Article contents
The state and post-industrial urban regeneration: the reinvention of south Cardiff
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 31 July 2017
Abstract:
South Cardiff was once dependent on the export of coal and the production of steel, but these activities had faded by the 1970s, creating economic stagnation and physical dereliction. However, the area was rechristened ‘Cardiff Bay’ in the mid-1980s and was the focus of an ambitious and contested state-funded regeneration. This article argues that regeneration was broadly successful, although not without failures, and that government remained willing to intervene heavily in some small areas. The main contribution is to identify and analyse how local authorities retained influence over regeneration, in contrast to approaches taken elsewhere by central government.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017
References
1 Interview with Lord Crickhowell (Nicholas Edwards), Conservative MP for Pembroke (1970–87), secretary of state for Wales (1979–87), 14 Dec. 2011.
2 Quoted in Johnes, M., ‘Cardiff: the making and development of the capital city of Wales’, Contemporary British History, 26 (2012), 509–28, at 521CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
3 Punter, J., ‘Cardiff Bay: an exemplar of design-led regeneration?’, in Hooper, A. and Punter, J. (eds.), Capital Cardiff 1975–2020: Regeneration, Competitiveness and the Urban Environment (Cardiff, 2006), 149–78Google Scholar; Thomas, H. and Imrie, R., ‘Urban policy, modernisation and the regeneration of Cardiff Bay’, in Imrie, R. and Thomas, H. (eds.), British Urban Policy: An Evaluation of the Urban Development Corporations, 2nd edn (London, 1999), 106–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
4 Loughlin, M., Gelfand, M.D. and Young, K., Half a Century of Municipal Decline (London, 1985), xiiGoogle Scholar.
5 As examples, see Brownill, S. and O'Hara, G., ‘From planning to opportunism? Re-examining the creation of the London Docklands Development Corporation’, Planning Perspectives, 30 (2015), 537–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wetherell, S., ‘Freedom planned: Enterprise Zones and urban non-planning in post-war Britain’, Twentieth Century British History, 27 (2016), 266–89CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lever, W. and Moore, C., The City in Transition: Policies and Agencies for the Economic Regeneration of Clydeside (Oxford, 1986)Google Scholar.
6 Thomas, B., ‘The growth of population’, in Rees, F. et al. (eds.), The Cardiff Region (Cardiff, 1960), 111–17, at 111Google Scholar.
7 Davies, J., Cardiff (Cardiff, 2002), 64Google Scholar.
8 Davies, J., A History of Wales (London, 1994), 470Google Scholar.
9 Daunton, M.J., Coal Metropolis: Cardiff 1870–1914 (Leicester, 1977), 46Google Scholar.
10 Thomas, ‘The growth of population’, 111.
11 Quoted in Davies, J., Cardiff and the Marquesses of Bute (Cardiff, 1981), 266Google Scholar.
12 Finch, P., ‘Culture and the city’, Planet, 38 (2001), 19–25, at 19Google Scholar.
13 Morgan, R., Cardiff: Half and Half a Capital (Llandysul, 1994), 33Google Scholar.
14 Interview with Ken Poole, economic development officer at South Glamorgan County Council (1980s), 19 Oct. 2011.
15 Interview with Lord Crickhowell.
16 Best, S., A Whim Set in Concrete: The Campaign to Stop the Cardiff Bay Barrage (Bridgend, 2004), 13Google Scholar.
17 A. Hooper, ‘Introduction’, in Hooper and Punter (eds.), Capital Cardiff 1975–2020, 1–16, at 12.
18 E. Parkinson, ‘Making places: the story of a civil engineer and town planner’ (unpublished autobiography), 37.
19 Cardiff City Council, East Moors Plan (Cardiff, 1979)Google Scholar.
20 Welsh Development Agency, Annual Report 1978–1979, 15.
21 N. Harris, ‘Planning and spatial development in Cardiff: a review of statutory development planning in the capital’, in Hooper and Punter (eds.), Capital Cardiff 1975–2020, 71–96, at 80.
22 Welsh Office, Welsh Economic Trends No. 8 (Cardiff, 1983), p. 59Google Scholar.
23 Interview with Ewart Parkinson, director of environment and planning, South Glamorgan County Council (1974–85), 17 Apr. 2012.
24 Interview with Roger Beaumont, director of economic development, South Glamorgan County Council (until 1993), 30 Nov. 2011.
25 Parkinson, ‘Making places’, 37.
26 Interview with Lord Crickhowell.
27 Johnes, ‘Cardiff: the making and development of the capital city of Wales’, 523.
28 Glamorgan Records Office (GRO), CDBC/1/1/1i, board minutes, 6 Apr. 1987.
29 Imrie and Thomas (eds.), British Urban Policy, vii.
30 C. Wren, Industrial Subsidies (Basingstoke, 1996), 139.
31 After Joel Barnett, chief secretary to the treasury in the previous Labour government.
32 Interview with Lord Crickhowell.
33 The National Archives, PREM, 19/1921, personal note from Nicholas Edwards to Margaret Thatcher, 28 Nov. 1986.
34 H. Thomas and R. Imrie ‘Assessing urban policy and the Urban Development Corporations’, in Imrie and Thomas (eds.), British Urban Policy, 3–42, at 18.
