A project to understand community actors' views on the comprehensive regeneration of Bracknell town centre, the first post war New Town to be substantially redeveloped.
Department: Real Estate & Planning
Supervised by: Victor Nicholls
Measuring the success of regeneration is challenging, partly due to the complex nature of regeneration activities. Schemes may have multiple objectives. Evaluating the extent to which these have been met can involve analysing multiple data sets; moreover, the meaning of ‘success’ itself needs to be defined. This project will build upon interviews conducted in early 2021 with regeneration professionals involved in the planning, financing, construction, management and operation of The Lexicon. These explored the factors behind the success of the scheme, as well as lessons that can be learned for future regeneration. This research will add the views of the wider Bracknell community including residents and businesses. This is vital since many of the regeneration’s aims related to enhancing the town centre experience for the whole community. For instance, the first objective in the 2002 masterplan was to: ‘Change perceptions and raise aspirations for the future town centre putting behind the failure of previous proposals’. Understanding what makes town centres work is an ongoing exercise that needs to engage with a wide cross-sector of users. This project will use methods such as interviews, surveys and social media analysis to seek the views of Bracknell’s residents, visitors and businesses - the lifeblood of The Lexicon – on how the regenerated town centre is performing. Results will then be compared with previous research findings and outputs from quantitative data sets commonly used in town centre management (e.g. footfall monitoring) to build a fuller picture of The Lexicon’s performance. Lessons for those looking to undertake town centre regeneration will also be drawn out.
Helping to plan and conduct primary research including interviews, surveys and participant observation. Analysis of online and print media and social media material (e.g. Facebook group comments). If time allows, the student researcher will also help prepare the results of the above for analysis, for instance, entering basic survey data into Excel. It is not expected that this will involve transcription nor actual the actual analysis of research data.
A basic knowledge of town centre regeneration is preferable but not essential. While it is not necessary to have prior research experience, a willingness to learn about the research process is essential. Also key is the ability to organise and manage your own time effectively (a significant proportion of the project will entail independent working). The ability to effectively search for and analyse complex information (e.g. online searching) is important, though specific training will be given for all of the proposed research techniques
Research skills including survey and interview design, participant observation, interviewing technique and social media analysis, as well as data preparation skills.
Some of the research can take place remotely (e.g. social media analysis) but a secure University network (e.g. One Drive) must be used to store all project work, so those wanting to work remotely will need a laptop (and access to Microsoft 365 including One Drive). It is expected that students will be available to meet supervisor(s) approximately once per week; at least some of these meetings will be on campus in Reading (see below). Students will need to travel to Bracknell to carry out fieldwork (e.g. participant observation) and attend in-person interviews or focus groups, as required. It may be possible to arrange these in blocks to minimise the need to travel to / from Bracknell but will this will be led by participant availability so some flexibility will be required.
It is expected that this will be a full-time post for 6 weeks but there is flexibility to vary this (for instance, periods of part-time work) if required
Monday 13 June 2022 - Saturday 16 July 2022
The post will be advertised centrally on the UROP website between 21st February and 4th April 2022. Students should submit their CV and Cover Letter directly to the Project Supervisor (click on supervisor name at the top of the page for email). Successful candidates will be invited for an interview.