Research shows how Blackpool offers lessons for regeneration and leadership
Tonight (29th August 2025) Blackpool's world famous lights will once again light up the promenade which is a tradition that has been sparking joy, debate, and cultural fascination for over a century. For the Institute of Place Management, Blackpool has been a focus of research for over a decade, with the Illuminations forming a central strand of that work. Through a series of studies by IPM and Manchester Metropolitan University researchers, we have examined how Blackpool is represented, how its public spaces are experienced, and what its story can teach us about managing places. Blackpool, like many coastal communities experiencing significant change, is working hard to address persistent challenges. In doing so, it offers valuable lessons for place managers - showing how identity, tradition and atmosphere are continually negotiated and reimagined. Here we take a recap at our research over the years.
Blackpool Illuminations: revaluing local cultural production, situated creativity and working-class values (2013)
Published in the International Journal of Cultural Policy, research by Prof Tim Edensor & Prof Steve Millington explored how the Illuminations are often dismissed as “tacky”, tied up with class stereotypes. Yet, for millions of visitors, they embody nostalgia, humour, community spirit and tradition. The study showed that Blackpool’s Lights represent a grounded aesthetics that resists homogenised, design-led regeneration. Learn more about this study here.
Learning from Blackpool Promenade: Re-enchanting sterile streets (2018)
Further work by Edensor and Millington demonstrated how Blackpool’s redesigned promenade offers an antidote to sterile, over-regulated urban spaces. Its sensory richness, cultural vibrancy and celebration of popular culture remind us that streets can be places of interaction, engagement, and enchantment and not just functionality. Learn more about this research here.
(Dis)ordering atmospheres: A sensory ethnography of a seaside pier (2024)
Most recently, new research by Dr Chloe Steadman and Prof Steve Millington explored how place managers might embrace, rather than control, the “disorderly” atmospheres of Blackpool’s North Pier. Using Richard Sennett’s Open Forms, they showed how porosity, spontaneity, and incompleteness generate emotional connection and vitality. Sometimes, the best management is knowing when not to over-manage. Learn more about this research here.
Together, these studies show that while Blackpool faces ongoing challenges, it continues to offer a distinctive case for place management showing that tradition, vitality, and even a little disorder can be as key for regeneration as high design.
Lessons for place managers
- Manage place reputation proactively - Perceptions of class and taste shape how places are judged. Understanding and addressing reputational narratives is central to effective place leadership.
- Prioritise vibrancy - Over-regulated, standardised design can create sterile spaces. What matters is cultural vibrancy, authentic character and sensory engagement that make places feel distinctive and alive.
- Allow for flexible atmospheres - Over-controlling sound, activity or natural elements often undermines place experience. Embracing a degree of unpredictability can build vibrancy and strengthen emotional connection.
- Recognise everyday cultural value - Visitors respond to nostalgia, humour and community spirit as much as to high design. Supporting locally rooted creativity and traditions enhances identity and belonging.
- Balance innovation with heritage - Successful places combine new interventions with continuity of story and tradition, ensuring evolution without erasing what makes them distinctive.
The research makes clear that while Blackpool offers important lessons for place managers, these do not erase the fact that many residents continue to live with deep-seated economic and social challenges. For Blackpool, and for many coastal towns, the task is not just economic recovery but building futures that connect everyday cultural value with material improvements in people’s lives. The Illuminations bring pride, atmosphere and community spirit, but they are not in themselves a solution to poverty or inequality. What they do show is that regeneration must take seriously the values that people attach to place - tradition, belonging, and identity - alongside strategies for jobs, housing and health.
If you would like to learn more about our research and commissioning us to work in your place, please get in touch with Ian Harvey at ipm@mmu.ac.uk.
About the author
Formed in 2006, the Institute of Place Management is the international professional body that supports people committed to developing, managing and making places better.