Urban Regeneration: A Titanic Task?
Published on Fri 10 Jan 2014
Professor Deborah Peel, the new Chair of Architecture and Planning at the University of Dundee, used the Titanic Quarter and the waterfront regeneration of Queen’s Island in Northern Ireland for her Discovery Days lecture to identify some parallels between Belfast and Dundee. She pondered on how the disaster of the sinking of the Titanic was being re-imagined to assert the grand scale thinking of that city.
“Dundee and Belfast share a ship-building and textile history and they are both engaged in major water-front transformations, seeking to address the difficult legacy of brownfield land and under-employment, whilst also building on a history of innovation and a maritime heritage” she said.
“Moreover, both cities are seeking to address issues of image and identity so as to reposition and re-direct the city’s wider fortunes. A major challenge of urban regeneration is the need to ensure that different stakeholders, disciplines and professions work together. This is why the Dundee Partnership model is so important to making the regeneration of Dundee’s waterfront happen.”
In her lecture, Deborah highlighted that Professor Sir Patrick Geddes, the father of town and regional planning, had been a professor of Botany at the University of Dundee, highlighting his mantra about the importance of the natural environment - ‘by leaves we live’.
In asserting the connections between town and country, city and region, and ‘work, place, folk’, Patrick Geddes, she suggested, was articulating what, today, we would recognise as sustainability. She also emphasised how prescient Geddes’ thinking was in stressing the importance of inter-disciplinarity and the need to break down departmental boundaries.
In opening her lecture, Deborah launched the 50th anniversary Wordle to remind the audience that 2014 sees Town and Regional Planning celebrate 50 years of planning education at Dundee. A year of events is planned to mark the occasion.