire to belong as part of these active negotiations. The thesis concludes with a discussion of the potential for an understanding of the place of local belonging within human geography debate, reiterating the value of a complimentary understanding of both territorial and relational approaches to place. ix Chapter One: Belonging In Byker The nature of local belonging and attachment in contemporary cities “Standing on top of Byker Hill, John Wesley exclaimed of the breath-taking panorama beneath his feet: ‘A vision of Paradise!’ Presumably, in 1790, it actually excluded Byker, since Byker then was a village, and mostly behind his back.