Regeneration

Regeneration is a term that is widely misused and misunderstood. It means different things to different people, and can range from large-scale activities that promote economic growth, to neighbourhood interventions that improve people’s quality of life. Fundamentally, it is a holistic process of reversing economic, social and physical decline in areas where market forces alone will not suffice. Holistic regeneration may be conceptualised as a stool, the three legs of which represent physical, economic and social aspects, without any one of which the stool will fall over. Urban regeneration as an idea encapsulates both the perception of a town or city in decline and the hope of renewal, reversing trends in order to find a new basis for economic growth and social well-being. It may be defined as a comprehensive and integrated vision and action that leads to the resolution of urban problems and that seeks to bring about a lasting improvement in the economic, physical, social and environmental condition of an area that has been subject to change (Roberts and Sykes, 2000). Physical regeneration is work on the physical fabric of an area where such work forms part of a strategy to promote social, physical and economic improvements in a given locality, rather than just redevelopment driven solely by market forces (Commission for Racial Equality, 2007). It is necessary to clearly distinguish physical regeneration activity from redevelopment; the latter has arguably been occurring ever since urban settlements existed. It is the process of recycling or reusing land that has already been developed, and may involve demolition, land remediation and reclamation, rebuilding, rehabilitation, conversion and change of use etc. To be considered to be physical regeneration, a project must have some public sector input or intervention that results in it making a contribution beyond the delivery of profitable or worthwhile property development. Urban policy is the collection of policies and programmes introduced by, sometimes, successive governments, to tackle social, economic, physical and environmental problems in urban areas. Urban policies are often targeted at areas of greatest need, as identified by a weighted combination of socioeconomic indicators of poverty and deprivation. Area-based initiatives (ABIs) are spatially targeted programmes of intervention intended to reverse the process of decline, alleviate poverty and promote a process of transformation in the fortunes of an area. Such initiatives are long term, taking anywhere from 10 to 20 years to deliver measurable improvements.