@juliandobson on Twitter, writer and editor on anything to do with place and society. Researcher at Sheffield Hallam University. Occasional academic and creative writing too.
A year of war on the eastern borders of Europe. A cost of living crisis. Here in the UK, public services on their knees after a decade of dismantling. So why talk about universities, and the role they can play in their communities? The short answer is because they are there, and they last. They […]
Community-based businesses and organisations can play a vital part in repurposing ailing high streets. But it is not a quick fix, and it demands a rethink of what creates value in town and city centres. A new report by the Centre for Regional Economic and Social Research finds that high streets present new opportunities for community […]
How long does it take you to walk to your nearest park or green space? If it takes more than ten minutes, according to the charity Fields in Trust, you’re missing out: 2.8 million people in Great Britain don’t have a green space within a ten-minute walk of their home. If you live in a […]
The idea that connecting with the natural world is good for human health and wellbeing has become of a commonplace, underlined by many people’s experiences during the lockdowns of the last two years. ’Nature connectedness’ is now influencing thinking among landowners such as the National Trust and healthcare practitioners who are testing how ‘green social […]
A host of universities now claim to be ‘civic’. But what does that really mean, and how can we tell? Over the past year, I have been part of a team at Sheffield Hallam University working to answer these questions. We have been exploring the idea of a ‘civic index’, following on from the Civic University Commission’s […]
The changes in the retail character of our town and city centres may be as sweeping and significant in their way as the effects of de-industrialisation in the 1970s and 1980s, and similarly irreversible. If proof were needed that the shopping-centred high street of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is disappearing, the £517m pre-tax loss posted by […]
Governments like ambitious plans. They love to talk in terms of billions of pounds and ‘moonshot’ aspirations. The shiny and spectacular make better headlines than the everyday labour of caring for what we already have. But that everyday work of caring is foundational to our quality of life, as new research on urban green spaces underlines. The […]
We know green spaces are good for us. The evidence is overwhelming. So why don’t we invest in what we know to be healthy and helpful, when we can find £522 million to subsidise people who want a meal out? In case there’s any doubt about the evidence, earlier this year a team at Sheffield Hallam University […]
Today, in the middle of an accelerating crisis, some of us are publishing a book about hope. You could call it unfortunate timing. You could also call it the best time. The crisis is obvious but merits a quick scan. First, we’re caught in a global pandemic that, outside the bubble of British media attention, […]
What can we do in the face of two overarching crises: a crisis of climate change and biodiversity loss, and a crisis of social injustice characterised by the systematic removal of support from places and communities? For two days last week I was part of a group that discussed, debated and shared stories with an […]
Julian Dobson 