Dr Bronwen Edwards

Between 1957 and 1972, Piccadilly Circus was the object of a series of major plans and comprehensive redevelopment proposals that would have fundamentally transformed the character of this key central London site. The Piccadilly plans have conventionally been seen as part of an assault by modernist planners and property speculators on the established cityscape. Drawing upon recent perspectives that treat plans as both fantasies of metropolitan life and as complex events, this article argues that the unbuilt plans for Piccadilly were more complicated and contested responses to contemporary attitudes towards the city. The article also argues that these visions altered significantly between the late 1950s and the end of the 1960s, particularly in their responses to flows and movement in the city, and their accommodations of the new consumer cultures of the period.

This paper explores the twentieth-century rise and fall of the traditional department store Bourne and Hollingsworth in London's Oxford Street as a means of re-examining the historical geographies of metropolitan consumption cultures. The research moves away from a preoccupation with urban retail's novelty and spectacle towards a consideration of the more conventional and conservative kinds of consumption that have been a vital part of the retail ecology of many major cities in the twentieth century. The paper analyses the intersections of different dimensions of the history of metropolitan consumption: with a culturalist focus on consumer identity and urban microgrographies; but also an examination of this as a family-owned, paternalistic business, and as a material space, both as a building designed and refurbished by its owners, management, architects and shopfitters, and as a particular site within the routes and flows of the West End. The final approach to Bourne and Hollingsworth as urban property, as a distinctive form of capital asset in the city, allows a new understanding of the vulnerability of this kind of retailing by the later twentieth century. The study shows that an emphasis on the significance of cultures of consumption provides at best a partial explanation for changes in the landscapes of consumption: it is argued that cities are the sites of complex intersections between cultural practices and other kinds of geography, in this case those of asset values and opportunities for property speculation.

This article explores the cultures of the post-war West End through the design of its retail buildings and shopping streets, considering the designs themselves in addition to the publishing and debates surrounding them in the professional architectural and popular presses. It looks at how the rethinking of the physical fabric and the spaces of the West End's central shopping area was a crucial part of the re-imagining of London's identity by planners and architects in the decades following World War II. It is argued that this new geographical focus of metropolitan planning opened a fresh chapter in the historically problematic relationship between architecture, particularly architectural modernism, and fleeting, feminised consumer cultures. Whilst taking account of continued traditional strands within metropolitan shop design, this research points to the development of two distinct and novel approaches to retail architecture by the 1960s. In the first, the store was conceived as an integral part of the comprehensively developed centre, set amid a rationally planned urban landscape of efficient road grids, pedestrian decks and towering modern office blocks. This was architecture-as-planning, which prioritised spatial concerns and negated the surface. In the second, the shop was an independent element, espousing an ephemeral, even provisional, architecture of surface. This form was epitomised by the fashionable boutiques of 'swinging' London which camped out in the lower storeys of old buildings within London's historic street patterns. These shops were supremely 'of the moment', yet also very much in tune with the West End's well established fashionable consumption cultures.

The article uses a case study of British Vogue to examine the geographies of fashionable feminine consumption in the 1930s, showing how the magazine both reflected and constructed these geographers for its readers. It did so through a series of visual and textual maps and urban narratives, which could assist actual or imagined shopping trips. It uncovers a shopping geography centred on the West End of London, focussed particularly in the tight cluster of streets at its heart: Oxford Street, Regent Street, Bond Street and Piccadilly, along with the smaller streets running behind and between them. In addition to mapping the shopping routes within the West End, the article positions the West End within broader national and international networks of consumption. The article considers how these routes and networks shifted over time, and were strongly inflected by class, gender and nationality, constituted variously for each reader. The article draws conclusions about the continued importance of metropolitan consumption for a particular group of female consumers/readers, during a period whose consumption history has more frequently been written in terms of the home or the suburb. A broader argument is also made for the usefulness of geographies within research into consumption cultures.

This article is about the branches of fashionable London menswear retailers on ocean liners 1930–1960. It examines the design and spaces of shops on Cunard liners, and the connected discourses about masculine consumption cultures and geographies contained in trade journals, advertising and business records. The article draws together perspectives from consumption and design histories and geographies. It addresses the intersection between men's fashion, consumption and travel geographies on liner decks. It considers how metropolitan menswear retailers, adjusting to changing overseas markets, engaged with transatlantic leisure travel cultures. This created a complex web of production, retail and consumption spanning the Atlantic, whilst also demonstrating the elasticity of metropolitan consumption geographies. This study of liner shops re-examines the urban, 'located' nature of mid twentieth century fashionable consumption culture. It rethinks the ‘otherness’ of historic maritime life, repositioning the interior of the ocean liner as an extension of and staging of West End consumption space. It is also explored as a place of transformation, for preparing for the metropolitan.

