Following the 2007-8 economic crash in which high property values played a significant part, the world of urban regeneration has, in part, struggled to find its feet again. Yet it was often said that the truly effective regeneration and renewal of some of the most deprived areas in the UK was always a 25-year change process— working to a rhythm of generations, not quarterly reports.

I want to suggest that it was the years leading up to the economic crash, let’s say 2002 to 2008 roughly, which were the aberration and that we are now poised to return – either to normality, or to repeat the earlier mistakes. And perhaps the biggest of those mistakes was to assume that ever-rising property values was the same as urban regeneration. It was clear to many at the time, and to many others with hindsight, that a world where property prices were rising faster than earnings year on year was not sustainable.

Instead, let’s go back to the drawing board. We need to remind ourselves of the underlying factors which are crucial for urban regeneration, and apply these timeless traits in modern times.

So, in no particular order we have:

1. A Masterplan
OK, these days even the youngest newbie in the team knows that you have to have a masterplan or you just cannot join the regeneration club. But, sadly, how often have we asked people for a masterplan, only to be handed a document. Yes, it has lots of colourful diagrams and maps. Especially the overlay maps that show the synergy between transport corridors (bus routes) and primary employment areas (bus stops). It might even touch on some of the headings below. It will have a vision statement. But, crucially, the writers of the document will have assumed that the document is the masterplan. It isn’t. The document is useful for various engineers who will need to know where to dig their holes. The masterplan is what people tell you when you ask them the question, why do they bother? If you get a coherent answer from a range of partners, brilliant! If you get unconnected answers or even no answers at all, then there is no masterplan, only maps.

2. An Economic Base
Bang in the centre of your urban community is an externally-funded non-transferable major employer with a commitment to, and proven results in local employment, and an order book that is full for the next 50 years. Lucky you. The rest of us have to work with less, and with what is real. Not everywhere will be a high-tech innovation hot spot. There just are not enough Googles to go round. So a me-too economic strategy will not work. Maybe for your area the niche, the economic USP, is something like world-class soft cheese making. Don’t knock it. Better to be real and succeed than to be pretentious and fail.

3. Partnership Working
Anyone who says that partnership working is easy clearly hasn’t tried it recently. Like childbirth, some say we only do it again because the brain can’t fully recall the pain from previous times. Partnership working is going back to your office and thumping the wall with frustration. It is putting down the phone and tearing your hair out. It is not about who sits on what committee. Nor is it who is on speed-dial with who else. It is hours and days of patiently going over the same simple point with the plonker from X until a glimmer of independent thinking is spotted. Every regeneration programme has at least one X. For me, I’m waiting for the day predicted in science fiction when arms-length agency ABC becomes self-aware. I’d fill in the gaps, but I need the work.

4. Community Engagement
So, this is (a) the minimum necessary number of community meetings to be endured in a church hall to satisfy the council so that planning permission will be granted, or … ah, there is no (b).

5. Jobs, Skills, Education
When asked, the majority of car drivers say they have above-average driving skills. Similarly, the majority of regeneration programmes have above-average expectations. Which sometimes is valid because there is a need to re-balance an area that has become mono-cultural. After all, blacksmiths did have to re-train as car mechanics. But too often the high-skills jobs focus says nothing for the many people who have lower formal skill levels but still want and need to play their full part in the local community, including the local economy. My first job was as a schools crossing officer, that is, I did a lollipop patrol. Long may they be.

6. Leadership
Similarly to partnership working, this is not only about who runs which committee. Nor is it about management, a necessary but different task. Leadership is bestowed, not taken. You will know the classic definition, that the people around a good leader say, ‘this is what we have done’. But also, leadership is not about any one person, but instead it is a function in which many different people all have a part to play at different times. The teacher who stands up against the bully is a leader.

7. Inclusiveness, Fairness, Diversity, Tolerance, Equality
Unfortunately, there is a cheap and very nasty way to build community spirit, and that is to produce a scapegoat. The blame game. Sometimes it is blatant— let’s blame Travellers for crime, let’s blame immigrants for unemployment, or young people for litter. But there is also an insidious blame game— let’s blame political correctness. “Everything was going just fine until we had to be nice to…” A tell-tale sign of this approach is an exclusive focus on traditional communities, as in a bread commercial, which conveniently leaves out the minority voices that can be found if you search with an open mind.

8. Mixed Communities
What are the factors which influence the mix of any community, any area? The housing type? Access to transport? Skill levels? These are textbook answers, but in truth it comes down to two factors: secondary schools catchments and estate agents. All the rest is puff. If you want to regenerate towards a more balanced, mixed community, then start with teacher recruitment.

9. Sustainable Practices
It is a fact universally acknowledged that every urban regeneration programme with a sustainability strategy is in need of more eco-bling. (Sorry Jane, but you know others have mangled it far worse. I have names if you need them.) So, when the flood defence teams arrive with their wagons of concrete in the hundreds, and you ask them to fund the planting of some trees, and get *that look*, you need to realise that actually more eco-bling is needed instead. Think bigger. Artificial trees made from recycled plastic bottles, that kind of thing.

