Real regeneration

7/30/2019 Real regeneration

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INDEPTHL

Susie Hay: I long for

people to take action

without waiting for the

f word (funding) that

gets all off the hook. No

funding equals freedom.

Yaser Mir: Include

high quality design,

sustainability , equality

and diversity consider

how all communities can

live side by side.

Toby Blume: Stopregarding regeneration

as something that can be

done without tackling

underlying causes of

poverty and inequality.

Rob Greenland: A smaller

State gets out the way

and communities take the

with economic and

environmental change.

Chris Doyle: Ubiquitous

broadband for all in digital

Britain, bringing the UKinto the global digital

marketplace.

Kelvin Owers: Tax breaks

on saving existing

buildings, and repurposing

them. Less focus on

building new.

Simon Cooke: Confidence,

motivation, initiative,

enterprise and community,

not consultants and

architects.

Dan Thompson: Small,

locally distinct, community

led acupuncture

We asked people on Twittertheir hopes for regeneration

for the coming decade. Hereare a few of their responses...

l hi


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INDEPTH

MFor the most part, these policies (person and place) have

developed separately within their specific domains...

However, this separation does not reflect a reality in which

poverty and disadvantage are mediated by place, and

places are affected by the poverty or otherwise of their

inhabitants.

Even if we could get the policy mix and implementation

right, there are compelling reasons why regeneration will be

a continuing need. Think for a moment about the definition

drawn up by civil servants in the regeneration framework

document, Transforming places, changing lives (see panel,

below): The governments view is that regeneration is aset of activities that reverse economic, social and physical

decline in areas where market forces will not do this

without support from government.

The history of the last half century shows us that

economic, social and physical decline have gone hand in hand

with rising affluence. The economist Joseph Schumpeter

expressed this as creative destruction: to make way for the

new, the old must be demolished. But what in economic

and market terms is considered a good innovation andnew products brings social ills in terms of skills becoming

redundant, places losing their economic raison detre and the

personal costs of stress and unemployment.

One of the greatest policy failures of the last decade,

arguably, has been the unwillingness to recognise that the

market forces that create prosperity and opportunity are

the very same forces that bring decline and deprivation.

They create losers as well as winners, as surely as Strictly

Come Dancing or X Factor A 40 year analysis for the Joseph

One of the greatest policy failures of the last decade,

arguably, has been the unwillingness to recognise that the

market forces that create prosperity and opportunity are


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INDEPTHL

Poverty isnt just about

a lack of jobs, education

or wealth, its about

unsafe and bad housing

design and low quality

Poverty in this country is not just about poor education,

unemployment or low wages, and lack of opportunity. It is

typically associated with poor housing and poverty of place

badly designed estates or low quality neighbourhoods,

with dysfunctionally designed energy inefficient homes

showed four million children living in poverty after housing

costs are taken into account. For working age adults it was

seven-and-a-half million, and for pensioners two million.

Those are just the bald figures. As the department

stated in evidence to the Commons work and pensions

committee: The impact of poverty on children goes well

beyond material disadvantage... Children who experience

poverty are more likely to have low self-esteem and lower

expectations for their future. They are more likely to be

poor themselves and there is a strong association between

parental earnings and the earnings of their children when

they enter work.But despite a wealth of analysis and initiatives, we seem

stuck with the same problems.

In 1998 the Social Exclusion Units report,Bringing

Britain together, offered this critique of previous initiatives:

None really succeeded in setting in motion a virtuous

circle of regeneration, with improvements in jobs, crime,

education, health and housing all reinforcing each other.

Ten years on, the 2008Monitoring poverty and social

exclusion report concluded that the comprehensive visionof the Blair government had been lost in favour of a crude

focus on worklessness:

Ten years ago, the challenge was to get child poverty

reduction added to the governments agenda. Ten years

on, the challenge is to prevent it dominating the social

policy agenda to the exclusion of virtually all else.. the

answer is nowhere near as simple as work is the route

out of poverty.

Does this mean though that were stuck in a


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INDEPTH

The last 20

years has

delivered some

remarkable

urban

regeneration

schemes in

the UK from Tate Modern to

new waterfronts in Newcastle-

Gateshead and Liverpool, fromthe occupational transformation

of Shoreditch to the Scandi-style

minimalist repaving of most city

centres.

But the debt-fuelled boom

is over: bank lending is tighter,

housebuilders darent start

on site, the mathematical

foundations of value uplift havebeen wrecked by low land values

and the number of people in

poverty has increased, when the

very purpose of regeneration is

to help poor people become more

prosperous.

Urban regeneration needs a

new narrative. What might it be?

Th r r th ith h

and the private and rolling out

statism as innovation.

Then theres the crew wielding

luxury Mont Blancs: lawyers and

accountants reframing the idea

of value-uplift and calling it a TIF,

or politicians like David Cameron

or Tessa Jowell heralding a new

age of localism or mutualism

but not giving us much of a clueon cast or story.

What seems clear is that

economic change will be

less reliant upon property

developers, unless they are

prepared to innovate by shifting

to sustainable development or

become increasingly transparent

and flexible. Local developmentwill become more answerable to

the people and well see less of

a massive-shopping-centre-with-

a-town-attached approach to

urbanism.

The industry will now push

for value to be assessed on a

broader basket of assets and

rr i r d b r t l

local councillors and planning

officers.

Small projects are back in

vogue, rather than physical

projects so big that they make

the earth tilt.

And new, non-aligned

organisations or aggregated civic

organisations at the most local

level are about to become flavourof the month, so long as they

offer a genuine bridge between

citizens and state, engender

trust, express identity and

promote the welfare of the larger

community.

Who are the poster boys and

girls of this new world?

Theres the army of activistswho lead their communities

but believe in collaboration, the

welfare of the larger community

and power of collective

bargaining.

Then there are the people

who understand that enterprise

in all of its many forms social,

ll r i l i k

in the book: the taxpayer and the

consumer.

But the new element is the

collective. The new vehicle: the

non-profit. The new hero: the

social entrepreneur.

The politicians suggest we

are at the dawn of the social

economy. However, only one or

two investors in regeneration seevalue in life-cycle costs, mutualism

or assets other than land.

Some time soon a bright

spark is going to come up with a

marketable link between carbon

credits and the financing of urban

renewal.

In the meantime, everyone

talks of paradigm shift and onlya few engage with whats likely

to become the new key theme of

regeneration: equity.

XDavid Barrie is principal

consultant at David Barrie

& Associates and specialises

in regeneration, community

i l m t d th d i

Urban regeneration needs a new narrative, says David Barrie


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In February 1996 the oil tanker Sea

Empress hit the rocks at the entrance to

Milford Haven, Pembrokeshire, spilling

more than 72,000 tonnes of oil and

polluting around 250 kilometres of coast.

A cost-benefit study later concluded

the clean-up operation had generated

500,000 of extra local income and created

25 new jobs.

Against those benefits, of course,

had to be set the huge damage to the

areas fishing and tourism industries. Theresearch estimated between

1,100 and 1,400 jobs were

lost overall.

The study illustrates

the difficulty with

traditional measures of

success, such as spending

generated or jobs created. Both

the standard measures of theeconomy gross domestic product

(GDP) and gross value added

(GVA) measure activity: more

activity equals more spending and

is typically considered beneficial,

less is a bad thing and can lead to

recession. So the work involved

in cleaning up an oil spill can be

i d mi iti

even if it would have been better not to spill the oil in the

first place. Another way of looking at that 500,000 of local

income and 25 new jobs would be to say that this was

money that could otherwise have been spent on activities to

improve local peoples quality of life, and labour that might

have been put to more creative purposes.

