Regeneration As Social Innovation, Not A War Game

Regeneration as social innovation, not a war game Received: 11th May, 2009

David Barrie designs and delivers public projects. He works in the regeneration, property, design and media sectors. Clients include igloo Regeneration, BioRegional Quintain, Wakefield Council, Middlesbrough Council, One North East, the Design Council and British Council. At present, David is supporting projects in Moscow, Wales and London. He is developing online media initiatives linked to urban renewal and creating a new social enterprise that will be the subject of a series of TV programmes on Channel 4 in 2010.

Abstract There is an emerging new debate going on as to what is the value and purpose of community involvement in urban renewal. At the moment, different parts of the urban planning system use ‘consultation’ in different ways. But more often than not, ‘consultation’ and ‘engagement’ are democratic-sounding words for a process of co-option: appointing members of the community to a given strategy or plan. This paper outlines two projects which have brought innovation the role and nature of ‘community involvement’, but which push to re-frame policy and practice: take methodology away from two-dimensional public relations, the procedural fetishism of local government and the ‘Post-it-itis’ of public workshops — towards the broader idea of mobilising sustainable networks of local people. Smaller towns and cities have idiosyncratic characters that can be mobilised to support the social and economic benefit of a place, but an appropriate strategy needs to be formulated for public involvement. Community engagement needs to give way to ideas of participation and customer service. It needs to support long-term values and sustainability that will be intrinsic to the viability of the regeneration sector after recession. This is a matter of effective business practice, not just ethics. Keywords: Public participation, community involvement, networked publics, sustainability, public space, urban agriculture, social innovation

David Barrie David Barrie & Associates, First Floor, 148 Curtain Road, London EC2A 3AR, UK Tel: ⫹44 (0)777 5945302 e-mail: [email protected]

INTRODUCTION There is an emerging new debate going on as to what is the value and purpose of community involvement in urban renewal. The involvement of the taxpayer in this field of public policy is usually that of consultee. Public opinion is sampled on a development scheme, a strategy is published for online or offline discussion, or a third-party device is rolled out in

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the name of ‘empowerment’, such as a community event or art project. In the political sphere, the government appears to have shifted from an earlier agenda of seeing involvement as a route to communal self-determination to one of giving people confidence, skills and the power to shape and influence what public bodies do for or with them. This is a shift from emancipation to accountability.1

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The Conservative Party in the UK now frames involvement in the context of returning power to local communities. Part of a larger plan to decentralise government, this builds referenda into local political systems. Think ‘free communes’, rather than focus groups or ‘workshops’.2 At the moment, different parts of the urban planning system use ‘consultation’ in different ways. Within local government, it is a formalised, formulaic part of the framework of planning and regulation. Private property development companies use ‘consultation’ to support planning applications: and it tends to mean public relations, masquerading as ‘stakeholder partnership’. More often than not, ‘consultation’ and ‘engagement’ are democratic-sounding words for what is a process of co-option: of appointing members of the community to a given strategy or plan. The debate that sits under the bonnet of current political thinking is how and at what stage is it appropriate to involve the public in local decision making? This paper outlines two projects which have innovated the role and nature of community ‘involvement’, but which push to re-frame policy and practice: take methodology away from two-dimensional public relations, the procedural fetishism of local government and the ‘Post-it-itis’ of public workshops, towards the broader idea of mobilising sustainable networks of local people. The projects suggest the value of involving the public in the process of urban regeneration from the very start and creating new systems and structures around them as the client. They argue that just as the word ‘sustainability’ should be replaced by ‘green technology’, the phrase ‘community involvement’ should be replaced by two distinct things: ‘citizen participation’ and ‘customer service’.3

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URBAN REGENERATION AS A WAR GAME Urban regeneration tends to be triggered by natural disaster, macro-economic strategy, public or private investment strategies or set-piece inventions that aim to trigger economic growth and behavioural change, such as the Olympic Games or Capital of Culture programme. Conventionally, these triggers are announced and then usher in a process of strategic, physical and financial master planning. Development frameworks, spatial, business, action, entry and exit plans are drawn up. A cadre of experts and institutional representatives come together and dig in for the long haul. A document trail is created that establishes priorities, provenances, value for money and return on investment. In next to no time, regeneration becomes a complex process that presents a constant flow of challenges, questions, issues of positioning, politics and timing. Within the management team, much like a game in an amusement arcade on a seaside pier, one frog pops up and is hit on the head, only for another to demand attention. The net effect of this is to create a mindset of urban renewal as a war game; a closed professional system of extensive paperwork, mapping and Cobra-style discussions and negotiations away from the limelight. Combined with issues of commercial confidentiality and local politics, this approach can attract and engender caution, ‘analysis paralysis’, opaque external communications, poor internal communications, loss of momentum and an asymmetry of information between producer and audience that creates mistrust. In this scenario, regeneration becomes a closed circuit — and the community fast becomes an issue of public relations and the management of opinion. This is a problem. For if the purpose

