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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A critical hope is the foundation to #BuildBackBetter

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by Julian Dobson and Rowland Atkinson In the middle of the COVID-19 crisis, the hashtag #buildbackbetter became a rallying cry on social media for those who saw the need and opportunity to reconstruct our cities. Demands included closing streets to traffic to reduce pollution and create spaces for play; investing in renewable energy; creating affordable […]

Book review: The Metropolitan Revolution

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Will a ‘metropolitan revolution’ bring new life to the US and Britain? There are plenty of city leaders who’d like to think so. In this review for the journal People, Place and Policy we take a look at the popular recipe retailed by the Brookings Institution in Washington, and raise a few questions. You can read the full […]

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 […]

Can Belfast become a city fit for the future?

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A few minutes after you leave Belfast City Airport to head into the city centre, a row of fluttering purple flags greets you. They signal that the estate behind the fence is the territory of the Ulster Volunteer Force. Seven months ago they weren’t there. It’s a visible sign of the fragility of Belfast’s recovery […]

The legacy of Alderman Graves, and lessons for regeneration

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A couple of weeks ago I was asked to give a lecture at Sheffield University’s Interdisciplinary Centre of the Social Sciences. The talk focused on people-centred approaches to regeneration, and how they could be encouraged in today’s policy context. The full text of the talk and the accompanying slides are here. I also wrote a […]