YoCo and partners will be on-site to talk about community-led neighbourhoods as part of the The Radix Big Tent Ideas Festival 2023: REGENERATE.

Join us on the day for a fun family-friendly, map-based "Day in the Life of" activity to collaboratively inform and design a new community-owned and led neighbourhood.

What would be a good proposal for ownership of public space, and what would people want to do there?

As with YoCo’s thinking about homes and workplaces, the issue of ownership (and with it thinking around economy and governance) is central to thinking about open space. “Taking ownership” is a phrase often used, but often used to mean “you looking after the space we continue to own”. Back when YoCo’s community plan for York Central was developed, we talked a lot about co-ownership – could the “Great Park” instead be “The Commons” – and recent conversations with one of the shortlisted developers prompted us to revisit these.

YoCo has had a long-standing relationship with the Interior Design course at York St.John University. In 2023 we worked with tutor Emma Ramsden-Sharman to explore creative responses to the Foundry buildings. Here’s how the students on BA (Hons) Interior Design Level 6 tackled it.

Our January Open Meeting looked at home energy and retrofit from a YoCo standpoint – thinking both of the existing communities around the site and the potential new buildings which will be there.

What can we all do right now to make our own homes more comfortable and more affordable to heat?

What are the processes and skills involved and how might we explore beyond what we can individually do, to think about the kind of jobs which home energy and retrofit might create?

And how might this point to the sort of homes which should be built on York Central, and who builds them?

YoCo’s Community Plan for York Central responds to the extensive My York Central engagement with the local community, which emphasises a local economy which is based upon Community Wealth Building and a community made through exchange. What do these terms mean, though, and how are these ideas connected? How might this version of York Central differ from other visions of commercial development on York Central?

What mix of activities and environment creates life in cities? What economic framework enables citizens to take part in creating the living heart of their own city?