Narratives of Urban Change: Rethinking the City after 2008

By Ella Harris

23^rd May 2019

This event invited stakeholders from across sectors to consider urban change since the 2008 financial crash.

It was held in collaboration with Truth Consulting, a strategic insight agency.

The urban landscape after the 2008 crash was defined by instability, fractures and gaps: businesses closed, developments were stalled and, as cuts began to take effect, council owned land was sold off. This necessitated changes in place making, leading to innovations in urban form that sought to make use of vacant spaces temporarily, inhabit awkward, in-between sites and respond rapidly to the pressures facing the city.

A series of terms emerged to describe such urban forms: terms such as ‘meanwhile’, ‘pop-up’, ‘micro’, ‘flexible’ or ‘modular’, as well as the concept of ‘co’ living and working.

The aim of this workshop was to question the kinds of urban change that these terms reflect and encourage and to think collaboratively about the potentials and pitfalls they entail.

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Ella Harris

Ella Harris is a researcher and writer interested in 'crisis cultures', epistemically just creative methods and inventive knowledge exchange strategies. She is currently working on the project Story Arcs at Bath Spa University as the Narrative Exchange Champion as well as undertaking freelance research for clients including Natural England, Caring in Bristol and the Runnymede Trust.

Previously, Ella was a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in the Geography Department at Birkbeck, University of London. Prior to this, she was an ESRC postdoctoral fellow in the Sociology Department at Goldsmiths, University of London. She's also worked as a research assistant in the Geography Department at Royal Holloway University on a collaborative project on pop-up social housing. She completed a PhD in Cultural Geography at Royal Holloway University in 2017.

Ella has published widely on subjects including the cultural geographies of precarity, pop-up culture, housing insecurity, immersive cinema and interactive documentary. Her book on pop-up culture is out now and her latest interactive documentary, about COVID-19 lockdown in London, can be found here.

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