ABSTRACT
Plymouth, England—a city with a glorious past—now faces processes of decline. This chapter focuses on the area around Union Street, where key historical buildings sit empty, with deteriorating fabrics, epitomizing the condition of the neighborhood as a whole. It explores the flexible perceptions of inclusion in the neighborhood, and identifies possible areas of intervention to improve it. Even as community groups and small entrepreneurs amplify inclusive processes through the low-cost re-use of spaces to host micro, alternative businesses or community initiatives, other stakeholders perceive an uninviting environment of abandonment, with few evident and public signals encouraging them to explore and discover what is available beyond certain thresholds. Through a series of interviews with key stakeholders from community groups, the local authority, local businesses, landlords, local health organizations, visitors, and designers, this chapter presents their interpretation of inclusion. The discussion identifies the key dimensions of perceived inclusion in this place, which could be enhanced by strategic efforts. It highlights how locales that might strongly support inclusion can be perceived as exclusive if they lack an ability to signal this in the public realm. It explores the physical dimension of signals in the neighborhood, but also the importance of fostering underlying larger processes of participation, governance, spatial agency, and local appropriation involved in the successful production and sharing of signals of inclusion.