The problem is that we dont measure the right things

either because the measurements seem too difficult, or

because theyre not acceptable to funding agencies. Its

not for want of talking about it: the debate about how to

measure quality of life and the social impact of investment

is well-established (see panel, p30). But were still stuck inpatterns that measure jobs created or safeguarded rather

than the skills and attitudes and life chances generated by

that work, and economic output rather than the impact of

that work on society and how sustainable it is.

Whats astonishing is that we use values and

measurements in assessing the impact of regeneration

programmes that we dont use in our own lives. We asked

New Startreaders what values we should use in measuring

the worth of the places we create. The answers wererevealing: they included how useful we feel as a member

of our community, sustainability, the social fabric of

society, the importance of locality, how well you know your

neighbours. Nobody mentioned the number of cranes, the

amount of speculative office development, or the number of

cars on the road.

Obviously we need to know whether the money we

spend does the job we want, and whether we can afford

h t l t d B t D id B l t it i hi b k

realregeneration


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Now is the time for

a new wave of local

economic activism

that seeks to nurture

and protect the

environment and create greater social and

economic equity.

To do this, we need to challenge theassumptions that underpin current approaches,

including growth and a belief that economic

success will inevitably result in positive

social return. At the core of this reconfigured

economic development must be a greater

appreciation of creating resilient places.

While historically used in the context

of natural disasters, resilience and

its application to economic planningoffers a way forward for local economic

development. Like a boxer who can take a

punch, a resilient place can ride economic

and environmental punches.

Lets be brutally honest. The practice of

local economic development has created

some outcomes which have proven brittle

and short-lived. Renaissance has been patchy,

t i d t i l i l ti

sturdy. In turn that enables us to assess a

local economys brittleness, its vulnerability

and weak points. This leads us to better

policy and action which fully considers a

localitys powers of recovery and understands

what can drive it.

Our work on resilience is well under

way and is rooted in practice. Followinginternational research work in six locations,

we have embarked on an ambitious pilot

process in six areas in England, including more

than ten local authorities. We also have an

ongoing pilot in Melbourne, Australia.

Our research disrupts the key assumption

that economic development is mainly about

the commercial economy (wealth generators).

This is not resilient on its own. Practitioners

need to develop ways to harvest commercial

success better, and consider how the public

(t ti d) d i l

clunky and unsubtle and in some instances has

been environmentally damaging, detached

from labour market needs, social context and

local identity.

Our resilience work opens the door to an

alternative view of economic prosperity that

is not at the expense of the environment or

community. We need differentiated, smartand bespoke strategies and policy that actively

plan for a transition to green, balanced

growth, and are capable of managing decline

and developing the social economy.

This is work in progress, but we and our

pilot areas are at the forefront of socialising

and greening economic development and

creating resilient places for the future.

uNeil McInroy is chief executive of the

Centre for Local Economic Strategies.

u R ad Ali Gil hri t arti l mm it

We need a new way of socialising and greening economic

development, says Neil McInroy

The pursuit of growth has been clunky and unsubtle and in

some instances has been environmentally damaging, detachedfrom labour market needs, social context and local identity.


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possible scale, has consistently been viewed as anti-business

and the clinching argument therefore bad for jobs.

Nobody appears to know how much of our economy

consists of activities to remedy the effects of other economic

activity. There are figures that aggregate lost production and

remedial activity: a recent study cited by the Royal College

of Psychiatrists, for example, puts the cost of mental health

problems in the UK at 110bn a year. In 2003 the cost of

crime to individuals and households in the UK, according

to the Home Office, was 36.2bn. The UK security industry

is worth around 6bn a year. More than 20bn is spent

on private healthcare every year in the UK. Some of thesefigures are lost opportunities; others are activities that

employ people and create products.

However you account for them, they represent time and

money spent putting right what has gone wrong. In fact,

the more damaging the activity, the stronger the economic

multiplier effect may be: the tobacco smoked creates

work for cancer specialists, a polluting industry creates

opportunities for land remediation, and so on.

Over the last decade regeneration programmes havebeen bedevilled by the skewed thinking that applauds

activity rather than quality. Major cities have sought to

anchor their renaissance in shopping centres, bars and

hotels, with scant thought about what consumers would be

buying or where the money spent ends up. Superstores have

been given planning permission in the hope that theyd

become anchors for other local businesses, when they have

frequently had the opposite effect.

If i t tl th d l i th t t l t

be little more than wishful thinking unless its underpinned

and driven by sustainable practice. Here regeneration

practitioners can take a lead.

That requires a tectonic shift in thinking in some

quarters. It means ending the kind of analysis that produces

league tables of regeneration projects, with the most

expensive at the top as if this were a helpful gauge of how

effective, well-planned or sustainable they might be. Big,

strategic projects are doubtless necessary in many cases, but

their size doesnt make them more necessary.

There is little evidence of such a shift from the

traditional leaders of UK regeneration. Michael Parkinsons2009 report, The credit crunch and regeneration, focused

strongly on commercial property and housing markets.

His sequel, launched in January at a conference held under

the banner of The Northern Way, focuses on the need for

economic development and continued public investment.

But there are significant gaps. Inequality gets not one

mention in 100 pages of text. Poverty is mentioned once,

in a description of the hidden social consequences of the

downturn.The same goes for climate change. The single mention

is a passing reference to the Department of Energy and

Climate Change. Theres a little more on low carbon as in

the low carbon sustainability agenda, which means little if

you fail to explain how it is to be put into practice.

Search the report for concepts like flourishing and

thriving and you wont find them. Of the three uses of the

word green, two refer to the green belt.

Si il l th B iti h P t F d ti


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Mg bg

The ew conomics Foundation has called for national

prosperity to e measured in terms of national accounts

of wellein.

The challene is to match the multiplicity and

dynamism of what constitutes and contriutes to peoples

wellein with what ets measured, ef says. uch

measures need to capture the strenth of peoples social,

family and neihourhood networks of support, how

positive they feel aout their lives and their psycholoicalstate. Central to that is the idea of resilience the aility

to withstand shocks and chanes.

n international study conducted in 2006-2007

found Denmark and witzerland had the hihest levels

of personal and social wellein in urope, with the

K trailin in the ottom half of the tale. The French

president, icholas arkozy, has now set up a commission

to develop new ways of measurin economic performance

and social proress which take wellein into account.imilarly, the Youn Foundations ocal ellein

Project has set out in partnership with three local

authorities Hertfordshire, outh Tyneside and

Manchester to examine how pulic policy could e

eared towards improvin wellein. The findins,

pulished in January, arue that wellein can e made a

practical policy oal, oth nationally and locally, and that

it provides a very different way of thinkin aout chanin

d th t diti l h

what matters; only includin what is material; avoidin

over-claimin; transparency; and verifyin results. The

methodoloy is now ein used to measure the impact of

community reen spaces in cotland.

Find out more:

The SROI Network: www.sroi-uk.org

The SROI Project in Scotland: www.sroiproject.org.uk

CMC CThe Centre for ocal conomic trateies has pioneered

work on economic resilience. t calls for a shift from a

rowth-focused model to one that takes into account

equality, employment and social issues. eil Mcnroy

explains the approach on pae 27.

Find out more:

Towards a new wave of local economic activism,

http://snurl.com/u4t27

C MPCT bD

ocial impact onds are a way of raisin finance for actions

that have a social value. The idea is ein developed y

the Youn Foundation and ocial Finance. The aim is

to link investments y commercial players or charitale

foundations with a proramme to improve the prospects

of a roup of people (youn people at risk of offendin,

f i t ) d it t ti l t

Better ways of measuring value some starting points


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Humans cant resist building houses of cards. Given the

flimsiest of foundations and a little sleight of hand, we

construct fantasy kingdoms that leave observers awestruck

until they all fall down.