10. Transport
Most people walk. Some run. A few skip. Many cycle. Some use wheelchairs, some scooters. Doctors encourage us to take exercise. And walks with greenery around us are good for our mental wellbeing. So isn’t it marvellous how professors of transport planning have come up with concrete walled dual carriageways. Who would have the M602 in their CV, no-one I guess. And, as every economist knows, the required solution for any economic improvement is another motorway.

11. A Sense of Place
There are stacks of picture books for architects to colour in (sorry, palette) which show you how to make a distinctive and unique sense of place. Oh, wait a minute, …

12. Can-Do Attitude
This is perhaps one of the hardest aspects of urban regeneration to make happen. It is where “everything here would be just dandy if only the government / council / supermarket / whoever would give us X.” Maybe it would. It very probably would be an improvement. But urban regeneration is not a box of magic wands to be rationed out. “If only we had the power to do such-and-such.” Of course, funding helps massively and for some tasks it is indispensable. But it is all for nothing if there is no spark, no passion, no love, no animation, no attitude. And we all know places which have had the money and then some, but where there is nothing left to show for it.

You may disagree with some, or even much, of this blog. Great. Because that’s the attitude we like to see.

It seems rather bad manners to mention this, but what happened to the idea of a mixed economy?

The idea of wanting to achieve both a thriving private sector and a strong public sector seems to have become passé. Now, we are told, you can have one but not the other. And private sector growth is good, and public sector growth is bad.

This week we have heard of outline political manifestos stressing the need for local authorities to show “value for money”. Probably alongside their statements on apple pie. Innocent enough, but it comes from the same political song sheet as “more for less”.

Now, most economists who don’t fear for their job security would tell you that economic activity rates are agnostic about any private vs public sector ideology. Except that the private sector pays its economists more (in general) than the public sector, and the piper calls the tune. Worse, in some parts of the public sector the ideological requirement is to promote the private sector alone.

So who is there left to champion public sector growth? We need to stop apologising for the quality of life improvements that come from full employment, from diverse workforces, from social goods, from environmental protection, from lifelong learning and from rich cultural lives. These are not nice-to-haves. And in a mixed economy these are not conditional on the beneficence of a few wealthy individuals in a light-touch regulated private sector characterised by growing inequalities.

But these days to argue for a mixed economy is so left-wing that you might as well raise a red flag and call for world revolution. However, having a mixed economy does not require a five year plan for bread, or national targets for pizza production.

Surely with the UK housing market in crisis, with youth unemployment at record high levels, and with the wider London area overheating while many parts of the UK shiver, the days of private-good and public-bad must surely end soon. What is needed is a return to a more balanced, more equal, fairer economy which returns to its rightful place as a servant of society, not its controller. Public service, in fact.

More … http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed_economy

Last month, six thousand teenagers using social media turned up one day at a shopping mall in São Paulo, Brazil, and started a new trend.

Urbanists will probably be interested in the article below, which describes this new trend in detail and explains the context of Brazilian cities where shared, public meeting spaces are said to be very few.

Link:
dissidentvoice.org/2014/01/rolezinho#more-52631

HT @scharlab Brazil Character Lab

Why is it so hard, and so expensive, to buy a good powered wheelchair?

The industry response is that they have high overheads, low volume sales, after-sale support, and costs associated with assessments. They claim that internet remote selling of so-called medical technologies such as powered wheelchairs may be cheaper, but the industry says it is unethical.

The EU Court considered these arguments and disagreed. The test case was in 2012 concerning the use of the internet to sell contact lenses in Hungary, which the Hungarian government tried to ban on health grounds. Details in the link below.

The EU Court also spelt out the difference between medicinal products (such as drugs) and medical technologies (such as wheelchairs) and decided that an open market in equipment is lower risk than in prescribed drugs.

This still begs the question whether a wheelchair should be seen as a medical device at all. What about skateboards then? Or tricycles? People can also hurt themselves when they don’t use these correctly.

But even with the current legal definitions, there is no EU legal reason for not having a vibrant, efficient, competitive market in power wheelchairs and similar equipment, just as there is a open market for your choice of a mobile phone. Of course, sometimes assessments are needed and these should be provided for separately.

And ethically, any assessment ought to be independent of the range of products that the assessing company provides.

Link:
http://medicaldeviceslegal.com/2010/12/05/eu-court-rules-on-internet-sales-restrictions-for-medical-devices/

For the most recent version of the Baldwinson & Duffy histories, please see this – Lives and Times (30 Apr 2014)

Cheers

Andrew Hunter, co-founder of Adzuna [jobs website], said in the article below that ‘the UK jobs market was becoming a “tale of two halves”, with significantly more vacancies in the south.’

As a competitor jobs website, I wonder if LinkedIn UK directors would also want to comment?

Link:
http://www.theguardian.com/money/2013/dec/23/job-vacancies-increase-north-south-divide

There is a debate underway about Victorian philanthropy and whether we would benefit from its revival in the twenty-first century. Where to start? Perhaps with a comment that this is not new.

