Memorandum by the Building Centre Trust
(UWP 44)
THE PROPOSED URBAN WHITE PAPER
This memorandum is presented by the Building
Centre Trust on behalf of the My Kind of Town . . .? Forum. The
memorandum is based on the conclusions of a symposium entitled
MY KIND OF TOWN . . .? Which was sponsored by the Building Centre
Trust and held in November 1999.
The event brought together a national forum
of 80 high level cross-sectoral practitioners in the design professions,
construction industry and housebuilding, urban regeneration, planning,
investment and development, research and social policy. In small
discussion groups, convened by experts, the participants were
asked to come up with priorities and recommendations for the Urban
White Paper, building on the recommendations of the Urban Task
Force report, and examples of success stories or urban renewal.
The symposium was chaired by Will Hutton, Editor of the Observer,
and an immediate response to the discussion was given by Dr Paul
Evans, Head of Regeneration Directorate of the DETR. The discussions
were summarised, and further comment was solicited from a cross
section of the participants. This material is being published
in a full report which will be submitted to the DETR. A list of
symposium participants and discussion themes is attached.
The My Kind of Town . . . discussion groups
brought together people from very different backgrounds, yet they
were able to agree on a number of key ideas that require (1) a
clearer concept of urban renaissance; and (2) a different focus
to that of the Urban Task Force report, as summarised in this
memorandum.
1. A CLEARER
CONCEPT OF
URBAN RENAISSANCE
"It's not just about buildings—it's
about all those other things, prosperity and social inclusion
and so on as well" . . . (Discussion report, My Kind of Town
. . .!)
1.1 Broadening the scope
The problem is producing a route map for getting
from A to B, which is not about having exclusive priorities of,
for example, education or transport, but about balance. It is
about hundreds of different things that all need to go on together.
A critical priority is governance and planning. There needs to
be greater democratisation of the planning process, with neighbourhood
workshops, town champions and, for example, taking symposia like
this to a local level. We need to change attitudes and improve
knowledge. The user should be at the centre of the process so
that we liberate the market and influence investors.
The term urban renaissance is misleading—we
need a clear concept that grabs people's imagination (for example,
people are contesting the term saying they want a "suburban
renaissance"). The symposium suggested that we have to look
at "urban mass", whether it be suburb or country town.
An urban renaissance is about a way of living that is connected,
not isolated, close to facilities and less dependent on the car.
The Urban White Paper should highlight the relevance of urban
living at different stages in the life cycle: it is not just relevant
to the 20 and 30 year-olds but increasingly to the "empty
nesters" whose children have left home.
1.2 Changing hearts and minds
The urban renaissance is about valuing our urban
areas properly. These often represent generations of civilisation.
Transport and schools, fiscal incentives, good management and
fostering local champions were generally agreed as crucial to
making any progress. However, changes in attitude and perceptions
have to be achieved, both by improving areas and also by galvanising
the media. We are beginning to notice a turnaround in attitudes
to urban living, and this needs encouraging. What was previously
seen as undesirable is now being seen differently; for example,
people are positively describing where they live as "urban
and gritty". It is also vital to assess attitudes, and how
they are changing.
1.3 Rediscovering pride of place
The future of an urban area depends on whether
the people with choice will stay, whether others want to live
there, and whether those with no choice can develop a pride of
place. The regeneration of the urban neighbourhood must focus
on "pride of place", and this is being emphasised, for
example in research by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. The historic
aspects of a place can help people feel rooted and provide a sense
of belonging. Programmes to build on this are needed, but the
symposium highlighted the problems of accessing funding at a local
level. Support is needed for lots of small projects—"think
small to achieve something big". Techniques range from market
research to action planning and local history projects. Programmes
can be devised to engage more than community activists.
1.4 Publicisng success stories
While each place is individual (and has to be
considered on its own strengths and potential), it can draw ideas
from other similar places. We have enough examples from the Continent,
and should concentrate on national examples, to learn what can
be done (within existing structures and constraints) and understand
the positive things that are already happening. Examples also
have to be from outside big cities. Currently there is not enough
information, and there is the opportunity to do something here.
We asked for case studies from participants and present these
in our report. Surely with the potential of the Internet, it should
be much easier to discover good practice, and who is doing what?
Urban Priority Areas, an Urban Task Force recommendation, should
focus on developing exemplars.
2. A DIFFERENT
FOCUS
"One thing we want to see out of the Urban
White Paper is a really new approach which will avoid past disasters."
