Presentations

The last few days have been pretty crazy being torn from experiencing and living in Sheffield to analysing its use, culture, identity and function especially around the city centre.

Part of my last few days has been around understanding Sheffield’s city centre along with specific mention of the Castle Markets located within the Castle gate area not far from the Don River. Come to think of it I am quite surprised at the lack of water frontage use and development within Sheffield, something that is highly sought after and generally one of the more prominent types of real estate back in Australia. While walking around the Castle Market viewing various people using the space it was amazing to think that the city harboured so many run down shops and businesses. It also made me wonder what it would mean for those that regularly use this space, will there be other places to conduct their shopping or for those to sell their unwanted goods to the masses?

Something I noticed more was the higher density of urban development that Sheffield and (England) has in comparison to Australia without the loss of rural landscapes especially in Sheffield, possibly the UK’s largest village? However, with such a large amount of students and professionals starting to live in Sheffield which seems like the only real drive or vision that is being pursued by post-industrial Sheffield what does that mean for the communities within Sheffield’s city? Will we see middle class and the capable aspiring working class moving to other areas or continue to seek the benefits of the professional lifestyle in Sheffield? What would that mean for those ill-equipped to better their opportunities? Will they move further out onto the fringes of the city like many do as inner city living heightens in demand and expense? If this is then the case is Sheffield just heading towards problems that many global cities have?

Sheffield isn’t the only place in Transition, there are many that are on the tip of needing to transition, I think part of Sheffield’s difficulty with transitioning effectively is partly due to its ‘forced’ de-industrialisation, the move was not out of choice nor was it the only thing for Sheffield to have done and as such meant that there was no drive to move forward in a different direction.

Despite all this concern about if Sheffield even knows its future I still found it really quite surprising how comfortable living within Sheffield is, I did expect a more significant culture change, or rather to be able to spot the differences more regularly. Although among saying that it became clear I was different everytime I tried to order something that I thought was familiar.

- Josh Lee (Bachelor of Community Development)