From the Tower of Babel to the South Sea Bubble, from

Daedalus and Icarus to the Wall Street investors of the last

decade, legend and history is littered with human hubris

and its devastating effects. None more so, it would seem,

than the financial crisis of 2007-2009, which broughtentire economies such as Iceland and Greece to the brink of

ruin, and left the UK saddled with the long-term costs of a

250bn bailout.

But if you think that was the worst we could do, think

again. The banking crisis was triggered by the collapse of

the sub-prime mortgage market: real estate underwritten

by loans that the lenders knew were unlikely to be repaid.

The trick was to pass the liability on before the chickens

h t t

A reminder of how close that point might be emerged

on 10 February. While climate scientists raged about

allegations of data misuse and leaked emails, a group of

business people warned the moment of peak oil might be

much closer than we imagined.

The UK Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil and Energy

Security doesnt contain Greenpeace die-hards or people

who sit in hand-sewn yurts making their own muesli.

This warning came not from the radical fringe of greeneconomics, but from business people who think it terms of

viability and profit margins.

In brief, it suggests that the worlds ability to extract oil

could peak within the next decade, and possibly as early

If we want to achieve our aspirations for regenerating communities, we have to frame

them within an understanding of environmental limits. Julian Dobson explains why

realregeneration

Climate for

@AndySawford: Create green jobs by

getting serious about adaptation, with

il d l i l l t t i


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change@jurup:Look at

developing bicycle

infrastructure potentialfor jobs in refurbishing

bikes, bicycle repairs,

cycling lanes.


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uWabl ad alai y

uppliClimate change legislation

What could a low carbon society look like?

magnified. Fuel poverty will further disadvantage the

poorest members of society. Areas with little or no economic

activity will struggle if the cost of connecting them to work

opportunities rises. Repairing and maintaining the urban

fabric will become more expensive.

a Wl-y appaC

In the first of these articles, I argued that regeneration

needed to create a sense of home. Placemaking strategies

need to connect with peoples aspirations and what gives

them meaning and purpose, shifting from the linear

approach adopted by government programmes and project

management toolkits to an organic outlook that nurtures

and supports communities through continuous change.

Last month I suggested that to enable this to

happen, we need to examine the values that underpin

our approaches. Instead of measuring what delivers

economic output or looking at the number of jobs createdor qualifications gained, we need to focus on the qualities

we are generating: resilience (the ability to withstand and

recover from shocks) and wellbeing peoples satisfaction

with their lives, relationships and neighbourhoods.

The issue of environmental sustainability provides

both an inescapable context and a call to action. The phrase

we cant go on like this has become a political slogan, but

contains a deeper truth: we cant go on acting as if economic

growth is a never-ending escalator, and we cant put off

rethinking the way we live in the hope that it will become

the next generations problem.

The governments approach to sustainable development,

articulated in the 2005 strategy Securing the Future, set out

five guiding principles:

u living within environmental limits

u ensuring a strong, healthy and just society

u achieving a sustainable economy

u promoting good governance

u using sound science responsibly

@seanamcginty:Re-engineer ALL council services to cut waste, duplication,

crazy council crap and carbon footprint using social enterprises!

@lcpu:Expand the Sheffield tramto where I live, get rid of the bus

fumes & get more people out of cars.


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realregeneration

You dont achieve sustainable development just by

ticking one of those boxes: you cant seek a strong, healthy

and just society and hope youll get a sustainable economy

along the way. It demands a way of thinking that sees our

social, physical and economic fabric as part of a whole that

recognises both the aspirations of human beings and the

limits of the environment within which they operate.

That might appear obvious, but it doesnt inform

much day-to-day thinking within government. Indeed, theofficial progress report on the DCLGs 2007-8 sustainable

development action plan revealed widespread ignorance:

few of the departments staff, it said, understood the

relevance of sustainable development.

Such ignorance spills over into poor decision-making

and planning. It might help to explain the missed

opportunity of the governments economic recovery plan.

A very small proportion of the 20bn fiscal stimulus has

been invested in environmental technologies and projects

despite detailed proposals from a host of sources for a

green new deal. While China and South Korea billed much

of their economic support as green (see table, left), the UK

focused on retaining jobs within existing industries through

initiatives such as the 400m car scrappage scheme.

Changing this culture must be an urgent priority. If the

peak oil taskforce is correct, we havent time to wait for

a new government to lumber through further legislative

processes: we need to act now to build the infrastructure

for a sustainable society that will allow us to realise our

aspirations for regeneration. The comments featured on this

pages are suggestions received from some readers, while on

the following pages we explain some ways of getting there.

whch s execte to roce enogh ower to

h t 13 000 h

ght s, whe sconte centr hetng

t f t h

Counry Fun Pro Grnfun Grn

($bn) ($bn) prcnag

China 586.1 2009-10 221.3 37.8

Japan 485.9 2009- 12.4 2.6

Germany 104.8 2009-10 13.8 13.2

Italy 103.5 2009- 1.3 1.3

South Korea 38.1 2009-12 30.7 80.5

UK 30.4 2009-12 2.1 6.9

Source: extract from Tim Jackson, Prosperity Without Growth, table 7.1 (Earthscan, 2009).

themissedPPtit:thet-s-Geeewdel

@creativecoop:Moreinvestment to turn grassroots

green projects into big social ideas.


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ere re three ws o cn jon n or ete ot the ftre of regenerton:

uWrite a response: our feedback section (see pages 32-37) is a forum for your views or if youd like to make a more

substantial contribution relating to this series, contact Julian Dobson at [email protected]

uEngage with us online: talk to @NewStartMag or @juliandobson on Twitter, blog your thoughts at www.newstartmag.

co.uk/blog, or comment on other readers blogs

uCo-host an event: if youd like to partner us in taking this conversation forward at a face-to-face event, or would like us

to speak or facilitate a discussion at an event youre putting on, please get in touch email [email protected]

jointheconversation

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What could a low carbon society look like?


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The lives of the most vulnerable are a better measure of our

civilisation than the successes of high achievers.

When we look at whats happening at neighbourhood

level, we need to go beyond the raw statistics. Not all low-

income neighbourhoods are dysfunctional far from it. And

there are many middle class neighbourhoods where wealth

disguises the loss of neighbourliness. Fear of crime can

create blight and distrust in wealthy areas where remote-

controlled gates sprout like teenagers acne, not just in

traditional working class communities.

T cfT gu

The key to a functional neighbourhood isnt income:

its confidence. Increasing the income of the poorest is

essential, but on its own it may simply provide an escape

route. Confidence is what enables someone to open a shop

or start a business, to buy a house or use the local park.

Confidence is what allows people to use the streets after

dark or socialise with their neighbours.

The first sign of a lack of confidence is rising crime

(or fear of crime) and a neglected environment. Its nocoincidence that much of the work of neighbourhood renewal

has involved tackling visible indicators of fear and distrust

neighbourhood wardens or community support officers

patrolling the streets, litter-picking days, environmental

projects, improving dilapidated houses and shopfronts.

As one resident interviewed for the evaluation of

the shortlived guide neighbourhoods programme put it:

There is a lot of jargon about regeneration... but really, as a

id t th i l ti I thi I t

As one visitor remarked: What they achieved is

absolutely out of this world because when I walked round

the estate... I noticed that there was no rubbish. I noticed

that there was no dogs running around, no graffiti and I

noticed that it felt quiet and peaceful and people tend to

their gardens

Many of the guide neighbourhoods achieved a sense

of safety and stability without expensive demolition and

rebuilding programmes, and without trying to change the

social mix of the area by breaking up housing estates or

seeking to import people with more disposable income.

They shared a belief that local people, given support, had it

in themselves to change their neighbourhoods perceptions

and prospects.

