Questioning 'Inclusivity' of Public Spaces in Post-Industrial Cities: the Case of Haymarket Bus Station, Newcastle Upon Tyne
METU JFA 2005/2 (22: 2) QUESTIONING ‘INCLUSIVITY’ OF PUBLIC SPACES IN POST-INDUSTRIAL CITIES: THE CASE OF HAYMARKET BUS STATION, NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE Z. Müge AKKAR Received: 23.05.2005 INTRODUCTION Keywords: public space; social inclusion; social exclusion; Access; Newcastle upon Public spaces, one of the essential components of cities for centuries, have Tyne; Haymarket Bus Station (HBS). become the focus of broad concern for more than two decades (Francis, (1) The research that formed the basis of this 1987; Carr, et al., 1992; Tibbalds, 1992; Mitchell, 1996; Madanipour, 2000). paper was undertaken in the School of Attractive and alluring public spaces have been placed at the centre of Architecture, Planning and Landscape at the University of Newcastle by Müge Akkar for many post-industrial cities. Starting from the 1980s, public spaces have her Ph.D. An earlier version of this paper been also increasingly used as the key components of city-marketing and was presented at the Open Spaces-People Places Conference in Edinburgh, Scotland in urban regeneration programmes in Britain (Crilley, 1993; Goodwin, 1993; 27-29 October 2004. Sadler, 1993; Hubbard, 1995; Hall and Hubbard, 1996). Despite the The author owes her greatest thanks to resurgence of broad interest in public spaces, urban design and planning those interviewed in the fieldwork literature, frequently hinting at the diminishing ‘inclusivity’ of public programme of this research; i.e. 32 and 33 year-old bus drivers, 37, 46 and 50 year-old spaces in post-industrial cities, has raised the question of how far they are taxi drivers, a 20 year-old street trader, truly ‘inclusive’.
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