Success in Regeneration: Pride, Prejudices and Lessons

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Success in Regeneration
Pride, Prejudices and Lessons Nora Galley,
Roger Tym Partners
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Success in Regeneration
Pride some (still too few) successes to shout
about
Prejudice mine, but others too
Lessons with a personal take
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For It is a truth universally acknowledged, that
a down-at-heel place in possession of a good
partnership must be in want of a (successful)
project
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But first some parameters
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What is successful regeneration? Is it the same
as a successful regeneration project ? - A
successful regeneration project is a project that
is delivered more or less as conceived (doh)
But - Successful regeneration is not the same
as a successful project (doh?)
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Why? Because (too often) projects are about
outputs, and are (too rarely) driven by outcomes
(i.e., the lasting change that is needed for
regeneration to occur)
Output-itis and outcome-blindness are symptoms of
the same affliction - regeneration that
is driven by political agendas (short-termism)
and/or - regeneration that is driven by
funding regimes (where the project serves the
funding bodies dicta, rather than action that
will produce the lasting change needed)
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• Successful regeneration is, in this order
• Recovery of well-being
• - Enough jobs (labour market in balance)
• - Average incomes in line with at least
  national average
• - GDP in line with at least national
  average (a modest goal given UK performance note
  that competitiveness is measured by GDP per head)
• - Growth in GDP in line with national
  average (also modest UK is not catching up)
  
• Which is the wherewithal for improved quality of
  life
• - Popular place to live, shop etc.,
  demonstrated by house prices, pressure on
  development land, school performance, range and
  quality of private service offer, good governance

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• And ensuring
• - Equitable distribution of the above
  (inclusion)
• Effective protection of the natural and built
  environment (sustainable now and future
  generations)
• Prudent use of natural resources (sustainable
  for future generations)
• Although more often than not, these will be the
  outcome, or at the very least, intermediate
  stages in achieving well-being / regeneration
• 
  With this in mind

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Pride some genuine regeneration
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Employee Employment Change 1995-2002 Cities vs
City Centres
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Employment Change in Growth Sectors Proxy
(business services)

city centres cities and regions
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Employment Change in Growth Sectors Proxy
(consumer services) city centres cities and
regions
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Employment Change in Growth Sectors Proxy
(consumer services) city centres cities and
regions
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Manchester in the 1980s
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Manchesters Millennium Quarter
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Manchesters Selfridges Store
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Manchesters Printworks Corn Exchange (The
Triangle)
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Manchesters Millennium Park
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Manchesters Aquatic Centre
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Trafford Park
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Leeds in the inter-war years
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Leeds Victorian Quarter one of the arcades
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Leeds Design Innovation Centre, Langton Wharf
and Chandlers Wharf
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Leeds Waterfront
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Leeds Royal Armouries
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Outcomes, not outputs but to achieve successful
regeneration, the interventions must be the right
ones.
How to determine what will produce the
outcomes / successful regeneration ?
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Some Prejudices
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Intervening to Effect (effectiveness is what it
is all about)

• Accept that there is a relationship between
  inputs (the regeneration project, the outputs it
  delivers and the outcomes that can be expected to
  follow.
• Accept that achieving the desired outcomes
  requires the causes of under-performance) to be
  resolved (what has caused what needs to be
  regenerated)
• Accept that under-performance at root is
  insufficient demand of some sort
• But also accept that it is not possible to alter
  the demand side of the economy - e.g., demand for
  labour demand for goods and services (although
  the Keynesian approach has merit, if it corrects
  market failures and exploits assets that offer
  competitive advantage)

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Intervening to effect

• Therefore stuck with understanding how the supply
  side factors e.g., property, spatial
  relationships, labour, institutions,
  infrastructure, environment etc are frustrating
  demand that might otherwise exist.
• To understand, need to unpick the cause and
  effect relationships / the feedback loops.
• Need, therefore, to understand the concepts of
  market, institutional and distributional failure
  technical but essential to effective
  intervention
• But can only do this with some idea of what
  demand might, in the absence of these failures,
  be realisable

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• Market Failure
• Externalities one party imposes a cost on
  another that is not adequately priced in the
  market
• Goods non-rival in consumption free-riders
• Imperfect knowledge transactions inefficient and
  depressed because true costs and values not known