Furthermore, the guide neighbourhoods programme

demonstrated the value of peer learning. Visitors said

they particularly valued the personal experience and

accessibility of residents and colleagues; their willingness to

share learning, and the honesty with which they did so.

Similarly, a research report by DCLG in 2007 found

the neighbourhood management pathfinder areas wereimproving faster than comparable areas where there was

no neighbourhood management in place. Residents were

increasingly satisfied with local policing, street cleaning,

and maintenance of public spaces.

Significantly, the researchers pointed out that the

neighbourhood management pathfinder areas were still

deprived they had a long way to go before catching up

with the better-off. But the spiral of decline had stopped.

Th t l ti f th ti l t t f


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realregeneration

etween 1999 and 2009 the ew Labor

overnment delivered a srprisinly radial

proramme o neihborhood renewal that

narrowed the ap between the poorest

neihborhoods and the rest o the ontry.

The deline o many poor neihborhoods was

halted and reversed, aided by eneral prosperity

and inreased spendin on pbli servies. n basi measres like

joblessness and rime rates, the ap between the poorest plaes and

averae neihborhoods started to shrink.

Ater a deade o proress, the tre eels rosty. An nertain

politial landsape, severe pbli spendin ts, a sspiion o bi

overnment prorammes and sins o a harsher pbli attitde to

poverty. The haned ontext makes it all the important to learn the

lessons rom the past deade, and the sarity o ndin makes it

imperative to bild on what has been ahieved.

The irst key lesson is the importane o neihborhood os and

ommnity enaement. Prorammes worked when they takled the

speii and interonneted problems in eah plae in a tailored way, and

math-nded pbli spendin with the eqity o loal ativism. n ae

o loalism and asterity, taretin ndin where it matters most and

harnessin the eorts o loal rops will be more important than ever.

The seond key lesson is the need to tie eorts to reenerate

the poorest neihborhoods into wider prorammes. ationally

and loally, neihborhood renewal was oten kept separate rom

mainstream poliies, inldin hosin prorammes whih impated

diretly on deprived plaes.

The emphasis in tre mst be on ettin mainstream pbli

We need to learn the lessons of the last decade of neighbourhood renewal,

entry points for new arrivals, for example. There are other,

more isolated, neighbourhoods that will present harsh andcontinuing challenges.

Such places, if theyre not to decline irreparably and

expensively, will always need support. But in a time of

scarce resources such help has to be chosen carefully.

Masterplanning and remodelling is likely to prove much

less helpful here than sustained and supportive community

development.


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breaks down barriers and helps to overcome depression

and disaffection; and mental wellbeing is key to physicalhealth and productivity. In 2004, for example, 38% of

incapacity benefit claimants had been diagnosed with

mental health problems.

A social neighbourhood is more than a safe and stable

one. It is one that offers quality of life without making it

dependent on increasing affluence and as strategies to

create mixed communities unravel in the wake of the

recession, it will become more important to be clear about

h di i i b ffl d llb i

Longbenton, North Tyneside, is another productive

neighbourhood. The Good Life community allotment project described inNew Startin July 2004 and October 2007 has

brought veggie boxes to local residents, countering the

effects of poor diet and the lack of local fresh produce. Its

an example of people taking responsibility themselves for

renewing their communities.

A productive neighbourhood brings economic benefits.

Not only does it become safe for local retailers; it also

becomes a place to do business. The Arts Factory in the

h dd h l h d f i

servies to riorosly prioritise the poorest neihborhoods withot the

inentive o additional money. Althoh the loor tarets, whih set

ot basi minimm standards or the poorest plaes, had their laws, the

overnments deision to abandon them ndermined the drive to make

neihborhood renewal a priority or all loal aenies.

The third key lesson is the need to nderstand the roles whih

dierent deprived neihborhoods play in the loal eonomy and the

dierent trajetories whih they are on in terms o rowth or deline.

Poliy has tended to rop all poor neihborhoods toether and

address them as stati plaes.

n reality, o orse, they dier widely and the state o the srrondin

hosin and jobs market inlenes their development. Some poor

neihborhoods are isolated eonomially and have low levels o

poplation hrn. thers are hihly transient, play an esalator role or

some hoseholds, and with the riht interventions old beneit rom

srrondin rowth. As we learn more abot how poor plaes hane (or

dont hane) over time, the emphasis needs to be on eorts whih will

link their development into opportnities in the wider eonomy.

Ten years ao this month, the overnment lanhed its onsltation

on the drat national stratey or neihborhood renewal and

onirmed another sl o ndin alloations throh the 2bn new

deal or ommnities proramme. Thins old only et better.

clearly, were now in a very dierent ae. t i we an learn and

apply the lessons rom the past, bild on whats been ahieved and realise

the potential o poor neihborhoods, thins dont have to et worse.

u John Houghton is a writer on regeneration and principal consultant

with Shared Intelligence.

argues John Houghton


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Read, watch or listen to any discussion about broken

Britain and you wont need to wait long before social

housing is mentioned. And it wont be in glowing terms.

Welfare dependency, crime, antisocial behaviour,

educational failure, ill-health: all are dumped on the

doorstep of the social housing estate. Sometimes it takes a

historian to remind us that the affordable housing we have

today was built as a solution to remarkably similar problems.

Take Friedrich Engels description of the Manchester

slums in 1845. In such dwellings only a physically

degenerate race, robbed of all humanity, degraded, reduced

morally and physically to bestiality, could feel comfortable

and at home, he wrote setting a rhetorical bar even Phillip

Blond or David Cameron might struggle to reach.The academic Anne Power quotes H G Wells: It is only

because the thing was spread out over a hundred years

and not concentrated into a few weeks that history fails to

realise how much massacre, degeneration and disablement

of peoples lives was due to the housing of people in the

nineteenth century.

When you look at todays problem neighbourhoods

and estates, its worth remembering that there were times

h f h h f h

affluence; but there was also council house building on

an industrial scale, creating many of the estates now

considered the most difficult.

The class divide often became starkly visual, suburban

semis contrasting with municipal slabs. The introduction of

the right to buy in December 1979 saw more than a million

better quality council homes sold to their tenants. Pressureon the accommodation that remained intensified, with

tenancies rationed on the basis of need. The people with the

most severe problems became concentrated in the housing

that was least desirable.

By the time Tony Blair took office in 1997, Britains most

intractable social problems were firmly associated in the

minds of pundits and policymakers with the worst estates.

While the Social Exclusion Unit was careful to point out that

d d f d d

realregeneration

For ten years UK housing policies have reinforced

disadvantage and widened the gap between rich

and poor. Julian Dobson explains why rethinking

regeneration must involve rethinking housing

Dealing in a few


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home truths


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realregeneration

There are tried and tested approaches to hosin that escape the cce o oo

and st in the private arket and concentrated deprivation in socia hosin. t

present the tend to e rearded the pic sector, hoseiders and consers

as niche arkets t theres no reason wh the shod contine to e.

ug -

ooperative hosin is an aternative to traditiona

rented hosin, especia (t not on) within the socia

hosin sector. o-ops can own or anae their hoes,

ivin tenants and residents a stake in the wa their

neihorhood is rn and a voice at oard eve. esidents

a choose to rn a rane o anciar services aonside

the hoes theseves. There are an ors o cooperative

hosin, ro district-wide oranisations ike onit

gatewa in reston to sa independent co-ops.

uMore information: www.cch.coop

mmuTy lf-bul

onit se-id is a wa o rinin down the cost o

new hoes and providin or peope who otherwise iht

never have a pace o their own. e-iders can work with

hosin associations or or co-ops, and a id or rent,

shared ownership or to own their hoes otriht. ot on

do the iders rin down the cost contritin their

aor; the aso have the chance to earn skis and ain

A more diverse housing market:

Some starting points...

mixture of improvement, replacement and an injection of

owner-occupiers. The problems of private housing were

to be addressed by increasing supply and seeking cheaper

ways of building.

