Sport, Leisure and Culture in the Postmodern City

Stephen Wagg, Stephen Wagg, Peter Bramham

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781138272521
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317051039
• Topic: Physical Sciences
• Subtopic: Geography
• Index: Geography

The widespread concept of the 'postmodern city' is frequently linked to the decline of traditional manufacturing industries and a corresponding wane of white working-class culture. In place of these appear flexible working practices, a diversified workforce, and a greater emphasis on consumption, leisure, and tourism. Illustrated by an interdisciplinary study of Leeds, a typical postmodern city, this volume examines how such cities have reinvented themselves - commercially, politically and spatially - over the past two decades. The work addresses issues like cultural policy, city-centre development, sport, leisure and identity, and explores different urban processes in relation to changing configuration of class, gender and ethnicity in the postmodern city.

Chapter 1
Introduction

Peter Bramham and Stephen Wagg

There is a strong predilection these days to regard the future of urbanization as already determined by the power of globalization and of market competition. Urban possibilities are limited to mere competitive jockeying of individual cities for position within the global urban system. Harvey, D. (1996: 420)

Both in his seminal book Conditions of Postmodernity (1989) and in an earlier article, ‘Down towns’ published in Marxism Today (1989) David Harvey argued that late capitalism results in the ‘serial reproduction’ of malls, pedestrian city centres, plazas and waterfronts as capital markets reinvest and restructure, moving away from industrial production and shifting into the service sectors, financial services, marketing and retailing. Global firms in retailing, tourism, hotel accommodation and fast-food outlets have invested in urban prime sites with the result that the mix of shopping and leisure experiences varies little from one city to another. This has led some commentators such as George Ritzer (2004) to suggest particular distinctive places disappear only to be replaced by universal homogenous ‘non places’. Everywhere is nowhere; all places are pretty much the same. Globalisation gradually erases distinctive localities and local identities.

This book provides an explicit focus on sport, leisure and culture because local politicians and policy communities in recent years have identified these areas as crucial sites for public policy and local agency. In the UK the local state has been ‘hollowed out’ by the centralising policies of Thatcherite and Blairite regimes. So in the face of globalisation and centralisation, cities look towards postmodern cultural forms, branding and lifestyles to differentiate themselves from other cities.

In the UK experience, London Docklands and Canary Wharf represent the archetypal postmodern city: conceived by a central government quango with planning powers and budgets to reconstruct and redevelop derelict industrial locations into commercial waterfronts. The vision is one of private enterprise, high-tech, and an integration of work, home and leisure within the city. Its icons are postmodern architecture, a mass transit system, water-based developments and heritage conservation (retaining dockland cranes for aesthetic purposes, for example), alongside cultural investments in cinema, art galleries and festival events.

The backdrop to such urban redevelopment remains in social divisions of class, race, gender and locality. What is to be done with existing local working-class communities rooted in conditions of industrial modernity? Where are they in terms of employment, housing and leisure? How do local established industrial lifestyles shaped by race and gender fit the new cosmopolitan postmodern city? What are the politics of the postmodern city and what public policy do local politicians favour? One of the major problems associated with urban redevelopment is that local people and communities demand involvement, democratic participation and may actively resist these postmodern plans and cosmopolitan ‘new times’. In the UK, Urban Development Corporations, harbingers of a neo-liberal project to energise market forces in the 1980s, were for the most part unprepared for the resistance of people in London’s Docklands and have tended, since Docklands, to favour developing ‘people-less’ areas elsewhere.

London Docklands highlighted the pressing dilemmas of urban development with all its usual suspects, both on centre stage and lurking in the wings. Tensions in the postmodern city have played out in the face of a changing economic climate, whether the credit booms of the 1980s, the fears of recession in the 1990s or the spectre in the 2000s of full-blown global depression. Major players tend to act out their stereotypical roles: footloose international capital searching out profitable locations and niche markets; central government providing subsidies for relocation1; and local involvement stage-managed by local politicians in ad hoc partnerships and pragmatic alliances, demanded by new business models.

