Memorandum by The SURF Centre—University
of Salford (UWP 31)
THE PROPOSED URBAN WHITE PAPER
1. THE SCOPE
OF THE
WHITE PAPER
1.1 The SURF Centre considers the Committee's
inquiry to be a good opportunity for debate about what are the
most appropriate policy instruments and delivery vehicles for
promoting urban regeneration and development and improving the
quality of life in cities in the 21st century. It is particularly
important that the Committee's report conveys to Government a
sense of the achievements of "urban" policies, broadly
defined, to this point and offers a series of practical recommendations
that can overcome some of the difficulties that policy makers
and other interested parties in this field have faced. In other
words it, like the White Paper itself, needs to indicate what
has worked, what remains to be achieved and how. We hope the remainder
of this memorandum makes some contribution to this broad goal.
However we feel that the opportunity available to the Committee
will not be grasped effectively unless it sends three key messages
to those charged with preparing the White Paper.
1.2 First, it is crucial that the White
Paper is not viewed only as a response to the Report of the Urban
Task Force and an opportunity to operationalise its key recommendations.
SURF considers the Task Force's report to be a comprehensive response
to the brief it received from Government. However that brief concentrated
overwhelmingly upon issues related to the built environment and
its contribution to the quality of life in cities. As a result,
the Task Force had much to say about urban design, land utilisation
and residential attractiveness. But it was unable to focus upon
the way in which cities of the future will be sustained economically
and how urban and related policies can facilitate restoration
and development of the urban employment base. It also had little
to say about the policy environment in which urban programmes
are developed and how this might be reconfigured to promote more
effective responses to urban problems and potential. The White
Paper cannot be silent on these issues.
1.3 Second, the White Paper needs to be
framed in such a way that it is consistent with other aspects
of the Government's agenda which impinge in potentially important
ways upon urban policies and institutional arrangements. In particular,
the White Paper needs to pay due regard to the evolving programme
of regionalisation and the proposed reform of local government
decision-making being developed under the rubric of local democratic
renewal. These three central planks of the Government's approach
to sub-national policy and institutional development need to be
taken forward in parallel. Otherwise there is a danger that the
recommendations of the White Paper in respect of urban change
will not resonate with, for example, the regional economic strategies
of Regional Development Agencies, the potential establishment
of new institutions designed to close the "democratic deficit"
of the English regions, and the creation of powerful new city
Mayors.
1.4 Third, the White Paper needs to recognise
that regular reforms of urban and related policies undertaken
by Governments over the last 30 years have not been founded upon
a particularly sound evidence base. Government departments have
invested considerable resources into measuring the effectiveness
of particular policy instruments during that time. A great deal
of support has also been made available through UK research councils
for programmes of research into myriad aspects of urban change.
However these have not resulted in the creation of dedicated,
accessible and easily interpreted stocks of information which
policy makers can utilise to improve their understanding of the
changing nature of cities and urban life and underpin policy innovation.
The White Paper needs to be clear about "what needs to be
done", but it should also recognise that the way we currently
answer that question, and measure the effectiveness of policy
initiatives, would be more effective if investment were made in
a more robust and sophisticated evidence base.
1.5 SURF has a number of specific concerns
that relate to these three central messages and to other elements
of the brief sent to potential respondents. These are set out
below.
2. SPECIFIC RESPONSES
TO ELEMENTS
OF THE
COMMITTEE'S
BRIEF
Priorities for implementation from the Urban Task
Force report
2.1 The Committee will no doubt receive
evidence on the Task Force recommendations from a broad range
of professionals and practitioners with an interest in the built
environment. The particular item that we, as academics accustomed
to working at the interface of theory and practice, are concerned
to see develop is the proposal for Regional Centres of Excellence
in Urban Regeneration (RCEURs). This maps onto our general concern
with the state of the evidence base for sub-national development
policies and the need for integration between the Government's
urban and regional agenda. In particular, there is an opportunity
to combine improvements in the training of regeneration professionals
and the information needs of urban and regional policy makers
in a way which supports the Cabinet Office's strategic priority,
in its Action Plan for Modernising Government (1999), to develop
"a complete framework for excellence in policy-making, including
guidelines on best practices, new databases to support evidence-based
policy making, and appropriate training and development".
