Civic associations and urban community: local history, place-making and activism in twentieth-century Britain

公民协会起源于世纪后期，现已发展成为英国许多城镇的一个受欢迎和有影响力的特色。它们为社区和当地城市人口的行动主义提供了一个重点，将居民与当地专业和政策辩论联系起来，并建立了社区参与城市管理政策的潜力。在二十世纪，民间协会对城市景观形成了广泛的关注，其中包括保护和遗产、规划和发展、地方历史和地方特征。他们通过各种方法开展工作，与学校、企业和地方当局合作，发布信息和指南，开展宣传活动，筹集资金，并通过购买建筑物或土地直接进行干预，以保护当地的设施。因此，他们是显着的，但在很大程度上未开发的贡献者，在英国的地方制造了一段持续的时间。这项研究包括三个核心内容。首先是对现有文献的回顾，这些文献将借鉴城市和社会历史，规划，保护和遗产研究以及社会科学。通过这一审查过程，我们打算确定具有经验和概念相关性的现有领域。文献综述将导致一篇学术文章，将我们的研究置于当前思想的明确综合中，并为未来的研究提出建议。本研究的第二个要素是探索与英国公民行动主义历史有关的幸存档案材料。这项研究的探索性部分将在评估公共和私人档案中的书面证据方面开辟新天地。我们将制作一个指南，这种材料，档案评估文件和寻找援助，这将是一个关键的参考未来的研究和利益和价值，目前活跃的公民和礼仪社会。这份文件将通过公民运动传播，并通过纽卡斯尔大学主办的专门网页提供。该项目的最后一项内容将是第二篇期刊文章。这将探讨一些概念性的问题，为我们的社区的理解，由该项目的重点是历史，地方的决策和行动。特别是，本文将寻求发展一个更强大的理论基础，我们的理解的重要性，独特的地方和历史身份的社区群体的形成。在这样做时，它将处理与提高地方福祉和参与能力有关的当代重要问题。

From their origins in the late nineteenth century, civic associations have grown to be a popular and influential feature in many of Britain's towns and cities. They have provided a focus for community and for activism among local urban populations, connecting residents with local professional and policy debates, and establishing the potential for community engagement in urban management policy. Over the course of the twentieth century civic associations have developed a broad-based concern for the urban landscape that incorporates conservation and heritage, planning and development, local history and place identity. They have worked through a wide range of methods, collaborating with schools, businesses and local authorities, publishing information and guides, campaigning, fundraising and intervening directly through the purchase of buildings or land in order to protect local amenities. As such, they are significant, but largely unexplored contributors to place-making in Britain over a sustained period of time. This study contains three core elements. The first is a review of existing literature that will draw on urban and social history, planning, conservation and heritage studies, and the social sciences. Through this review process we intend to identify existing areas of both empirical and conceptual relevance. The literature review will lead to an academic article that situates our research within a definitive synthesis of current thinking and suggesting ways forward for future research. The second element of this study is an exploration of surviving archival material relating to the history of civic activism in Britain. This exploratory part of the research will break new ground in its assessment of documentary evidence held in both public and private archives. We will produce a guide to this material, an archives assessment document and finding aid, that will be a key reference for future research and of interest and value to those currently active civic and amenity societies. This document will be disseminated through the civic movement and made available through dedicated webpages hosted by Newcastle University. The final element of the project will be a second journal article. This will examine some of the conceptual questions raised for our understandings of community by the project focus on history, place-making and activism. In particular, this article will seek to develop a stronger theoretical basis for our understanding of the importance of distinctive place and historical identity for community group formation. In so doing, it will address questions of contemporary importance relating to increased capacity for local well-being and participation.