Memorandum by Southampton City Council
(UWP 55)
PROPOSED URBAN WHITE PAPER
1. INTRODUCTION
1.1 The Urban White Paper is a logical and
necessary step to implement the key recommendations of the Urban
Task Force. The Urban Task Force (UTF) Report proposes a framework
for urban change and contains over 100 recommendations. They cover
a wide range of issues from design to investment. Southampton
City Council has welcomed the Task Force's Report and considered
its recommendations.
1.2 The City Council welcomes the Environment,
Transport and Regional Affairs Committee Inquiry invitation to
contribute to the debate on the Urban White Paper, and would value
the opportunity of participating further.
2. SOUTHAMPTON
CONTEXT
2.1 Southampton, with Portsmouth and neighbouring
districts, forms the largest urban concentration in the South
East outside London. The influence of the City extends beyond
its administrative boundaries, providing a sub-regional centre
for business, shopping, higher education, culture, leisure and
recreation. Southampton City Council gained unitary status in
April 1997.
2.2 Southampton is a "Renaissance City"
committed to promoting quality in urban life. Southampton City
Council's evolving City Strategy offers an holistic vision of
the future, which will play a key part in helping the City maintain
that renaissance. The City Strategy reflects the distinct role
of the city in the urban area. The City Local Plan Review has
also commenced, and in its conception and implementation it is
intended to be a pioneering model for Urban Renaissance.
3. THE URBAN
TASK FORCE
REPORT
3.1 The overriding significance of the UTF
Report, and the attention it has received, is that it carries
three essential messages:
— that cities are good and worth investment;
— the renaissance should affect every
street in every city and town; and
— local authorities should drive urban
success.
3.2 The UTF Report advocates a design-led
approach to urban regeneration. Southampton City Council endorses
the UTF's recommendations on Urban Design Guidance. The City Council
promotes the use of design as a legitimate tool for securing high
quality, high density, and mixed-use, in people (not car) orientated
development. However design alone will not achieve the renaissance.
The City Council considers the following which derive directly
from the recommendations of the UTF, should be a priority for
implementation:
— Strengthening the role and ability
of Local Authorities in achieving the urban renaissance;
— Funding the renaissance;
— Enabling the planning system to deliver
urban regeneration; and
— Managing land supply and the urban
realm.
4. THE SCOPE
OF THE
WHITE PAPER
4.1 In the following paragraphs the City
Council seeks to:
— highlight those recommendations from
the UTF Report which it considers merit prioritisation in the
Urban White Paper; and
— outline issues not addressed by the
UTF, which the Environment, Transport, and Regional Affairs Committee
should examine further.
CITIES ARE
GOOD AND
LOCAL AUTHORITIES
SHOULD DRIVE
THEIR SUCCESS
4.2 UTF Recommendation: Assign a strategic
role to local authorities in ensuring management of the whole
urban environment
Local authorities within cities have a lead
responsibility to facilitate city governance. City Government
based on the principles of subsidiarity, mediation and partnership
has a pivotal role in leading and managing the necessary change
in urban environments. Cities and urban areas do not function
solely on local authority administrative boundaries, and city
authorities have a responsibility to provide governance for the
broader city region. This entails a degree of planning and management
within the city region, and careful consideration should be given
to the powers and flexibility necessary to permit this.
FUNDING THE
RENAISSANCE
4.3 UTF Recommendation: Providing an
above-inflation increase in central resources allocated to local
authorities for managing and maintaining the urban environment
in each of the next seven years.
This is essential if the UTF recommendations
are to be implemented or pursued, given the low-base of funding
available for these programmes, following significant reductions
in "Other Services" funding over a number of years.
The Government should assist local authorities to bid for and
manage regeneration projects that are currently funded out of
existing revenues at the expense of other services.
4.4 If Government is serious about achieving
policy objectives in urban areas, or indeed other broad policy
objectives, then it should ensure that it focuses funding streams
on the achievement of those objectives. The Committee should consider
the important strategic issues of whether "investment"
by that we mean both public and private expenditure, generates
a higher return when it is made in cities, or urban areas.
4.5 Further to this the New Commitment to
Regeneration programme should be strengthened by combining government
department's spending powers to deliver long term funding commitments
for local authorities and their partners.
