Abstract
ABSTRACTGenuine engagement about how best to achieve liveable urban futures should be part of planning’s raison-d’etre but it has a chequered history of delivery. Exhibitions harnessing the communicative power of mixed media and linked to a progressive and responsive programme of focused discussion and debate remain relevant to community consultation and civic engagement. Terry Farrell’s concept of the ‘urban room’ to involve citizens in engaging with the past, present, and future of towns and cities offers a contemporary refreshment of the approach propounded by Patrick Geddes from the early 1900s. The possibilities of creating novel and compelling opportunities for civic discourse in this guise are explored in this review article though the Newcastle City Futures pop-up exhibition and events held in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK in 2014. This event carries lessons for imagining how planners, developers, governments, and community groups may come together to critically and creatively forge future propositions for the urban condition.
Highlights
Engaging communities at higher rungs than the manipulative tokenism recognized in Arnstein’s ladder of citizen participation remains an enduring imperative in urban planning processes.[1]
The Newcastle City Futures exhibition was not consciously initiated in emulation of Geddes’ ideas, it testifies to their continuing relevance
The Newcastle experiment and its downstream impact suggest that it is time that the city-wide exhibition returned as an extension to proactive civic participation, but a key question remains: who should resource and manage those spaces?
Summary
Engaging communities at higher rungs than the manipulative tokenism recognized in Arnstein’s ladder of citizen participation remains an enduring imperative in urban planning processes.[1]. The aim of the paper is to explore a specific initiative, the Newcastle City Futures exhibition, to engage the public in a debate on urban change utilizing imagery and more creative means, rather than strategies, plans, and traditional consultation methods. Large numbers of people really did want to engage directly with both the private and public sectors to talk about what they would like to see in Newcastle and Gateshead, and contribute positive, constructive and thoughtful comments about the future Issues raised by this interactive process included calls to fully pedestrianize Grey Street in central Newcastle, the introduction of cycle lanes, improving shopping, extending the Metro, greening the city, a new southern entrance to the railway station, and the provision of affordable housing in the city centre. The features that are common to all three models and could work well when applied to most places are those that are: targeted to broad non-expert audiences; predominantly image-based; and are housed in neutral central venues
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