ABSTRACT
As Britain’s fifth largest city, with a population of 527400 in 1991, Sheffield conjures up several contrasting visions in the popular imagination. There is first its old image as ‘steel city’, a grim dour northern place where even the sparrows cough and second, its new image being promoted by Sheffield’s development agencies as a place of culture, sport, leisure and pleasure. The aim of this chapter is to evaluate critically whether this transformation has occurred in reality. First, the extent to which Sheffield is shifting from being a manufacturing city to a locality based on consumer services will be examined. Following this, an exploration is undertaken of the magnitude and character of various sub-sectors of consumer services in Sheffield, starting with tourism and moving through sport, cultural industries, retailing and higher education to medical services. In the process, it will be revealed that the conventional perception of consumer services as ‘parasitic’ activities, supposedly reliant upon other, wealth-creating, sectors of the economy (manufacturing and business services) for their vitality and viability, is far from the reality in contemporary Sheffield. Since the mid-1980s, consumer services will be shown to have played a dominant role in Sheffield’s economic revitalization.
