Fables of the reconstruction: Inner-urban regeneration, city centre living and the reinvention of urban space Chris Allen and Sarah Blandy Correspondence to first named author at; Centre for Regional Economic and Social Research Sheffield Hallam University Unit 10, Science Park City Campus, Howard Street SHEFFIELD, S1 1WB Email:
[email protected] Tel: +44 114 224 4522 Introduction There have been relatively few studies of city centre living in the United Kingdom. However, the limited number of studies that do exist tend to treat city centre dwellers as a relatively undifferentiated mass (e.g. Darbyshire, 1990; Fitzsimmons, 1998; Couch, 1999; Madden et al, 2001; Blackaby et al, 2002; Seo, 2002; Fox and Unsworth, 2003). First, city centre living tends to be characterised in terms of its appeal to young, single professionals as if this social group constituted an undifferentiated mass. Second, these young, single person households are assumed to follow a ‘housing career’ starting in the city centre and concluding in the suburbs. Third, these ‘housing career’ moves to the suburbs tend to be presented in terms of a desire to access better quality facilities (such as schools), greenery and low noise environments. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that city centre dwellers are not undifferentiated masses that are distinguished from other housing markets simply by virtue of the demographic characteristics of their housing consumers. City centre dwellers are shown to be complex and differentiated group of housing consumers that occupy a number of distinct positions within the city centre housing market, which should therefore be seen as composed of a series of sub-markets that operate according to their own unique socio-economic and cultural logic.