Key:
Blue University Owned Buildings
Purple Privately built student accommodation
Blue University Owned Buildings
Purple Privately built student accommodation
Green Popular student rental areas
Red Busy student thoroughfares
The slideshow highlights the presence of the University in Shieldfield. When it was formed as a polytechnic in 1969, it remained west of the motorway. Then as the student population began to increase accommodation belonging to the University was built in the Melbourne street area (South of Newbridge Street) as well as Pandon building on Camden Street, and privately built accommodation also began to spring up. In 2008 University cmapus east was built on the site of the old goods station, and recently the Ridley Villas, which were among the first buildings in Shieldfield, have been demolished to make way for university owned accomodation and plans for a 2000 bed 'student village' have been passed for the area in between Stoddart Street and Portland Road.
There are other ways that the university impacts Shieldfield as well; most students prefer to live within walking distance of the University and so thousands of students who live in the compact areas of Heaton, Sandyford and Jesmond and all travel to the same destination must pass through Shieldfield, giving the area the atmosphere of a thoroughfare.
Northumbria University has had a huge impact on Shieldfield, including its borders and boundaries. Since the building of the new East campus in 2008, Northumbria buildings have straddled the central motorway, connecting both sides. The motorway could be seen as as much of a physical border between Shieldfield and Newcastle city centre as the dene and the railway before it, perhaps even more as a motorway has a constant flow of fast moving traffic and can only be crossed at the designated points of foot bridges and raised roundabouts. However now that the University campus stretches over the motorway, aided by the new foot bridge between the two campuses that is always busy, has the 'border' effect of the motorway been erased? For staff and students of Northumbria University I think that this is likely, as in most minds it is simply an extension of the grounds of the University. But I wonder if it is the same for non-student residents of Shieldfield: Perhaps it feels more as if the western border of Shieldfield that once was the dene, then was the railway, and then the motorway, has been pushed eastwards - with the University that previously was a city centre phenomena now pushing it up to the edge of Shieldfield green. Perhaps the bridge, with its enormous 'Northumbria' lettering, feels as if it is exclusively for people affiliated with the university?
These questions are an attempt to address the issue that borders are experienced in different ways by different people depending on their personal experience of a place, and that it is not possible to draw a definite line around an area and say that its identity is contained within that shape, for its identity only exists in the minds of the people who inhabit it and so is shaped by their personal experiences and ideologies.
There are other ways that the university impacts Shieldfield as well; most students prefer to live within walking distance of the University and so thousands of students who live in the compact areas of Heaton, Sandyford and Jesmond and all travel to the same destination must pass through Shieldfield, giving the area the atmosphere of a thoroughfare.
Northumbria University has had a huge impact on Shieldfield, including its borders and boundaries. Since the building of the new East campus in 2008, Northumbria buildings have straddled the central motorway, connecting both sides. The motorway could be seen as as much of a physical border between Shieldfield and Newcastle city centre as the dene and the railway before it, perhaps even more as a motorway has a constant flow of fast moving traffic and can only be crossed at the designated points of foot bridges and raised roundabouts. However now that the University campus stretches over the motorway, aided by the new foot bridge between the two campuses that is always busy, has the 'border' effect of the motorway been erased? For staff and students of Northumbria University I think that this is likely, as in most minds it is simply an extension of the grounds of the University. But I wonder if it is the same for non-student residents of Shieldfield: Perhaps it feels more as if the western border of Shieldfield that once was the dene, then was the railway, and then the motorway, has been pushed eastwards - with the University that previously was a city centre phenomena now pushing it up to the edge of Shieldfield green. Perhaps the bridge, with its enormous 'Northumbria' lettering, feels as if it is exclusively for people affiliated with the university?
These questions are an attempt to address the issue that borders are experienced in different ways by different people depending on their personal experience of a place, and that it is not possible to draw a definite line around an area and say that its identity is contained within that shape, for its identity only exists in the minds of the people who inhabit it and so is shaped by their personal experiences and ideologies.
