Paper short abstract:

This photographic essay/collage reports on attempts to determine the future of the city of Sheffield over more than a decade of regeneration efforts.

Paper long abstract:

Urban regeneration sounds banal but the long-drawn-out processes can unleash competing fantasies and flights of imagination about possible futures. Sheffield city centre has stumbled and stalled for several decades, falling between grandiose plans and uneven realisations. This contribution considers current attempts to bring together actors in the city, including diverse across from the university, the city authorities, investors and developers to reimagine the city's possibilities. Set in a context of repeated attempts to materialise imaginaries of the city centre across varying temporal horizons, it traces partial realisations, enduring and fleeting moments of materiality and constellations of actors, including occasional anthropologists.