Management of Regeneration

Choices, Challenges and Dilemmas

John Diamond, Joyce Liddle

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781134314409
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Urban Planning & Landscaping

Stemming from a need to understand strategic processes, examine current practices, and identify the needs of regeneration management professionals, this book cites current regeneration management practice within a framework which critically examines the theoretical models developed over the past twenty years. It features illustrative case studies, learning objectives, key themes boxes, and review and reflection segments, and explains strategic processes and new forms of local, sub-regional and regional management. It also investigates the development and extension of the roles of regeneration managers (which increasingly illustrate the uneven and contradictory nature of this subject), and raises important issues regarding how such individuals are supported and developed. This book:

• examines current initiatives in order to present good practice
• provides practitioners and students with an understanding of the choices, challenges and dilemmas faced by regeneration managers
• focuses on the themes of partnership, capacity building and community engagement, participation and sustainability
• has an accompanying web page featuring downloadable PowerPoint slides and test blanks.

A valuable resource for public sector managers, and urban management professionals, this book synthesises strategic literature and applies it within a changing local, sub regional and regional governance system. Providing a clear framework within which new models of strategy and implementation can be found, it presents a balanced approach between existing theory and practical case material.

Chapter 1

Context setting

KEY THEMES

• Reflecting on regeneration initiatives: a story of continuity or discontinuity?
• Changing and challenging approaches to regeneration activity.
• Understanding failure.
• Neighbourhood renewal: a new initiative?

LEARNING POINTS

By the end of this chapter we hope that you will be able to:

• Identify the ways in which regeneration initiatives have been defined over the past 30 years.
• Reflect upon the ways in which explanations of success or failure are contested interpretations.
• Locate your own experience or knowledge in the context of what you read and thought.
• Begin to identify the challenges, choices and dilemmas faced by regeneration professionals.

INTRODUCTION

A difficulty for those engaged in regeneration management is to balance the demands of the present with the expectations (and doubts) of those who live in the neighbourhoods where activity is taking place. A very real challenge for both managers and residents is to develop a shared picture of what the neighbourhood could be like over a 10-year time frame. To have credibility these attempts at imagining the future or developing a shared vision have to be rooted in a sense of what is real. One coping strategy is to see current initiatives as the focus of dialogue and debate and an opportunity to break with the past. As we try to show in this chapter, there is a real sense of the way in which ‘regeneration activity’ has been redefined and reassessed over the past 30 years. The story of regeneration initiatives has been one where each new strategy has been claimed as making a break with the past. There are some good reasons why this may be both useful and appropriate (as we suggest below). However, for those involved in the day-to-day coordination and delivery of activity and projects it may be more appropriate to adopt a slightly different approach.

By adopting a different ‘lens’ – one which seeks to see the neighbourhood as those who live there see it – an alternative interpretation may emerge. This ‘alternative’ would suggest that for residents the wave of successive initiatives represents a ‘norm’ of both instability and predictability. The ‘instability’ derives, often, from the short-term nature of such interventions and the nature of the relationships between those who manage and/or decide the type of intervention and those who live in an area and are the ‘object’ of the intervention. The ‘predictability’ comes from the assumption that at some point a new initiative will be announced without reference to the perceived or spoken needs of those who live there. In that sense, while regeneration managers may see current initiatives as a break from the past (and there are good reason why this might be the case), local residents may adopt a scepticism which sees them as part of a process with a long history.

As we try to suggest in this chapter it is important to locate contemporary initiatives in the context of what has gone before. This is necessary for four good reasons:

1 The current neighbourhood renewal strategy claims to be radically different from previous regeneration initiatives.

2 The formation and funding, at a local level, of ‘networks’ of community representatives represents a shift in thinking and practice.

