A Cultural Geography of Civic Pride in Nottingham
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
A Cultural Geography of Civic Pride in Nottingham Thomas Alexander Collins Submitted in accordance with the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Leeds School of Geography April 2015 ii The candidate confirms that the work submitted is his own and that appropriate credit has been given where reference has been made to the work of others. This copy has been supplied on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. © 2015 The University of Leeds and Tom Collins The right of Tom Collins to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. iii Acknowledgements Thanks to David Bell, Nichola Wood and everyone at the School of Geography. Thanks to the people of Nottingham and all the participants I interviewed. Thanks to my family. Thanks to Kate, Dan, Rachel, Martin, Tom, Sam, Luca, Taylor and to everyone who has heard me witter on about civic pride over the past few years. iv Abstract This thesis examines how people perceive, express, contest and mobilise civic pride in the city of Nottingham. Through interviews, participant observation and secondary resource analysis, I explore what people involved in the civic life of the city are proud of about Nottingham, what they consider the city’s (civic) identity to be and what it means to promote, defend and practice civic pride. Civic pride has been under-examined in geography and needs better theoretical and empirical insight. I show how civic pride can be thought of as a composite and holistic urban ethos that represents what people feel about the city they live in, what people value and take pride in, and the range of practices and behaviours that people develop to celebrate and protect the city’s identity and autonomy. Civic pride ties together the local, the emotional and the political, and forms a range of discourses and narratives that help produce, mediate, reflect and at times conceal structures of power, identity and inequality. I claim that Nottingham is a friendly, bolshie, East Midlands city; a city with many people who are passionate about Nottingham and civic pride, but who are also uncertain about Nottingham’s identity and aspirations as a city. The findings complement existing debates about cities by showing how civic pride connects with issues of urban regeneration, neoliberalism, localism, social identity and social justice. But I also challenge current literature by offering a more critical and nuanced examination of civic pride, grounded in an understanding of emotions and emotional geographies, that reshapes some of these debates and advances of our understanding of the interface between people, place and politics. v Table of Contents ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...................................................................................... III ABSTRACT .......................................................................................................... IV LIST OF FIGURES ................................................................................................ VII CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION ................................................................................ 1 THESIS OUTLINE ................................................................................................ 15 CHAPTER 2: CIVIC PRIDE – THE PRIDE OF BELONGING ....................................... 19 CHAPTER 3: PRIDE/SHAME, URBAN REGENERATION AND THE NEW LOCALISM .. 57 CHAPTER 4: METHODOLOGY ............................................................................. 71 INTRODUCTION TO CHAPTERS 5 AND 6 ............................................................. 97 CHAPTER 5: NOTTINGHAM – A FRIENDLY CITY ................................................... 99 PARTICIPANT OBSERVATION 1: HERITAGE OPEN DAYS – REFLECTIONS OF A TOUR OF THE COUNCIL HOUSE AND NOTTINGHAM CASTLE ....................................... 128 CHAPTER 6: NOTTINGHAM – A BOLSHIE CITY ................................................... 132 PARTICIPANT OBSERVATION 2: ‘NOTORIOUS NOTTINGHAM’ – THE CIVIC SOCIETY’S CHRISTMAS LECTURE ...................................................................... 165 CHAPTER 7: NOTTINGHAM AT THE CROSSROADS – THE REGIONAL GEOGRAPHY OF CIVIC PRIDE ................................................................................................ 170 PARTICIPANT OBSERVATION 3: THE GRAND OPENING CEREMONY OF THE NOTTINGHAM GOOSE FAIR ............................................................................. 206 CHAPTER 8: REDEFINING CIVIC PRIDE WITHIN AND BEYOND NOTTINGHAM ..... 210 CHAPTER 9: CONCLUSION ................................................................................ 235 vi REFERENCES .................................................................................................... 246 APPENDIX 1: PARTICIPANT INFORMATION SHEET (SAMPLE) ............................. 257 APPENDIX 2: PARTICIPANT CONSENT FORM (SAMPLE) ..................................... 258 APPENDIX 3: PARTICIPANT LIST WITH GIVEN PSEUDONYMS ............................ 259 vii List of Figures FIGURE 1 - MAP OF NOTTINGHAM AND THE EAST MIDLANDS ............................ 89 FIGURE 2 - MAP OF THE NOTTINGHAM URBAN AREA ........................................ 93 FIGURE 3 - BRIEF SUMMARY OF FINDINGS ......................................................... 98 FIGURE 4 - UNEMPLOYMENT FIGURES BY ETHNIC GROUP FOR 2014 ................ 123 FIGURE 5 - MAP OF MUNICIPAL BOUNDARIES AROUND NOTTINGHAM ........... 192 1 Chapter 1: Introduction Cities have a profound impact on many people’s lives. They are where many people live and work, and where people develop lasting connections. The places that people choose to live in, or where they end up living in, and the communities that people belong to, can be integral to people’s sense of identity and wellbeing. Through time and through taking time to participate in the public life of the city, people can come to feel highly attached to their city and identify with it as their own. However people form these connections in different ways and develop different sorts of values and aspirations for their city and local community. Cities represent sites of difference and diversity. But the collective power and identity of a city is shaped by its citizens, its local government, its economy and its unique history and culture. Taken together, these features make up a city’s civic identity. In Britain, cities have been undergoing considerable change in recent years and are facing a range of civic challenges: from changing governance regimes, to fluctuating patterns of growth and decline in industry, manufacturing and services, increasing suburbanisation and urban sprawl, market instability, increasing levels of migration and increasing social and cultural diversity. In an era of advanced globalisation, with greater fluidity of movement of people and things, and revolutionary changes in technology that have reshaped how people live and interact with each other, it could be argued that local civic identities are gradually becoming more complex, more diverse and more disjointed – and for many people perhaps less important to their lives. But while some people fear that globalisation and technology are undermining the ‘localness’ of places – and with that their civic identity and heritage, others continue to promote and defend where they live, and continue to honour the virtues of local citizenship. Beyond making sure that cities provide individuals and communities with a decent quality of life, good quality services and a range of social, cultural and political freedoms, many civic-minded people have come to see it as their duty, their calling, and their passion, to ensure that places remain unique, that local people and businesses thrive, and that a city’s freedoms and powers to be but itself and nowhere else are honoured and maintained. 2 Geographers have had a long-standing interest in urban identities and the ways in which people engage with civic life in cities (Amin 2008; Hall 1997; Watson 2006). This has often connected with broader theories of place, and how places form and represent different meanings, identities and experiences for people (Harvey 1996; Thrift 2008). The identities people forge in places and the experiences and memories people take from them are often based in and coloured by certain emotional connections and associations – connections and associations that can profoundly shape and reflect people’s values and wellbeing. One positive kind of emotional connection or association might be a feeling of pride for a place. Pride is a complex emotion, but one which generally describes a feeling of self-worth and self-esteem about one’s identity, status or achievements (Smith 1998; Tracy et al 2010). Cities can be sources of pride if they inspire a feeling of (collective) self-worth and (collective) self-esteem among the people that live there, or if the city has a strong local heritage and culture that people value. People may also be proud of their city if it is successful at something or is praised by others. Over time, people can come to feel highly attached and loyal to where they live, and feel a strong sense of pride for, and duty towards, the people living there. Despite long-standing interests in questions of identity, belonging and place in geography however, the notion that people are, or can be, proud of where they live has not always been acknowledged or explored