Urban Renewal of the Potteries, North Staffordshire

Abstract

Recently, in the West Midlands, the United Kingdom, there has been a significant decline of its economic-and social status. Especially, the circumstances are serious in the Potteries which is a synonym for the city of Stoke-on-Trent, North Staffordshire. The Potteries has a narrowly based economy with an over-reliance on the traditional industries such as pottery manufacture and coal mining, in which 29% of total workers are employed, and yet of which current laborer requirements are declining. These traditional industries are founded largely on the local extraction of natural resources which has produced extensive areas of derelict land such as slag heaps and pit works. The city assumes the unique form of a linear polynuclear structure as a whole, but its conurbation dose not reach maturity, and six original towns are rather separated from each other. As a result of evolution of the area's basic urban structure in the late 19th century and early 20th century, there has been a legacy of areas of pre 1914 age houses with intermixed industrial and commercial premises, often dissected by busy roads. Thus, decadent and inadequate environment stemming from dereliction and non-conforming land use is a serious problem in the urban cores, associated with poor housing conditions.Therefore, of particular importance will be policies and assistance directed towards broading the economic base of the area specifically by diversifying and expanding the employment structure of the area, as well as improving the living environment such as derelict land reclamation, regulation of mixed land use and improvement of housing. The City Council has enforced a series of the policies to improve the city economy and environment, including the Slum Clearance Programme, the General Improvement Area Programme, the Derelict Land Reclamation Programme, the Sewage Disposal Programme and the Major Roads Programme.Generally speaking, in many cases of cities with medium size in the United States and Japan, the emphasis of their urban renewal is laid on functional resusciation of their urban centers. However, as concerns urban renewal of the Potteries, the subject is laid on improvement of environment. In this sense, the social welfare policy comes in front of economic policy.The areal problems of the Potteries have basically been brought as the result of rapid industrialization by extraction of natural resources since the 19th century. If a city has engraved its nature with bequests such as heaps of rubble, old buildings of no use and nonconforming land use through its long history, and if the city reaches the limit of a self-contradiction to its further development, the problems are similar in nature, to those recognized in the Potteries.