urbanpollinators.co.uk

Welcome to Urban Pollinators

This site exists as an archive of Urban Pollinators’ work. Julian Dobson, Urban Pollinators’ director until 2022, can now be contacted via the Centre for Regional Economic and Social Research at Sheffield Hallam University.

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Why diggers are better than levellers

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God, so the saying goes, helps those who helps themselves. If you’re not of a godly persuasion, you might say you make your own luck. Action brings its own rewards. These are truisms that have filtered their way into philosophy and social policy, but it’s worth stepping back and doing a bit of de-filtering. I […]

‘Written in community’ – the story of Incredible Edible

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There’s a convention at book launches that the author signs copies bought by the guests. Something strange happened to that convention on Saturday at the launch of the story of Incredible Edible Todmorden. Guests started asking for signatures not only from the authors, but from others who’d appeared in the book – friends and co-workers […]

Why we need urban development heretics

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When shopping centre developer Hammerson walked away from Sheffield’s much-vaunted New Retail Quarter last year, it could have been a blessing in disguise. Here was an opportunity to radically rethink the ‘mall without walls’ template for city centre regeneration. Sheffield City Council’s chief executive, John Mothersole, has been quoted as saying that the next iteration of the […]

New book tells the story of Yorkshire’s food revolution

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The story of the Incredible Edible movement that begun in Todmorden and has now spread across the world is to be told in a new book by Urban Pollinators writer Joanna Dobson. What began with ‘propaganda planting’ in cemeteries and on station platforms in a former mill town has now become a global network of […]

The people-centred city

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We’ve recently visited Sri Lanka as a keynote speaker the University of Moratuwa’s conference on Cities, People and Places. In a country that is seeking to get to grips with reconciliation and reconstruction after a brutal conflict, creating cities that work for people is a key priority. The text and slides of the keynote have […]