Regeneration | Rethink

People have been working to regenerate areas of Britain for decades; most acutely since Thatcher took power. Thatcher came along, with the promise of the free market to make our world better. Reagan more aptly described it as trickle down economics. Trickle being the operative world. What ensued, in fact, is the fastest climb to the most economically divided society; where 90% of the wealth was shifted to 5% of the population (or numbers to that effect).

This is the stage. The play, is a decades long commitment by the government and its servants (consultants, voluntary groups, quangos, etc.) to return some equilibrium to the system.

Surely, with such a herculean effort – decades of money/people/plans–we would have brought some equilibrium back into the socio-economic system?  Nope. If you are born poor, you stay poor. In fact, even more disheartening, is that you remain in the socio-economic class (no matter which one) you are born into; period. (according to recently published 20 yr study by Sheffield Hallam University)

What’s wrong. Lots of things, surely.
But I propose one large element of what’s wrong are schemes. That’s right, schemes. One masterplan or government initiative after another being created, partially implemented, changed, implemented some more….so on. And it isn’t just the masterplans, it is the entire thinking process of regeneration, as if the sector has some special powers.

In fact, one of the most spectacular examples of how the scheme might be the most dramatic waste of money in regeneration comes from an iconic location in the USA, Times Square in NYC.

If you have been there recently, can you imagine the following as a description of the place as late as 1995?

The lawless climate had devastating economic consequences. In 1984,
the entire 13-acre area that we sought to revitalize employed only
3,000 people in legitimate businesses and paid the city only $6 million
in property taxes—less than what a medium-size office building
typically produced in tax revenue.

No
legitimate business—indeed, scarcely a normal person—would willingly
visit so blighted and threatening an area. As head of the UDC during
the mid-eighties, I would walk through Times Square at night, a state
trooper by my side, and feel revulsion. We’d hurry past
prostitute-filled single-room-occupancy hotels and massage parlors,
greasy spoons and pornographic bookstores; past X-rated movie houses
and peep shows and a pathetic assortment of junkies and pushers and
johns and hookers and pimps—the whole panorama of big-city low life.
Everywhere I’d look, I’d see—except for female prostitutes—only men. A
UDC study later verified my impression empirically: 90 percent of those
who walked Times Square’s streets were adult males. Times Square was
haunted with them, like a circle of lost souls in Dante. (http://www.city-journal.org/html/9_4_the_unexpected.html)

What happened in the following decade is a lesson for regeneration; How did Times Square revive? Was it the result of the NDC’s or UDC’s (in USA) $2.6 billion Redevelopment Plan? Nope. In fact, it had nothing to do with it. One of the plan’s authors states:

Simple really. This simplicity is also outlined in Gladwell’s The Tipping Point and in Buchanan’s The Social Atom. Getting the basics right and paying attention to the natural and basic laws of nature hold the keys to affecting change.

This simplicity element also emanates from online and in person conversations with folks like Chitty (my interpretation of Chitty, et. al’s thinking) and others who are vociferously pointing out that we need to stop anointing gurus to save our cities. We need to stop master planning our way out of the disequilibrium. We need practical investment and action for and in support of good work, not special paradigms created by governments.

A sign that this thinking is starting to take hold:  A top regeneration officer, last month, suggested to a small group of committed people taking action in a neigbhourhood that the most effective way for the council to help in the near term would be “to ensure the trash is collected and flytipping laws were enforced”. Now there is a step in the right direction.

We need to encourage more action on the basics in order that we may raise aspirations and create opportunities. Actions like strategic investments with return in mind, better delivery of basic services, and support for straightforward (see: simple) and high return people support.

Imagine what would happen if the trash actually got picked up and new bins (like exist in Chapel Allerton) were put into Chapeltown. What would happen if zoning laws were enforced regarding advertising in Harehills (see: big billboards littering the road), and jobshops were actually clean inviting places to look for a job that attracted both the employees AND employers to meet?