Ellie Barker

I am a PhD student in the Department of Geography at the University of Manchester working on research entitled “Understanding Barriers to Working Class Youth Activism in Salford, Greater Manchester”.

1.     Current Research

Understanding Barriers to Working Class Youth Activism in Salford, Greater Manchester 

Originally, I began my PhD with an interest in Manchester’s smart city and its tendency to prioritise city branding above genuine social and environmental sustainability. I was also concerned about failure to involve young people in key decision-making processes about the future of their city. I wanted to assess how ‘sustainable’ this smart city vision truly was by empowering Greater Manchester’s youth– an often under-researched and under-represented group– to play a significant role in reforming the smart city concept and vision. Typically, the smart city appears as a major branding tool, presented as a ‘saviour’ for often intractable urban problems, promising ‘technologically advanced, green and socially inclusive’ cities (Vanolo, 2014, p.883). Its aim is to demonstrate how it can ‘serve as a thread binding the three sides of the sustainability triangle’ (Trencher and Karvonen, 2019, p.625)– environmental, economic, and social aims and issues. Initially, picking up on young people’s increasingly vocal and passionate stances towards climate change, social and climate justice after the 2019 climate strikes seemed like an interesting area to focus my research on. Could they have more of a voice in the future of Manchester’s smart city? 

As I delved further into the first year of my PhD, it became clear that this link between the smart city, youth, and climate activism wasn’t, unfortunately, as strong as I thought it could be. The annual review helped me realise that the smart city concept wasn’t doing as much for my project as I had hoped, and that it may be better to view it as context and background instead of centre stage. With that, youth climate activism gained greater focus and attention. I then narrowed my focus further from Greater Manchester as a whole to Salford– a largely under-researched, ‘ordinary’ city that, despite its rapid and ongoing development, has not attracted much attention at research level. Salford also adds a very personal element to my PhD; being raised there made me incredibly aware of and emotionally sensitive to both its potential and its struggles. It bore the brunt of industrial decline and political changes, yet now attracts major investment and attention whilst still retaining its working class identity and culture. It became interesting to me to think of what Salford’s future– socially, environmentally, and economically– has in store. This ‘ordinary’ city is anything but ordinary, and its potential is exciting. Mayor Paul Dennett’s focus on tackling the climate emergency, poverty and inequality presents a solid case for Salford as somewhere that can have a more sustainable future whilst remembering its industrial past and what this meant for community and Salford’s identity. I began to think about how its future could hold and make space for the intersection between working class identity and climate change action, whilst still recognising the importance of placing young people’s agency and their voice at the forefront of change. There is a significant research gap when we consider working class young people and climate activism. They are often not consulted for their ideas, opinions, nor their imagination and thoughts on what they would like the future of their place and space to look like. Thus, my research considers working class youth activism in Salford, the importance of place to them, and whether there are barriers to engaging in climate activism as a working class young person– especially important given climate activism in the UK has, typically, operated in middle class spaces. There is also exciting potential to consider digitally mediated methods in the city, and participatory research methods. Overall, I hope this research acts as an enabler: empowering youth voices, sharing them with stakeholders, and allowing young people to advocate for the future of their place. 

References: 

Trencher, G., and Karvonen, A. (2019) Stretching Smart: Advancing Health and Well-being Through the Smart City Agenda. Local Environment, 27(4), pp. 610-627. 

Vanolo, A. (2014) Smartmentality: the Smart City as Disciplinary Strategy. Urban Studies, 51(5), pp.883-898. 

2.     Other / Previous Research 

GrowGreen Project, funded by Horizon 2020: Green Cities for Climate and Water Resilience, Sustainable Economic Growth, Healthy Citizens and Environments: 

Managed by Professor James Rothwell and Dr Jamie Anderson, I worked as a research assistant in 2021 collecting post-intervention survey data in West Gorton (intervention neighbourhood) and Pendleton (comparison neighbourhood) in Greater Manchester. West Gorton was the focus of a GrowGreen initiative and funded as part of the European Commission's Smart Cities and Communities call for nature-based solutions in cities. The 10 year regeneration programme demonstrated the ability of a new sponge park to reduce flood risk through nature-based solutions and sustainable design. The intercept surveys I helped conduct assessed self-reported use of outdoor spaces using a seven-point ordinal response scale, ranging from 'never' to 'everyday'. The survey data also aimed to contribute to the assessment of the extent to which the development of the park has enhanced community cohesion, wellbeing, and active lifestyles. Findings from the data collection and project can be found in the article 'Large walking and wellbeing behaviour benefits of co-designed sustainable park improvements: A natural experimental study in a UK deprived urban area' (Anderston et al., 2024). 

Links to Published Works:

Anderson, J., Benton, J.S., Ye, J., Barker, E., Macintyre, V.G., Wilkinson, J., Rothwell, J., Dennis, M., and French, D.P. (2024) Large Walking and Wellbeing Behaviour Benefits of Co-designed Sustainable Park Improvements: A Natural Experimental Study in a UK Deprived Urban Area. Environment International, 187, pp. 1-9.