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of regeneration is to increase prosperity, this relies upon a contract of trust between resident, worker, occupier, tenant and the service provider, be they in the public or private sectors. If the purpose of regeneration is to uplift values, there needs to be a contract between diverse transactional parties, be it the retailer and consumer, investor and resident community or employers and workforce. If the purpose of regeneration is to enable the creation of more prosperous communities, towns and cities need to become, to quote writer Herbert Girardet, ‘energy- and resource-efficient, people-friendly, and culturally rich, with active democracies assuring the best uses of human energies’.4 And if the purpose of regeneration is to make money, the scale of cost of development, the demand of shareholders for a return on their investment and innovations such as tax increment financing suggest that landowners and developers need to place greater emphasis upon the social, as well as physical infrastructure of a site. OPEN-CIRCUIT REGENERATION In recent times, certain ideas and ways of working and living have emerged that suggest the efficacy of taking a more open approach to delivering regeneration. The rise of partnership working, public–private partnerships and local asset-backed vehicles have established an ethos of collaborative working. Privatisation and outsourcing of public services, the rise of ‘joined-up’ government, consumer choice and technological innovation have shifted hierarchical organisation of government to more networked forms of public management. The rise of ‘place’ as an organising principle of local government and city

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planning acknowledges that the built environment is more than just the organisation of the interests of landowners and users, but a web of experiences and physical, social, cultural and financial relationships. Government emphasis upon community engagement, the Third Sector, democratic governance and inclusive economics has set on record the role of users in the provision of public services. Social and cultural entrepreneurs have become an increasingly important part of urban development, alongside landowners, speculators, planners and architects; bringing to regeneration a new cast of characters who have an acute, populist mindset and combine skills in enterprise, thought leadership, stakeholder management and project delivery. The rise of online social media has revealed a consumer appetite for informal, purposeful and semi-visible public networks. The increasing use of co-design as a method for originating and developing ideas — from creating a new park to the development of open source software — has revealed an understanding of the opportunity and value of sharing intellectual, as well as emotional property. Popular participation in voting for performers on television by telephone and text messaging has revealed that people like to engage with and not just consume products and services. And popular take-up of Crazy Frog and online applications mark the power of viral advertising and marketing by word of mouth. All these strands push towards taking a more open approach to designing and delivering urban renewal: and suggest that ‘asking people what they want’ or ‘think’ is no longer enough. The people known formerly as the audience need to be engaged in a different way. The relationship with the taxpayer

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becomes ever more important, as land asset values collapse, and the search is on to find more sustainable sources of local income against which to amortise risk. CASE STUDY 1: THE CASTLEFORD PROJECT The Castleford Project was a programme of renewal of a town in West Yorkshire, England, which started in 2003 and completed its first phase of work in 2008. In five years, it helped to transform several of the town’s public spaces and has been credited with leveraging over £250m of new public and private investment in the town.5 Castleford was once an important coal-mining town. In the 1990s, the town fell upon hard times as coal production in the UK was restructured. The economy of the town collapsed, and its fabric fell into disrepair. With a population of 40,000, located within commuting distance of Leeds, Castleford is an exemplar of the crop of smaller towns and cities across the world that have suffered at the hands of de-industrialisation. What was once a bustling centre of industry and commerce with wealthy patrons committed to civic improvement has given way to a place that is neither a service centre for its nearest adjacent city nor a sure-fire attractor of millions of pounds worth of investment. It is neither a village nor a large city, so the distinctive and vital role it might play in the work of a new century is not certain. But Castleford has many things going for it. The town has managed to maintain a distinctive civic pride because of a powerful, historic culture of community and heritage.6 The town has many active citizens’ groups, community organisations and young and old people committed to living and working in the town. These