But there is also a growing voice of ‘white racism’, with the British National Party winning local elections on Isle of Dogs and gaining footholds elsewhere. Here blossom fascist parties which address fears and concerns of local working-class communities which ‘dare to say what you are thinking’,2 seeking “to withdraw from the EU, protect British jobs for British workers and to say no to immigration”. Even before the May 2009 media and public outrage at MP’s expenses and accusations of sleaze, mainstream parties had been unable to mobilise an increasingly disenchanted electorate, particularly at a local or more global European level. During the past decades in its quest to modernise, the Labour Party has redefined its relations with traditional working-class communities; it has reneged on Old Labour’s shibboleths in defence of welfarism and social reformism. One consequence of the neo-liberal project and its global politics of marketisation and privatisation has been emergence of single issue, community-based groups to promote or resist new developments, many formed in response to cuts in local public expenditure on collective consumption, often informed by an environmentalist perspective to tackle broader ‘green’ issues related to overpopulation, global warming and overconsumption.

Manuel Castells’ (1977) (1978) initial neo-Marxist analyses were overoptimistic about the emergence of new urban social movements which he predicted would shift agendas and create a ‘new politics’ of identity, reflecting issues about gender, race and ‘green’ lifestyles. Not only did those in receipt of public subsidy (in essence the powerless, marginalised and unemployed) fail to mount a defence of collective consumption expenditures in the face of retrenchment from the neo-liberal project but neither did local government professionals and public sector unions. Some cities did resist central government ‘interference’ and cuts in local state autonomy whereas others did not and were able to accommodate local policies within the thrust and direction of neo-liberal or New Right central government policies. Indeed Ian Henry (2001) has written extensively about Right- and Left-Post Fordist policies to deal with these times and the tensions between the central and the local state. Whereas traditional Fordist policies defended high levels of expenditure on collective consumption, Right-Post Fordism accepts the central state’s neo-liberal project and looks to the local state to be more entrepreneurial and managerial, contracting services out to the most efficient and effective provider. In contrast Left-Post Fordism, demands that the local state offers progressive new cultural services for a ‘rainbow alliance’ of excluded and neglected citizens, such as racial and ethnic minorities, gay and women’s groups.

It is clear from Peter Bramham and John Spink’s first chapter here about postmodern cities and the detailed city-centre case study provided in the second chapter by Janet Douglas, that Leeds is just one of many northern cities that have experienced the Docklands strategy: namely, the redevelopment of waterfronts, derelict warehouses, canal sites into an integrated city-centre environment. There are other examples in northern UK cities with Manchester, Liverpool, Sheffield and smaller industrial towns Bradford, Wakefield, Halifax, Barnsley and Doncaster in South and West Yorkshire.3

Leeds became a postmodern city in its patterns of employment and labour migration as the past generation for thirty years witnessed a decline in primary and secondary sector jobs and a growth in tertiary sector employment in education, insurance and financial services, tourism, arts and cultural services. All these were designated as ‘qualities’ in the City’s new unitary plan A Vision of Leeds, first published in 1992.4 Hence, there were several zones or prime use quarters: Civic Quarter, Prime Office Quarter, Prime Shopping Quarter, Hospital Quarter, Education Quarter, Riverside Area and Prestige Development Area. There were key developments and the areas of city which symbolised these dimensions of economy and policy – such as Lisbon Court; Corn Exchange; St. James Hospital and Thackray Museum; the University; Canalside; Armouries; West Yorkshire Playhouse area and so on.

Since 1979 the city administration had until 2004 been controlled by a Labour council and the local economy had remained buoyant compared with other northern industrial towns. Nevertheless, a Thatcherite central government imposed an Urban Development Corporation on the city during 1987-1995 with an annual £15 million budget and planning powers to encourage capital investment and regeneration in inner-city areas (free from some local authority professional and bureaucratic planning control). The slogans were for ‘new realism’, entrepreneurialism, leaving the private sector to develop those areas which had been ‘failed’ by local authority red tape, blanket subsidies and inadequate market intelligence and data. The Labour Group responded to the UDC in Leeds by setting up its own Development Corporation (Leeds City Development Corporation) and transferring its land ownership and assets so as to isolate or minimise the impact of the Leeds UDC. The Board of the LCDC included a partnership of Chamber of Commerce, local politicians and leading experts and planners.

