Our challenges

Regeneration

MCAU are committed to exploring the issues of urbanism today and dealing with the big challenges we all face. We live in an uncertain and complex world where the global forces of change affect the daily lives of individuals and the places in which we live, work, and relax.

For some this creates vast opportunity and we continue to see our largest and most successful cities exerting a gravitational pull on people, resources, and investment. However for many of our other secondary cities and towns this has led to the decline of traditional industries, the quality of the environment, and with an exodus of the young, brightest, and the best leaving exposed them to an increasing cycle of unsustainable decline.

MCAU operate in both of these urban environments:

In those major cities where constant evolvement and innovation is taking place and where much of our input is at the forefront of the latest thinking and new ideas. Be that in the changing face of residential urban living, or responding to the significant changes taking place in the commercial sectors where retail, leisure, and work environments are witnessing huge upheaval, and changes in their commercial focus and how they will physically operate in the future.

Also, in those secondary locations that are seeing massive commercial and social upheaval with an increasing loss in their communities and regional status, which is creating areas where real poverty exists and life’s challenges are even greater now than they have been in recent history. A shortage of quality housing being supplied in the areas which most need them, and the decline of their commercial centres which in some cases is beyond repair, requires more radical thought, intervention, and ideas for re-positioning. Ideas of regeneration that react and embrace and enhance all that is positive in these declining areas is a way forward.

Despite the outlook MCAU see the positive opportunity in all of this for our towns and cities to evolve, adapt, and rethink these issues. Through an entrepreneurial and innovative approach that challenges convention, we believe the potential for positive change, added value, and imaginative thinking can deliver brownfield site regeneration to its maximum potential.