ABSTRACT
Western city centres have experienced an unprecedented revival in the last decade. After major disinvestment in European cities during the 1970s, the late 1980s witnessed the beginning of a radical redesign, refurbishment and renewal of the urban landscape. Formerly empty city centres such as Manchester have seen their population grow by more than 15,000 residents between 1995 and 2007. During the same time property prices of already densely populated urban cores, such as Barcelona’s Old Town, have increased by over 250 per cent (Marshall 2004). Not only has the city become ‘trendy’ (Jencks 1996), but city life has been reinvented or rediscovered, as the following newspaper extract suggests:
[Cities] are becoming fashionable again. People are trickling back to once-seedy, depopulated areas, where converted warehouses – the ubiquitous lofts – and new flats provide attractive homes. Restaurants, bars and cafe societies have sprouted everywhere. High streets are reviving as city retailers slowly win the battle against out of town shopping centres.
