50 ways to regeneratively reimagine our High Streets. A co-creating workshop.

Sara, Rachel; Rice, Louis; Doron, Holly

Abstract

This co-authoring workshop provides a collectivist space for participants who have been involved in radical rethinking of High Streets/Main streets internationally to work together and contribute to the future and imagined role of these spaces. Traditional High Streets have declined with abandoned buildings and boarded up shopfronts, often as a result of large out-of-town retail malls and online shopping; their decline also takes the heart out of local communities. Whilst there is already much research and knowledge on the nature of the problems for dying high streets, there is little in the way of solutions for these spaces, and even less which explores ideas which are environmentally and socially restorative. This collectivist and exploratory workshop uses design to test out transformations that bring ecological and systems thinking to the fore in order to generate a catalogue of radical approaches and visionary ideas for High Streets.
The co-authoring workshop starts by sharing Co-lab Dudley’s principles for collaboration (move at the speed of trust, be good ancestors, create the conditions for curiosity and experimentation etc) and celebrating emerging radical ideas (the high street as a series of natural sewage treatment pools, as woodland for local building materials and space for rewilding, as place of communal food production and consumption, as a site of localised energy generation). The workshop uses 'cultural animation' to bring together diverse participants in imagining a future high street built upon regenerative design principles: moving beyond sustainability toward a net-positive, co-evolutionary and interdependent relationship between humans and the living world.

• Presentation Conference Type: Other
• Conference Name: Architectural Humanities Research Association Conference 'Building Ground for Climate Collectivism'
• Start Date: Nov 17, 2022
• End Date: Nov 18, 2022
• Deposit Date: Jan 29, 2024
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/11641262