3S RECIPE – Smart Shrinkage Solutions: Stoke-on-Trent (UK) Policy Brief #1. Resilient urban economy & municipal finance

This policy brief features a successful solution to low economic productivity through the development of a Central Business District (CBD). This was achieved in the 2010s in Stoke-on-Trent – a medium-size polycentric industrial city in central England, coping with economic restructuring and demographic decline. Building on local knowledge and the stakeholders’ experience in implementing this project, this brief demonstrates how to develop a solid evidence base, design and build a CBD that works effectively for the whole city. The key lesson learnt is that to build a CBD, one should utilise non-traditional co-production and experimental methods for managing a major project in an uncertain and risky environment, combining technical skills and expertise, whilst tapping into the day-to-day knowledge and experience of the local community. The brief offers a set of policy recommendations on enabling mechanisms for an effective CBD delivery

3S RECIPE – Smart Shrinkage Solutions: Stoke-on-Trent (UK) Policy Brief #4. Liveability

This policy brief showcases a successful initiative to improve urban liveability in a shrinking city through repurposing its historical heritage. It shows how old industrial buildings could be used to accommodate new creative arts entrepreneurs and host high profile cultural events. The brief focusses on Spode Works, a 10-acre bone china pottery and homewares production site located in Stoke-on-Trent – a medium-size polycentric industrial city in central England, coping with population loss. Building on local knowledge and stakeholders’ experiences of using the Spode site after the factory’s closure in 2009, this brief demonstrates how a shrinking city can challenge a negative stereotype, raise its profile, and improve attractiveness by generating new creative arts and culture dynamics from within the effectively repurposed old industrial assets. The key lesson learnt is that to enhance liveability one should not drive it down to specific concerns like housing, jobs, or leisure. Urban liveability is about the dynamism and wider significance of a place. These qualities can be improved by a visionary local authority, enthusiastic civil society, and risk-taking private sector partners, all committed to urban regeneration and raising the city profile through the development of local creative capacity for impactful events and knowledge exchange

3S RECIPE – Smart Shrinkage Solutions: Stoke-on-Trent (UK) Policy Brief #3. Compact connected city

This policy brief displays a successful compact and connected city solution – the consolidation of Staffordshire University into a distinct University Quarter – that has been implemented in Stoke-on-Trent – a medium-size polycentric industrial city in central England, coping with population loss. Building on local knowledge and stakeholders’ experiences, it shows how better integration of local knowledge infrastructure can improve the compactness and connectivity of the city. It reveals a number of conditions to make it happen. The key lesson is that achieving compactness and connectivity depends on building unique university expertise, meeting the current and future requirements, and aspirations of the academic staff, students, and visitors, and on providing good learning, teaching, and everyday life experience

Cui bono? On the relative merits of technology-enhanced learning and teaching in higher education

This article provides evidence from a 4-year longitudinal study on the comparative use of illustrative video podcasts during Economic Geography lectures vis-à-vis traditional educational methods in order to guide pedagogic practice and future research on the relative merits of technology-enhanced learning in higher education. Key benefits derived from the introduction of video podcasts identified in this study included positive affective and cognitive attitudes of students towards educational technologies, increased teacher satisfaction and improved teaching evaluations. Key challenges included negative impact of video podcasts on student behaviour (attendance and broader engagement), and uncertain impact on learning performance (exam scores). The study highlights the benefit of sequencing the improvements to the learning/teaching process, starting with a module review and revised content, before proceeding towards the integration of learning technologies into the content delivery. More broadly, the paper calls for pedagogy to remain vigilant, critically reflecting on the intricate relationship between educational technologies, teaching content, and the wider socio-political context

Three-dimensional brownfields: the tragedy of the mining communities

The processes of active restructuring in the mining industry of many countries have entailed the physical closure of enterprises, accompanied by measures to mitigate their environmental and social impacts. Brownfields that emerged in districts with developed mining industries are predominantly perceived through a stereotypically flat, superficial, and narrowly literal lens. Adhering to such an approach is risky both in terms of ecology and in the aspect of economic losses incurred in territories with concentrated localization of mines. The article provides substantiation for the importance of perceiving brownfields within a threedimensional space, with due consideration given to geological deformations, dynamics of underground water and gas flows, and the potential of gravitational and geo-thermal energy. The authors propose interpreting brownfields as either oper ating or abandoned industrial sites with buildings and infrastructure facilities on the ground surface, as well as natural landscapes that are negatively affected by geological, hydrodynamic, and gas-dynamic processes characteristic of the disturbance of the subsoil due to underground or open-pit mining operations. The reuse and recycling of industrial waste accumulated within brownfields alone cannot ensure the survival of coal-mining towns. Similarly, depopulation cannot be halted solely through economic instruments. Thus, the strategy for the development of coal-mining towns should entail ‘enlightened’ restructuring in line with the ideas of ‘Smart Shrinking’

Historicising the Neoliberal Spirit of Capitalism

What is new about neoliberalism? Such a question immediately implies that certain objects and processes can be defined as ‘neoliberal’ and, importantly, that the contents of the ‘neo’ can be explained by reference to a larger phenomenon called liberalism. A veritable galaxy of things are now attached to the term ‘neoliberalism’, if not as some primary identifying marker then at least as one descriptive property among others. This chapter seeks to offer a window through which to problematize and analyse this core, if recalcitrant, question. In keeping with other debates in the social sciences, it proposes that the frame of neoliberalism tries to capture something about developments in capitalism since the 1970s, with commodification, financialization, and general moves towards ‘market-based’ modes of regulation or governmentality being major debates in the literature (Harvey 2005; Brenner et al. 2010; Peck et al. 2012; Springer 2010, 2012). While accepting this temporal frame as a starting point, the chapter seeks to contextualize the history of neoliberalism in two ways. First, the chapter sheds a sharper light on the relationship between capitalism and its mechanisms of legitimation, particularly at the level of everyday experience. Second, within the inevitable space constraints, the argument traces certain threads of meaning that connect the history of the liberal tradition to the present, specifically the themes of individualism, universalism, and meliorism. Thus, the chapter aims to reveal how justifications for neoliberal capitalist practices are the product of a long history of social struggles that are, moreover, often confusing, multifarious, and even contradictory. Ironically, once this perspective is recognized, the task of deciphering contemporary neoliberalism arguably becomes harder, particularly concerning efforts to understand where certain ideas and values tied to neoliberalism acquire their commonsensical power. If neoliberalism is a moving concept then scholarship needs to be equally adept at moving with it