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• Institutional failure
• Inappropriate policy (e.g., unsound planning
  policy, inappropriately limiting competition)
• Leadership weakness (failure to deliver
  appropriate policy)
• Ineffective institutions (failure to achieve
  what they are set up for e.g., poor schools)
• Distributional failure (inequities in the
  distribution of wellbeing)
• For example
• Obstacles to access that impose additional costs
• Policy that disadvantages

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Some typical causes and effects (feedback loops
vicious spiral) The Catch 22 in property
markets no suitable property is available
because values are low values are low, because
demand is low and demand is low because there is
no suitable property. Possible
explanations? - adverse externalities (e.g.,
bad neighbours) - imperfect knowledge -
poor policy (poor spatial planning poor planning
policy)
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• Some typical causes and effects (feedback loops
  vicious spiral)
• Insufficient local spending to support an
  attractive retail offer retail offer limited
  because spending is low, spending is low because
  offer is limited
• Possible explanations?
• Cartels in shopping centre ownership
• Inadequate policy response (out of town
  competition no attractive land supply in centre
  access obstacles etc)

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• Some typical causes and effects (feedback loops
  vicious spiral)
• Little representation from growth sectors of
  the economy (little representation because labour
  pool inappropriate labour market inappropriate
  because little demand from the sectors property
  market inappropriate because there is little
  demand and so on)
• Possible explanations?
• Policy failures (hanging on to hopes of
  manufacturing growth not coming to grips with
  the economic future of the place etc)
• Property market failures (imperfect knowledge
  adverse externalities poor spatial planning etc)
• Institutional shortcomings (schools
  under-performing)

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• Some typical causes and effects (feedback loops
  virtuous spiral)
• Rising employment in growth sectors of the
  economy
• Growing residential population
• Possible explanations?

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• Some typical causes and effects (feedback loops
  virtuous spiral)
• Possible explanations?
• Positive externalities for knowledge and
  consumer services
• Concentration producing scale economies
  (supply chain efficiencies sharing labour and
  customer pools knowledge exchange competitive
  intensity), leading to I
• Increase in spending, rise in innovation,
  creation of new businesses, leading to
• Pressure on land and in-movement of labour,
  leading to
• Investment in property, more attractive
  environment, public services leading to
• More businesses wanting to supply goods and
  services and so on

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Intervening to Effect

• 4. And once the source of the problem is
  understood, and the feedback loops are unpicked,
  the task is to set objectives that
• to remove causes of failure
• take advantage of under-exploited supply-side
  assets (which evidence shows offer prospect of
  competitive advantage)
• take advantage of other opportunities
• But all within the demand capacity of the place
• And taking on board the lessons from best
  practice in regeneration

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• Best practice in regeneration
• Every piece of land in an area ought to have a
  specific job to do (under-used / ineffectively
  used land shows that the job is not the right one
  or that some adverse externality is at fault)
• The job for the land should be dictated by what
  the places job is what kinds of wealth it is
  best placed to generate what kinds of services
  it must deliver and to whom, where and what
  additional services it needs to deliver in order
  to ensure well-being and its fair distribution

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• Best practice in regeneration
• City and town centres have unique,
  un-substitutable characteristics and should offer
  advantages unavailable in other locations
• Town and city centres should contain a
  concentration of the factors that drive
  competitiveness in the catchments it serves
  (skills, investment, innovation, enterprise,
  competition)

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So that the regeneration projects - are a
response to evidence-based objectives - that
are founded on a sound understanding of
prospective demand - and the corrections to
supply-side failures needed to realise it - So
that the project will produce the outputs that
will lead to the desired outcomes In other
words, so the regeneration will be effective
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Some Lessons
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• Places must have economic purposes cannot
  regenerate neighbourhoods in isolation of the
  economies that sustain them
• Cannot regenerate without a notion of demand
  whether a place (e.g., a coalfield town with no
  more coalfields) or a project (the Dome)
• Design alone never regenerated anything
  without these basic factors already in place
  (dont be fooled by places simply looking better
  it wont last)
• Cant solve the problem if you dont
  understand what caused it in the first place
• Image itself can be a form of market failure
  (imperfect knowledge but only if the market is
  wrong), but it is never the only thing, and
  usually is the consequence of something else
• Development takes a long time particularly
  the right kind (i.e., that corrects market
  failures development that doesnt, but just
  produces outputs, is short term-ism)

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Success is not that difficult but it is too
rare Rise up go forth research the problem
devise the strategy gain the support get your
partners on side and SUCCEED