Heritage + UtopiaMain MenuIntroductionIntroduction to Heritage + UtopiaUtopian Currents in HeritageSection 1Community Futures and UtopiaSection 2My Future YorkSection 3Utopia: Crafting the Ideal BookSection 4Author and Contributor BiosBiographiesReferences and Further ReadingBibliographyElizabeth Stainforth3d3e3051d7a13ea6e4f2b27f7bcb160c4bc167b7Helen Grahamf204c9df947a0fb7f84dae27e743c01016c9be7c
12017-01-03T06:14:36-08:00My Future York11Section 3plain2017-01-06T09:37:42-08:00 York’s reputation as a heritage city makes it one of the most desirable and unaffordable places to live in the north of England. Therefore, the need to build new housing is a pressing issue but one which has been highly contested in recent years. Concerns about losing York’s historic character have dominated discussions of local planning and development.
The My Future York project explores how collaboratively produced histories can be used to create a space of critical engagement and possibility thinking, in the hope that more people become involved in local decision-making. The project encompasses a range of temporal perspectives; from thinking about housing plans that didn’t happen to inviting ideas for the future development of the city. The critical and transformative aspects of this approach make it a properly utopian form of inquiry, opening up conversations and ways of thinking otherwise about York’s future.