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groups are prepared to work for the town, as well as themselves. They can see beyond their doorstep. In other words, Castleford has a human architecture of identity and attitude. It has ‘character’. The question is: can Castleford embrace shrinkage, not as decline but as a framework for creative reinvention? In 2003, a team of experts in regeneration, design, project management and community involvement were drawn together with a common purpose to pioneer a new, local, citizen-oriented model of renewal for Castleford. The team were supported by Channel 4 Television. Channel 4 maintains an active programme of corporate philanthropy, and it wanted to commission a series of television programmes that would document the process of the regeneration of a town and share it with the viewing public.7 After evaluating several towns and cities across the UK, the group of professionals decided it wanted to work in Castleford, in partnership with community groups, Wakefield Metropolitan Borough Council, regional development agencies and national regeneration organisations. The aim of the initiative was simple: to harness Castleford’s assets, especially the commitment of its people, find out what physical aspects of the town people wanted to see improved, and do it. In parallel, a programme of social, economic and cultural activity would add value to the capital programme, and the two would act as a larger catalyst to change. The methodology hinged upon building social capital, positioning the community as client, not just end user, and using their involvement as the trigger and foundation of a strategic vehicle for regeneration. The vehicle had no assets, other than a power to assemble

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people or bridge ‘social capital’. It would seek to enable change by designing and delivering a series of popular projects and build a momentum behind them that would make them sustainable: a process very different from three-year funding-locked Government initiatives. In early 2003, the project started with a series of public meetings in bars, clubs and community centres, supported by Channel 4, Wakefield Council and the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment. At the meetings, a simple question was asked: ‘How do you want to see your town improve?’ A public poll was published in the local newspaper and discussed at public meetings, eliciting a series of priority projects. Community leaders stepped forward to lead individual projects, as ‘champions’ or stewards. Three new community organisations were formed in support of projects. A plan was conceived to deliver 11 projects in all, from small improvements to derelict open spaces to a new town square; from new children’s play facilities in housing areas to a new pedestrian bridge across the River Aire. A package was created that combined several projects in different locations. All the sites were owned by the local authority and by bringing them all together, those projects with a stronger business case could support the weaker ones. With its ranks swelled by ‘community champions’, the project team ran an open ideas competition for architects and landscape designers, and local people voted for their favourite designs and designers. In 2004 and 2005, development teams were formed in support of each site, made up of local people, their appointed designers and local government officials. Concept plans became budgeted designs, and the team of external experts stayed on hand to provide light-touch, strategic

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advice on regeneration, design, management and project funding. In late 2005, just two years in, the first project went on site: a new playground in the Airedale/Ferry Fryston district of the town. Nine have since followed. The last project, an architect-designed pedestrian bridge was completed in Summer 2008 (see Figure 1). Other projects include four new public spaces and a renovated subway (see Figure 2). Almost all the projects were designed by small and medium-sized architectural practices. Many involved the contribution of visual artists. The project programme was supported by a comprehensive business plan. With this plan, a seed grant of £100,000 by Channel 4 Television became a £14.5m capital and revenue programme, sourced from 23 funding sources. By summer 2008, several projects entered second phase development under their own steam, and groundwork has now advanced on residential development of brownfield sites adjacent to the town’s waterfront and linked to the project’s bridge scheme.8 One key reason for the success of the project is that it created a clear development platform for the town, based upon a connected but layered network of community, civic, public and private sector organisations:9 • A community network made up of the Castleford Town Centre Partnership, the Castleford Heritage Group, Riverside Community Group, Sagar Street Tenants Association, Wilson Street Community Triangle, Cutsyke Community Group and Friends of the Green. • A stakeholder network made up of Wakefield Council, Wakefield LSP, Groundwork Wakefield, Yorkshire Forward, English Partnerships,

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Figure 1: Castleford Bridge Design: McDowell+Benedetti. Image courtesy of Channel 4 Television. Photographer: Glenn Dearing.

Figure 2: Tittle Cott Underpass Design: DSDHA. Lighting: Martin Richman. Image courtesy of Channel 4 Television. Photographer: Glenn Dearing.

