- Urban Futures for Pendleton    996 kb by    Vrolijks, Luc & Königs, Marteen | luc@urbanprogress.nl    Short Outline The paper describes the urban renewal challenges of Pendleton (Salford, UK) and the work on the Pendleton Area Action Plan. It illustrates and evaluates the regeneration strategy based on linking urban identity, city branding and urban design. Abstract The paper describes the recent work of the author in re-inventing the identity of Pendleton, an urban district of around 14,000 people in the city of Salford. The area is now characterised by heavy deprivation. Housing complexes and public functions are heavily fenced and guarded by CCTV cameras, leaving the public realm as an urban wasteland. The Area Action Plan for Pendleton should help to turn this process around, and transform Pendleton into one of the vibrant urban districts of Salford. Its position, close to the centre of Manchester, should support such ambitious regeneration targets. Key factor in the regeneration of the area is the need to change its reputation and re-invent its urban identity. To support this process, a city branding exercise was carried out. This exercise included a series of workshops with key stakeholders, including present and future residents, entrepreneurs, social services managers, community workers and city council officials. Based on the process, the desired future identity of Pendleton was expressed with five core values: connectivity, character, vitality, communal, and shelter. The ‘desired future brand of Pendleton’ acted as the brief for the urban design. Urban design, as the basis for the Area Action Plan, was seen as a core strategy to turn around the area. In an intitial round, the team developed a series of twenty ‘urban regeneration prospects’, ranging from a proposal for a new public transport infrastructure to a toolkit for neighbourhood improvements. As part of the design process, the team identified how each prospect would contribute to the realisation of the five core values. The prospects were put up for a wider consultation process. This consultation confirmed that there was wide support for the five core values as ‘planning intentions’ for the future of Pendleton and confirmed that many of the proposed prospects were indeed seen as key contributions to meeting the aspirations of the people of Pendleton. Based on the feedback from the consultation process, a preferred regeneration strategy is currnetly drawn up. The paper concludes with an evaluation of the approaches followed. The feasibility of a direct link between urban identity, city branding and urban design is investigated and compared with other urban regeneration strategies. Keywords urban regeneration identity design options futures Case Study presented on the ISOCARP Congress 2007: Urban Trialogues   Click to open the full paper as pdf document   Click to send an email to the author(s) of this paper