(upbeat music) Geographers are working on some of the major challenges that we face as a society. A big challenge that's faced lots of UK cities has been the decline of their traditional manufacturing industries. Factories have closed and jobs have moved out to Southeast Asia where labour costs are much lower. Here in Portsmouth, that dominant industry was ship building and other activities linked to the Royal Navy. This is Portsmouth Naval Dockyard, home of the British Royal Navy. The size of the Navy has declined massively since the second world war, when there was over 200 ships. Now, there are only around 70 and only half of those are based in Portsmouth. At the same time, the ship building industry has declined as well. After the second world war, at its peak, there were 30,000 manufacturing jobs in Portsmouth. Now, there are only 10,000. A loss of 20,000 manufacturing jobs. So ships are no longer built in Portsmouth, they're only repaired and maintained. The latest ship, the Queen Elizabeth aircraft carrier, was still built in the UK, but up in Scotland. This decline in manufacturing presented Portsmouth and other UK cities with a challenge. How could they survive and thrive without their manufacturing industry? And how could they create new jobs and bring in new money? (peaceful music) In the 1990s, any city with derelict industrial or brownfield land, was looking to redevelop it as mixed leisure and retail sites. This shift in focus from the secondary industry of manufacturing to the tertiary industry of leisure and tourism, was a common redevelopment strategy. This is Gunwharf Quays. For 300 years, until 1995, it was a major part of the Royal Naval base. It was where they used to store weaponry and ammunition. This is actually where they used to bring the ships in. The weapons would be lined up on the dockside there and they would load them onto the boats. (peaceful music) This arch is actually one of the old entrances to Gunwharf Quays, and until 2001, no member of the public had been or even seen beyond this point for over 300 years, because it was a secure military zone. After the Navy left Gunwharf Quays in 1995, it was transformed over the next six years into a major leisure, retail, and residential development. This was part of a strategy to redefine Portsmouth Harbour as an international centre for heritage and leisure. This old military land now has designer outlet stores, there's a casino, a bowling alley, and a cinema. It's been transformed into a major leisure and consumer destination. And it's the physical and human geography of Portsmouth that's actually made this development so successful. The roads and the rail infrastructure that connects Portsmouth with the rest of the UK, and the sea, enabling passengers to travel to Portsmouth from France, Spain, and the Channel Islands. The most striking feature of this development is the 170 metre high Spinnaker Tower, which is one of the UK's highest public viewing platforms outside of London. Spinnaker Tower was funded with public money through the Millennium Commission at a cost of 35.6 million pounds. There's a really interesting story about the Spinnaker Tower. When it was first built, it was white. But, in 2015, the Emirates sponsored the Spinnaker Tower and they wanted to paint it red and white, which is their corporate brand colour. The trouble with red and white is that those two colours are the exact colours that Portsmouth residents did not want on their tower because they're the colours of the rival football team, Southampton. So, when the plans were announced to paint the tower red and white, 10,000 people actually wrote to the city council to complain. So it really meant something to people? Absolutely. It shows how important a particular building can be to the collective sense of identity of people in a city. This is one of the big challenges facing urban redevelopment projects. How to regenerate part of a city without erasing the area's unique history, identity, and sense of place. So people are emotionally connected to place, it really means something to them. This place could be anywhere in the world or any UK waterfront development. It's the same shops, the same types of apartments that have been built. Isn't there any Portsmouth in here? It's interesting you should say that. So, in order to retain some of the historic character of the sight, they have retained figureheads from the boats, the dry dock, artillery, torpedoes, canons, some of the old buildings, one of the old cranes. So there's reference back to the Naval history. So, although Gunwharf has been commercially successful, planners need to think about issues like sense of place. Equally, there are knock-on effects for the rest of the city. (peaceful music) The redevelopment of Gunwharf Quays has made this area an attractive place to live. Older buildings have been done up and new buildings have been created to create modern apartments. This is gentrification. It may look nice, but it causes social problems. Richer people move into these gentrified areas and poorer people can no longer afford to live in the places that used to be their homes. (peaceful music) The city centre has suffered from the loss of jobs over a large number of years. Here, we see some intriguing things. We see trees growing out of derelict concrete. We see a vast area in a city centre area that's just being used as a car park. So, the city centre faces real challenges. There was a lot of debate over whether Gunwharf Quays should go ahead because of the competition that would be introduced for shoppers with the city centre. And, in fact, the planning permission that was granted required that the shops at Gunwharf would not duplicate and compete with the city centre. But, there is some evidence that perhaps Gunwharf Quays is competing with the city centre. So, although Gunwharf Quays has attracted a lot of people into the city, poor transport connections make it difficult for many people to come from Gunwharf up to the city center, with a railway line and a dual carriageway intersecting the route, with busy roads to cross, and no cafes or shops to entice people to walk between the two. The city centre has also suffered from the rise of internet shopping and the development of out of town retail centres. We can see evidence of this if we look around us. Such as sites that have not been developed for long periods of time, vacant shops, and some of the shops that are in parts of the city centre being lower-end market shops. (peaceful music) This example from Portsmouth shows us how successful urban planning decisions require decision-makers to think like geographers. We have to appreciate how cities are interconnected and how new developments have knock-on effects. Urban redevelopment projects might improve the look of cities, bringing in new investment and jobs, but it is often difficult for new developments to maintain the unique identity of cities. Those subtle, but important aspects of a city that help create a sense of place. Modern developments can also effect the housing market, effecting where people can afford to live. And if allowed to, they can draw business away from traditional town centre areas. Urban redevelopment projects are a really important way of replacing old industries that have declined and making use of derelict urban land. They can be commercially successful, but they have to be sensitive to the local environment. By studying examples like this, as geographers, we can learn from the successes and the mistakes of the past to make better planning decisions in the future.