Coalfields Regeneration Trust, Channel 4 Television, Environment Agency, British Waterways, the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment, Sure Start Airedale, Eastern Wakefield Primary Care Trust, Wakefield Police, Edinburgh House Estates Ltd and Arts Council England, Yorkshire. • A creative network made up of the Castleford Heritage Group, Arts Council Yorkshire, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Yorkshire Culture, Yorkshire Film, Media Trust Productions, participating architects — McDowell+ Benedetti, Sarah Wigglesworth, DSDHA, Allen Tod, Carey Jones, Estell Warren, Parklife and Martha Schwartz Inc. — creative advisors,

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including Gehl Architects (Denmark) — and artists, including Harry Malkin (UK), Chris Campbell (UK), Martin Richman (UK), Pierre Vivant (France), Winter & Horbelt (Germany) and Carlos Garaicoa (Cuba). • A financing network, featuring all of the above plus the Heritage Lottery Fund, Big Lottery Fund, the Scarman Trust, Waste Recycling Environmental Limited, Ibstock Cory Environmental Trust, SITA Trust, Edinburgh House Estates Ltd, Amenbury Properties Ltd, Xscape (Capital & Regional plc) and Nestle´ UK. • And a consultant network, including Chris Brown (igloo Regeneration), Alison Nimmo CBE, Peter Rogers CBE, Abros Ltd (Ben Denton), AZ

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Urban Studio Ltd (Roger Zogolovitch), Mace Ltd, Gleeds Ltd, Lee Mallett, Nick Wates and the author. For three years, the ‘connective tissue’ of these networks was a permanent coordinating staff of two, supported by a seconded officer from the local authority. In 2005, these management functions were novated to the local authority as the capital programme was implemented. By enabling community representatives and local councillors to hold key positions in the management and governance of the project from an early stage, the process of regeneration engendered trust. But an added ingredient helped cement this trust and add momentum and effectiveness to the coordinated effort. Inspired by the idea of Town Fairs, the ‘whole community’ ethos of participatory planning in the US in the 1970s, the successful ‘Main Street’ movement in America and the strengths and weaknesses of initiatives such as the Liverpool Garden Festival, the Project implemented an ancillary programme of local social, economic and cultural activity.10 On one level, this was set upon leveraging the energy and enthusiasm of the core programme and its participants and applying it elsewhere to the town. This was founded upon a basic understanding and appreciation of the power of common cause. In the words of geographer Yi-Fu Tuan: ‘When people work together for a common cause, one man does not deprive the other of space; rather he increases it for his colleague by giving him support.’11 But it was also founded upon the value of ‘recommender technology’ — a prominent feature of the Internet — but whose principles were best expressed by mathematician Blaise Pascal in the 17th century, when he wrote: ‘We are

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generally the better persuaded by the reasons we discover ourselves than by those given to us by others.’12 What was required was a programme of revenue activity that re-sensitised the local population to the opportunity of participation, extended the power of the core capital programme, but also countered ‘consultation fatigue’. For in the words of an anonymous marketer: ‘Consumers are like roaches. You spray them and spray them and after a while it doesn’t work.’13 The team decided to run a process that might also self-consciously exploit and engineer spectacle — be a ‘tiny epic’ — a facet of renewal exemplified by the Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao, and described by writer Hal Foster as: ‘To make a big splash in the global pond of spectacle culture today, you have to have a big rock to drop.’14 The project refurbished a shop in the town centre and turned it in to a meeting and arts space. It ran events for local businesses and volunteer organisations. Wakefield Council ran environmental projects in schools. Arts Council England, Yorkshire enabled the commission of new work by local and international artists. The Coalfields Regeneration Trust and Sure Start ran linked projects in local communities. Channel 4 held ‘Regeneration’ dance nights in clubs. The entire programme was designed to create a regeneration project in the business of people, not land assembly — and, in all, over 15,000 people took part. There is no evidence whatsoever that the ancillary programme of activity helped the improvement of the local economic environment directly. However, the combination of investment in revenue as well as capital activity extended public participation and demonstrated to the outside world a broader commitment to change —

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making a pound spent in Castleford a more confident investment. What was the role of master-planning in the regeneration programme? When the project started, there was no master plan for the regeneration of the town. There was a jigsaw of strategies in place devoted to small-scale areas of the town and a broad commitment by Regional Development Agency Yorkshire Forward to develop a strategic framework plan for the town, in line with other places in the region. In effect, the Castleford Project was a popular, design-rich process of networking that gathered these strategies together and delivered a series of ‘early wins’ — projects that since became ‘tent-pegs’ in a larger and now completed strategic plan for Castleford and its district.15 In other words, a culture and community-led programme of networking created and delivered a programme of work that became embedded in the wider and longer-term plans for the town. What were the problems in the process of implementation? Time. Originating a project programme by popular mandate captures attention and establishes expectations of a human timeline; while composite public/private finance and technical planning don’t. CASE STUDY 2: DOTT 07 URBAN FARMING, MIDDLESBROUGH Middlesbrough in the Tees Valley is one of the most deprived towns in the UK It has a population of 140,000 and a quarter of those of working age are on state benefits. The district of Middlehaven has the lowest life expectancy in the country. The town suffers from poor health and high levels of obesity. Its native dish is the Parmo: a slab of pork or chicken beaten flat, rolled

