This paper highlights socio-environmental inequalities as consequences of urban regeneration projects in post-industrial sites within suburbs. Transforming inner-city industrial sites such as those in Fishponds, Bristol discussed in this paper, remains challenging for urban planning and for local authorities such as Bristol City Council (BCC). These sites on the one hand provide opportunities for regeneration and housing, yet on the other hand their historical detachment from surrounding neighbourhoods can persist if redevelopment sidelines local perspectives on what constitutes a sustainable neighbourhood. If such detachment, both physically and mentally, between existing communities and industrial sites is not explored properly, it can result in less meaningful engagement during consultation process and further inequalities that can be simply framed as consequences of regeneration projects.

The paper highlights the role of creative methods for capturing diverse experiences, memories and relations shaped by the industrial sites in the neighbourhood. Exploring the place and mapping relations with local community including Fishponds Planning Community Group (FPCG) during two workshops shows multiple narratives of place and the risk of reducing them through consultation process. Multivocal Fishponds include a series of co-produced narratives of Fishponds highlighting communities’ multiple and contradictory priorities. Such approach upskills local communities to gain a wider understanding of their places and needs, to engage meaningfully with planners and developers in future, when regeneration schemes reach planning application stage. It also contributes to much needed justice framework in regeneration projects to tackle longstanding socio-ecological inequalities and planning approaches that at best take a provisional approach rather than transforming places, including their narratives and aesthetics with the local communities.