4.6 The White Paper should look more carefully
at the flexibility necessary to allow the budgets of public sector
authorities across a city to be drawn together in the form of
a "city budget". In Southampton, the notion of the Area
Investment Framework, as proposed by SEEDA, is an example of how
we might draw together budgets, the White Paper should consider
carefully how this might be done.
PLANNING FOR
CHANGE
4.7. UTF Recommendation: Produce dedicated
Planning Policy Guidance to support the drive for an urban renaissance,
backed up by measures to ensure the policies are implemented in
Regional Planning Guidance, local development plans, and planning
decisions.
This is essential if the delivery of an urban
renaissance is to be made an integral goal of the planning process.
Planning should be viewed as a positive mechanism for achieving
change rather than primarily a reactive means of controlling development.
MANAGING THE
LAND SUPPLY
4.8 UTF recommendation: Establish clear
procedures for assessing future housing demand to ensure the early
correction of an emerging under-supply or over supply of housing.
All local planning authorities to carry out regular urban capacity
studies on a consistent basis, as part of their development plan
making process, where necessary working together across borough
boundaries.
The Government's much publicised shift in policy
from a "Predict and Provide approach" to housing land
to the "Plan, Monitor and Manage" regime has so far
only caused confusion and is reducing the prospects of solving
the housing crisis. It has yet to be supported by detailed guidance.
Southampton City Council considers implementation of these recommendations
to be essential.
4.9 Housing is just one of the increasing
demands on diminishing supplies of land. In cities like Southampton
future development land will be created from:
— Suburban renewal and increased densities
of development,
— Sustainable urban extensions into
Green Belts and Strategic Gaps, and
— Regenerating older urban areas and
recycling brownfield sites, favoured by the sequential approach.
However, contrary to popular myth, Southampton and many other
cities do not have large tracts of available land. We work with
generally small opportunities, so that regeneration is inevitably
a long term rather than a quick fix process.
4.10 Legal and fiscal measures are necessary
to enable local authorities and regional development agencies
to acquire brownfield sites, which are often:
— Require decontamination, and
— Need archaeological and ecological
investigation.
4.11 Assembling physically difficult sites
and releasing them as market-ready land can only be the first
stage in the regeneration of our urban areas. Additional measures
are then required to ensure design excellence, social-wellbeing
and environmental responsibility are secured in redevelopment.
TACKLING EMPLOYMENT
AND SOCIAL
EXCLUSION
4.12 Tackling the social and economic realities
of urban life is vital to the realisation of the urban renaissance
vision. Our citizens are our main asset, investment in their health,
education, wellbeing and safety are economic and social imperatives.
The Urban White Paper must address:
| Unemployment | Loss of urban jobs has hit full-time male manual workers hardest;
|
Urban out-migration
| Which has been socially selective, favouring those in work and holding non-manual jobs;
|
| Polarisation | Southampton city centre is booming, with new retail development and high quality housing, but this sits cheek by jowl with the most deprived areas;
|
| Social exclusion | The Renaissance should strive to reverse the fortunes of these pockets of deprivation and bring social cohesion to disenfranchised communities.
|
| |
4.13 In tackling the barriers to economic development
the Urban White Paper should incorporate the following themes:
— Competitiveness and innovation,
— Education and training to develop a flexible and
skilled workforce, and
ACCESSIBILITY IN
URBAN AREAS
4.14 Providing adequate access to jobs, education, social,
cultural and recreational opportunities without the pollution,
distribution, disruption and loss of productive land caused by
excessive use of the private car is a key challenge for urban
communities everywhere.
4.15 The Urban White Paper must consider how best to
harness the spirit of the Millennium to achieve real and sustained
co-operative action from organisations and individuals to achieve
a substantial switch to using more sustainable modes of transport.
In particular developing institutional structures and utilising
modern ticketing technology to ensure easy, cheap and hassle-free
access to an integrated multi-operator, multi-modal network of
public transport services is essential.
5. CONCLUSIONS
5.1 To conclude:
— The Urban Task Force (UTF) Report represents a
significant and valuable contribution to the debate on the urban
renaissance, providing a solid foundation on which to build the
Urban White Paper.
— The Committee's Inquiry should seek to widen the
debate and tackle the issues of economic decline, social exclusion
and accessibility in urban areas.
— Local Authorities are the key vehicle for successful
delivery of the urban renaissance. Through development of its
City Strategy and City Local Plan, and with the necessary legal
and fiscal measures, Southampton is well placed to make a positive
contribution.
January 2000
| 