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in breadcrumbs and deep-fried.16 In recent years, Middlesbrough has experienced an ‘urban renaissance’, led by a local authority and regional development agency who have prioritised improvement of the town’s urban design, support for creative industries such as digital technology at Teesside University and the application of skills acquired in steel and chemical production to the new green economy. The town benefits from a mayoral structure of local government and the commitment of the local authority to an agenda known as ‘Raising Hope’, centred on key themes of creating clean, safe environments, improving run-down landscapes, reducing obesity, deaths from heart disease and CO2 emissions.17 Like many towns and cities in the UK, however, Middlesbrough’s health, efficiency and the sustainability and resilience of its future growth is compromised in part by the globalised, not localised, supply chain of some key resources. The percentage of people in the town eating ‘five-a-day’ servings of fruit and vegetables is lower than the national average; and yet to the south of the town lie the fertile, agricultural lands of Yorkshire and Lincolnshire. The town has a high proportion of people who feel ‘in poor health’; yet it has extensive and well-maintained parks and open spaces. While the town seeks to increase the density and sustainability of its town centre, key sources of self-sufficiency such as its allotment sites are located on the periphery of the town, like shanty towns on the approach to an airport. With the onset of climate change, ‘peak oil’, ‘food security’ and increasing food price inflation, food and the extent to which it is locally sourced is an increasingly important aspect of responsible urban development. According to the environmental

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organisation BioRegional Development Group, around 23 per cent of a household’s carbon footprint arises from its food choices.18 Recent export bans and food controls in Argentina, Pakistan and Russia mark the increasing importance of self-sufficiency. There is an increasing popular awareness of the need for food to be traceable. There is a movement to make people aware of and enable them to discriminate between factory and farm-produced food. In other words, there is an increasing understanding that healthiness and sustainable living is not just in the ingredients, but in the system that supplies our food. The challenge is to find ways and means to enable people to participate in ‘food systems’, connect their lived experience to the broader system and help people to change their habits. Conventionally, the response of the regeneration community to the issue of health and food has been to break the issues down into silo initiatives linked to ‘healthy eating’, business support for farmers and environmental projects linked to ‘growing your own’. These are often delivered by different agencies, such as the local Primary Care Trusts, Regional Development Agencies and NGOs. Food, however, is more than diet. It is about living; and lived experience cuts across the stove-piped organisation of public services and their delivery. As in the Castleford Project, the Dott 07 Urban Farming project in Middlesbrough sought a route forward by exploiting the power of networking and citizen participation. The initiative was part of a larger programme of activity in the region known as Dott 07. Dott 07 (or Designs of the time 2007) was a year of community projects, events and exhibitions in North East England, led

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by the Design Council and One North East, which sought to explore what life in a sustainable region might be like — and find ways and means for design to shape and influence the process.19 The aim of the Urban Farming project in Middlesbrough was to prototype a healthier, more resilient and local food supply chain. In autumn 2006, supported by the Dott 07 programme, a team of consultants led by the author, and including designers Nina Belk and Debra Solomon, talked to people living and working in the town. By March 2007, over 60 community groups, voluntary organisations and schools in Middlesbrough elected to grow fruit and produce in over 250 different sized containers across the town (see Figure 3) in school yards, the windowsills of hospitals, the foyers of offices and open plains of the town’s university campus. The Environment Department of Middlesbrough Council agreed to grow food in public parks. Across the growing season, the Dott 07 project enabled the town’s new ‘urban farmers’ to learn cookery skills using their harvest in a series of ‘kitchen playgrounds’ — chef-led classes in neighbourhood centres. In September 2007, in the town’s main square, the growers came together and ate the final harvest in a large-scale ‘town meal’ (see Figure 4). This was part of a larger ‘country fair’ event — The Really Super Market — organised by Middlesbrough Council and Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art and curated by artist Bob and Roberta Smith.20 The final ‘harvest’ was brought in from containers across town. School cooks and youth groups prepared soup and salad from the produce. Local farmers sold produce at stalls. Alongside the initiative, architectural designers Katrin Bohn and Andre Viljoen

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Figure 3: Linthorpe School ’urban farmers’ Image courtesy of Dott 07 (Designs of the time), Design Council and One North East.

