Recession, Recovery, Regeneration and Resilience: Newport and the creation of movement cultures

Abstract

This article aligns theories of city imaging and physical cultural studies to probe the city of Newport. This ‘new’ city shares many cultural and economic characteristics with the rest of Wales, but also reveals some significant differences. We focus on and probe the movement policies and cultures in the city, understanding the relationship between bodies and economics, cities and health. Through this discussion, we weave analyses of resilience through the paper, recognising that regeneration focuses on constructing and renovating buildings. We investigate how regeneration and resilience disconnect, with particular consequences for health. Part of this challenge emerges because of the inability to align sport and event tourism with the promotion of walking programmes for residents. Regeneration and resilience disconnect once more. Creating movement cultures is difficult. The ambivalent success of Newport’s policies and initiatives offers both insights and warnings to other small cities.

Keywords

• city imaging
• Newport
• physical cultural studies
• Regional development