The Making of a Liveable Community at New Wortley, Leeds

Since 2009 a collaborative process between New Wortley Community Association and Leeds Beckett University has sought to establish a more cohesive and livable community environment in Leeds’ most deprived area. With the project still on-going, this piece of research establishes the social, cultural and economic impact to date. The enthusiastic collaboration empowered this previously marginalised community to establish a diverse collective of stakeholders including students and tutors of six disciplines, client, local people, centre users, contractors and design consultants in a groundswell of mutual action referred to by the writers as ‘Emergent Community Governance’. Significant outputs include Our Place initiative grants, an NHS pilot scheme to create a Health & Wellbeing Centre, and £759,497 BIG Lottery funding to construct a new Community Centre. To determine the positive and negative impact upon the community of the collective endeavour, evidence is gathered through interviewing numerous stakeholders. The conclusions are considered alongside the pre and post quantitative data available, with the findings presented visually enabling a holistic evaluation of the urban environment to be observed and helping define the continued future regeneration of New Wortley. The results suggest, and therefore this paper advocates, that the successes observed in New Wortley confirm one strand of creating Livable Urban Futures is through a co-production model where university students use their academic learning environments and productive endeavour to support a network of social participants to achieve meaningful and positive contributions to society