created an ‘edible map’ of Middlesbrough — a spatial plan known as a ‘Continuous productive urban landscape’ — that connected land in the town that might be made available for cultivation with existing allotment sites, places in which people had grown food as part of the project and places where people said that they would like food to be grown in the town in the future.21 The territory of the Dott 07 Project will be familiar to those working in social and environmental regeneration. The approach that the project took, however, was unusual. In effect, the project programme was designed to enable participants to experience a single narrative journey: growing, cooking and eating. The project team established the journey, set logistical and funding parameters, but then threw participation of the project open to dispersed, self-organising communities. Strands of the project were delivered by different public or non-governmental organisations: Groundwork South Tees

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coordinated the growing project in partnership with community groups, schools and other ‘farmers’. Middlesbrough Council and Middlesbrough Primary Trust coordinated the ‘kitchen playground’/cookery strand of work. And the town meal was created and coordinated by the local authority in partnership with the Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art. The methodology of the urban farming project in Middlesbrough was similar to that in Castleford in that it placed an emphasis upon participation and a dispersed programme of activity. It established a partnership of public agencies to fund, support and coordinate the overall programme of work. And it placed exceptional emphasis upon the networked endeavour of both the community and agencies alike. One thousand people participated in the growing project in Middlesbrough, and 8,000 people attended the town meal event. In 2008, 2,000 people grew food once again, without the

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Figure 4: The Middlesbrough Meal Image courtesy of Dott 07 (Designs of the time), Design Council and One North East.

coordinating effort of an external consultancy team. ‘Urban farming’ became a core strand in a larger, successful bid by the town for £8m of new external public funding. The local authority has now put in place a plan to create ‘pocket allotments’ across the town and support the development of a social enterprise restaurant to purchase produce grown locally in future and realise revenue to invest in future growing seasons.22 IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE The implication of the projects in Castleford and Middlesbrough is that there are routes to regeneration that are more closely aligned to local identity, local taxpayers and human behaviour — and that innovative involvement of communities on a town-wide scale can act as a catalyst to a longer-term sustainable shift in policy and values. A second implication is that smaller towns and cities have idiosyncratic

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characters that can be mobilised to support the social and economic benefit of a place, but that that strategy may need to find terms of engagement different from those applied to global cities. There is a metropolitan, boutique bias to urban renewal that is inappropriate to many post-industrial places. A third implication is to think network, not project: and be informed by the explosion of public involvement in platforms that promote bridging capital and dynamic engagement, such as online social media. It is worth noting that some of the most profitable investments in venture capital have been in ‘mid-level’ technologies, in circuit design and chip layout, rather than high-level know-how on the laws of solid-state physics or the manufacture of semi-conductors.23 It is also worth noting that an exciting development in urban renewal at present is in the the organisation of resources to site, such as bundling and ‘rentalisation’

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energy supply via third-party providers such as Energy Services Companies. Projects similar to Castleford and Middlesbrough can be achieved elsewhere by local authorities or private sector developers by connecting top-level strategy and grassroots activity by designing and delivering human resource-rich, mid-level programmes linked to the redevelopment of large-scale sites. It is important that there is a commitment to open public planning and that the project programme is allowed to grow organically. What is also important is for local government leadership to press for work across service delivery arms. The new Housing and Communities Agency and Urban Regeneration Companies could apply a similar methodology to priority schemes and areas by enabling initiative that connects strategy with the grassroots via area-wide action planning, and cross-silo public participatory initiative. Inspired by participatory budgeting, local authorities could also set in train town-wide public processes that set priority for their spending. Large-scale private investors in towns and cities could abandon conventional ‘community consultation’ programmes and seek and capture the power and return of investment in social infrastructure by ensuring that their Section 106 payments and other contributions and levies are used to develop networks of local people and organisations. What is important is that words like ‘consultation’, ‘engagement’, even ‘involvement’, are abandoned in favour of something else; that marketing plays second fiddle to establishing and creating new alliances of people and organisations; that any initiative is seen as an adjunct to the existing statutory, democratic functions of government and is seen as

