My Virtual Jericho | Prof Danny Dorling - The Disneyfication of North Oxford: Is it Inevitable?

Wed 14 April @ 5.30pm
Danny, conceived in Jericho, is Oxford University’s ‘pop’ social geographer. He makes the complicated simple. Last year hundreds watched his My Virtual Jericho on the changing face of the area. This year he asks whether North Oxford is in danger of becoming a theme park. Let Danny explain "The title of this talk assumes that a Disneyfication of the centre and North Oxford is already underway, and poses the question as to whether that should simply be accepted as given and unstoppable. By Disneyfication I mean becoming like a kind of American Disney Land, a theme park to which more and more tourists are attracted and within which less and less is authentically original; but is renovated or built to look as if it was there, as it is now, always. Of course, the canal would have once been a working canal, taking coal and other heavy goods into the city - nothing can be kept quite as it was. But, as house prices in the north of the city show no sign of falling, and as international student interest in the city remains so high, should be begin to better recognise and perhaps simply accept the direction of travel? And, if so, what are the implications for the other parts of the city?"

[stuartcalow]

I find it soothing and reassuring to come across calm, evidence based analyses among all the lies and hysteria. You are my favorite geographer, Danny! Cheers from a retired archaeologist in Norwich, still a ( relatively) fine city!

[BritishAnts]

Lived and worked in Jericho/WaltonWell Manor for over a decade in the late 90’s but couldn’t afford to live there in come 2008 and moved to Kingston Bagpuize! That became to expensive and had to move 111 miles south tot he coast! FYI if i returned to the same job i had back then they’d need to pay double just to be able to pay myLucy’s (bedsit) they call it it a flat or studio!

[horserous]

Lived in jericho in the early 1960s, in cranham Street. Recall the steam trains passing by at the boatyard. It was a bit of of dive then. Fun to play in the houses, full of rubble, ready for demolition. Went to St. Barny's school. When reprimanded by the headmaster, he had a massive coal fire burning in his office. Suffered from whooping cough back then, missed a lot of school, the pollution in the area was something else. We eventually moved to temple cowley, a far better place to live. Memories.