Memorandum by Professor Brian Robson (UWP
102)
URBAN WHITE PAPER INQUIRY
WHITE PAPER
As an academic researcher who has worked for
some years on the evaluation of urban policy, I welcome the opportunity
to submit the following brief observations to the Environment,
Transport & Regional Affairs Committee in its consideration
of the Urban White Paper.
I should like to address five points: integration
across different policy domains; the recommendations of the Urban
Task Force; the future of areas of current low demand; administrative
boundaries; and linkage to wider issues such as development on
greenfield sites and arguments about the North/South divide.
First, however, it is important to emphasise
that the future economic strength of the country is inextricably
tied to the future well-being of our major cities. Despite the
evident problems that they continue to face, the major cities
remain the principal source of economic wealth-creation, the principal
source of labour demand, and the generators of innovation and
of economic and cultural vitality in the country.
There are some green shoots visible in the statistics
of change in the 1990s:
— The amount of derelict land has been
reduced in some of the big cities.
— Local property markets have been
revived in some central areas through re-colonisation by small
professional households.
— Even though cities have continued
to lose population, household numbers have continued to increase
in cities.
— Some of the big cities have seen
growth in private-sector jobs connected partly to the creative
and information-based industries and to tourism/entertainment—all
of which represent some of the hallmarks of the future economic
roles of cities.
Just as important is our success as a country
in tackling the challenges of social inclusion within a multi-cultural
and unequal society, and in this it is the success within our
large cities which is the real litmus test of our resolve and
of our achievements in the attempt to create a civilised society.
"Getting it right" in our cities is important both economically
and socially.
The White Paper will come at an important moment
in the evolution of urban policy. The last three decades have
represented a progressive learning curve in our knowledge of what
works in urban regeneration. There have been significant shifts
in the focus of policy—not least since the early 1990s in
the form of City Challenge and the Single Regeneration Budget
and the more recent activities of the Social Exclusion Unit. These
have begun to embody important principles: the need for inclusive
delivery partnerships that give significant roles to local authorities
and to private-sector and community interests; the need to recognise
the social dimension of regeneration and to dove-tail the social
and economic thrusts of policy; the need to co-ordinate the priorities
and the spending streams of different policy domains; the need
to place consumers of services at the forefront. Moreover, there
is some evidence that large cities have begun to turn-around their
fortunes—for example, the growth of service-sector jobs,
new residential development, the continuing growth of household
numbers, the growth of consumer activities—even though the
net flows of population, jobs and investment have continued (albeit
at lower rates) to show a move away from cities.
Policy implication: Regeneration is a long haul.
We should not now relax the targeting of policy on the big cities.
INTEGRATION OF
POLICY DOMAINS
All of the evidence from evaluation studies
suggests that integration across policy domains is critical and
is best achieved through implementation on the ground. This requires
large-scale programmes through which such synergy can best be
achieved. Independent commentators have therefore welcomed the
targeting of Round 5 SRB resources on fewer but larger schemes;
large programmes have the merit of increasing the probability
that partnerships will draw in a range of issues—such as
employment, training, housing, crime, health and the like. This
process of concentration should be continued in future rounds
of SRB and RDAs should consciously focus regeneration resources
on a small number of high-priority areas. Given the range of area-based
initiatives, there is also now a convincing argument that in future
they should consciously be targeted at identical or overlapping
geographical areas so that the challenge of integration might
better be met on the ground. An important role might be played
in helping this cross-domain integration by the creation of more
Urban Regeneration Companies of the kind now established in Manchester,
Liverpool and Sheffield. While individual cities are at very different
stages of their evolution of strategies and partnerships, the
URC model offers a sufficient degree of flexibility to take account
of where a city is on this learning curve. In addressing the need
for greater co-ordination and integration, the ideal approach
would be to move towards a single urban "pot" of resources
drawn from across a range of government departments; although
there would be obvious challenges in achieving this.
Policy implication: Area-based intervention
makes sense, both to achieve the scale of impact that is necessary
to turn-around the fortunes of areas and to maximise cross-departmental
co-ordination of efforts and priorities.
URBAN TASK
FORCE
Part of the problem that cities have faced is
that there are many fiscal disincentives to investment in urban
areas. If policy is to develop a consistent framework to support
the reinvention of cities, there should be positive incentives
to encourage and facilitate investment. The fiscal measures proposed
in the UTF could therefore form a valuable element in altering
the balance of attraction to investment in cities. Amongst these,
the most obvious is levelling the VAT rates on new-build and refurbishment.
But the Task Force also suggests wider positive incentives that
should be explored: tax incentives for developers and investors
to contribute to regeneration and refurbishment of sites and buildings
that would otherwise not take place—for which there are
examples from which experience can be drawn from America; incorporating
into the forthcoming Comprehensive Spending Review the objective
of supporting an urban renaissance; allowing local authorities
to retain some fraction of the additional revenue arising from
local taxes associated with uplift of values in regeneration areas.
Policy implication: There is a variety of fiscal
instruments that could help both to level the playing field between
new-build and refurbishment and to introduce incentives to attract
investment into areas where development is costly and difficult.