The traditional service committee structure and divisions of local authority officers and departments experienced substantial changes. Like other local authorities, Leeds was subject to new legislation from central government (e.g. Rate Capping, Community Charge, Urban Development Corporation, Compulsory Competitive Tendering) to curtail or restrict local powers of expenditure and policy direction. Leeds’ local political system, whether controlled by the Conservatives or Labour, has historically been dominated by a ‘rate-payer’ ideology. Here, emphasis is focused on constraining budgets, gaining accountability and value for money, and political pragmatism in response to local political demands and pressure groups. The Leeds policy system was already well-positioned to develop Right-Post Fordist strategies to go with the political plans of central government policies.

Leeds was already seeking strong partnerships with the commercial/financial sectors of the local economy. It had set up Leeds Waterfront in the early 1990s with a £500K budget to develop the waterfront and increase tourism spending by 12% and visitor numbers by 10% in the three year period. The Leeds Initiative was another attempt to co-ordinate the public, private and voluntary sector response to redevelopments, events and festivals. It was headed by a flexible taskforce (and initially using Urban Aid money from central government), it introduced ‘Landmark Leeds’, which sought to conserve heritage architecture in Leeds and refurbish or reconstruct central city Victorian Leeds street furniture. It was also involved in urban event ‘pump priming’ such as sponsorship for City of Flowers, for festivals – film, jazz, piano as well as co-ordinating events like Opera North, rock concerts in the park – in the early days boasting global celebrities such as Madonna, Michael Jackson and the Rolling Stones, but recently with more local celebrities, such as Arctic Monkeys and Kaiser Chiefs topping the bill at the Leeds Festival.

There has been discussion amongst urban theorists regarding city tourism and ‘boosterism’ in postmodern debates. David Harvey has argued that the relocation and restructuring of city forms around the post-modern is a ‘carnival mask’ to conceal deep-rooted class divisions with ensuing privatisation of social, cultural and political forms and spaces. If post-modern buildings are the precursor of postmodernity, then Leeds has its fair share. Indeed, architects refer to the ‘Leeds style’ – decorative brick, a bricolage of styles Greek, Gothic, Victorian – glass, steel and brick. Traditional buildings from industrial modernity have been transformed into postmodern restaurants and conference centres. The Corn Exchange has been refurbished as exclusive niche market shops, Granary Wharfe becomes ‘specialty shopping’ – 22 highly individual gift shops, art and craft stalls in a festival market and new cultural forms have emerged such as the West Yorkshire Playhouse, Opera North and the Phoenix Dance Theatre boasting an international reputation for audience development and community dance education.

Leeds offers a Chicago skyline, but the facades of modern industrial functional office space have been reclad in post-modern glass and colours (see for example Leeds Metropolitan University Library and the iconic Rosebowl which houses the Leeds Business School and opened in May 2009), shopping mall and precincts have emerged such as Bond Street Centre and the Victoria Quarter and the city council has taken ownership of the Elland Road complex, home of Leeds United’s football ground which has been refurbished to house national and European competitions.

The success and appearance of post-modern buildings have helped convince city business and politicians that revitalisation and urban renaissance are on the way and civic boosterism is actually working. City politicians take credit for developments that would have happened anyway, and claim that changing cityscapes with new investments, especially new leisure opportunities, benefit every citizen. The postmodern discourse persuades doubters that it attracts new businesses. Newcomers to the region and locals themselves, it is argued, benefit from new employment, new buildings and a refurbished environment. Within these policy communities, urban marketeers convince themselves and others that they have made a ‘difference’. Indeed, the key Leeds Urban Development Corporation slogan was ‘Making Things Happen’ – The Delivered Future, but in reality, many UDCs have failed (and all have been wound up) and the Leeds UDC may have taken credit for planning processes which were embryonic and agreed before their incorporation. City politicians and policy communities have been swept along with the euphoria of urban renaissance, pressing for urban involvement and New Right-Post Fordist developments, even though they have little concrete evidence that festivals, heritage events, sports and cultural industries and such like generate extra investment and are central factors in relocations. Politicians were prepared to believe these were important issues in the city’s strategy and in consultative documents. City boosterism and mega-events become important ingredients in city politics, leisure and tourism strategies. This policy shift is perhaps synonymous with a significant loss of civic power and municipal effectiveness in more important areas of urban life. Maurice Roche (2000) has argued that the benefits of such sports and leisure strategies have been problematic and his case study (Roche 1994) of the Sheffield Student Games in the early 1990s convincingly argued that both conventional and situational rationality in local political processes have been the first casualties when preparing, deliberating and costing civic bids.

