This project will establish an international research network exploring the Future of the City Centre, through a partnership between Northumbria University; University of Strathclyde; University of Newcastle, Australia; University of Paraiba, Brazil; and the University of South Africa. The research network will examine how city centres are being transformed by a number of internal, external and contextual factors and the implications of these changes for the Future of the City Centre. The theoretical perspectives will involve past, present and future. Emphasis will be visions for the post-industrial, post-commercial and post-retail city. This theme and the related sub-topics will enable the development of future city models and will help to contextualise urban change. Provision for creative industries, cultural events and different forms of entertainment may offer vitality, together with visitors and responsible tourism. City authorities are starting to realise that structural changes are happening in city centres, and are responding by establishing core groups of officers to consider these issues. This proposal will provide a distinct focus on innovation for the Future of the City Centre. It will also enable academic research to inform new policies, from an inter-disciplinary perspective incorporating views from different cities. The research network is proposed at a time when governments, communities, business, artists, entertainers, historians, sociologists and others, are re-evaluating their interactions with cities. The key aim of this research network is to explore the Future of the City Centre, informed by international perspectives of expert knowledge from a range of disciplines in each locality. Invited speakers will represent education, local government, non-government organisations, business and community groups. There will be four symposiums over 24 months. They will take place in four different continents and establish a view from developed and developing countries. While individual cities cannot represent continents or even countries, they can be indicative of responses from different geographies, governance systems, cultures, heritage and populations. The UK Government Office for Science City Futures Project established Newcastle upon Tyne as pilot city. According to the United Nations, Joao Pessoa in Brazil is the second greenest city in the world. Newcastle, Australia, has established a leading smart city approach, as part of its future. Mogale City in South Africa has created an integrated development plan, as a statement of independence from Pretoria. The universities and academics chosen from the cities for this proposal are each offering distinctive perspectives. Professor Giddings promotes the arts, architecture, and urban design in the culture of communities; Professor Silva researches sustainable urbanism; Dr Jefferies investigates public and private partnerships; and Professor Rwelamila practices city management systems. In addition Dr Rogerson will offer data and methodologies from the University of Strathclyde Institute of Future Cities. Each symposium will include selected speakers who will be asked to prepare position papers to establish the context for debates on the Future of the City Centre. Speakers will represent academia, local government, non-government organisations, businesses and communities. The outcome will be possible scenarios that may be formed into the inter-disciplinary policies. It is proposed that 20 invitees will attend each symposium over a two-day period, together with open access for all interested parties. In addition to world-wide availability of the project data through the website, publications and other outputs, participants will work with their local policy makers to develop novel scenarios. The focus on exploring a range of perspectives during an era of fundamental change will assist cities around the world to re-assess their strategies.

The ARN is a group of early career researchers who are involved in reinvigorating debates about authority. This involves thinking about the dynamic and creative ways in which authority is fostered and how it contributes to community life. The need to think about authority and how it operates is timely, as traditional authority structures are seen to have been eroded and there are calls to reinstate these (e.g. after the riots of summer 2011). Recent years have also seen a movement of authority away from the state and into the hands of private organisations such as credit agencies, disability assessors and other "big society" organisations. Policy moves (e.g. the Localism Act) that threaten existing state-led structures have exacerbated the need to think about new ways of understanding and building the social aspects of contemporary life, and provide alternatives to the state-community-individual model. The erosion of trust in traditional authority (family, banks) continues and contributes to these concerns. The ARN has worked together for 3 years, organising symposia, conference sessions, retreats and writing a special edition of the Journal of Power, an article for Critical Inquiry and a pamphlet on authority and participation to be used by community practitioners and participatory researchers. The core network consists of early career academics working at Universities of Brighton (Leila Dawney), Bristol (Naomi Millner, Tehseen Noorani), Plymouth (Julian Brigstocke) Warwick (Claire Blencowe), Paraiba, Brazil (Aecio Amaral) and Bath Spa (Sam Kirwan). The project will extend this network to academic and non-academic participants working both in the UK and in Latin America, where similar concerns are being investigated in community and local political settings and where there is potential for research development and cross-fertilisation of ideas. The project builds on the work undertaken during 2 previous AHRC projects and takes up themes identified during these projects to build durable collaborations with new partners. The project will involve two symposia: "spaces and aesthetics of authority" and "the making of the common". The latter explores the notion of the "common" in philosophical and theoretical writings, in order to consider the role of knowledge and authority in the production of a shared life. The former emerges from a previous AHRC network project where a focus on the experience of authority was found to be central to understanding how it works and how it is generated through performances and practices (Dawney, Blencowe et al. 2011). The symposia provide an opportunity to get to grips with new concepts and collectively produce workable ways of using those concepts in research practice which will lead to the development of a major participatory research project. They will feed into two retreats, which will provide time and space for creative thinking, collaborative writing, engagement with texts and the development of concepts and approaches. These will be supported by a creative writing expert and a visual artist to facilitate the production of creative, communicable material to be used in the larger research project and by colleagues working in community settings. Having found their methods successful for their own career development, the ARN are keen to promote their distinctive working methods (retreats, diagramming and collaborative writing) to PhD students. The project will therefore include events at doctoral training centres (e.g. ESRC funded doctoral training centre network). These activities will be supported by an intuitive webspace that enables discussion and peer review and provides a platform to archive, collect and disseminate creative and academic work that will form the beginning of a clear area of study called "new authority studies". This will prepare the ground for the development of a significant research project that explores new articulations of authority in community settings.