Future of the City Centre in Four Continents: cultural pasts-urban futures-cultural futures

This paper is derived from a UK Arts and Humanities Research Council project, set in the four cities of Newcastle upon Tyne UK (Europe), Newcastle NSW (Australasia), Pretoria-Tshwane (Africa), and Joao Pessoa Brazil (South America). City centres have developed through a number of eras. Most were predicated on commercial and retail development from the mid-20th Century, but demand for this kind of space is diminishing rapidly, predominantly due to the Fourth Industrial Revolution accelerated by the covid pandemic.1 These four cities were selected for the study because they are located in four different countries in four different continents. While individual cities cannot represent continents or even countries, they can be indicative of responses from different geographies,
governance systems, populations, heritage and cultures.2 Every city can be characterised by its buildings and spaces, and this investigation focuses on the similarities and differences in these centres. Fortunately, none of them is constrained by a grid and block layout. The objective of this paper is to investigate the cultural pasts of these four centres through the visual images of their buildings and spaces. This will be followed by analysis of the socio-political structures that are currently generating urban futures. Finally, there will be proposals for how cultural futures might be generated.