#19: Phil Bixby - YoCo

This is a special episode, because it takes everything that we’ve talked about in the past 18 episodes and it focuses on an opportunity that the city of York has right now, to put some of the community wealth building principles into practice.What am I talking about? Well, let me introduce this week’s guest, Phil Bixby.Phil is an Architect and Passivhaus designer who has lived and worked in York for more than thirty years. Over the past decade Phil has worked with heritage academic Helen Graham as My Future York, exploring ways to get the city to think creatively about its future. This led to the My Castle Gateway and My York Central community engagement projects, and subsequent work with York Central Co-Owned (known as YoCo) – facilitating community-led action to create a mixed community and local economy within the massive York Central redevelopment.So, what does this mean? Well, we have one of the biggest city centre brownfield regeneration sites in the country on our doorstep with York Central, which has been in the works for four decades. Phil has been part of the conversation around what happens on this site for the last 10 years or so, and has been fighting to make sure that the wants and needs of the community are reflected in what gets built there.If you’ve driven through that part of town recently you’ll see that money is being spent, infrastructure is being invested in, and there is already momentum to this project.The question is, will York seize the opportunity to do something creative with this, that people in generations to come will look back upon as a marker of York’s commitment to building community wealth rather than private wealth, or will it continue with business as usual?In this episode we dig into the origins of the YoCo project, including why Phil and Helen were first commissioned to do public engagement around the site.We discuss how architects and city planners tend to approach complex issues and systems, and how that might not always be the best way forward. We talk about the disparity between people genuinely believing that York is unlikely to change in the next 10 years, yet also paradoxically believing that it has changed a lot in the past 10 years. And Phil shares his tips on how to do genuine public engagement, rather than a tickbox “public consultation”. I hope you enjoy this conversation with Phil Bixby of YoCo, I’m Ben Porter, and this is the York Community Wealth Building Podcast, brought to you by Fieldwork. You can become a YoCo member here, or follow them on Instagram or Facebook. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit wearefieldwork.substack.com