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good customer service, to residents and taxpayers alike. It is also vital that the area in which the initiative takes place has strategic ambition and confidence, reflected in a clear understanding on the part of local authorities and regional development of the strategic case for larger-scale regeneration. There are also three key strands of thinking that any initiating agent needs to understand. First, the agency needs to have a broad, enlightened understanding of what constitutes the asset base of an area and be committed to innovative ways of unlocking and exploiting its value. In 2005, policy thinker Geoff Mulgan wrote an important paper for the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment that drew an analogy between building spaces, trust and the modern financial markets. Mulgan wrote that derivatives markets ‘Recognise and then organise hidden values and assets in ways that allow new value to be captured’.24 Just as developers such as igloo Regeneration and Blueprint have pioneered new forms of public–private partnership, and local authorities such as Croydon have invented broader-based investment vehicles for the regeneration of their centres, Mulgan hints at — and the projects in Castleford and Middlesbrough represent — an innovative platform for renewal and a new combination of human and land assets. Second, the agent needs to be inspired by the value of communication and its design. In the 1970s, John Gardner founded the non-profit, non-partisan citizen’s lobbying organisation Common Cause. He was also the former US Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare under President Lyndon Johnson. In a book published in 1970, Gardner wrote: ‘Communication in a healthy society must be more than a flow of messages; it must be a means of conflict

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resolution, a means of cutting through the rigidities that divide and paralyse a community.’25 Finally, the agent needs to appreciate the value of networks to effective public management and see their role as mediators, not just managers of the public realm. In 2004, the former mayor of Indianapolis Stephen Goldsmith and William Eggars, global director at Deloitte Research, Public Sector wrote a pioneering book on managing government in the digital age. Goldsmith and Eggars emphasised the role of networks in a world of privatised government, services and sprawling logistics chains and the role and value of private integrators in rationalising and acting as a catalyst to change. They wrote: ‘A network that delivers effective public services doesn’t just happen. Someone must first figure out how to fuse a collection of private and public organisations into a seamless service delivery system. The job of the network designer is to identify possible partners, bring all of the relevant stakeholders to the table, analyze the current in-house operations, determine and communicate to all members the expectations of how the network will function, assemble and enmesh the pieces of the network, devise strategies to maintain the network, and, finally, activate it. The designer faces the challenge of creating a model malleable enough to accommodate each partner, dynamic enough to adjust to changing circumstances, but fixed enough in mission to serve the common goal.’26

CONCLUSION In his recent report on the impact of the recession on urban regeneration, Professor Michael Parkinson highlighted the importance and value of taking a long-term view of development. He drew attention to the opportunity slowdown affords the public sector to review and develop its approach to community, as well as physical,

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infrastructure. Parkinson underlined the value of local efficiency and innovation.27 On one level, this has to mean the design and development of more sustainable projects. Most public and private sector organisations involved in regeneration, however, continue to believe that sustainability means additional cost and the sacrifice of value. Hundreds of millions of pounds worth of new investment in Castleford and the increasing supply of locally grown food to Middlesbrough — one of the country’s unhealthiest towns — prove otherwise. These returns suggest that bigger and better regeneration results can be achieved by setting up comprehensive, popular, participatory regeneration ‘vehicles’. And the fact that second-stage work is taking place in successive years in both places suggests that, once such a process has been set in motion, it can be self-sustaining, provided that it is allowed to follow its own momentum and not bound tightly into Treasury spending cycles. Is it time to stop seeing regeneration as a war game, but an opportunity to carry out profitable, self-sustaining innovation? Is it also time to stop seeing supporting rate and taxpayers as ‘community involvement’, but as ‘customer service’? Working constructively and imaginatively with customers is not a matter of ethics. It is good business practice — and pays dividends. David Blood is managing partner of Generation Investment Management, a boutique asset management firm that he founded in 2004 with former American Vice-President Al Gore. Blood believes that a sustainable approach to business is in the best interests of shareholders. ‘Sustainability issues around the environment, climate change, corporate culture, community

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engagement and how companies attract and retain employees are drivers of business performance. The very best businesses can use sustainability to drive revenues, profitability and competitive positioning.’28

7.

In their support and involvement in projects in Castleford and Middlesbrough, Wakefield Metropolitan District Council, Middlesbrough Council, One North East, Yorkshire Forward, English Partnerships, British Waterways, the Design Council, Arts Council and many other organisations have pledged allegiance to this flag. Is it time for all of us to follow suit? For local government to understand sustainability as effective public management, not just a route to countering climate change; for private sector property developers to see public investment as an instrument of long-term value, not just public relations; and for all of us to see urban regeneration as a process of social innovation, not war?

