London Women and Planning Forum Seminar
Jointly convened with the Centre for Suburban Studies, Kingston University

Suburban Regeneration

Although suburbs are home to 86% of England's population (In Suburbia Report, 2002), they are largely ignored in the debate on the urban renaissance and in current regeneration policies. In their form and design, suburbs are also gendered spaces, shaped by assumptions about home, work and family. The suburban lives of women and men are often very different. Women are more likely than men to work as well as live in suburbs and to use suburban shops and public transport. This seminar will investigate why suburbs need to be included in regeneration policies and the ways in which suburban regeneration can improve the everyday lives of women. The seminar also considers media and other representations of women living, and often working, in suburbia.

Suburban regeneration is now on the national agenda. In 1998 the Civic Trust (www.civictrust.org.uk) began a 5-year Sustainable Suburbs Project, funded by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, and devised a Sustainable Suburbs Toolkit to assist local authorities in measuring the nature of decline in suburban areas. In 2002, a report entitled 'In Suburbia' was prepared by the Local Government Association, the South East England Regional Assembly, the Civic Trust, Bury Metropolitan Borough Council, London Borough of Harrow, Hampshire County Council and Rushmoor Borough Council to raise the national profile of suburbs. Two speakers at the seminar - Claire Codling from the London Borough of Harrow and Alex Rook from the Civic Trust - will talk about their work as part of the In Suburbia National Partnership, focusing on two case studies: East Finchley High Street and Wealdstone District Centre.

The seminar is jointly convened by the London Women and Planning Forum and the Centre for Suburban Studies at Kingston University. Established in 2003, the Centre for Suburban Studies is the first research centre dedicated to the study of the suburb in the UK, and is the world's first research centre to study the suburb in cultural, multi- and interdisciplinary terms. The Centre seeks to define Suburban Studies as 'an important, timely and original area of inquiry for both the academic and the wider community'. Vesna Goldsworthy, Director of the Centre for Suburban Studies, is the third speaker at the seminar, and will discuss gendered representations of suburbia.