UCO’s London Research Tour - 2024
J. David Chapman, PhD/May 17, 2024
I am on a transatlantic flight to London as I write this week’s column. On our Boeing 777 are 15 student researchers from the University of Central Oklahoma. Our research is looking at how better planning, urban design, and construction could specifically enhance the health and well-being of children and young people, while also benefiting the population as a whole. It will look at how they use outside public spaces and move around their neighbourhoods, and how they can be active in their communities. On previous trips, we have researched redevelopment projects, privately-owned public places (POPs), “third places”, and gentrification effects of development in and around London.
The students’ research, presentations, and reports will focus on the Battersea Power Station development with fieldwork taking place on the development and in the surrounding areas such as Battersea Park and Queenstown Road. Our first day of the tour will start out at Coventry University’s London Campus for basic training on research. The students will be engaged in multiple research methods and their applications by experienced Coventry University researchers, Dr. Dan Range, Dr. Tom Fisher, Dr. David McIlhatton, Ms. Emily Padgett, and Dr. Aurelie Broeckerhoff. The key academic concepts will include: third places, social cohesion, consumption spaces, intersectionality, and privately-owned-public spaces.
After the training session and description of the research project and methods, the students will tour the study location. Battersea Power Station is a decommissioned coal-fired power station located on the south bank of the River Thames in Nine Elms, Battersea in the London Borough of Wandsworth. It was built by the London Power Company and the architects were J. Theo Halliday and Giles Gilbert Scott.
The station is one of the world's largest brick buildings and notable for its original Art Deco interior fittings and decor. Later, after increased concerns about public health, air quality, pollution both stations were shut down in the seventies and eighties. Battersea Power Station remained closed for many years, becoming an unused, derelict, and dingy space. Proposals to repurpose the space came and went, but none were able to achieve the funding, the right mix of retail and residential, or the right look and feel. Finally, these issues were resolved and today it is one of the largest redevelopment schemes in Europe, and our real estate students from UCO will have the opportunity to analyze it.
Dr. J. David Chapman is a Professor of Finance & Real Estate at The University of Central Oklahoma (jchapman7@uco.edu)