The thesis investigates the evolution of arenas for popular culture since 1980 in Europe, and specifically in France and England. Using a qualitative research strategy and a thematic and comparative approach the research focuses on arena developing in France and England, using two case studies, the cities of Bordeaux and Leeds. The timeframe for the research is c1980s to 2019, a period which saw the emergence of the ‘dedicated’ indoor music arenas. The thesis explores the development of arenas through a governance perspective exploring, decision-making, cultural attitudes, and urban spaces for new consumerism. The research highlights the decision-making processes within different political and administrative systems, both nationally, and locally in Bordeaux and Leeds. It identifies similarities and contrasts in process. The research suggests that in both cases the actual decision-making was indecisive, with neither city having a defined vision for the development of arenas. The research findings suggest that the time scale for the development of the arenas was exacerbated by internal political conflicts in both cities – between the mayors in Bordeaux, whilst in Leeds, the external pressures of a neighbouring authority. The thesis also explores issues of arena ownership and the relationship between public and private investments in cultural infrastructure. The thesis similarly considers the impact of local cultural policy on decision-making related to the provision of local cultural infrastructure. The thesis is situated within a literature focused on the development of venues for popular music, and more specifically presents a comparative analysis of how these develop in specific places. The thesis highlights how, within contrasting political and administrative systems, decision-making related to major cultural infrastructure projects is often faced with similar challenges. The thesis extends the discussion and understanding of decision-making in a comparative context and adds to an understanding of the response to the accommodation of popular culture since the 1980s. In so doing it contributes to knowledge through its exploration and analysis of the governance and politics of cultural infrastructure provision.

Many historic cities have experienced the challenges common to other cities since the 1960s, including deindustrialisation. An additional issue has been the need to conserve the historic built environment in a period of economic change. Historic cities have also seen a growth in the appreciation of heritage related employment opportunities in the service economy and especially in tourism. This thesis focuses on the role of local governance practice in the management of that process of change, examining what specific characteristics in historic cities might build and reinforce effective governance mechanisms. This focus has provided the opportunity to position historic cities, and particularly conservation, in the wider theoretical discourse on local governance.  York provided an opportunity for a single case study, being a ‘jewel’ historic city that also experienced significant losses of manufacturing employment. An historical institutionalist approach was adopted enabling a thick and deep understanding of the processes of institutional change over a long period of development and economic restructuring. Narratives were prepared on the governance of conservation, economic development and tourism that demonstrate how the qualities of a place influenced governance mechanisms. Evidence was gathered from documentary and interview sources, the latter especially informing the motivations of participants in governance processes.  The thesis concludes that regime theory is appropriate to explain the interaction of national, local and voluntary organisations in conservation in the research period. The role of independent institutions in York, with the financial capacity to act, (in science development and tourism as well as conservation), enabled some of the governance mechanisms to be categorised as regimes. Underpinning governance activity in York has been strength in social capital formation, occurring over a very long historic period and maintained through processes of path dependence. The discovery of regimes challenges a literature that postulates regimes as USA centric and not a feature of UK governance. Overall the thesis demonstrates the importance of a historical approach to institutionalist studies.

This session will explore the border between motherhood and academia. Presenters apply the geographical lens to their experiences of motherhood, and the ways in which ‘geographer-mothers’ navigate the borderlands between academia and motherhood. The session highlights research undertaken about and within these borderlands. Geographer mothers often share how we think geographically about everyday encounters with children’s television, school performances and displays, navigating the urban environment and spaces of motherhood. We share stories of divergence and melding of career and lifepaths, and the difficulties of researching at this intersection: navigating speed and slowness, the esoteric and the mundane, the cerebral and the bodily, excitement and monotony. This research sometimes becomes part of our paid academic work, but often doesn’t. Consequently, this less formal research takes a back seat to our professional focus and becomes forgotten about or hidden, just as the motherwork itself is hidden. These issues can feel particularly urgent in certain periods: journeys through fertility, pregnancy, adoption, maternity leave. Because of the intense domestic labour required at these times, these ideas are often left unspoken, half-developed, overtaken by more ‘pressing’ work. This session provides space for mothers to share this work, bringing this informal labour into the open, providing an opportunity for these insights to be shared.

This paper examines a residential writing retreat for final year human geography and planning students held in a youth hostel in North Yorkshire, considering how it is experienced by students. This is a curriculum innovation for the dissertation module that combines aspects of geography fieldtrip and writing workshop to support the dissertation writing process and build community. Drawing on the concept of ‘the slow university’ (Berg & Seeber, 2016; O’Neill, 2014) where the ‘slowing down’ and ‘stripping away’ of the usual structures and patterns of teaching and learning create a critical and creative space for thinking and writing, we explore whether and how the Malham retreat makes space for writing. The study is also informed by our spatial approach to the processes and content of research and teaching as geographers (Massey, 2005). Qualitative focus group evidence was gathered on the student and staff experience and used to evaluate the field trip (Breen, 2006; Krueger & Casey, 2009; Stewart & Shamdasani, 2015). This paper presents the results of this evaluation and it is argued that the retreat made space for writing in three ways: 1. The space of countryside, nature and youth hostel. 2. The formal and informal learning spaces staff and students constructed during the retreat 3. ‘Head space’- the social, psychological and emotional room the retreat made for staff and students. This model of residential writing retreat could be transferable to dissertation and other modules involving a substantive writing project on all kinds of undergraduate courses.