Know Your Place

Author: Joyce M Bullivant

From the Foreword:

This very useful paper draws together a diverse range of facts and research to illuminate an issue that is vital to justice and to our wellbeing - the survival of our local heritage, our buildings, our green spaces and the social structures that maintain them. Sadly, as Joyce Bullivant documents, too often local heritage, particularly Northern, industrial and working-class heritage is being irretrievably lost. The impact on community life and wellbeing is grave.

This issue illuminates a profound failure of political imagination. It is not just our current extreme Right-wing Government that focuses on money and jobs as the only measures of success. The whole political system has forgotten that human beings need communities, identities, histories and diverse ways to express their citizenship. Furthermore, the centralisation of money, power and planning leaves local people unable to take back control and protect what they value.

In Sheffield we can see this struggle being played out today. Our city has some great examples of old buildings which are being protected and re-used, but also many community assets that are under threat. Local government - the number one target of cuts by Central government - often feels trapped in an unwinnable game. But this situation can be salvaged, by transferring assets, power and resources back down to the local communities that make up this great City.

Cities are more than the people who live in them; they are also a legacy of those who came before, who built for those who would come after them. Today's citizens must be given the same opportunity to demonstrate their love for their own place.

Read and download the free pdf in your browser, link below.

The publisher is the Centre for Welfare Reform.

Know Your Place © Joyce M Bullivant 2019.

All Rights Reserved. No part of this paper may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher except for the quotation of brief passages in reviews.