The Port of Sheffield: Co-creation in Mobile Application Development for Place-Based Interaction with Large-Scale Urban Heritage Sites

Constructed in 1819, the Sheffield and Tinsley Canal linked the City of Sheffield with the rest of the British waterway system and brought ships into the canal basin in the city centre for the first time. Eroded by periods of rapid social, economic and technological change, the three-mile stretch of the canal site has today become a ‘forgotten’ space, hidden behind surviving industrial sheds and derelict warehouses. The city council's regeneration plans of new waterfront housing along the canal have been held up by the complexities over land ownership, use patterns and brownfield contamination. It has been suggested that the ‘sense of possibility’ of neglected sites such as the Sheffield and Tinsley Canal is what gives the urban landscape of Sheffield its unique character. This article presents our research on the development of a location-aware mobile application through a community-oriented process to deliver ‘place-based’ interaction with the Sheffield and Tinsley Canal as a large-scale urban heritage site. In collaboration with local creative practitioners, we piloted ‘The Port of Sheffield’ a mobile application that enables oral histories and memories to be overlaid onto specific geolocations along the Sheffield and Tinsley Canal. Through the data collected from public use of the application, we reflect on the effectiveness and limitation of co-creation as a methodological framework and discuss the implications of place-based mobile interaction for initiating and sustaining citizens' engagement and interpretations of the past and future of large-scale complex urban heritage sites.