The Routledge Companion to Urban Regeneration

Michael E. Leary, John McCarthy, Michael E. Leary, John McCarthy

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136266539
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Urban Planning & Landscaping

In the past decade, urban regeneration policy makers and practitioners have faced a number of difficult challenges, such as sustainability, budgetary constraints, demands for community involvement and rapid urbanization in the Global South. Urban regeneration remains a high profile and important field of government-led intervention, and policy and practice continue to adapt to the fresh challenges and opportunities of the 21st century, as well as confronting long standing intractable urban problems and dilemmas.

This Companion provides cutting edge critical review and synthesis of recent conceptual, policy and practical developments within the field. With contributions from 70 international experts within the field, it explores the meaning of 'urban regeneration' in differing national contexts, asking questions and providing informed discussion and analyses to illuminate how an apparently disparate field of research, policy and practice can be rendered coherent, drawing out common themes and significant differences. The Companion is divided into six sections, exploring: globalization and neo-liberal perspectives on urban regeneration; emerging reconceptualizations of regeneration; public infrastructure and public space; housing and cosmopolitan communities; community centred regeneration; and culture-led regeneration. The concluding chapter considers the future of urban regeneration and proposes a nine-point research agenda.

This Companion assembles a diversity of approaches and insights in one comprehensive volume to provide a state of the art review of the field. It is a valuable resource for both advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students in Urban Planning, Built Environment, Urban Studies and Urban Regeneration, as well as academics, practitioners and politicians.

PART 1

Globalization and neo-liberal perspectives

INTRODUCTION

John McCarthy

This Part provides an introduction to and critical engagement with the crucial impacts on urban regeneration of the many-faceted aspects of the processes involved in the powerful twin forces of globalization and neo-liberalization. In doing so it does not seek to provide an introduction to these topics, which have themselves generated a prodigious literature; for this, readers are referred to, for instance, Beck (1999), Brenner and Theodore (2002), Held (2004), Hackworth (2006) and Lovering (2007). However, part of the rationale for this Part is that a basic grasp of these ideas and practices is necessary in order to gain a critical appreciation of urban regeneration. A major aim of this Part of the book is to provide empirical substance to inform the globalization debate as far as it pertains to urban regeneration. It is important to note here, however, that the debate is often polarized between the globalization advocates who see advantages in greater globalization (for instance, Friedman 2007) and the sceptics (for instance, Rodrik 2012) who warn of the dangers. Nevertheless, it was David Harvey who back in 1989 drew attention to the potential harm that a globalized neo-liberalism could do to disadvantaged areas (Harvey 1989; see also Raco 2005). Neo-liberal political and economic agendas are arguably the principal components of globalization, usually advocating the unhindered international movement of workers and capital investment, each of which carries important but contentious consequences for urban regeneration (Tallon 2010). Aspects of globalization and neo-liberalism are of course highly controversial and contested, and have been examined by a wide variety of observers. In particular, Harvey (2007, 2012) shows how neo-liberalism – assuming market exchange as an ethic in itself – has become dominant in many fields of political thought, policy and practice. This involves minimization of state intervention, including in relation to social welfare. Like many other observers, however, Harvey highlights the possibilities of more socially just alternatives to neo-liberalism. Clearly, such considerations are central to a rounded evaluation of global interventions to progress urban regeneration aims.

This Part therefore focuses on how nations and cities have sought to adapt to shifting economic and social pressures through changing governance possibilities and structures. Issues of urban policy mobility from the Global North to the South are explored as another major outcome of globalization. The Part begins with a historiography of regeneration, and the changing context for urban regeneration in Europe. It then considers global influences on regeneration in the specific context of waterfront development, including implications for gentrification, and this is followed by examination of the specific mechanisms of Business Improvement Districts and Enterprise Zones. Finally, the Part includes a series of country-specific cases covering Turkey, China, Japan, Poland and South Africa.

This Part begins with Gold’s consideration of urban regeneration in the context of architectural modernism. He argues that many interpretations of ‘urban renewal’ derive essentially from two metanarratives related to architectural modernism – ‘triumphalism’ and ‘reappraisal’. ‘Triumphalism’, Gold suggests, signifies the rise of modernism, while ‘reappraisal’ refers to a reconsideration of modernism’s deficiencies. Gold suggests that critique of urban renewal/regeneration-as-modernism remains important within contemporary discourse on urban regeneration, and asserts the need to factor in a plurality of histories, thus combining awareness of earlier interpretations while understanding the limitations of Grand Narratives. This issue reflects an early manifestation of globalization in terms of the ‘export’ globally of modernist ideas from Europe and North America.

