Urban Histories Module - MA Urban Design 2011 - Sheffield School of Architecture
In an essay concerning the folk festival Fasnacht in Basel, Christine Macy considers such an event, that occupies public and private spaces all over the city for a week, as 'a form of urban design through public programming – call it temporary urbanism'.1 For Macy, the Fasnacht festival is an expression of the relationships between different groups of citizens, their cultural and political differences played out among the city's most intimate alleys and public places. She traces these relationships and their expression since its medieval beginnings. This inspired me to look at Sheffield's own current temporary and temporal urbanism, the events and festivals that constitute it and the spaces they occupy. In this essay I will ask what are the drivers of this temporal urbanism and what do they express.
In the last two years Sheffield has seen the rise of a home grown music festival; Tramlines. Unlike the city's other music festivals (and other music festivals nationally) it is based in the city centre. All of it performances are free and spread across over 50 venues that include pubs, clubs and three outdoor stages in the public realm. Tramlines lasts for three days, and in 2010 it is estimated that 125,000 people attended.2 Such huge numbers easily occupy not only the designated venues but also the streets and squares in between. Music Festivals have become common cultural events in their out-of-town/middle-of-no-where form, so to have this atmosphere transposed to the everyday city creates a very special atmosphere.
The main stage is on Devonshire Green around which an 'arena' is created by cordoning off the neighbouring car-park and the west end of Division St. Entry to the arena is free but the large numbers create a queue that runs along Division St toward the centre. This intensity of people itself adds to the atmosphere as can be seen in figure 1. Several private venues on or just off Divison St make it the heart of the festival, while at the eastern end, on Barker's Pool is secondary stage. A smaller stage is found in the Peace Gardens (fig. 2)
The organisers are a private company, but they are strongly supported by the City Council. The total cost of the festival in 2010 was £150,000, with £135,000 of funding coming from the Council, although this is expected to be reduced as the festival becomes more self-sufficient. The Council considers the investment good value as they report that the city centre's businesses recorded an addition of £2.25 million in income over the three days. This is in contrast to the expected income during the time of year in which many businesses struggle due to the exodus of students over the summer. Local and independent businesses especially reported that the festival kept them trading through this period.3
Another of Sheffield's major events that temporarily transforms it's centre is FrightNight.4 Billed as a 'mass promenade event', 40,000 people attend this 'Britain's Biggest Halloween Party'. Staged on a Sunday from 4 – 8pm, the main public spaces are used; Fargate, Barker's Pool, Orchard Square, Millennium Square and the Winter Gardens. Roads are closed around Fargate; Surrey Street and Leopold Street. While attractions include street theatre and celebrity lookalikes; Harry Potter and Cybermen, the greatest spectacle is the 'audience' themselves who all dress up in Halloween costume.
These two events are not based upon a historic tradition such as the Fastnach festival in Basel described by Macy. Rather than being an expression of the population's character and identities, Sheffield's events are part of a different tradition, engaged in not by citizens but by local authorities with different aims and objectives.
A 're-discovery' of European city centres had been growing since the early 1970s, where local authorities aimed to bring their populations back in from the suburbs by staging cultural events and improving the infrastructure that would make them feel welcome; pedestrianisation, better street lighting, public transport. Their objective was to re-establish the centre as a stage for 'civic identity and public sociability'.5
The majority of British cities did not follow this continental example until later. By the 90s Sheffield was in danger of becoming a doughnut city; with rings of development around an empty decaying centre. As part of the British Urban Renaissance the City Council published the City Centre Master-plan in 2000 setting out the strategies for physical improvements within a financial agenda. In 2008, with the centre transformed an updated City Centre Master-plan was produced that continued to link the quality of urban design with economic growth:
'In order to become more competitive, the city centre needs to increase the level of investment and visitors. These are essential elements in developing a set of attractive city products and an improved quality of life [...] The Master-plan includes a number of proposals to increase footfall and activity and to attract and retain visitors. The most successful drivers to increase market demand will come from a growth in the visitor economy based on an event strategy and a clearly differentiated cultural/ leisure offer'.6
In 2009 an Economic Master-plan for the city was also produced, which developed the theme of an strategic events programme:
'Cities are increasingly using events to improve their image, stimulate urban development and attract visitors and investment. Events are great catalysts for not only attracting visitors but increasing their overall expenditure and dwell time in the city. They can create international profile, and competitive advantage in relation to other cities'.7
The council obviously has clear priorities in using the city as a platform for economic regeneration. During Fright Night in 2008, a survey of 100 people had the following results: 88% said they had come to the centre especially for this event. 93% said they generally enjoy visiting the city centre, and 87% said that they would recommend the city centre as a good place to visit.8 Apart from the figures themselves, the fact that the council is keen to quantify the people's attitude toward the city centre demonstrates their focus.