AREAS OF
LOW DEMAND
There is widespread evidence of the increasing
polarisation of neighbourhoods in big cities. Deprivation has
become more intense within certain small neighbourhoods. Two features
have characterised this polarisation: it has strengthened the
link between social housing and deprivation; and it has affected
households with children more severely than those without. One
implication of the latter trend is that policy should consciously
focus on young children (and the creation of Sure Start is an
encouraging development in this respect). At its most extreme
deprivation is seen in areas where housing markets—both
for private and social housing—have virtually collapsed.
There are some 35 local authorities in which more than 20 per
cent of private houses sell for less than £20,000. It would,
however, be mistaken to infer from this either that such places
should be written off through a policy of triage or that large-scale
demolition of properties is necessarily a solution. While the
overall key to recovery lies in economic competitiveness and job
creation, large-scale area-based regeneration has proven its worth
in many instances. Again, it has to be stressed that this is the
case only in those instances where large-scale co-ordinated programmes
have been pursued.
Policy implications: A focus on young children
is well placed. Area-based intervention is a valuable response
to the patchiness of deprivation.
ADMINISTRATIVE BOUNDARIES
There are two aspects of administrative geography
that can currently prove unhelpful to cities: the happenstance
of administrative boundaries and the lack of conurbation-wide
jurisdictions. On the first, the resource base of cities is critically
dependent on the geographical area from which their tax base is
drawn and, for some cities, tightly-drawn boundaries create difficulties.
This is well illustrated by the contrast between Leeds and Manchester;
the first being generously drawn to include large areas of affluent
suburbs, the second being tightly drawn to include only inner
city and peripheral council estate areas. At a trivial level,
this means that any of the socio-economic data that describe their
fortunes are always going to show the more generously defined
area in a more favourable light. More seriously, it means that
many of the facilities provided in the core district but used
by those beyond the administrative boundaries will place disproportionate
financial strain on the resources of any "under-bounded"
district. There is a strong argument to revisit the effectiveness
of the boundaries of core districts. There are not only resource
implications in this, but also issues of the areas for which most
effective strategic planning can be developed. It is here where
the arguments about city-regions are telling. This has been recognised
in the case of London with the establishment of a cross-London
authority. Clearly, the RDA experiment has stamped a regional
dimension on governance in England and one would hesitate to create
further tiers of government. Nevertheless, the issue should be
revisited.
Policy implication: The RDAs should encourage
the development of sub-regional (conurbation-wide) perspectives
in the evolution of their action plans.
THE WIDER
CONTEXT
The fortunes of cities are inextricably tied
not only to their place with regional economies, but also to the
macro-context in the UK as a whole. An effective urban policy
aimed at sustaining the renaissance of cities must take account
of the knock-on implications of policies across the whole ambit
of government. The point can best be illustrated with examples.
First, is the thorny issue of transport. In the absence of significant
investment in better public transport, congestion charges and
parking restrictions on private cars will inevitably encourage
new investment in areas outside densely built-up cities. Equally,
the provision of free parking for large-scale retail developments
will have the same effect on retail investment. A test of the
power of urban policy would be to subject such policies to an
"urban audit" (using the parallel of environmental or
social impact assessment) to consider the unintended consequences
of such policies on the fortunes of cities. Second, the greenfield/brownfield
debate has highlighted the importance of maintaining restrictions
on greenfield development as a lever to encourage reinvestment
in urban areas. The experience of some of the biggest cities has
been highly encouraging; Leeds, Birmingham, Manchester and other
of the big cities have seen significant residential development
close to their very cores. While as yet this process is still
in its infancy, it represents a sea shift of potentially revolutionary
significance; one that could transform cities into places of mixed
tenure and social class and with an economic rationale based more
securely on leisure and cultural industries. Relaxation of greenfield
restriction would undermine such development. It is widely argued
that there are national interests at stake in ensuring that development
pressures in the South East can be met, otherwise investment will
be attracted to continental Europe, and that this inevitably implies
the lifting of restrictions. But this needs to be set alongside
the evidence on the North/South divide. Even though there are
intra-regional disparities in socio-economic circumstances, these
are dwarfed by the consistent evidence of the significant differences
between the regional averages and by the extent of deprivation
in the three most northern regions (alongside inner London) in
comparison to the three most southern regions. It would clearly
be counterproductive to encourage relaxation of development restrictions
in the South alongside their continuance in the North since this
would exacerbate inter-regional migration to the South. The two
extremes are: a universal relaxation of controls which would undoubtedly
have highly negative consequences for northern cities and would
exacerbate the overheating of southern land and property markets;
and the universal strengthening of restrictions which would help
to meet the government's target for 60 per cent brownfield development
but would increase land values in the south and run the possible
risk of encouraging investment outside Britain. The balance is
between the social and environmental costs of the former and the
political and (possible) economic costs of the latter. A genuinely
urban policy would strike a balance towards support for the latter.
Policy implication: The White Paper should provide
an "urban-friendly" framework in which the implications
of policies from across a range of departments are tensioned against
an assessment of their impacts on big cities.
Brian RobsonSchool of
GeographyUniversity of Manchester
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