Margate on the Edge of Regeneration

I took these photographs in 2011, before Margate became synonymous with regeneration. At the time, the town felt caught in a moment where change was implied but not promised. It hadn’t yet been rebranded or rediscovered. Looking back now, as narratives of transformation define Margate, it’s worth asking what has already slipped from view.

This photo essay is not a lament, nor a before-and-after exercise. Instead, it’s a counterpoint to the glossy story of regeneration—a visual reminder of what we forgot, when we rewrite places.

Margate Regeneration and the Quiet Before Change

What I See

My camera lingers on the everyday. I returned to buildings that have long shaped Margate’s identity and the lives lived around them. Arlington House—the 1960s Brutalist tower on the seafront—appears not as an architectural icon, but as a familiar part of daily life worn by time and weather. Nearby, Arlington Arcade sits quieter, its boarded-up shops suspended between past purpose and an uncertain future.

Elsewhere, people rest in cafés, eat fish and chips on the promenade, play games in the amusements, and pass through streets. The photographs move between shuttered shopfronts, people’s daily lives, and a windswept seafront in its off-season state, stripped of spectacle. Dreamland Margate, synonymous with nostalgia, is closed, functioning less as a destination and more as a landmark awaiting renewal. The Turner Contemporary, central to Margate’s regeneration story, sits quietly on the seafront—present, but not yet thriving.

Across the series, the images convey stillness rather than crisis, depicting a town in a state of suspension rather than decline.

What I Feel

It’s easy to read these photographs as evidence of neglect, or as nostalgia for a town “before regeneration”. I resist both interpretations. For me, they show how place attachment—the emotional bond we form with places—emerges not from spectacle, but from familiarity.

Routes walked daily. Buildings absorbed into habit. Spaces passed without remark. Out of this repetition emerges an affection for places that some researchers describe as topophilia—a “love of place” that grows through lived experiences.

Over time, these routines shape what psychologists call place identity: the sense that places become part of who you are. Looking slowly at these images reveals how closely place and identity intertwine.

What I Know

Place identity is shaped as much by what is missing as by what is present. By attending to absence—quiet streets, closed shops, forgotten corners—my images reveal what regeneration narratives often overlook: boredom, endurance, humour, and resilience. These are not signs of progress or failure, but the overlooked textures of everyday life.

By resisting the language of decline or revival, this essay encourages a slower, more careful way of looking. One that shows how people form connections to places long before anyone invests in them, photographs them, or celebrates them.

Why Margate Regeneration Still Matters

Regeneration does more than change landscapes—it shapes the feelings people attach to places and the memories that keep them alive. As a photographer and psychologist, I see how “creativity” and “renewal” quietly shape the rhythms of daily life.

Margate on the Edge of Regeneration documents the town as it was before developers rewrote its story—when the future felt uncertain, and people carried on with their lives. Looking back now, these images ask a simple question: what else are we in danger of forgetting, just as it disappears from view?

Thank you for taking the time to look. These images document Margate regeneration, and sharing them helps keep the conversation alive.