DS 3.4

On the 1st March 2022 the Essex resort of Southend-on- Sea was granted City Status becoming England’s 52nd city. Located on the north side of the Thames Estuary it forms part of the Thames Gateway - a cluster of cities, towns and villages and the country’s largest regeneration project. Southend’s city edge is defined by seven miles of coastline that is home to the longest pier in the world to the south and the single 6,000 foot long asphalt runway of London’s Southend Airport to the north. To the west it bleeds out into farm and river marshlands by Leigh-on-Sea and Canvey Island - fragile ecologies defined by tidal flows and cultural shifts that continue to radically change this landscape. With Southend being raised to city status, where will the regeneration start and where might it perhaps end? This year Studio 4 challenged traditional notions of boundaries, and explored analogue and digital strategies to plot, adapt and reimagine unknown fields. In the race to become a new tech-, garden- or smart city, the act of ‘building’ Southend City challenged what it means to create a city at all. Could one draw from a past wealth of culture and stories, captured in paintings of Constable or scenes in Dickens’ ‘Great Expectations’? Or could one be inspired by Canvey Island today - its backdrop of romantic creeks, intoxicating oil jetties and the blues music of Britain’s Mississippi delta. As we drifted along the estuary, we encountered sunbathers next to petrochemical plants, golf ca