The chapter by Couch, Sykes and Cocks then turns to the changing context for urban regeneration in North West Europe. They highlight the various phases of urban regeneration since the Second World War and the parallel shifting contextual paradigms, including post-war reconstruction; urban renewal and ‘modernization’; a boom in ‘property-led’ regeneration in the 1980s; the more ‘holistic’ approaches of the 1990s; urban renaissance; and more recent integration of policies for regeneration and environmentally sustainable development. The chapter also discusses the reconceptualization of urban, governance and policy contexts, highlighting the increasing complexity of goals and methods for urban regeneration, with, for instance, a shift from urban reconstruction and slum-clearance to housing refurbishment and area improvement. These shifts may also relate to an increasing globalization of regeneration policy and practice. In addition, federal, central and local governments have become much more aware of issues such as social exclusion, with neighbourhood renewal and increased use of partnership-based mechanisms. But the authors highlight the most important change as the rise of the economic agenda and competition for investment, pushing cities towards neo-liberal economic policies which often neglect distributive issues and socio-environmental costs. Institutions at all levels have therefore sought to develop responses, including via the Leipzig Charter, the Toledo Declaration and other documents. Hence – for cities in the EU at least – there is potentially a set of common frameworks for interpretation and co-ordination of policy.

Turning to the specific issue of waterfront development, Brownill highlights how examples in cities in the Global North – as well as in the fast-developing economies of Latin America, the Gulf States and South East Asia – show that the ubiquity of such approaches often illustrates a formulaic recipe. This reflects the increasingly globalized prerogative of neo-liberal-driven regeneration. Brownill focuses on how the waterfront development phenomenon can be understood, and on the international mobility of regeneration concepts. She outlines the history of waterfront regeneration and shows how it has been addressed in the literature, arguing that an alternative analysis, based on the concept of ‘assemblage’ or the bringing together of different elements, actors and ideas, can assist in this context. This suggests that waterfront regeneration reveals much about how we can analyse and understand the processes of urban change. The chapter concludes, however, that the use of the assemblage notion should be combined with acknowledgement of the importance of power, wider social processes and locality.

Lloyd and Peel then turn to the specific mechanisms of Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) and Enterprise Zones (EZs). In setting the context for these approaches, they show how public policy in the UK emerged from a broad social democratic philosophy. However, the turn to a neo-liberal ideology in the mid-1970s, combined with a market critique of earlier policy, prompted a turn to business-led and land and property development-infused models. In addition, they focus here on the importance of policy learning and transfer, an issue which, of course, cuts across all the parts of this book. In particular, they highlight specific features that might hinder or help a policy’s transferability. The chapter then examines how such transfer of business-led, market ideologies – via BIDs and EZs – has influenced practice in the UK, with the business sector arguably becoming the de facto regulator of public service delivery, and how contractualized relations may be used to determine outputs which may conflict with public interests. Specifically, they show how EZs represented an explicit turn to a more neo-liberal market regime inspired by the relatively ‘free-market’ regime in Hong Kong. And in the case of BIDs, transfer of ideas was linked to disaffection for town centre management approaches, particularly in view of the lack of resources. By using these examples the authors show how, in spite of the porous context in which policy transfer and innovation may occur, critical reflection is needed in assessing policy fit, so that local technocratic and democratic aspects can be protected, a point echoed by Rodrik (2012).

In the next chapter, Güzey focuses on regeneration in Turkey in terms of inner-city redevelopment, within a framework of neo-liberal policies aimed at creating high-income/status housing areas. The sites for such areas frequently comprise stigmatized so-called ‘squatter housing areas’, with perceived unhealthy living conditions and potential for crime, which legitimate a process of damaging gentrification (similar points are made in the chapters by Rossi and Vanolo in Part 2 and Kang in Part 5). Güzey highlights here the importance of the use of authoritarian state power through legal mechanisms and, in particular, the imposition of one powerful state agency, responsible directly to the Prime Minister. Güzey shows also how the state and local administrations in Turkey play a primary role in the shaping and channelling of housing demand, as part of broader aims for place-marketing, linked to neo-liberalism and attempts to address crime and economic decline. The state also offered support to real-estate developers to promote the inner city. Güzey emphasizes the resulting variety of problems, using examples of regeneration areas in Ankara, and concludes that, in Turkey, urban regeneration projects using land and financial subsidies to revitalize the construction sector via development of squatter housing areas are often poorly integrated into the wider city structure. He also shows that such approaches are inherently speculative and lead to displacement and the exacerbation of social polarization. Hence he suggests that displacement in this context represents a means of using the ‘rent gap’ originating from the increasing financial value of land compared to the existing residential value.

Chen then considers large-scale urban development projects (UDPs) as a particular type of neo-liberal intervention strategy in urban regeneration in China. She shows how this neo-liberal strategy is meant to underpin competitive advantage and economic growth. Thus, via the example of the development of the Shanghai Pudong New Area, she shows how neo-liberalism played a significant role in the formulation of urban strategies to attract global finance; facilitate private participation; promote competitiveness; project modern, dynamic city images; and position the city via global actors and city marketing. She also suggests that the developmental state framework (whereby local government can attract foreign investment while central government loses some control over the development process) has enabled particular implementation strategies, with evidence of synergies between central and local government in the facilitation of large-scale urban development projects, and encouragement of participation of a range of private actors albeit with a lack of active participation by local communities. She concludes that UDPs such as the Pudong development have created new urban spaces and promoted competitiveness, and the Pudong development has often been seen in China as a model of implementation for UDPs in Chinese cities, with its cautious coalition building. But she shows that each city strategy needs to be adjusted to fit its particular context.