Theres no doubt many of the programmes to

replace council housing were needed because the homes

themselves were unfit for purpose. Schemes such as the

redevelopment of the Castlefields estate in Runcorn had

widespread resident support. But others were

perceived as breaking up existing communities

and sparked fears that local people would be

forced out.

The so-called mixed communities

programme, for instance, was founded

on the premise that to tackle entrenched

disadvantage, social housing estates had to

be broken up and uplifted through the good

offices of an influx of homeowners. Large-scale

redevelopment plans in places like Canning

Town, east London, or the Ferrier estate in Greenwich,

south London, generated vociferous localprotests (New Start, May 2009). More recently,

Hammersmith and Fulham Councils plans to

demolish the West Kensington and Gibbs Green

estates (New Start, February 2010) prompted

local people to declare they would take them

over themselves.

Meanwhile the solution proposed for the

home ownership market was to bring down the


24/46

Above: a blue plaque

marks one of the first

houses to be built on

the Becontree estate in

east London

realregeneration

enables housing to regenerate communities rather than

ossifying them? There are plenty of instances where

housing is part of the solution rather than part of the

problem (see box, left). But they are relatively small scale,

and exist at the margins of the market.

fu Wy T bg T fT

1 Stop the rot

more organic solutions have to be found.

Meanwhile we need to open up wealthier

neighbourhoods to those on lower incomes.

Planners need to be strong enough to

resist the nimbys and sprinkle affordable

housing generously across middle-class

neighbourhoods. They should also resist

gated communities that create physical

barriers within neighbourhoods. More mixed

neighbourhoods will in turn help to reduce the

social segregation of schools.

3 Be more flexible about land use

The homes we build tend to be an inflexible

solution to problems of social and industrial

change. Labour markets shift rapidly and social

demographics are fluid, but houses stay for a

century or more.

Housing solutions need to become

more adaptable to 21st century lifestyles. In

particular we need to rethink housing withincity centres. In many areas there is a vast oversupply of

retail and office space and no realistic prospect of using it

for its intended purpose. Much of this could be converted to

both short and long-term housing. The private rented sector,

which so far has grown largely on the speculative buy-to-

let craze, could play a key role in offering a wider range of

house types and locations.

We also need to think of different ways of using


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realregeneration

Just thejob?


26/46

realregeneration

policy gaffes of the 75p increase in the state pension in 1999

or the removal of the 10p income tax band in 2008.

But just as few in the UK dispute the need for a safety

net, there is a general assumption that it is being abused. So

every welfare reform adds new layers of conditionality, with

one eye on the commentators who specialise in spotting

people who appear to get something for nothing.

Yet there have always been large numbers of people

outside the labour market. What has changed is who those

people are, how their inactivity is financed, and the public

attitudes that are attached to what they do.

In the first half of the 20th century it was common

for only one member of a household to do paid work, and

households tended to manage on one income. In 2010

that is unusual. What has changed positively has been

womens participation in the labour market. In 1955,

according to a Nottingham University study, 45.9% of

working age women were employed. By 1975 that had risen

to 55.1%, and by 1995 to two-thirds.

But the caring and domestic multi-tasking previously

lumped under the dismissive job title of housewife didntsimply disappear, to be done by millions of household

appliances. Some was outsourced to paid workers; some done

informally within families and social networks; and some

juggled into the spare hours of dual-earning households

(with the woman usually bearing most of that burden).

Couples and families increasingly found they couldnt

manage on one income alone to fund the lifestyles of their

peers; but as two-job households increased, so did no-job


27/46

programme to help all unemployed people get back into

work.

For more of an insight we need to turn to the new work

and pensions secretary, Iain Duncan Smith, and the thinktank he founded, the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ). This

has been hugely influential among the Cameron set and

offers an analysis that goes well beyond the thinking of the

previous government.

Last years CSJ report,Dynamic benefits, advocates

a root-and-branch overhaul of the benefits system to

remove disincentives to work. In particular it accepts

the case, advocated over many years byNew Start, the

Community Allowance campaign and anti-poverty groups,

for increasing the amount people can earn before benefits

are withdrawn. It calls for the benefit withdrawal rate to be

eased so claimants entering work never lose more than 55%

of their earnings after taxation.

These are important proposals that could make

employment more attractive to people who might

otherwise find themselves working long hours for rewards

only marginally better than welfare subsistence. Theyrecognise that the choice not to get a job is often entirely

rational: it simply is not worth the extra effort and expense.

Indeed, one of the key findings of the Joseph Rowntree

Foundations report,Monitoring poverty and social

exclusion 2009, was that more children than ever suffer

poverty in households where at least one adult works.

The CSJ report advocates sweeping away the current

system and replacing it with just two payments: a

A positive approach would recognise the value

generated by creating homes and communities places

where children can grow up and elderly people grow old

Above: volunteers using

their time to paint a

community centre in

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28/46

realregeneration

that increase social skills and quality of life and

nurture communities. The Community Allowance (see

panel) is one such idea. But to achieve that, the link between

And it is not cheap: it would demand a significant

redistribution of the tax burden.

But it may be just the kind of support system we need

to face an uncertain economic future and growing socialneeds. A citizens income creates scope for volunteering,

community involvement and informal care the kind of

social infrastructure that could be stretched to breaking

point as people juggle paid employment and caring

responsibilities. It recognises that people contribute to

society in a mass of ways that cant be measured by GVA

or tax revenues. Initiatives like time banking could flourish

because there would be no question of contravening

available for work rules.

A citizens income replaces a culture of

compulsion and enforcement with one of

permission, where people make their own choices

about how they use their time. They might choose to

supplement their basic income with a modest amount

of part-time work; they might feel better rewarded by

using their time for the benefit of friends and family; or

they might go all-out for the higher living standards afull-time job offers.

But what if they do nothing? The objection is that

such a system encourages a culture of handouts. It would

be nave to assume nobody would try to take advantage.

Over time, schools and community organisations could

encourage a more universal culture of volunteering the

idea of National Citizen Service is a step in that direction.

But changing cultures is a long-term process.

The idea of allowi eole o beefit to wok i thei coitie withot

loi welfae etitleet eeed aod eiht ea ao fo the natioal

Coit o.

The cocet wa ile: t beefit edi to wok b ii claiat

the chace to do efl tak i thei eihbohood, de the eiio of

etablihed coit oaiatio. Thi wold ie eole a ootit to

ioe thei aea, lea ew kill ad becoe oe wok-ead, while ii

local oaiatio oe caacit to adde ie like eioetal bliht, ill

health, loelie ad atiocial behaio.

The allowace wold be aid o to of beefit

fo a axi of 52 week, with additioal

eai caed at 4,469. td b the new

cooic odatio coclded ee od

et o the Coit llowace wold ceate

10.20 woth of ocial ale.

at ea thee oaiatio wee choe

to ilot the idea i noth at icolhie,

pototh ad the le of iht, ad

Taeide, machete. t eai to be eewhethe the ew oeet will with

thi bt it a ideal ootit to tet

oe of ai ca sith idea.

The Community Allowance

Right: New Startfocused

on the issue of the

community allowance in


29/46

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30/46

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1Make social justice the main goal. Social justice means the fair and equitable distribution of social, environmental

and economic resources.

2Build a broader economy. Extend the principle of decentralisation and citizen control to economic institutions likethe banks.

3Build a bigger democracy. Ensure widespread engagement and participation in government by citizens of all socialgroups, nationally and locally.

