Course: Unit XII Value
In 2012, a resident of Grangetown, Cardiff, observed that any partnership between Cardiff University and local communities should take the form of a ‘relationship, not an affair.’ This began an ongoing relationship between Cardiff University and partners living and working in and around the electoral ward of
Grangetown. As an architectural educator, participant, activist, learner, and academic lead of the partnership platform Community Gateway, I am committed to collaborating with the same place and people year upon year in what artist and writer Adrienne Maree Brown terms an ‘inch-wide, mile deep’ strategy.
Despite collaborating with Grangetown over eight years, we make no claim to ‘know’ Grangetown. The land upon which we stand has shifted so seismically economically, socially, ecologically – that perhaps we cannot claim to know it at all. In a global pandemic within an economic crises, racial inequalities and climate emergency, our sense of understanding the value of this land begins again with a commitment to challenge assumptions, prejudices and privileges.
What do we know about what this land is worth, and for whom it holds value? How has the value of this land been calculated, extracted, exploited, nurtured, cared for? How does this understanding shape our agency as architects in proposing alternates to systems which fail us socially, economically, ecologically?
As a city neighbourhood of 20,000 residents, Grangetown is home to diverse and cohesive communities threatened by air, water and industrial pollution, river and sea flooding, heavy vehicular traffic, energy inefficient 19th and 20th century housing stock, encroaching gentrification and rising house prices. As we open the community-owned Grange Pavilion as a (socially-distanced) physical base, we are in a position to plan next steps, beginning with shaping deeper understandings of where we are now.