Sam Brown

Established by the Outer Phoenix Initiative, London Coventry, named after it’s extended airport and HS2 connection, is a blueprint for how industry can play a productive role in the future of mixed-use development and an antidote to the de-mixing and monoculture of city and town edges, regaining the self esteem of this once great midlands city. 

Enticed by a series of new market cross enterprise zones, Jaguar-Land Rover relocalise and embed themselves within the new mixed-use ex urban territory to manufacture and test their electronic, autonomous vehicle, the eDaimler. As a caveat to the enterprise zone, the eDaimler factory is to form a civic face that embeds itself at the centre of the community by providing market places, retail precincts and investment within the wider ward.

Remixing the edge and centre, luxury and the popular, mobility and comfort, new and emerging manufacturing techniques sample the post war centre and suburbs of Coventry to create a poly-centric aerotropolis edge city. Edge activities become enshrined and inform the ex-urban plan creating new public spaces such as the doughnut plaza and industrial churches. 

With these emerging manufacturing techniques come new and difficult labour and social relations. As people’s behaviours alter through the emergence of autonomous travel, and Coventry now acting as a major gateway with a newly formed relationship with London, tensions begin to arise and are played out through the project.