Capital, state and redevelopment : Newcastle city centre (1960-1990)

Abstract

This research is based on a case study of Newcastle upon Tyne and seeks to understand the redevelopment process in the city and the way in this has developed and changed over time in accordance with institutional changes in governance and changes in the regime of capital circulation and accumulation. The study suggests that the theoretical framework proposed in the work of David Harvey is able to offer the potential of a suitable analytic framework for understanding of the development of built environment. Such a theorisation is able to offer not only a sensitive appraisal of the everyday mechanisms of governance and property markets in shaping built environment but also to offer a level of access to the workings which lie behind these structures. The research is therefore organised around three broad sections. First, an exploration of the suggested theoretical framework in its application to both capital circulation and state. Secondly the study addresses the historical development of Newcastle through until the beginning of the 1960s in order to demonsbate the way in which the built environment of Newcastle changed in accordance with the nature of the predominant capital regime at any point in time. Thirdly the city is considered in the light of contemporary development policies from the 1960s until 1990, in order to analyse the thesis that the main driving force influencing built environment in the city is a process of capital circulation. The research concludes that this process is maintained by public money, whilst it is still under the control of a small number of elite ruling families who originally established themselves in the city through involvement in the coal industry at least three centuries earlier. This elite has been continually sustained by public money.