(Discussion report, My Kind of Town . . .?)
Although the Urban Task Force report covers
almost everything, it comes across as being primarily concerned
with the physical environment. However, we know that the problems
of urban areas are driven by economic factors and can only be
addressed by tackling social issues. An urban renaissance must
be of benefit to all. If our cities and towns become derelict
and are abandoned, and if urban sprawl continues we will all suffer.
We believe the key is, of course, people, and the report does
not go far enough in dealing with implementation and leadership.
The scale of focus is the local neighbourhood, and information
and communication are crucial to the process of urban renewal.
2.1 Urban means people
The event emphasised a crucial aspect of urban
regeneration that our architects and planners often overlook.
Urban means people. The "urban renaissance" is people-based,
and has to be about tackling poverty and employment. The connection
has to be made between sustainable places and a stable workforce,
and we have to ask what kinds of employment are suitable and sustainable?
2.2 Leadership is crucial, and currently is
lacking
The task of urban renewals is such a long-term
issue, and has to move on so many fronts together, inter-linked
and balanced. We need "tools not rules": "There
is no blueprint for what has to be done . . . It is about giving
people the tools with which to do things, not constraining them
by rules about things they cannot do. There needs to be a pubic
vision, the ability to deliver that vision, and the legitimacy
to deliver the vision on behalf of the community" (Discussion
report). We need strong leadership, but how do we find leaders
with the right ethos and values? We have to question the purpose,
values, ethos of agencies etc, and find the right people to lead
projects, agencies and local authorities. If local authorities
are to lead they need more competence and vision. Suggestions
include taking this kind of symposium across the country to planning
councillors to improve leadership, and to develop exemplars. Neighbourhood
champions matter because neighbourhoods often coalesce around
people who take up an issue.
2.3 Implementation has to be given more thought
Implementation seems woefully lacking. Practitioners
have wider experience of this, for example how to constitute regeneration
companies, and this should be drawn on. More should be done to
insist on genuine long-term strategic partnerships. We need new
stakeholder and developer-based bodies that can help create and
articulate local neighbourhood visions, and also turn them into
practice. There needs to be a way of binding the community in,
including community approval of briefs, and a mechanism for ensuring
that these are properly followed through. Social and environmental
risk have to be rated along with financial risk: partners are
all those who carry risk. Mechanisms must get the funding to where
it is needed (rather than it leaking off into administration).
"While a lot of money goes into housing, it leaves neighbourhoods
no better off. We need to use that money to incentivise."
(Plenary session)
2.4 Focus on the local neighbourhood level
. . . encourage local management
Any search for an urban renaissance must start
with the right focus, so that efforts and resources are targeted
where they will yield most results. The scale of operation is
important, and there are different kinds of urban mass, but the
general feeling was that there needs to be a neighbourhood focus.
PPGs should require local development frameworks to be prepared
at a neighbourhood level. The neighbourhood depends on "nodes"—the
school, the library, the health centre, located within reasonable
walking distance—that have to be supported. Parental choice
is a key issue for communities (are people going to travel to
the schools or are they going to move to neighbourhoods that have
the schools?) and so schools in particular need to become centres
of community, and employers need to work with schools.
Neighbourhood plans need to say more about onward
care and management—"not just making it look good,
but making it last". Neighbourhood management must begin
with bottom-up empowered engagement, with local development partnerships,
community leadership, and leaders other than councillors. There
is no point relying on local authorities who are under pressure
to cut costs. Instead, we need area management, through local
agencies with assets to generate enough income to cover basic
staffing costs. Good neighbourhood management depends on ongoing
revenue funding. To make urban areas more attractive we need a
high quality of standard of maintenance when investment has taken
place. Residents and local firms must buy into this and adopt
it as a basic value. Maintenance requires more people, for example,
without park-keepers open spaces end up as refuges for the dispossessed.
So the work of looking after public space and services could provide
the very jobs that young men need as part of the "social
economy".
2.5 The emphasis must be on positive urban
design, rather than negative physical planning
A successful street-based urban realm is a prerequisite
for increasing housing densities both in the inner core of cities
and also further out in the suburbs. The Urban White Paper should
make the planning process constructive, rather than regulatory
as it is at present: "not a dinosaur but a bit more of a
dynamo". There should be more flexibility, but with incentives
to focus on urban priority areas. It should provide ideas on creating
"kerb appeal"—what can be done to improve the
external appearance of many urban places, often at relatively
low levels of expense. (The enveloping schemes of the 1970s and
1980s—the GIAs and HAAs—might be revisited to help
in salvaging some run-down places.)
