Urban Regeneration in Oldham CBD

Many Northern UK towns and cities have fallen out of favour with shoppers due to deindustrialisation and the rise of out-of town shopping centres. As a result, local governments have been spending money on urban renewal programmes to encourage shoppers back into town centres to boost jobs and trade in the local economy. This has recently been done in Oldham, a satelite town within the Greater Manchester area.

This is a comprehensive lesson ( may stretch to 2 lessons as originally devised for 100 minute lesson) on regenerating the town Hall in Oldham, which was completed in 2017. The lesson looks at reasons for Oldham’s decline and asks students where they normally do their shopping to pick out trends in retail moving away from city centres. They study images and videos of before and after pictures of the town hall. Link to the ’ before’ clips of the townhall on youtube clip is here; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0sQtmrRcvI

Students then have a choice of 2 worksheets to fill in: a copy of the slide or an easier annotation tasks with labels ready to select from. There are some suggested extension questions on the worksheet also.

This lesson would be great for any schools in the Manchester region.