35 Interview with Sir Geoffrey Inkin, CBDC chairman (1987–2000), 1 Jul. 2012.
36 Ungersma, M., Cardiff: Celebration for a City (Tonypandy, 2000), 118Google Scholar.
37 Interview with Paddy Kitson, chair of the South Glamorgan County Council Economic Development Committee (1980s), CBDC board member (late 1980s), 30 Nov. 2011.
38 CBDC, Annual Report, 1987–88, 6.
39 Imrie and Thomas (eds.), British Urban Policy, 14.
40 CBDC, Renaissance: The Story of Cardiff Bay (Cardiff, 2000), 33Google Scholar.
41 GRO, D/D CBDC box 91/92, CBDC Corporate Plan No. 1, 1989–92, 1.
42 Punter, ‘Cardiff Bay’, 149.
43 Clapson, Mark, Anglo-American Crossroads: Urban Planning and Research in Britain, 1940–2010 (London, 2013), 139Google Scholar.
44 Interview with Paddy Kitson.
45 Gooberman, L., ‘Moving mountains: derelict land reclamation in post-war Wales’, Welsh History Review, 27 (2015), 521–58, at 549Google Scholar.
46 GRO, D350, 30, speech by secretary of state, Dec. 1986.
47 Interview with Sir Geoffrey Inkin, CBDC chairman (1987–2000), 1 Jul. 2012.
48 CBDC, Renaissance, 140.
49 Interview with Sir Geoffrey Inkin.
50 CBDC, Cardiff Bay Regeneration Strategy, 1988.
51 Grosvenor Waterside Plc, Capital Waterside, 1992, 10.
52 GRO, CDBC/1/1/3, board minutes, 13 Jul. 1987.
53 GRO, D/D CBDC box 91/92, A Strategy for Public Relations, board papers, 6 May 1988.
54 GRO, D350/26, Canton residents against the barrage, minutes, 23 Oct. 1989.
55 Best, A Whim Set in Concrete, 50.
56 GRO, CDBC/1/1/1i, board minutes, 6 Apr. 1987.
57 GRO, D350/26, papers relating to a BBC Wales investigative programme.
58 GRO, D350/26, Canton residents against the barrage, minutes, 5 Jun. 1989.
59 South Wales Echo, 28 Jul. 1991.
60 GRO, D350/26, Canton residents against the barrage, minutes, 8 Jul. 1989.
61 Ungersma, Cardiff, 121.
62 House of Commons Select Committee on the Cardiff Bay Barrage Bill, Minutes of Evidence, 5 Feb. 1992, 187.
63 Best, A Whim Set in Concrete, 256.
64 Western Mail (WM), 18 Apr. 1991.
65 CBDC, Annual Report, 1993–94, 1.
66 GRO, D/D CBDC box 91/92, CBDC Corporate Plan No. 7, 1996–99, 12.
67 CBDC, Annual Report, 1991–92, 6.
68 Best, A Whim Set in Concrete, 199.
69 CBDC, Cardiff Bay Regeneration Strategy, 1988, p. 8.
70 Punter, ‘Cardiff Bay’, 153.
71 GRO, D/D CBDC box 91/92, CBDC Corporate Plan No. 5, 1995–98, 120.
72 ESYS Consulting, ‘Evaluation of regeneration in Cardiff Bay’ (unpublished report for the Welsh Assembly Government, 2004), 62.
73 CBDC, Annual Report, 1990–91, 1.
74 WM, 13 Dec. 1994.
75 ESYS Consulting, ‘Evaluation of regeneration’, 16.
76 CBDC, Annual Report, 1994–95, 5.
77 CBDC, Annual Report, 1991–92, 9.
78 Punter, ‘Cardiff Bay’, 164.
79 CBDC, Annual Report, 1996–97, 4.
80 House of Commons Welsh Affairs Committee, The Closure of the Welsh Industrial and Maritime Museum (London, 1999), ixGoogle Scholar.
81 Crickhowell, Nicholas, Opera House Lottery: Zaha Hadid and the Cardiff Bay Project (Cardiff, 1997), 153Google Scholar.
82 Auditor General for Wales, Continuing the Regeneration of Cardiff Bay (Cardiff, 2002), 5Google Scholar.
83 WM, 1 Mar. 2016.
84 National Assembly for Wales, Audit Committee, Thursday 5 Jul. 2001, Q. 2.
85 ESYS Consulting, ‘Evaluation of regeneration’, 20, 28, 54.
86 Interview with Rhodri Morgan, Labour MP for Cardiff West (1987–2001), front bench spokesman on Welsh affairs (1992–97), first minister (2001–09), 13 Dec. 2011.
87 Interview with Sir Geoffrey Inkin.
88 WM, 22 May 1991.
89 CBDC, Sustaining Success, 1996, 5.
90 Interview with Rhodri Morgan.
- 5
- Cited by