We have to influence investors to invest in
different formats, more mixed use for example which is quite difficult
in the current market. We also need to design and construct homes
to go further towards meeting people's needs—you may not
be able to offer people large, detached houses in urban environments,
but you can make houses of a better quality, and design for greater
flexibility and more spacious rooms, rather than putting people
into little rabbit hutches. To counter arguments that high densities
meaning "town cramming" the Urban White Paper needs
to encourage more spacious rooms.
2.6 Explore financial mechanisms and adopt
fiscal incentives to "level the playing field"
Land economy issues have to be addressed by
penalising greenfield development and incentivising brownfield
development. We should not be focussing exclusively on the quality
of new build, but on existing stock and improving existing neighbourhoods.
This should involve densification of the suburbs, equalisation
of VAT, and greater facilitation of reuse. However, we should
be prepared to demolish and develop depending on the situation.
As a matter of urgency we need mechanisms for
large scale purchase and site assembly, to deal with problems
before they become too desperate (especially in the Midlands and
the North), and also for large scale demolition and clearance
in certain parts of the country. Something like 40 per cent of
our inner urban areas are characterised by public housing estates,
and in the North and the Midlands there are obvious signs of large-scale
dereliction and abandonment which is creeping southwards at an
alarming rate.
The biggest practical problem in brownfield
sites in urban areas is site assembly. This is often easier in
mainland Europe, for example the Dutch control supply of land.
There needs to be a subsidy for that process to suit each particular
circumstance. We should not be concentrating on bricks and mortar—it
is the cash flows coming out of the bricks and mortar, and financing
mechanisms that are important—structuring those flows in
a variety of ways to make them attractive to players who are not
investing in this area at the moment. A lot of this is quite difficult
to do. We need people competent to do these sorts of deals, structure
these sorts of financing mechanisms, and undertake this complex
site assembly.
Something could be done quite quickly. English
Partnerships already have some good powers which they have never
used which allow them to do site assembly for regeneration just
on the back of a regeneration plan, and does not require legislation
to put it in place. They could also structure the first investment
fund—put a little bit of seedcorn money in alongside some
partners.
2.7 Alongside practical initiatives, the concept
of urban living has to be communicated and marketed to all concerned,
including the public and private sectors
The urban renaissance is not just about changing
things but also about changing the way we look at things. We need
a genuine campaign, using the media: think of "real ale"
and the success of the don't drink and drive campaign, as well
as the current stop smoking campaign that is changing the image
of smoking from "cool" to an addictive problem. We need
one or two pioneer champions, people in the media who are respected
(Will Hutton suggested himself) who could take the message out
to a wider public. Kids, characters and personalities should speak
up for urban living, focusing on the opportunities and their aspirations.
Communication should involve "asking the teenagers"—who
are the ones supposed to be causing the problem.
14 January, 2000
APPENDIX
The My Kind of Town . . .? symposium
Discussion groups
DISCUSSION GROUP
1
Making projects financially viable in urban areas
of weak demand
(Convenor: Will Hutton, The Observer; Rapporteur:
Chris Brown, AMEC/RICS Urban Regeneration panel)
DISCUSSION GROUPS
2, 3 AND 4
Building quality urban neighbourhoods
(Convenors: Dickon Robinson, Peabody Trust;
Ben Derbyshire, HTA Architects Ltd; David Levitt, Levitt Bernstein
Associates. Rapporteurs: David Child, Sheffield First for Investment;
Charmain Young, St George Regeneration plc; David Lunts, The Prince's
Foundation/Urban Task Force)
DISCUSSION GROUPS
5 AND 6
Sociable neighbourhoods and quality of life
(Convenors: David Rudlin, URBED; Jennifer Lynn,
West Central Halifax Partnership. Rapporteurs: Nicky Gavron, Local
Government Association/LPAC; David Fitzpatrick, BURA)
DISCUSSION GROUP
7
Ensuring accessibility and ease of movement
(Convenor: David Taylor, Alan Baxter Associates;
Rapporteur: Professor Sir Peter Hall, The Bartlett School of Architecture
and Planning)
DISCUSSION GROUP
8
Creating secure and pleasant environments
(Convenor: Nicholas Falk, URBED; Rapporteur:
Michael Gwilliam, The Civic Trust)
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