2.2 The Urban Task Force found that the
infrastructure for supporting continuing professional development
and training for practitioners engaged in various aspects of urban
regeneration was weakly developed and fragmented. It subsequently
supported a study of the feasibility of establishing cross-professional
RCEURs that drew enthusiastic responses from professional institutions,
universities and urban and regional agencies. Relatively little
progress has been made, however, in developing specific proposals.
A key barrier is that the remit of RCEURs cuts across the funding
sources and policy boundaries of the Departments of Employment,
Education, and Environment, Transport and the Regions. One way
in which the Committee can help facilitate change here would be
to request clarification as to how interdepartmental sponsorship
and ownership can be built at the regional level and support the
development of a national network of RCEURs. In particular, progress
could be made if:
— The three main Government Departments
were required to make specific proposals for the interdepartmental
funding of RCEURs; and
— Invitations were invited from consortia
of users (local authorities, consultancies, developers, voluntary
& community organisations), regional organisations (Government
Offices, Development Agencies, Regional Assemblies etc), professional
institutes (RIBA, RTPI, RICS, Housing Institute, Institute of
Local Economic Development officers) and providers (Universities
and training agencies) with a view to establishing RCEURs in each
region by 2001.
2.3 The development of RCEURs could be taken
forward in parallel with improvements in the evidence base available
to urban and regional policy-makers and the enhancement and integration
of urban and regional research capacities. Since this is an issue
that the RDAs are currently grappling with, and since the RDAs
have an important role in establishing a regional framework for
urban development and regeneration programmes, there is a strong
argument for RCEURs to develop their services in the medium term
to encompass urban and regional research and information systems
linked to the needs of RDAs and the network of public and private
sector agencies involved in urban and regional programmes. In
order to do so, they will need to integrate research and information
provision at the regional scale. This raises the prior question
of what sources currently exist and how they can be brought together
more effectively.
2.4 Currently, urban and regional research
and information provision is divided between three principle sets
of actors. First, Government Departments, NDPBs and local authorities
commission policy oriented research linked to their specific interests.
Second, research councils support more general urban research
programmes (eg EPSRC on Sustainable Cities, NERC on the Urban
Environment and ESRC on Cities and Competitiveness). Third, charitable
organisations such as the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and the Leverhulme
Trust support individual projects and programmes on aspects of
urban and regional development. In addition, there is also a range
of European research programmes with strong urban or regional
dimensions.
2.5 Each of the "players" in urban
and regional research and information provision defines its own
needs, sets questions, identifies priorities and specifies appropriate
research methods. But policy makers and academics lack any comprehensive
assessment of the collective implications of these different research
frameworks. Solutions to the "problems" of cities and
regions are linked to the ideas used to understand them. Different
urban research programmes therefore embody distinct ways of understanding
cities and regions. Because urban policy-makers and researchers
are calling for a more sophisticated understanding of the connections
between environment, economy and society we need to examine how
conventional discipline-based research promotes or restricts the
development of an interdisciplinary understanding of cities and
regions. In our view, progress towards integrating urban and regional
research and information provision at the regional scale needs
to start from a ground-clearing exercise which involves policy-makers
and researchers in joint discussions about how urban and regional
problems are defined and addressed by different research frameworks.
In particular, there is an urgent need to build an understanding
of:
— The central research questions particular
frameworks focus upon (or ignore);
— What forms of explanation, advice
and resources particular research frameworks provide and whether
they compete with or complement each other; and
— The types of research have been taken
up in practice and have shaped policy most effectively.
The integration of policies to foster urban regeneration;
policies relevant to towns and suburbs as well as cities
2.6 The plea for integration has become
something of a mantra for those concerned with addressing urban
problems that do not respect the functional boundaries between
Government and local authority departments and NDPBs or the division
of labour between statutory and non-statutory sectors. A great
deal of progress has already been made on this issue through the
creation of partnerships for the delivery of urban regeneration
programmes. The "partnership model" has also been extended
by the current Government into new area programmes that concern
themselves with more "traditional" service areas such
as health, housing and education. Whilst such initiatives are
welcome, however, it has to be recognised that they have added
still more players to the crowded stage of area initiatives without
providing any mechanism for taking an overview of all such initiatives
operating within a particular area.
