Cardiff: A renaissance city ‘with a reputation for imaginative architecture and iconic urban design?’

Cardiff is the UK’s tenth largest city with a population of 314,000 (2005). It has, until recently, marketed itself as ‘Europe’s youngest capital’, following devolution and the establishment of the Welsh Assembly government (WAG) in 1999. Ironically, devolution deprived it of participation in the urban renaissance policy initiatives introduced in England that year, and has excluded it from membership of the English Core Cities grouping, though the council constantly benchmarks itself against these cities (CC 2007a). In a number of respects, Cardiff is the archetypal ‘urban renaissance’ city: competitive ethos, resurgent growth, high-density and entirely brownfield development for the next decade. But its self-acclaimed reputation for ‘imaginative architecture and iconic urban design’, a key part of the archetype, deserves close scrutiny.