Regeneration: just give us the money and go away...it'll be good!

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David Barrie runs a company that does this:

...designs, directs and consults on initiatives that enable transformational change and capital growth in cities and communities

Anyway David Barrie knows a lot about regeneration and has said in his blog that: Urban regeneration needs a new narrative

I’m not so sure what we need is a “new narrative” (whatever that means) in regeneration but rather a considered review of the economic geography underlying the continuing challenges that face us as a society. And to ask whether the acronym soup managing regeneration – RDAs, HCA, BURA, CLG, LOCOG, LGA and so forth – are helping or hindering the process. And to ask at what level we deliver regeneration and for whom.

The truth of economic geography
If you map the poorest places in England in 1968 – when as we all know “poverty was rediscovered” and urban regeneration began – and compare that map to the poorest place in England 40 years later there is an enormous overlap. All those carefully targeted regeneration millions have served to change very little. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation produced such as study, “Poverty, Wealth & Place in Britain: 1968-2005” – and on page 38 of the main report are a set of maps that should make every regeneration guru and poverty campaigner hang their heads in shame. They demonstrate that our chosen preference in regeneration – targeting extra cash resource (controlled by us regeneration experts) towards carefully defined “deprived” places has failed.

To illustrate this let me tell you the story of Robert Brown. Robert’s from inner city Leeds - born in Harehills and brought up mostly in Chapeltown. When I knew him as a young ideological researcher he always swore he would not desert his “roots” and would stay in Chapeltown. Some while later I ran into Robert again – and where was this older, more successful researcher living? Harrogate. And why? Because he had a family and didn’t want the risks of bringing them up in a place with violence, drugs and crap schools.

The hindrance of the agency
Regeneration agencies are too often arrogant, directed by central policy not local need and subject to the problems that come with manipulation for local political gain. No matter how we try to be inclusive, to allow “participation”, we end up with a load of initials competing and coalescing in a mad world of bids, paperwork, reporting and review. A mad world that keeps many of us in well paid jobs trying to translate that gobbledegook so ordinary people can understand it better (or maybe at all) - and maybe get just a little benefit from all the spending.

OK I hear your mutterings: “Simon’s an elected member and would say all that. He just wants to be in charge, that’s all.” (As an aside when did this horrible term “elected member” come into vogue? The word you want is Councillor – simple, eh!). Well no – I would like ordinary folk to be allowed to get on with stuff, to be supported and to make their own choices about the places where they live. Not to have choices foisted on them by well-meaning apparatchiks who have no real or long-term interest in that local place. And bear in mind that – unlike all the regeneration gurus – I have to put myself up for election.

In his blog David Barrie tips us “new mutualism” and public service partnerships. These all sound very grand – the John Lewis approach (a good piece by Janet Daley in today’s Sunday Telegraph on this). But the flaw in this line is the continuing denial of a role for competition. John Lewis succeeds not because it is a worker-owned business but because it is good at what is does in a very competitive market (and please can we stop calling it a social enterprise – it’s no more one of those than Tesco - it makes profits and pays dividends to its owners; it's what businesses do). Government – and the regeneration moths fluttering round its every word – obsess about structures, business models and processes. Just give communities the money and trust them to do good work with that cash - and work for those communities not big agencies, consultancies or on the development of important national strategies.

Consumer-led regeneration avoids producer capture
We do not need assorted RDAs, we do not need the HCA or the TSA or any of the regeneration quangos. And we don’t need national strategies, regional economic strategies (all of which are the same any way) and all the paraphernalia of modern regeneration. We also need to stop listening to Eversheds, CBRE, DTZ and all the other private consultancies. They’re very clever but just want to get nice big consultancy contracts when all is said and done. These are producers not consumers of regeneration.

This producer capture of regeneration delivery (and indeed all services operating outside a competitive environment) is the problem. Changing the organisational model changes nothing unless it increases the power of consumers (that’s you and me folks) – it may create a different set of winners and losers among those producing regeneration services but it does not produce a “new narrative” let alone better outcomes for poor people and poor communities.

A real new narrative would be to see regeneration delivered by community groups, entrepreneurs, parish councils, sports clubs and groups of people who just want to see something done. Do you think all the important acronym-loving folk in the regeneration industry would let us do that? Please - we'd be good!
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