The Victorian era seems to have fascinated the British ever since it finished. The following was written in the swinging sixties: “For some years now the economic trends of the late nineteenth century in Britain have caused acute controversy. They have been examined not only as features of a particular economic situation but also in the hope of throwing light on the sources of our more recent discontents …” (Ashworth, 1966).

In short, economically the mid 1800s in Victorian Britain saw a very high rate of economic growth, but this rate had considerably slowed down by the late 1800s and was followed by the Depression in the 1920s.

There is also a lot of published work on the role of the workhouse during the Victorian period and how it replaced the Elizabethan Poor Law which had codified outdoor relief, which roughly we might call care in the community, 1600s style. The workhouse also led to some of the early general hospitals as a form of spin-off, and increasingly the workhouse population was the elderly poor until the first general pension was introduced in the early 1900s.

In current political thinking we see the start of the welfare state as 1945 onwards with the birth of the NHS, however some academics would go back further to the Old Age Pensions Act of 1908 introduced by Lloyd George. However, our current political discussions seem to separate out the NHS from welfare benefits.

Of current note, the state pension in 1908 was only paid to people over 70 years of age.

Perhaps less explored is the area where our Victorian forebears wrestled on the interactions between the private and the public sector. For example, the Victorians effectively nationalised the utility companies, taking them under municipal control initially, and later consolidating these into national boards. The logic for this legal shift was the inefficiency of private sector utilities.

Another example: the regulation of banks and of limited companies, where various scandals and bubbles brought the wilder excesses of the private sector under control. Similarly scandals in the running of workhouses, such as people being so deprived of food that they ate rancid horse bones, led to social reforms with national inspectors for minimum welfare standards.

Lastly, English Heritage would not appreciate a return to Victorian values. The Victorians were ruthless developers, demolishing the medieval heart of many towns and cities, putting up new buildings and roads left, right and centre.

Is there a conclusion to this question? Perhaps only that the economics, politics and social conditions of Victorian Britain were just as complicated as they are today, with no simple answers but with many useful lessons to be found within the detail.

Reference:
The Late Victorian Economy, by W. Ashworth, in Economica New Series, Vol. 33, No. 129 (Feb., 1966), pp. 17-33
Published by: Wiley
Article Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2552270

Recently I’ve started to wonder if local authorities are becoming too punitive, or at least risk being perceived as such by residents.

The link below is a news item concerning a council which sent a Christmas card to its tenants which was felt to be insulting, saying “Don’t overindulge this Christmas. Pay your rent!”.

Of course there has always been a need for local law keeping and civil behaviour, dealing with a percentage of any population who, by degrees, behave anti-socially.

But I worry that, with local authorities on a long path of reducing resources and staffing levels, councils are taking on a residual role of punishment (parking, bins, etc) as well as collecting ever-higher charges (council tax, near-market rents, social care charges) and distributing less money (bedroom tax, benefits cap).

These trends leave little or maybe no space for the previous role of councils as an enabler, as a promoter of wellbeing and of improvement. The changes give local authority staff less experience in their working lives of engaging with people and communities in a positive and trusting manner.

And these trends mean councils will need to reinvent themselves if and when the better times return, but only if there is still some residual local support for the idea of local government – rather than just a new hostility to local enforcement.

Link – http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-25428796

Given the recent reports on unsustainable property prices, and for example the housing pressures for key workers in London, we should consider separating the price of the building from the price of the land.

The idea here is that the owner-occupier or social landlord only pays for the building. They would rent the land, like a ground rent, but without having a long lease to sell on as an asset along with the building.

It is possible to build a modern car in a factory for under £2,000 and houses are actually less complex than cars, although a bit more bulky. Using offsite manufacturing, road delivery of house modules, and craning onto foundations with service connections, at scale a house could be ready to use for £5,000 to £10,000.

By removing the value of the years ahead of the lease, the price of a house could become less of an object for speculation. It would become a consumption good, not an investment asset. Publicly owned land could be given a ground rent waiver for key worker occupiers.

Link:
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/dec/15/great-housing-divide-disastrous-consequences

When TV cameras were first introduced in the House of Commons, MPs were worried that televising debates would reduce the dignity of the chamber. So, to try and protect the dignity of the House the rule was created that only images of the person speaking at the time could be broadcast. How wrong they were.

The level of behaviour by many MPs is now appallingly low. But we have to rely on print journalists to convey a sense of the sexist gestures or the yah-boo jeering from people off-camera. The cameras are not allowed to be used to show, and shame, such anti-social behaviour.

It is as if the CCTV room of a shopping centre is being controlled by the shoplifters. How convenient – just switch off the cameras whenever they might catch someone up to no good.

So, it is time to change the rule. We need to allow any broadcast channel (BBC, ITV, etc) access to all camera feeds in real time. Let their editors decide which images are most appropriate to show, for example to cut to show a gesturing back-bench MP sitting opposite when a woman MP is speaking.

Sunlight is the best disinfectant.