1. See Dobson, J., ‘The great community empowerment heist’, available at http://livingwithrats.blogspot.com/2009/05/great -community-empowerment-heist.html (accessed 7th May, 2009). 2. Conservative Party (2009), ‘Control shift: Returning power to local communities’, Policy Green Paper No. 9, Conservative Party, London. 3. For more on ‘green technology’, rather than ‘sustainability’, see work by design writer John Thackara, via http://www.thackara.com/ (accessed 7th May, 2009). 4. Girardet, H. (2007), ‘Schumacher briefings 2: Creating sustainable cities’, Green Books, Totnes, p. 73. 5. ‘Castleford Regeneration: Kevin McCloud and the Big Town Plan’, available at http://www.channel4.com/4homes/ on-tv/kevin-s-big-town-plan/ (accessed 7th May, 2009). 6. More on community engagement in issues of heritage in Castleford can be found in Smith, L. (2006), ‘The slate wiped clean? Heritage, memory and landscape in Castleford, West Yorkshire, England’, in ‘Uses of heritage’, Routledge, Oxford. Also ‘Castleford Heritage

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10.

11.

12.

13. 14.

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15.

16. 17.

18.

19.

20.

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Trust’, available at http://www.castleford heritagetrust.org.uk/ (accessed 7th May, 2009). For Channel 4 Television and public service broadcasting see ‘Next on 4’, available at http://www.channel4.com/about4/next_ on4.html, last accessed on 7th May, 2009. The Castleford Project was broadcast on Channel 4 Television in August 2008 in a series of four one-hour programmes, presented by Kevin McCloud. Additional new investment in Castleford includes plans for commercial development of the town centre by Edinburgh House Estates Ltd and large-scale residential development by Amenbury Estates and Paloma Ltd. More at ‘£50m facelift for former pit town’, available at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/west_ yorkshire/4025073.stm (accessed 7th May, 2009). An independent evaluation of the Project has been prepared by the Young Foundation — not available at time of publication. For more on participating planning exemplars, see Wates, N. (1996), ‘Action planning’, The Prince of Wales’s Institute of Architecture, London. For the Main Street movement, see http://www.mainstreet.org Tuan, Y. F. (1977), ‘Space and place: The perspective of experience’, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, MN. Quoted in Riedl, J. and Kostan, J. (2002), ‘Word of mouse: The marketing power of collaborative filtering’, Warner Books, New York. Anonymous quote sourced from the Internet. No reference available. Foster, H. (2001), ‘Why all the hoopla?’, London Review of Books, available at http://www.lrb.co.uk/v23/n16/fost01_.html Yorkshire Forward (2005), ‘Five towns strategic development framework’, Yorkshire Forward, Leeds. ‘Parmo’, available at http://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Parmo (accessed 7th May, 2009). ‘Raising hope’, available at http://www.middlesbrough.gov.uk/ccm/ navigation/council--government-anddemocracy/mayor--councillors-and-politicalstructures/mayor/?page=5# (accessed 7th May, 2009). BioRegional’s breakdown of the UK carbon footprint is available at http://www. bioregional.com/programme_projects/opl_prog/ principles.htm (accessed 17th May, 2009). A full account of the project and of Dott07 is available at ‘Designs of the time 2007: urban farming’, available at http://www.dott07.com/go/food/urban-farming (accessed 7th May, 2009). ‘The really super market’, available at http://www.visitmima.com/media/News.php? id=17 (accessed on 7th May, 2009). For more on continuous productive urban landscapes, see Viljoen, A. (2005), ‘Continuous

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23.

24.

25.

productive urban landscapes: Designing urban agriculture for sustainable cities’, Architectural Press, London. ‘Middlesbrough Meal 2008’, available at http://www.visitnortheastengland.com/site/whats -on/mm08-middlesbrough-meal-08-p158241/ site/bookonline (accessed 7th May, 2009). For more on this, see Bhide, A. (2008), ‘The venturesome economy’, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ. Mulgan, G., Matarasso, F. and Madanipour, A. (2005), ‘Physical capital: how great places boost public value’, Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment, London. Gardner, J. W. (1970), ‘The recovery of

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confidence’, W. W. Norton, New York. 26. Goldsmith, S. and Eggers, W. D. (2004), ‘Governing by network: The new shape of the public sector’, The Brookings Institution, Washington. 27. Parkinson, M., Ball, M. and Key, T. (2009), ‘The credit crunch and regeneration: Impact and implications’, Department of Communities and Local Government, London. 28. Willman, J. (2008), ‘Never a need to sacrifice returns: Interview with David Blood’, Financial Times, 3rd June, available at http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/616021fe-310911dd-bc93-000077b07658.html (accessed 17th May, 2009).

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