HUV Positive February 19, 2009

Leeds City Council is good at self aggrandisement. £4 million is being spent changing the name of Dark Neville Street to Light Neville Street. In lieu of a trite local symbol - think Liverpool’s docks or Henderson’s Relish in Sheffield - the council have come up with a slogan, plastering LEEDS: LIVE IT, LOVE IT over every hoarding and public notice. Currently, the hype machine is surging ahead, canons blazing with the council’s darling project, the creation of Holbeck Urban Village: A chance to create an entire self contained community from scratch. Before the plans for HUV were first mooted, the area was little more than an abandoned non place between the railway station and the marginalised suburbs of Holbeck and Beeston Hill. Consisting mostly of a disused car park and some empty warehouses, it had become a notorious red light district.

Now, however, we have been promised better things: so many things in fact that some disappointment in the final product must be unavoidable. Amongst other things, HUV is poised to become the centre for Leeds’ creative and digital media industries, provide a vital link between the city centre and the surrounding suburbs, become the Shoreditch of the North, preserve local heritage, and become a friendly community for ‘work, rest and play’ where you can park your riverboat and indulge in a spot of fishing before popping into Jamie Oliver’s new restaurant.

I believe that the regeneration of a derelict car park can only be a good thing, but the kinds of promises being made by developers and the council suggest a lack of consensus on what HUV is trying to be. In particular, there is a real tension between the plans which suggest a closed community committed to new ways of living, and those which view the village as a bridge and point of interaction between Leeds and its suburbs.

For new and potential residents, developers are selling the vision of a green, clean utopia built upon its contrast to the former stereotypes of burnt out cars, prostitutes and neglected factories: a safe space far superior to the unattractive suburbs. The suburbs themselves have been assured that HUV will be good for them, though little detail has been provided besides the assumption that they will benefit by proximity.

The development has not, of course meant the end of prostitution in the city. Instead, the ladies and their punters have moved further down towards Holbeck, generating a lot of jealousy and ill feeling towards HUV which has been an issue since the beginning. £800m is being poured into the project by the council and Yorkshire Forward, with long standing residents of the suburbs claiming that the social problems are simply moving out of the site of HUV and into their communities. Holbeck’s citizens have complained that their neighbourhood is being neglected by the planners and losing its identity as all attention is focused on the creation of the new village.

There are currently no plans to build a supermarket in HUV, the view being that it would go against the ethic of the urban village, which should be committed to greener, local, novel alternatives. So far nothing constructive has been put forward, despite the residents of Holbeck campaigning for the construction of a local supermarket for over a year, arguing that the 45 minute walk to the centre of Leeds will be the death of their community. HUV risks becoming a sterile and empty place if its model aspirations fail to address the needs of its residents.

Though the urban village is an exciting idea, it will be difficult to turn it into both the dream community for urban families who read Country Life and the artistic quarter of the city. If more effort is put into forging a relationship between the surrounding suburbs and HUV, then the vision of the Shoreditch of the North may not be out of the realm of possibility. New residents sold the dream of a self contained utopia will struggle to insulate themselves from the scary outside world of prostitutes and supermarkets, short of physically walling themselves in. But this should not be how HUV is selling itself. It is difficult to imagine HUV as the creative hub of town if it resembles a sanitised gated community. Preserving local heritage means more than doing up an old mill to turn it into a conference centre. Retaining some of the local character includes recognising the shadier sides of the area as well as the pretty parts.

But this should not be a problem for the creative residents HUV is hoping to attract. Leave some of the less salubrious parts of HUV intact, and before long there will be hoards of art students roaming the streets taking gritty photographs to develop in their new Innovation Award-winning studios. The cramped back-to-back terraces of Holbeck could be pitched as valuable local heritage (there is already a feature on their quaintness in the city museum) to appeal to young professionals. The developers will not be able to solve all social problems (unless they are able to drive out the prostitutes all the way along the canal to Liverpool) but considering the needs of both new buyers and existing residents will help a lot more than a new Jamie Oliver restaurant. Unless, of course, he makes another documentary and sorts everybody out.