4Make sure everyone can participate. Ensure adequate and consistent support for local groups and organisations,

especially the most marginalised.

5Make co-production the standard way of getting things done. Draw on the skills, knowledge and experience ofproviders and users in an equal and reciprocal relationship.

6Transform the role of professionals and other providers. Professionals should see themselves as facilitators andbrokers, working in partnership with those at the receiving end.

7Redistribute paid and unpaid time. Move towards a shorter working week, spreading employment more equallyacross the population, supported by changes in the minimum wage and tax rates.

8Make it sustainable. Ensure the Big Society protects natural resources, prevents social problems and reduces ourdependence on economic growth.

9Measure what matters. Dont just count short-term financial effects, but the long-term impacts on the quality ofpeoples lives and relationships.

Ten ways to make the best of the Big Society


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realregeneration

TETS D RESDETS SSTS

The Big Society etwork wants to see everyone in the UK being part of a neighbourhoodgroup. Tenants and residents associations already represent more than five million

social housing tenants in England alone. They deal with day-to-day problems of crime

and grime and build bridges within and between communities.

u See www.taroe.org/index.php

TME BKS

Rallying under the slogan, no more throwaway people, time banks work on the

principle that one hour of my time is as valuable as an hour of yours. Time banks

encourage people to exchange skills might fix your car in return for help in learning

Spanish, for example. They are particularly useful where people are excluded from the

labour market through unemployment or disability.

u See www.timebanking.org

DEEPMET TRUSTS

Development trusts are community enterprises dedicated to creating and keeping

wealth in local communities. They own and manage assets such as social centres or

shops, often developing facilities and businesses in places others have neglected. Many,such as Westway Development Trust in orth Kensington, ondon, had their roots in

local protests in this case, a campaign against the noise and pollution of the 40

motorway.

u See www.dta.org.uk

MMUT D TRUSTS

The aim of a community land trust is to acquire land which is held in trust for local

people in perpetuity. t could be used to provide affordable homes, to keep alive a village

Five movements the Big Society can learn from


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USD

Ushahidi began with a blogger collating accounts of violence after the Kenyan electionsin 2008. Within a short space of time 45,000 users were contributing. t has now been

reconstructed as an open source application that can be used to map and visualise

information about a problem, from monitoring elections in Sudan to recording the

impact of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

uSee http://www.ushahidi.com/

FREEE

Freecycle is eBay with a social purpose. nstead of selling your junk you pass it on to

someone near you who can use it or if you need something, you ask if someone has it

to give away. The only cost is travelling to pick up your item. Web based and organised

by locality, it could be of great value to community groups or tenants organisations.

Since 2003 more than 1.7m people in the UK have joined Freecycle groups.

u See http://www.uk.freecycle.org/

UFEREES D BRMPS

Unconferences and barcamps are for networking and generating ideas. The original

barcamps were get-togethers of geeks to share mutual interests, write code and hack.ow the idea is being used for social innovation, generating initiatives such as Enabled

By Design, which improves equipment for disabled people through users ideas.

n unconference is an unstructured conference, but based on the same principle of

sharing: attendees do not pay, and much of the discussion is self-facilitated.

u See: http://www.sicamp.org/

PPS FR GD

pps for Good is a new training course that brings together young people to create and

Five new approaches that should influence regenerators


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But it must recognise, too, that places and the people who

live in them are subject to forces and trends that operate at

a national and global level from demographic change to

capital investment, from the tax and benefit system to the

cost and availability of food and energy.

Government has to play a strong role here, both on the

national and the international stage. It has to be able and

willing to respond to a crisis, and capable of balancing local

and national interests.

But another of David Camerons favourite thinkers,

Phillip Blond of ResPublica, believes government

intervention has broken Britain. Its a view that ignores

global economics in favour of an attack on welfare.

The risk is that the answer to any problem becomes a

call to reduce government involvement. This may sit well

with a deficit reduction strategy that appears to value

immediate action above assessing long-term impact, butcould prove a much more dangerous experiment than those

of Professors Stoker and John: it becomes a game in which

the building blocks are removed one by one to discover

what is left standing.

So from a regeneration perspective, active citizenship

must be coupled with active government. There are many

examples across the world of how this can be achieved, all

tailored to local cultures and circumstances. In Brazil, for

is the single greatest shift in our lifetimes in the

way communities connect with each other and with

government. Clay Shirky makes the point that to tap into

the possibilities offered by the combination of digital

technology and human generosity, the biggest leap to

make is between doing nothing and doing something.

So to get the greatest number making that leap and

to maximise its value in terms of regenerating places and

communities, what would civil society and government

need to do?

First and its so obvious its astonishing it hasnt been

done is to ensure everyone can get online, when and

where they want. That means universal broadband access

and it means everyone, from the time they start school,

having a laptop, home computer, internet-enabled TV or

smartphone. Its easy and its relatively cheap, and could

generate hundreds of jobs in social enterprises recyclinghardware to give away to those who cant afford it.

But thats no good if people cant use it effectively.

Around half the UKs working age population lack basic

numeracy skills, while one in six are functionally illiterate.

More than one tenth of the working age population have

no educational qualifications. In 2008 nearly 12 million

adults were considered digitally excluded lacking access

to digital technology or the skills to use it.

To harness the power of the internet and social networks for the greatest good, everyone has to have

access to digital networks and the skills to use them. That means a big investment in basic skills...


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In the eighth part of our series on the future of regeneration, Julian Dobson considers the

need for distinctive places and argues that local economic development is the key

Standing outfrom the crowd


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On the August bank holiday weekend two years ago, several

thousand people gathered in the middle of the night in ashopping centre car park to watch the demolition of two

cooling towers. Stripped of its context, it sounds like one of

those bizarre events that could only happen in England.

Why did the demolition of Sheffields Tinsley Towers

attract so many people and such strong feelings? Some saw

them as ugly eyesores and couldnt wait for them to go.

Many others felt they were important landmarks that, for

all their industrial functionality, created a sense of identity.

A campaign to turn them into artworks that could become

the citys answer to the Angel of the North won nationalacclaim but was scuppered by the landowners insistence

that they were unsafe.

The most significant comment people used to make

about the towers, though, was that they were a sign of

home. People returning to Sheffield along the M1 knew

theyd arrived when they saw the

giant disused structures. They were

housing market renewal schemes in Liverpool, have proved

so emotive.Last year the Labour government produced a strategy

for urban design and planning, World class places. One of

its aims was to help local authorities and their partners

create places that were distinctive as well as well-designed

and sustainable in other words, places that met this need

for identity and attachment.

It was revealing that ten years after architect Richard

Rogers assembled a high-powered task force to deliver his

blueprint for an urban renaissance in the UK, policymakers

were still struggling to bridge the gulf between theiraspirations for thriving towns and cities, and the reality

of developments that often fail miserably to attain the

standards expected of them.

In the intervening period, weve had a robust critique

of the shortcomings of boring, nondescript town centres

and dull, samey housing developments. At the forefront

has been the New Economics Foundation, whose Clone

Town Britain report in 2005 lambasted the trend towards

bland identikit towns dominated by a few bloated retail

behemoths.

Instead we needed home towns, NEF argued:

distinctive places where local independent businesses

could thrive, with profits ploughed back into local

economies rather than siphoned off into the accounts of

corporate shareholders.

The recession underlined the urgency of creating a

viable future for town and city centres, as retail centres

hollowed out. Earlier this year a report by the Local Data

Bradford exploded into life in the 19th century with the phenomenal success

of the wool trade. Many of the citys buildings were erected within a very short

timespan around three quarters of a century of intense activity and their

styles reflected this new-found wealth.