3 There has been an emphasis on the training and with it the ‘professionalization’ of regeneration managers.

4 There is an emerging political consensus on the importance of ‘localism’.

We are not suggesting that these reasons alone are shaping the policy and practice of local regeneration teams. We do recognize that within each regeneration initiative there will be a different set of histories which will inform the way in which the initiative is managed, delivered and experienced. We are suggesting that it is important to take account of these histories (which may not be shared or even acknowledged by all participants) and to place current practice in the context of change. It is for these reasons that we argue (in the introduction) that contemporary regeneration managers need to have a variety of skills and a broad understanding of the dynamics in play at a local level.

We want now to trace the development of the current neighbourhood renewal strategy and to reflect upon how and in what ways it can be said to be a ‘break with the past’.

REFLECTING UPON REGENERATION INITIATIVES – A STORY OF CONTINUITY OR DISCONTINUITY?

The ‘story’ of UK-based regeneration initiatives is, at first sight, one of discontinuity. It also appears to be one which is defined by the political priorities of whichever party is in government. This complex history of ‘discontinuity’ can be traced back to the 1960s. As we show below, the origins and development of the Urban Programme in the late 1960s provide a useful point of reference when exploring the significance of the Neighbourhood Renewal Strategy (NRS). But there is another, potentially more significant reason for referencing the current NRS with the Urban Programme. A number of current neighbourhood renewal/ regeneration managers (and neighbourhood renewal advisers) come from the generation of practitioners who were active in a number of initiatives associated with the Urban Programme. They both provide and are part of the collective regeneration memory and experience. They act as an alternative thread to UK-based regeneration practice stretching back over 30 years. These points of reference are important. Their importance rests partly in their cumulative knowledge or experience. It also provides an alternative lens through which UK regeneration activity may be understood and evaluated. Further, it represents a generation which may soon be ‘lost’ to existing managers and practitioners. And so we may lose not only a rich vein of experience, but also ways of understanding and reflecting upon the continuity (or discontinuity) between the past and the present.

Since 1997 the Blair government has developed two major regeneration programmes. The New Deal for Communities (NDC) and the NRS are, in some ways, a continuation of earlier initiatives. They share many of the same characteristics of contemporary UK regeneration programmes. They are based upon area-based initiatives (ABIS), adding additional layers of monitoring and delivery to existing systems and claiming to engage in facilitating a partnership between the public, private and voluntary sectors.

The significance of these initiatives derives from their focus on inter-agency working and the need to develop a clear succession (or exit) strategy which is dependent upon the capacity of existing local state agencies and local communities to ensure that change is maintained. In the UK the analysis which underscores these new programmes is partly based upon an evaluation of earlier schemes and partly upon the experience of Labour during the Thatcher years. Both indicate that it is necessary to create the conditions for effective collaboration between welfare agencies and to develop a local or neighbourhood response (Burgess et al. 2001; Filkin et al. 2001; Newman 2001). In addition there is an assumption that changes in service delivery and more effective managerial systems will effect the reforms necessary.

The present government would appear to have embraced the ‘partnership’ approach as the means to achieve social and urban regeneration. Its assumed capacity to achieve these goals is most clearly illustrated with reference to the report from the Social Exclusion Unit (1998) which noted that:

Administrative fragmentation is a pervasive problem at local level too. Local authorities are just as likely as Whitehall to fall victim to ‘departmentalism’; many other key local agencies are not within the local authority sphere at all. Routine joint planning, where key local services come together to tackle and prevent similar problems is rare. In many places partnership working still tends only to happen when there is a special programme to apply for or where there is a particularly acute local problem. The quality of partnerships varies hugely.

(1998:38)

From the outset we can make a number of generalized observations. First, that in making use of the term ‘partnership’ the present government is laying claim to some concept of ‘equality’. The implication in a number of studies from the Audit Commission and the Social Exclusion Unit (and the associated policy statements) is that this represents not only a more effective way of delivering services but also a means by which different ‘voices’ can be heard and acknowledged. We think that this assumption needs to be challenged. While there may be evidence that the delivery of services can be affected positively by bringing different agencies together it is by no means proven as is illustrated below. As Mayo (1997) and Schaecter and Loftman (1997) demonstrate, it is debatable whether ‘partnerships’ enable local community organizations to feel that their views and experiences are ‘valid’ and can shape policy decisions. Indeed, it is often the case that the forums in which local community groups are asked to participate are inimical to such a process.