When interviewed, the city centre's Events Manager said the council is keen to work with companies staging events that can showcase the city and increase footfall.9 Their role is to 'allow partners to be creative without getting held back by bureaucracy and procedures'.10 However, she also said that despite the statement in the Master-plan, there was no overarching Events Strategy in terms of the types of events that should be pursued to fulfil its aims.
At the same time, I would argue that the city is already embracing the 'experience economy'. This is a business marketing concept which argues that greater value can be gained from a product or service if it is consumed within an 'experience' that the customer will pay for. This concept was formulated by Joseph Pine in 1999, and could be used to explain the way cities were marketing themselves as containers of particular 'experiences'.
Of course, cities like New York, Paris and London don't have to market themselves in this way, they are already synonymous with certain images and feelings.11 In 2000 Copenhagen created an accounting system to establish the economic value of the experiences it could offer; 'this should be done by first making inventories of the city's potential experience capital because the future is an experience economy in which people fulfil themselves and invent new needs'.12
Smaller cities such as Sheffield are competing with a much broader range of cities nationally and across the globe. Sheffield's city form and architectural heritage undoubtedly create a specific ambiance and urban experience, but this alone cannot compete with York's mediaeval lanes or Leeds' Victorian arcades. A city like Sheffield has to organise its own experiences and events.
If Sheffield has an experience economy it needs an experience infrastructure. This view point was supported by an interview with the Council's head Landscape Architect. He said that all the city's public spaces had been designed with the brief to allow events of different sizes to be held.13 For example the fountain at the centre of the Peace Gardens was designed not only for children to be able to run through, but so that it could also be turned off and a stage could be placed there instead. Tudor Square, has been designed with particularly smooth paving to allow performances or dance to take place without staging or platforms, and at the same time leaves space in one corner for a giant TV screen which is used when international snooker tournaments take place inside the Crucible Theatre.
But there are criticisms of such an approach, as Tracy Metz explains; 'witness the birth of the Event City. In historic city centres, every charming street and picturesque square is pressed into service as a podium where an event can be organised'. She also expresses concern over the way that public space used as an generator of income; 'increasingly becomes a commodity, [...] a street or square becomes a temporary place that can hardly distinguish itself from the interior of a mall'.14 A dominating commercial/corporate presence at an event can easily blur the division between private and publicly owned space.
Metz goes on to describe the Event City as a tool of city branding. Sheffield's aim is undoubtedly to improve its national and international profile: While Lofgren agrees that 'a city is not a vessel that can be filled with symbolic messages or cultural connotations'.15 Indeed, Sheffield may look at Bradford, one of its competitors, and its successful Mela Festival. Although it is subsidised and supported by its council, Charles Landry notes that it is a vital expression of the city's Asian community, significantly boosting their cultural confidence and improving race relations. It is a good example of a nationally recognised event that has grown from a grass roots activity.
Perhaps Sheffield could look elsewhere to find a less managed event that expresses its temporal urbanism. I would argue that there are other activities within the city's cultural life that can be seen in this way, although they are not organised. 'Friday night out on West St' is an event that does not feature as part of the city's brand, but has been as equally part of the city's temporal urbanism. Although its not a festival, it is a riot of colour and noise that colonises public and private space for a short period. Middle class students mix with Sheffield's working class, and although it represents a mono-culture of contemporary music and fashion, it is one that has been part of the city's history since it began.
A more recent temporal urban phenomenon that Sheffield experiences is the movement of the student population itself. This creates a city of two very tangible states; empty and full. In the city centre business slows down in July, bars and clubs become quiet, and student accommodation blocks shut down. In some of the suburbs whole terraced streets are cleared out. And then in September, like in spring, they are re-populated again.