In the context of Japan, Tsukamoto then considers Japan’s neo-liberalization in relation to the interactions between its ‘developmental state culture’ and the role of its cities. He shows how urban planning has for many years been a central component of Japan’s national development, linked, for instance, to urban growth and industrialization, or balanced urbanization to ensure spatial equality. In view of Japan’s long economic recession since the early 1990s, strategies of ‘concentration and selection’ have emphasized planning effectiveness based on rational decision making, rather than balanced urbanization. The author highlights the combination of Japan’s neo-liberal policy ideas and rational planning, with implications for redevelopment of major urban centres, particularly Tokyo. He shows that this is a means for the state to legitimize rational top-down development policy, so that state planning is strong and cities function as state assets to achieve national goals. But he also shows how the combination of state developmentalism and neo-liberalism is stimulating bottom-up demands among some urban leaders for drastic state devolution. He concludes that Japan’s neo-liberal state reform represents a convenient tool for decision makers to use for strategic purposes, rather than an adoption of neo-liberal capitalism values, since the developmental state continues to be the model for economic development at both national and local levels. He also highlights the consequent possibility of the Japanese developmental state disintegrating into a collection of city-regional developmental states, since cities could become essentially local spaces of economic agglomeration and business clusters. This could be linked to a tendency that already exists in the cases of Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya, which are all considering development of international airports and international cargo ship hubs, for example. He therefore suggests that, if many city-regions chase after similar urban visions, while competing with each other for development and regeneration, the national interest could be adversely affected, thereby hinting at the importance of a national strategy for aspirational regeneration.

It is significant in this context that the effects of globalization and neo-liberal approaches to regeneration have applied globally, including in former communist contexts. For instance, in the next chapter, considering the case of Poland, Kaczmarek and Marcinczak show how urban regeneration is linked to the evolution of spatial planning and territorial governance, with a 50-year period of socialist central planning isolating Central Eastern Europe (CEE) countries from the global/continental economy and planning practice. However, they show that the demise of socialism and the growing exposure to globalization and neo-liberal ideas has had significant effects, including project-led and community-led urban regeneration, with examples in Krakow, Warsaw, Poznan and Lodz. The authors conclude that the systemic transformation of Polish society and economy, starting in 1989, led to a new regulatory framework heavily influenced by a neo-liberal approach and an almost unconstrained burgeoning of private property rights. Urban planning led by public bodies and local authorities has become perceived here as a brake on private property rights. The authors show, however, that post-socialist urban renewal has brought positive outcomes, successfully transforming inner cities through new uses. Local authorities have also become actively involved in urban (re)development and local economic growth, freed from the constraints of central government and aided by funding from the EU’s structural funds, with projects focusing on historic cores and city centres. However, these projects have largely been developed in a piecemeal fashion, leading to increased fragmentation of urban space as well as gentrification. In overall terms, therefore, they suggest that urban regeneration has transformed the neglected and decayed Polish inner cities more successfully than the 50-year period of central planning economy, but they question the approach of the entrepreneurial city, suggesting that emphasis on liberal market forces and private property rights acts as a constraint on regeneration success.

The final chapter in this Part, by Houghton, illustrates the application of globalized neo-liberalism by countries in the Global South (also considered elsewhere in this book, for instance by Ibem [Part 4], Fahmi [Part 4] and Kamath [Part 3]). Here, Houghton considers urban regeneration in the context of the post-apartheid transition and transformation in South Africa. This, she suggests, has involved a process in which imperatives for socio-economic transformation, improved economic growth, and increasing global competitiveness are seen by the government as central. For example, an array of urban regeneration projects in Durban has sought to facilitate economic growth and improved quality of life, using public-private partnerships, linked to boosterist neo-liberal agendas. It is interesting to note this finding in the context of Harvey’s original 1989 critique of neo-liberalism and subsequent critiques. Houghton concludes that the prioritization of economic growth and improvement of quality of life in such cities is linked to wider aims for the reintegration of South Africa into the global e...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Acknowledgements
• Editors and contributors
• Foreword
• Introduction Urban regeneration, a global phenomenon
• Part 1 Globalization and neo-liberal perspectives
• Part 2 Emerging reconceptualizations of urban regeneration
• Part 3 Public infrastructure and public space
• Part 4 Housing and cosmopolitan communities
• Part 5 Community-centred regeneration?
• Part 6 Culture-led regeneration
• Index