Beyond masterplanning lecture: An interesting question…
Professor Guy Julier of Leeds Metropolitan University who hosted the Beyond Masterplanning lecture last night came up with an interesting question…
I thought I would post it up to encourage some debate. He said…
‘Regeneration specialists frequently use the word ‘community’ in terms of the end-users. But what do they mean by ‘community’? If they mean merely the people who live in a locality, isn’t this a rather outmoded idea of community? Don’t many people these days belong to several overlapping, multi-layered or even disconnected communities at the same time?
Someone can connect with their neighbourhood and those who live and/or work in it. But they may also have other, sometimes stronger, connections to other groups. These might be specialist interest groups such as weekend hobbyists. But they might be held together by ethnic, cultural or family ties that cross local, regional or even national boundaries. Or they might be ‘communities of practice’ within a neighbourhood, such as parents of a local school. So isn’t there a danger in using the term ‘community’ in a rather monolithic way? How can regeneration respond to a more complex definition of ‘communities’?’
Comments please…