Finally, with a broader idea of how Sheffield expresses its temporal urbanism, Landry notes that even 'the urban renewal process can itself become a spectacle'.16 This is surely a continuous event that Sheffield can claim to excel in, and could be another of its temporal urbanisms. As a friend of mine once remarked (while negotiating some never ending road works); “Sheffield eh?, it'll be great when its finished.”17 This ironic one-liner could only come from a local who had witnessed his city's spluttering transformation for too long, and was resigned not to wait for the completed state but to enjoy the 'event' that is its constant change. Of course the process of regeneration and development includes elements of hype, expectation, tension and release. It may not be an 'experience' that the authorities can market or even control, but citizens are participants within it, actively or not. Gitte Marling quotes Zygmunt Bauman as stating 'City and city change are almost synonymous. Change is the quality of city life and the mode of urban existence'. 18
Bibliography
Creative Sheffield, Economic Master-plan (Sheffield City Council 2010)
Creative Sheffield, City Centre Master-plan (Sheffield City Council 2008)
Marling, Gitte, 'Why Leave the City on Holidays?' in Fun City, ed by Marling, Gitte and Zerlang, Martin,(Copenhagen: The Danish architectural Press 2007) pp 37-56
Henwood, Tessa, Fright Night event research results 29/10/08– (Sheffield Events Company, 2008)
Landry, Charles and Bianchini, Franco, ed., The Creative City (London: Demos 1995)
Landry, Charles, and others, The Art of Regeneraiton, (London: Comedia 1996)
Lofgren, Ovar, First we take Manhattan..., in Fun City, ed by Marling, Gitte and Zerlang, Martin,(Copenhagen: The Danish architectural Press 2007)
Macy, Christine, 'Festival Urbanism' in Festival Architecture, ed. By Bonnemasion, Sarah, and Macy, Christine (London: Routledge 2008) pp 238-274
Metz, Tracy, 'Fun! Leisure and Landscape' in Fun City, ed by Marling, Gitte and Zerlang, Martin,(Copenhagen: The Danish architectural Press 2007) pp 24-34
Sheffield Events Company, Fright Night Website, Fright Night, < http://www.sheffieldevents.com/sheffield_fright_night.php > [accessed on 02/02/2011]
Sheffield Music City, Draft Report Tramlines 2010, (Sheffield City Council, 2010)
Thwaites, Kevin, and Simkins, Ian, Experiential Landscape, (London: Routledge 2007)
Worthington, John, 'Giving Meaning to the Experience Economy' in Urban Design Futures, ed by Rowland, Jon and Moor, Malcolm, (London: Routledge 2008) ppp 159-169
1 Macy, Christine, 'Festival Urbanism' in Festival Architecture, ed. By Bonnemasion and Macy, (London: Routledge 2008) pp 241
2 Sheffield Music City, Draft Report Tramlines 2010, (Sheffield City Council, 2010)
3 Sheffield Music City, Draft Report Tramlines 2010, (Sheffield City Council, 2010)
5 Charles Landry and others, The Art of Regeneraiton, (London: Comedia 1996) pp 28
6 Creative Sheffield, City Centre Masterplan, (Sheffield City Council 2008) pp 6
7 Creative Sheffield, Economic Masterplan (Sheffield City Council 2008) pp 27
8 Tessa Henwood, Fright Night event research results 29/10/08– (Sheffield Events Company, 2008)
9 Natasha Wagstaff, City Centre Events Manager, Sheffield City Council, interviewed on 10/01/2011.
10 Sheffield Music City, Draft Report Tramlines 2010, (Sheffield City Council, 2010)
11 Lofgren, Ovar, 'First we take Manhattan...', in Fun City, ed by Marling, Gitte and Zerlang, Martin,(Copenhagen: The Danish architectural Press 2007) pp 95
12 Lofgren, Ovar, 'First we take Manhattan...', in Fun City, pp 85
13 Richard Watts, Principal Landscape Architect, Sheffield City Council, interviewed on 02/02/2011
14 Metz, Tracy, 'Fun! Leisure and Landscape' in Fun City, ed by Marling, Gitte and Zerlang, Martin,(Copenhagen: The Danish architectural Press 2007) pp 30
15 Lofgren, Ovar, 'First we take Manhattan...', in Fun City, ed by Marling, Gitte and Zerlang, Martin,(Copenhagen: The Danish architectural Press 2007) pp 95
16 Charles Landry and Franco Bianchini ed., The Creative City (London: Demos 1995) pp 4
17 Pete Tissington, (Sheffield resident, and friend) in conversation whilst negotiating road works on Division St during summer 2008.
18 Gitte Marling, 'Why Leave the City on Holidays?' in Fun City, ed by Marling, Gitte and Zerlang, Martin,(Copenhagen: The Danish architectural Press 2007) pp 39