Architectural Culture as a Barrier to Urban Regeneration

The importance of involving local residents and workers in the regeneration of run-down urban areas is now enshrined in UK central government policy, through such programmes as Estate Action and City Challenge. However, it is widely accepted that effective community involvement is difficult to achieve in practice; and it is clear that one of the reasons for this difficulty stems from the presence of cultural barriers between architects and local people. The presence and importance of these barriers has been confirmed by various practitioners’ accounts (for example Thompson, 1988) and is consistently clear from the authors’ own consultancy experience in tenant-consultation work with the Oxford Brookes University Urban Regeneration Consultancy (URC) in a variety of situations, over the last six years (Bentley, 1993).

https://doi.org/10.35483/ACSA.Intl.1995.18

Volume Editors
John K. Edwards