Why south Bristol needs its own relaunch

This comment article is written by Tony Dyer, the Green Party’s parliamentary candidate for Bristol South

Here we go then, the new Bristol24/7, the exciting “Bristol project”, looking to turn what are already good into something even better. It’s exciting to be a small part of it.

I have had a bit of a personal relaunch recently. I passed the milestone of being 50 years old last week and have also finally completed the move back home to south Bristol after a temporary stay in South Gloucestershire that lasted the best part of a decade. I have been regularly commuting in to the city centre so had a pretty good idea of how much has changed and, at the same time, how little has changed, in my home city.

However, I am quickly rediscovering that to truly understand somewhere you really need to live there, not just visit frequently. For example, back in leafy Chipping Sodbury, the only noise to potentially complain about was the dawn chorus, whereas here in Ashton Gate there is the almost constant background hum of road traffic on Coronation Road. Air quality also, has apparently made its impact felt, in the form of a persistent cough.

Sense of belonging

Nevertheless, I already feel much more at home than I ever did in Chipping Sodbury. This is partly because I am back living somewhere to which I have strong family connections. Outside of south Bristol, only Old Market ever came close to offering that same sense of belonging. On the day after my birthday, I walked up from Ashton Gate to Hartcliffe to have Sunday lunch with my mum – repeating, in reverse, the same journey I had done so many times before with my Dad to go and watch City play at the Gate.

It is a decent walk, about an hour, but for me it also consists of a series of visual reminders of memories and stories, from the pub where a youthful Ernest Bevin used to sell lemonade to the Bedminster coalminers from his horse and cart, to the cigarette factory in Hartcliffe that closed with the loss of 25,000 jobs directly and indirectly across south Bristol. It was that reminder of lost jobs that made me wonder: can south Bristol be relaunched? To take what is good about south Bristol and make something even better.

There have been potential opportunities for a relaunching of south Bristol. The move to having a directly elected mayor offered such an opportunity – there were the vague promises to devolve important decision making powers to Bristol from London. But, despite all the promises made at the time, very few real powers have been transferred. We now elect a mayor but the decision making ability he has is, in reality, little different from that available to the leaders of the council in all those core cities that stuck with what they had.

A real ‘test bed’

We have an Enterprise Zone in the same general area that was once home to the Bristol Development Corporation, but the extra powers it has been given are largely in the hands of the Local Enterprise Partnership rather than the elected mayor. Meanwhile, south Bristol didn’t even get an Enterprise Area let alone an Enterprise Zone.

But how might the potential to relaunch south Bristol look like if a mayoral development zone had been created there? A chance to really be a “test bed” for ideas on how to regenerate an area – ideas that didn’t simply repeat what has already been tried before and is being tried everywhere else? Something a bit different for the city that claims to do things a bit differently?

That opportunity seems to have slipped away, we may have to rely on the impact of the Scottish referendum to revisit that particular opportunity again. However, there still remains another opportunity, in the form of the European Green Capital. Bristol 2015 will, according to whom you speak, be either the greatest thing to happen to the city since Brunel decided he would like to build a bridge across the Avon Gorge or it will be an unmitigated disaster that will leave the have-nots once again on the outside looking in while a privileged few have a year-long party with no lasting impact.

Green Capital potential

I suspect the reality is somewhere in between. There are clearly problems, particularly around clarity of communication, both in terms of the roles of individuals within the somewhat byzantine organisational structure that has been created, and also the publicising of opportunities for groups and individuals to get involved. It would be foolish to pretend that everything has gone to plan and that the concerns raised by critics are completely unfounded. Clearly that is not the case and to pretend otherwise will itself generate an increasing crisis of confidence in the city’s ability to deliver a Green Capital programme that will leave a legacy beyond 2015.

But, if the opportunity is grasped, there is the potential to use Green Capital to relaunch those parts of the city that most need investment – including the housing estates of south Bristol. To build on and expand existing activities from organisations like Knowle West Media Centre and Hartcliffe and Withywood Ventures to create even greater opportunities. Because being “green” is about more than just the obviously environmental factors, it is also about the social and economic impact.

A society based on economics whereby the 1% sit in mansions with pastoral views of open countryside while the rest of us are denied access to decent jobs paying at least a living wage, truly affordable and warm homes, good physical and mental health, viable transport options, and quality skills and education is not a green society and is not worth fighting for.