Much of the city centre was the work of a single firm of architects, Lockwood

and Mawson, providing a remarkable unity until the demolitions of the 1960s.

The buildings were designed to trumpet the citys success and ambition: City Hall,

built in 1873, was modelled on the tower of the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence.

Distinctiveness past: Bradford


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Londons South Bank after the Second World War was anything but distinctive. The concrete cultural centre surrounding

the Royal Festival Hall, built for the Festival of Britain in 1951, was an island in an expanse of speculative office

development and derelict sites.

A stones throw downstream, a group of local people decided to resist the encroachment of office blocks. Their

motivation was to have affordable homes for the people who had lived in the area for generations.

For many years Coin Street was little more than a small housing co-op, valiantly campaigning for local residents.

As time passed it grew creating a public garden to serve the homes it had built, gaining control of the riverside

walkway along the Thames, redeveloping the derelict Oxo Tower and, most recently, building a purpose-designed

Distinctiveness present: Coin Street


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REALREGENERATION

What local planners and economic development

professionals should do is to foster the conditions that

allow distinctiveness to develop. In a resource-starved

environment, this is the only option the old, expensive

solutions arent available.

To do this they need to recognise and value roots

and routes the roots back into the history, heritage and

identity of place, and the routes that create connections

with future opportunities, other localities, and social

and commercial networks that are increasingly global.

Successful places are those that discover the hidden assets,

talents and passions of their people and use them as thecrucible for innovation.

It is the making, inventing, creating and trading that

animates and develops the place. If the bulk of that activity

is organised to serve the needs of global corporations, we

will end up with places that reflect the branding, values

and uniformity of those corporations. Thats why inward

investment can be a poisoned chalice: multinational

companies may be committed to their employees and be

hot on corporate social responsibility, but they have little

interest in the distinctiveness of place quite the opposite,

in most cases.

Local knowledge and understanding, and a belief in the

value of local people, is essential if we are to create new

economic activities that keep wealth within

a community. There is an important role for

market intelligence and foresight to identify

trends and opportunities, and the new local

enterprise partnerships should prioritise this.

Todmorden, a small market town at the end of the Calder Valley in West Yorkshire,

has already gained international recognition for its approach to sustainability.

Incredible Edible Todmorden is a campaign to encourage local people to grow

and share vegetables. By simply showing

people where their food comes from, it is

heightening awareness of the importance of

local production and its hoped creating

opportunities for local producers, as well as

Distinctiveness future: Todmorden


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What is a great place? It sounds an easy enough question

to answer. Its one I pose when introducing ideas of

placemaking to council officers, asking people to bring along

pictures of what they think of as great places.

Often those places are landmark buildings, places with

special memories, or favourite holiday destinations. Ive

seen pictures ranging from the Golden Temple at Amritsarin India to Bradfords Wool Exchange. What I didnt expect to

see was a picture of an Asda car park.

The man who brought it along explained why his local

Asda was a great place. You can drive there easily, you can

carry your frozen peas to the car without them defrosting,

you can find everything you need to buy, and can go there

with your family.

Well, its clearly a useful place. But great? If thats the

threshold we set, we shouldnt be surprised if we end up

with places that look the same, that are entirely predictable

Last month I wrote about the importance of

distinctiveness, and how it needed to be rooted

in local economic development. Urbanism is

closely related, but focuses on the physical fabric

of a place and how it is used and animated.

Good urbanism supports a diversity of economic

and social activity; distinctive localities breedgood urbanism. Both are essential for the

regeneration we will continue to need.

Urbanism at its best brings together an

understanding of the organic and the planned

interventions by human beings that make

the built environment something of value. It

celebrates the culture and diversity and chance

interactions of cities, the interplay of histories

and uses of buildings, the multiple functions of

open spaces and street corners. It understands

realregeneration

In hard times, we have to change the way we do placemaking.

In the ninth of our articles on the future of regeneration,Julian Dobson explains why we all need to become urbanists

Urbanismfor


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everyone


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Kris Hopkins) appeared at exactly the wrong time. Before

the credit crunch of 2007-8 it was all systems go: the existing

shops and offices were demolished, the groundworks begun,

the basement excavated. Then everything stopped.

Neither Westfield nor the local authority nor the

schemes opponents predicted the extent and impact of

the credit crunch. With hindsight it might be easy to argue

things should have been done differently; at the time the

council and Westfield were both convinced of the case for

the new centre and that it would be commercially viable.

The councils view is still that the citys retail offer must

improve drastically, and Westfield is the way to do it. Butthere is an immediate problem: Westfields priority is

Stratford, and there is little prospect of work resuming on

site in the next year or two.

The hole has come to symbolise Bradford for outsiders

and locals alike. It speaks of unfulfilled ambition and market

failure. But with no money from the developers or the public

sector to kick-start building, something else had to be done.

The result was the Bug the Bradford Urban Garden.

Around one third of the site has been opened up to create

routes though the city centre, with grassed areas, wildflower

meadows and park benches. The hoardings which last

year were transformed by artists into advertisements for

Wastefield have been repainted and will exhibit artworks

by local schools.

After only a couple of months the urban garden

is already well used both as a through route and as

somewhere to stop and relax. Arts organisation Fabric, which

is leading the project with the city council, plans to populate


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Town centres across the country are suffering from long term changes.

The acne of empty shops is not a temporary phenomenon, though the

recession hastened it. The combination of people having less money

to spend and spending more of it online will permanently change

traditional centres.

Research for the British Council of Shopping Centres earlier this year

found assets worth a total of more than 10bn at risk from economic

recession, the withdrawal of public spending and long term changes in

shopping habits and town centre uses.

Investors such as pension funds, who have seen town centres as avaluable long term aspect of their portfolio, are facing serious losses and

write-downs. Capital values are unlikely to recover in the short term and

rental values are at risk from continuing decline.

With pressure on public agencies growing, towns and cities must look

to their own people to provide solutions. Rethinking shop and office space

for new and start-up businesses at low rents is one option. Another is to

turn marginal retail areas back into residential use; by repopulating town

centres, we help to support the retail and leisure functions that remain.

Housing demand is high but home ownership is increasingly difficult

for those without wealth. This opens the door for housing co-ops, urban

community land trusts, shared ownership schemes and open market

rented accommodation. Other spaces could be used for cultural and

educational activities, making central areas more attractive for new

residents and animating previously dead places. Vacant plots, instead

of being boarded up, can be turned into pocket parks or temporary

community gardens.

We also need these changes because of environmental challenges.

We may need to plan for a post-commuter economy where people will

denser but greener, with a greater diversity of uses in the buildings

we keep and creating useable, productive green infrastructure where

buildings have become redundant. We will need to rethink the business

park model of job creation, which encourages car dependency and drains

economic activity from town centres.

Theres also a strong case for localising the development process to

maximise local job creation and reinforce local character. Rediscovering

the vernacular of buildings is central to that using locally sourced or

traditional materials where available and appropriate, encouraging local

property firms rather than letting contracts to the usual big names, andfostering diversity and innovation in design.

How should this new activity be financed? Again, we need to look to

the resources we already have. The pension funds and institutions that

own much of our town and city centre property have a vested interest

in preventing its value from falling, and need to be engaged in thinking

about how we can create long term value. The public sector will remain

an owner and manager of assets, despite government encouragement to

sell or transfer, because it will not be able to realise maximum gain if a

sluggish market is flooded with surplus property. Local authority pension

funds and reserves could play a vital role in supporting local investment

and development; their managers too need to become part of the

conversation about placemaking and to understand the impact of their

investment decisions.

