Remaking Community? by Andrew Wallace

Author:Andrew Wallace [Wallace, Andrew]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Human Services
ISBN: 9781317066842
Google: VAfPCwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2016-03-23T02:53:46+00:00

AW: Motorbikes are a big thing round here aren’t they?

J: Oh god yeah! I know it’s a terrible thing to say, but I’ve seen them come down and they’re dodging all these cars coming up and the poor drivers that are coming up, it must be a nightmare for them, and I’m thinking, “I wish they’d hit the kerb” [laughs]. That’s terrible ain’t it?

AW: So, do they just drive around the streets?

J: Yeah. The noise is horrendous. Or down the back entries (‘Jane’, resident: 21–60).

One young male informed me that even when they ride the bikes on the playing fields, residents in the houses opposite phone the police and bikes are confiscated. A motorcycle track was suggested by another young male as a solution and the PA report also contained support for this suggestion, but at that time nothing had been planned.

The playing fields were another focal point for the contestation of space. The PA team found that burnt out cars are often dumped there and that this was an issue for many local people. I experienced this for myself. One evening in the walking through the neighbourhood accompanying ‘detached’ youth workers, we came across an incident where two cars had been burnt out and dumped on the playing fields. The police were already present at the scene, whilst another squad car chased another stolen car, this one with a caravan attached. The pursuit ended in the centre of a nearby estate and caused a sensation amongst local youths. The playing fields were used by young people as a place to congregate but were sealed off during that period for drainage in preparation for redevelopment into a sports complex. One young female protested that this deprived young people of somewhere to ‘hang about’ and would stop them having barbeques. The playing fields were also a site of conflict between young people, not just between youths and the adult population. One young male (aged 14, so younger than most other respondents) mentioned that the playing fields were always full of bikes and cars and that young males from other estates in the NDC zone stole their bikes.

Conflict over space between youths was also identified by young males in another area of the NDC zone, which had had a new play area built, including a swing park and a multi-purpose facility for football, basketball and netball. One 17–year-old male said older residents ‘tell him off’ if he is in the play area whilst the police moved his friend on. Two younger males (in their early teens) described how they could not use the new sports facility because ‘older lads’ from another estate drink alcohol on it at nights. It is this kind of data that throws up questions about the actual effectiveness of regeneration (in the sense of improving or introducing facilities) when it is mediated by this level of conflicting social relations.

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