Exploring Urban Change through Owners’ Lived Experiences of Their ‘Underutilised’ Properties

This thesis advances our knowledge about “set-aside” urban property. Academic literature often interprets these places as derelict, vacant, brownfields, and focuses on cleaning up these problems by changing inactive, “rubbish” properties into active, “durable” spaces (Thompson, 1979). However, property owners’ perspectives have been overlooked. To address this knowledge gap, this study examines owner activities in Neepsend, Sheffield, as part of a broader urban ecosystem that included occupants, planners and developers. Neepsend was selected because it is a “low-intensity” industrial and commercial area north of Sheffield city centre. Neepsend has been considered “underutilised” and ideal for “higher-intensity” uses, such as housing. Combining constructivist grounded theory (Charmaz, 2014) with Lefebvre’s (1974/1991) Spatial Triad and Rhythmanalysis (Lefebvre, 1992), primary data was gathered using repeat photography walks and semi-structured interviews. This thesis makes a theoretical contribution to knowledge with the Utility Pyramid. Built upon previous studies, this model identifies five sub-categories of “set-aside” property. The empirical findings revealed that “underutilised” property, rather than “set-aside” property, was a critical area of contestation. Landlords were between occupants of organically developed businesses keen to remain in low-rent properties and maximum utility narratives promoted by government authorities. Regardless of their scale of operation, owners of set-aside properties were wary of being negatively stereotyped. When it comes to resisting or complying with top-down plans, the temporalities of owner decisions were complex. Data analysis suggested that juggling multiple priorities was a simple explanation for setting aside property. When deciding whether to hold, buy, improve, or sell their set-aside properties, events in owners' personal lives, their management activities at other properties, and the actions of other owners were all contributing factors. An unexpected finding was the emotional labour involved in landholding. Overall, this research demonstrated how visual cues of seeming abandonment, disguise a wide range of offsite owner activities.