Nabeel Hamdi, professor emeritus of housing and urban development

at Oxford Brookes University, describes the practice of placemaking as

being about making the ordinary special, and the special more widely

accessible. That requires a change of culture and an acceptance that

whoever we are, the place where we live or work is our problem, not

Planning for change: why we need to think differently

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We all like testimonials from people of influence. So the

Social Enterprise Coalition displays no fewer than three

quotations from prime minister David Cameron, singing

the praises of social business.

The great institutional innovation of our times,

he called it in 2007. The previous year he talked ofmainstream businesses delivering public services with

a distinctive focus on quality, serving the community,

and employee pride.

Last year he declared: We need to give more power

to civic institutions like social enterprises, because

we desperately need your innovation to tackle social

breakdown.

That message has continued loud and clear as the

coalition government has developed the theme of a Big

Society. But social enterprise doing well by doing good

has been flavour of the month for more months than

many of us can remember.

Back in the 1990s Liverpools Furniture Resource

Centre was leading the way, providing work for long-

term unemployed people in refurbishing furniture

which was then sold to social landlords to help new

tenants furnish their homes.

The simple but powerful proposition was that you

could meet a triple bottom line of social good, financial

profit and environmental responsibility providing

a new and potent model for businesses, voluntary

organisations and public services.

ENTERING THE MAINSTREAM

And theres no doubt social enterprise has, in a

relatively short time, become an important part of

public discourse as well as a significant player in the

mainstream economy.

According to the Social Enterprise Coalition, there

are 62,000 social businesses in the UK, employing over

800,000 people and contributing 24bn to the economy.

And, since no comprehensive data appears to have been

22 | New Start | November 2010 New Start | November 2010 | 23

casualties as well as national success stories among

social enterprises: Sheffield Rebuild in 2005, Ealing

Community Transport in 2008, Secure Healthcare in

2009. Rapid expansion, dependence on a few large

clients, and sudden changes in market conditions can

all turn a profitable social enterprise into a marginal or

failing one.

So is the triple bottom line a realistic prospect

or are we becoming victims of our own rhetoric,

hoodwinking ourselves into believing theres a magic

formula that produces healthy communities as well as

healthy profits?

To consider whether social enterprises could be

a key ingredient in the glue that creates great places,

its worth reflecting on just what we imagine social

enterprises are for.

Talk to many who run them, and youll receive a

strong message that social enterprise is a better way ofdoing business. These are entrepreneurs who want to

achieve social good, to use the businesses they are in to

change the world. Often they fit the image politicians

and the media like to promote about business the

Dragons Den world of bold ideas, buccaneering

investors, go-getting individuals reaping the deserved

rewards of their risk-taking. With, in the case of social

enterprises, a cherry of social benefit on the top.

SIMILAR WORDS, DIFFERENT GOALS

But listen to the politicians and policymakers and the

stories arent quite in line. The rhetoric of enterprise

is the same, but the objective is different: rather than

Social enterprise could be at the heart of new

approaches to regeneration, says Julian Dobson.

But shouldnt we see it as a way of transforming

businesses rather than just changing public services?

A different role

We recommend a new power of civil association be

granted to all frontline service providers in the public

sector. This power would allow the formation... of new

employee and community-owned civil companiesthatwould deliver the services previously monopolised by the

state... The new civil company would be structured as a

social enterprise, with the scope and flexibility to allow

a number of different governance structures in the light

of local conditions... Governed neither by the public state

or the private market, this new civil association would

localise responsibility, direct agency and promote ethos.

It would do this by spreading the ownership of publicly

funded provision, revolutionising public service delivery

for the benefit of all.

Phillip Blond in The ownership state

Civil companies:a new breed of social enterprise?

Above: a hoarding at the

Social Enterprise

Coalitions annual Voice

conference last year

carries the events main

talking point

In The great transition the New Economics Foundation sets out a blueprint for a sustainable economy. It argues that a high growth, high

consumption economy cannot continue if we are to live within the earths environmental limits.

Its recipe for sustainability does not get rid of the market economy, but insists the market economy must change. It calls for prices to reflect

true environmental and social costs and benefits, so goods and services with a high environmental impact or negative social consequences

would be more expensive. It also argues strongly for a better balance between the public economy of local and national government services,

the market economy and the core economy the unpaid work such as social care that underpins the social fabric. From this rebalancing would

emerge forms of co-production in which local citizens join the state and businesses in defining what contributes to local wellbeing.

Alongside this there would be a great localisationin which economic benefit is shifted from multinational firms and their shareholders to

local businesses and communities, combining the local decision-making that is at the heart of the governments approach to localism with local

self-sufficiency wherever possible in essentials such as food or renewable energy.

The great transition, http://neweconomics.org/publications/publications/great-transition

How it could be different: The Great Transition

putting the social into enterprise, they are there to put

the enterprise into social.

As David Cameron put it in July this year: Weve

got to get rid of the centralised bureaucracy that wastes

money and undermines morale. And in its place weve

got to give professionals much more freedom, and open

up public services to new providers like charities, social

enterprises and private companies so we get more

innovation, diversity and responsiveness to public need. t

amassed since 2007, there may well be many more by

now.

Yet last year Claire Dove, chair of the coalition, was

still describing social enterprise as an under-reported

and undervalued part of the UKs business landscape.

Her comments came in her introduction to the State

of social enterprise survey 2009, which pumped out an

upbeat message: social enterprises were recession-

busters, twice as confident of business growth as

traditional small and medium sized enterprises. Two-

thirds were profitable, with a further 20% breaking

even. Seven out of ten reinvested profits for social good

or for expansion.

But mixed among the positives were causes for

concern. In particular, they are dependent on public

sector business 39% reported that more than half their

income came from providing services to central or local

government.

This year the vulnerability became more apparent.

Businesses trading with the public sector are at a

growing risk of insolvency: a recent report from

ResPublica, The civil effect, argues that while the biggest

companies are profiting substantially from government

outsourcing, smaller ones are suffering. Quoting

accountancy firm Wilkins Kennedy, it says the number

of public sector suppliers to go bust rose by nearly 50%

in the first six months of 2010, with 168 firms in the

health and social services, education and defence sectors

going under.

And for some time there have been high profile

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Above: David Cameron

at Voice 09 in

Birmingham

24 | New Start | November 2010 New Start | November 2010 | 25

place among those charged with delivering public

services, the social returns from the mainstream economy

are likely to be minimal. If social businesses dont have a

voice in chambers of commerce or the Confederation of

British Industry (CBI), if theyre not seen as participants in

and commentators on the wider economy, how can they

expect to be anything other than marginal?

Its understandable that social enterprises tend to

cluster together, taking part in their own trade fairs

and conferences, talking among themselves and to

government about the best forms of support for their

sector. Its what any industry does. But businesses also

club together the big ones much more effectively than

the small to influence government policy and economic

debate.

Where are the social enterprises in these forums?

How are they influencing the thinking of the CBI or

the Institute of Directors? Given the background and

culture of many of their leaders, who have begun life in

the community or voluntary sectors, these may feel like

uncomfortable networks to be part of.

But the risk is that unless they critique and debate

business ethics and practice from a business perspective,

their hugely important contribution to ethics and practicewill be ignored.

Earlier this year Will Hutton, founder of the Work

Foundation and chair of the Commission on Ownership,

E F Schumacher, in Small is Beautiful, quotes the case of one company that he

suggests offers a better way to do business.

Northamptonshire-based Scott Bader Co Ltd, which makes resins and polymers,

had been going for 30 years when its founder, Ernest Bader, turned it into the Scott

Bader Commonwealth a company owned entirely by its workforce. What that did

was change a traditional firm, accountable to its shareholders, into one that could

balance doing well with doing good.

Rules were put in place to ensure the company would continue to be run on

the principles espoused by its founder. It would stay relatively small; if it neededto grow, new firms would be set up on a similar basis. The maximum wage w

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