Evans and Foord Jayne and Bell (eds) Small Cities Routledge 1 Small Cities for a Small Country 1 : Sustaining the Cultural Renaissance ? In Jayne, M. and Bell, T. Small cities: urban experience beyond the metropolis. Routledge Questioning Cities series (forthcoming, 2006) Graeme Evans and Jo Foord Cities Institute, London Metropolitan University Introduction This chapter explores the implications for smaller cities of adopting culture-led regeneration strategies. It is suggested that there is a divergence between cultural planning for long term sustainable urban cultural renaissance and culture-led makeovers which rely on externally orientated projects devised to draw in new visitors, residents and enterprises. Drawing on evidence from Sheffield, an industrial city in South Yorkshire, northern England, it is suggested that small cities by thinking big, have been seduced into entering a culture-led city competition in which the stakes are high and the prospects of success limited. Culture in the urban renaissance Cities have been placed at the centre of government policy (if not the centre of power over resources 2 ) in the UK with core objectives of promoting creative, competitive economies and enabling social inclusion and participation. For the first time in the history of urban policy the goal is to encourage people and businesses to return to, rather than leave, city centres. An ‘urban renaissance’ has been championed to counteract socio-economic deprivation and the sprawling car-dependent edge cities which emerged in the 1970s and 1980s (DTR, 2000). Increased residential densities, mixed-use development and the reuse of brownfield sites are now commonplace in spatial plans for central city areas and have been accompanied by calls for improved design standards, quality open space and enhanced public realm (CABE 2004). This physical renaissance, combined with re-population and new economic investment, was initially focused on the metropolitan and core cities of the UK (GLA 2004; Core Cities Working Group 2004) but is now driving planning policy and practice in market towns and smaller settlements, as well as major planned urban development areas and new town extensions, notably the Thames Gateway (South East) and the Northern Way. Embedded within this strategy to re-centre cities and towns is a parallel concern with promoting an urban cultural renaissance. Here there is a general desire to capture and renew all that is best about cultural activity in cities - the ability to bring strangers (domestic and immigrant) together; to provide platforms for cultural engagement and creativity; and to foster social inclusion (DCMS 2000, 2004a). Within this there is recognition that it is within cities that cultural expression is forged, not just in the established cultural institutions but also in the informal spaces and events of everyday life. This attention to culture as an ‘urban way of life’ brings the identities of cities, places and communities and their quality of life to the forefront (Evans and Shaw 2004, Matarasso 1997). The development of Local Cultural Strategies by UK local authorities 3 linked to ‘Best Value’ performance indicators has encouraged the strategic use of cultural resources for the integrated development of neighbourhoods,