2.7 Better integration is still desirable
at both national and sub-national levels. In the former case,
the White Paper should confront the challenge of understanding
how different government departments—dealing with health,
education, employment, industry, environment, planning, housing
etc.—generate their own views of urban and regional futures.
Here, we consider there to be a powerful case for undertaking
an external review at cabinet level (as was done with Rural Policy)
to focus on three questions which can help highlight the degree
to which better integration is possible and desirable given current
policy trajectories:
— What are the explicit or implicit
urban and regional components and implications of different government
departments' policy frameworks?
— What are the resonances and dissonances
between different policy frameworks; are they mutually sustaining
or pulling in quite different directions? and,
— Is it possible to identify an integrated
urban policy based around a clear vision of how UK cities and
regions might develop or, alternatively, do we need to develop
a more complex understanding of urban futures that transcends
singular visions such as the compact city?
2.8 At the sub-national scale, the RDAs
are already involved in providing a more coherent and integrated
framework for urban regeneration and development policies which
takes their social and environmental implications seriously. What
seems certain from the Regional Economic Strategies that RDAs
have produced so far, however, is that many of their programmes
will need to focus upon sub-regional "units" that make
more sense than the standard regions either as travel-to-work
areas or as localities that people readily identify with. In some
cases, this has given rise to sub-regional groupings that potentially
provide for policy integration at a scale larger than the district
level. This is a positive development upon which the White Paper
needs to build insofar as it creates the possibility for policy
frameworks and programmes that bring core cities together with
neighbouring urban and suburban areas. In principle, at least,
it presents an opportunity to overcome the parochiality and inter-district
competition that has resulted from area-specific urban programme
resources being routed, independently, through district authorities.
2.9 If this opportunity is to be grasped
effectively, though, two sets of preconditions will need to be
fulfilled. First, mechanisms will need to be developed whereby
the resources channelled into area-specific programmes—by
Government Departments and NDPBs as well as RDAs—are grouped
together at the metropolitan/city-regional scale. Second, new
institutional arrangements or networks of authorities and NDPBs
within metropolitan areas/city-regions will need to be developed
in order to encourage policy integration at that scale and provide
a mechanism for agreement on strategic priorities and the allocation
of externally-provided resources. Without such a "stick and
carrot" approach, bottom-up partnerships between core cities
and their neighbours tend not to generate anything other than
lowest common denominator solutions to shared problems. Such improvements
in metropolitan/city-regional governing capacity would have obvious
implications for Government agenda in respect of the English regions
and local government. For example, they would raise serious questions
as to whether city Mayors, if they become a reality outside London,
should operate at a metropolitan rather than district scale, as
is currently assumed. This observation underlines the need for
these three planks of Government policy to be made mutually consistent
and taken forward together.
3. SUMMARY OF
RECOMMENDATIONS
General
3.1 The White Paper should encompass the
Government's response to the Urban Task Force report but must
also outline ways in which sustainable economic development and
urban employment creation can be supported.
3.2 The White Paper needs to provide for
consistency between the Government's urban agenda and its programmes
of regionalisation and local government reform.
3.3 The White Paper needs to recognise the
current limitations in the evidence base for urban policy and
outline ways in which it can be improved.
Specific
3.4 The Urban Task Force recommendation
on the creation of Regional Centres of Excellence in Urban Regeneration
(RCEURs) needs to be taken forward through interdepartmental funding
for regional consortia, incorporating users, regional bodies,
professional institutes and providers.
3.5 RCEURs should be encouraged to develop
urban and regional research and information services in the medium
term. However the first step towards this goal needs to be agreement
between policy-makers and research and information providers about
the practical usefulness of current provision in these areas.
3.6 Exploration of the way policy integration
at national level could be made more effective if there were an
external, Cabinet level review of how different departmental policy
frameworks view urban futures and with what degree of consistency.
3.7 Better policy integration at sub-regional
scale could be achieved through building metropolitan/sub-regional
governing capacity and pooling the area-specific resources currently
delivered at the district level at that scale.
Professors Ian Cooper, Alan Harding and Simon
Maruin
Centre for Sustainable Urban and Regional Futures
(SURF Centre)
January 2000
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