During the 1990s there had been a significant shift in the form and content of urban regeneration policy. The introduction of both City Challenge and the Single Regeneration Budget (SRB) by the Conservatives signalled the arrival of an apparently different mechanism by which regeneration initiatives were to be managed. Central to this process was the requirement to establish quasi ‘stand-alone’ agencies from the local authority to manage and to deliver initiatives. The responsibility for monitoring and ‘supervising’ these area-based approaches was devolved to regional government offices.

The role of the local authority was, and to some extent remains, ambiguous. It occupied the role of the ‘sponsor’ to the strategy. The process whereby bids were made and negotiations between potential partnerships conducted were carried out on behalf of the local authority. It was, in one sense, the local agency. However, the ‘day-to-day’ responsibility for managing the process was devolved to a small team of officers appointed (or seconded) by the authority (often on fixed term contracts) who were ‘supervized’ by locally established boards (usually including local councillors and representatives from other key agencies (or stakeholders) in the area.

The successful delivery of both City Challenge and SRB was predicated upon the establishment of good inter-agency working. In part this was built into the structure and organization of the process. By identifying a thematic approach to regeneration it was evident that individual agencies working alone would not be able either to secure additional funds through the initiative or to meet their stated outcomes. In one sense it is possible to argue that what was being proposed was a positive attempt to reduce the departmental barriers for effective working.

This approach was reflecting an emerging consensus across the political and academic spectrum (Stewart and Taylor 1995) which argued that, at minimum, area-based regeneration needed inter-agency co-operation and co-ordination. This approach had, clearly, informed the decentralization experiments in the 1980s in a number of Labour-run local authorities (Burns et al. 1994) and had been one of the criticisms of the earlier regeneration approaches of the Conservatives’ urban development corporations (Leach et al. 1996).

This need to identify ways in which development time can be built into the process of establishing partnerships is a theme which is repeated in a number of studies (Booth 1997; Leach and Wilson 1998; Mayo 1997; Schaectar and Loftman 1997).

In seeking to identify a model for discussion which draws together the need to address the ‘failings’ of elected members and professionals to engage fully with the experiences of local people (Mayo 1997) and the practicalities of local organizations navigating their way around the complexities of the SRB bidding processes (Nevin et al. 1997) we need to think creatively about how to support those who feel excluded or marginalized. Many studies (Brownhill and Darke 1998; Skelcher et al. 1996; Taylor 1995) focused on the needs of local organizations.

Both the NDC and the NRS place a high priority on empowering middle and senior managers to exercise control over ‘their’ resources. In the UK (and especially in England) these changes have been accompanied by reforms within local government. As a result locally elected councillors have even less power than before. The reforms of public agencies began in the 1980s and have continued under New Labour. Health, housing and education, all of which used to be locally managed and delivered, have all (to a greater or lesser degree) been restructured so that ‘stand-alone’ agencies at a regional or subregional basis have responsibility for them.

Perhaps this can be best illustrated by changes to social housing in the UK. In order to secure resources for improvements in housing New Labour have ‘encouraged’ the transfer of the housing stock from local government to housing associations or other equivalent agencies. To ensure this change tenants have to vote in its favour. In many cases this has happened and the campaigns to support or to reject such proposals are a useful indicator of the degree of resistance to such moves (Younge 2002). The significance of these reforms is, partly, in the way they change the relationship between the tenant and the landlord (the local authority), which may be welcomed, and, more interestingly, the removal of public housing from local control and the impact this has for locally developed services and the wider ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Full Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Context setting
• 2 Learning new skills and competences
• 3 Strategy
• 4 Leadership and stakeholder engagement
• 5 Partnership
• 6 Capacity building
• 7 Governance, scrutiny and accountability
• 8 An international dimension
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index