Landscape architecture in the United Kingdom
Great Britain is a relatively small, densely popu-
lated and urbanised island. It is often suggested
that there is a north–south divide. London and the
South-East are regarded as prosperous, but suffer
from a housing shortage which pushes up prices
and increases the pressure to build upon greenfield
sites. In the old industrial conurbations of Northern
England, South Wales and the West of Scotland, the
story has been one of traditional industries, such as
coal-mining, steel-making and shipbuilding, going
into decline, with a resulting loss of population to
the more prosperous south.
Though this picture is over-simplified, it does cor-
respond to two of the main strands of activity in
which British landscape architects find themselves
engaged in the early years of the twenty-first cen-
tury. The first, which is really a continuation of the
post-war concern for the aesthetic accommodation
of large items of infrastructure, such as motorways,
reservoirs, power stations, towns and commercial
forests, within the rural landscape, is concerned
with the mitigation of the ecological and aesthetic
impacts of new developments outside or on the
edge of urban areas. The second is an engagement
with the regeneration of post-industrial towns and
cities and the effort to reverse economic decline
through a mixture of environmental improvement
and cultural development. The aim is to alter percep-
tions and thus increase inward investment, business
relocation and tourism. The two projects studied in
this chapter belong to this second category.Newcastle and Sheffield can both be classified as
post-industrial cities. Little remains of the industries
with which they were once synonymous, coal-min-
ing and shipbuilding in the case of Newcastle, steel-
making and metalworking in the case of Sheffield.
Both have been looking for ways to shake off the
negative images associated with their industrial
heydays. Following the example of Glasgow, which
was European City of Culture in 1990, they have
sought to add to their cultural attractions, while
addressing the deficiencies of their city centres
through urban design. In Sheffield, this has been
done through an initiative called the Heart of the
City Project which, in addition to the transformation
of the Peace Gardens which will be described here,
involved the construction of the new Millennium
Galleries and demolition of the egg-box-like Town
Hall Extension, creating the site for the striking new
Winter Gardens. In Newcastle, the ‘Cityscape’ exer-
cise promoted by the northern branch of the Royal
Institute of British Architects was a catalyst for
city centre renewal, while Newcastle Gateshead’s
highly acclaimed, though ultimately unsuccessful,
bid for European City of Culture 2008 created an
adventurous climate in which novel ideas could be
received into urban thinking.The United Kingdom
Ian Thompson