Indeed, rather than studying tourist multiplier effects of mega-events, there should be more detailed empirical research on political configurations that lead to such decision-making. The third chapter in this book by Jonathan Long and Ian Strange makes such a contribution to understanding the development of cultural policy in Leeds. It has often been that it was political ‘autarchies’ and struggles for power within city policy systems that best explained decision-making processes and outcomes, rather than other political, economic or cultural assessments.

The dominant Leeds Labour group has not been immune to post-modern visions of using leisure and cultural policy as part of urban regeneration strategy. In the early 1990s the Policy Resources Committee has stressed the vision of Leeds as a 24 hour European City. At that time, Council Leader Trickett mapped out his European vision to lead businesses, police and policy makers to grant 24 hour licences for bars, restaurants and discos, as well as encouraging property owners to cut rents to encourage late-night shop opening. Founded in 1990 the Leeds Initiative encouraged local partnerships to revitalise Leeds city centre, giving grants for illuminating buildings, street events, festivals, Valentine Fairs in the city centre, as well as Christmas Lights, City Centre Cycling, Kellogg’s Tour of Britain and Leeds Classic Cycle Race. This bricolage of leisure and cultural activities is not part of the generic sports, parks, culture and leisure policy but has been organised on a more flexible, pragmatic, annual basis through contingency funds from the Leader’s Office. There has been a pragmatic alliance of existing provision and new projects initiated by civic personalities and professional officers. There have been new opportunities in these new times which are heralded at a local and national level, with key policy makers looking towards European cities and cultural renaissance, whilst professional officers remain still quite local and provincial. In the past there has been a local policy officer system with an emphasis on the ‘Leeds’ way of doing things within a stable and safe ‘rate-payer’ ideology. So arose an unresolved tension between traditional parochial Leeds style ‘mass’ leisure service provision associated with previous Leeds Leisure Services and emergent demands from the centre for a vibrant 24hour tourist city. There remains what Raymond Williams called ‘a local structure of feeling’.5 It is this culture that has been celebrated in the writings of Alan Bennett, one of Leeds’ few national celebrities. His postmodern celebrity status is discussed by Peter Bramham in the fourth chapter of this collection. The old Leeds industrial culture of modernity was going home for ‘tea’ (the main meal of the day) after work rather than more flexible work patterns around the city-centre restaurants, pubs, bars and cafes in the new 24/7 postmodern city. A similar cultural clash took place when Leeds United entered UEFA Cup competitions for the first time in 1966; programme notes explained to Leeds United supporters precisely how to pronounce strange sounding football teams and where in Europe they were located.6 It is precisely this juxtaposition of the local and the global, the modern and the postmodern that is explored both in Stephen Wagg’s chapter about the Revie era of Leeds football and Karl Spracklen’s chapter about rugby league. Local supporters belong to and remain loyal to local teams such as Hu...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Contributors
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Leeds – Becoming the Postmodern City
• 3 Cranes Over the City: The Centre of Leeds, 1980-2008
• 4 Mission or Pragmatism? Cultural Policy in Leeds Since 2000
• 5 The History Boy: Made in Leeds
• 6 Leeds and the Topographies of Race: In Six Scenes
• 7 Nowt for Being Second: Leeds, Leeds United and the Ghost of Don Revie
• 8 Dreams of Parkside and Barley Mow
• 9 “Off with their Headscarves, on with their Football Kits?”: Unveiling Myths and Exploring the Identities of British-Muslim Female Footballers
• 10 Barcelona of the North? Reflections on Postmodern Leeds
• Index