The Sustainable regeneration of the Swansea High Street - a cohesive community

Abstract

This paper discusses the sustainable regeneration of one of Swansea's (UK) most deprived urban quarters known as the 'High Street', once the traditional retail heart of the city. The regeneration strategy and vision has been driven by Coastal Housing Group, a Welsh housing association, since the late 1990s and is striving towards a cohesive inner city community to meet at least one of the goals of the Welsh Government's Wellbeing and Future Generations Act [1]. Context to the regeneration vision is given from the classification of Sustainable Communities from a number of strategies, used across the UK. As part of the regeneration process the paper also gives an overview of Cardiff Metropolitan University's input into the SURegen research project that conducted interviews with some of the key stakeholders engaged in the High Street regeneration project to investigate tacit knowledge leading to the vision. Finally, the paper discusses how some of the visions for the High Street have been delivered since 2012, and the next steps to be undertaken from 2017-2027; extending the vision of bringing life back into the High Street.