Alternative strategies for redistribution in urban renewal

Abstract

The theme of this congress is the redistribution of available resources to improve urban living conditions for the underprivileged and so provide more equal opportunities in urban life. In the past, much of the resources for redistribution were made available through growth in the economy. Currently, however strong the policies, this kind of redistribution has become more difficult as the developed world has moved from economic growth to economic stagnation, resulting in fewer resources available in the public or private sectors for redistribution. These difficulties are exacerbated when particular countries adopt vigorous restrictions of the money supply, monetarism, to pursue economic goals, such as combatting inflation, which of itself damps down rather than stimulates growth. How then is the redistribution of resources to be pursued in order to advance urban living conditions for the underprivileged? The answer to this question starts from the recognition of the obvious: that distribution of product (from any activity) is a consequence not only of “how much’ but also of how the resources for the activity are in fact employed. Using a national contractor with mobile labour for new house building will result in a different distribution from using local people with local materials. Similarly, there are many different approaches to tackling urban and community renewal, as is clear from a review of practice around the world since World War I. This paper will be looking for a pattern in the variety of approaches, and for a possible trend in the changes that have taken place in such approaches over the past 30 years. These changes have been put into a sharp focus in one small country (Israel) through the national programme of Project Renewal, which has been described in another paper in this congress. 1 Here it will be argued that the Israeli programme had telescoped into 3 years a sequence of change which has been evolving for the past 30 years in USA, the UK and other countries in Europe. This paper will indicate one approach which seems to be emerging from that process of change and which was employed in the town of Ashkelon in Israel. It is based on the better utilisation at the local level for the underprivileged of such resources that are available. Better utilisation is not regarded simply as deriving from a more efficient use of such resources through the use of economic calculus by central administration but rather through the involvement of the local community and individuals in a similar process to that which takes place where adaptation and mobility are self-generated. That is not to say that government resources become altogether unnecessary. But, instead of using them to top up the ever present shortfalls, they are used as a catalyst to introduce regeneration. Thus we believe a more effective redistribution of benefits can be achieved even with a lesser allocation of resources, provided they are properly used. But the approach in Ashkelon of itself is not the important question for this Conference. It is rather: has the approach a more general application, as a way of tackling renewal and a strategy for redistribution? My conclusion on this question is presented in the second part of the paper which provides a tentative overview of what has been happening in urban renewal since World War II in Europe and the USA. There I show the changing focus of renewal by reference to five strands which are found to a greater or lesser extent in any renewal programme: the physical, social and economic content of the programme, and the political and public participation driving forces behind them. From this tentative overview come two tentative conclusions: that the varying approaches in Israel to renewal in the past 3 years have reflected the variety in approaches over the past 30 years in the USA and UK, and that the trend in these approaches does encourage the notion that the Ashkelon approach has wider relevance as a model for regeneration strategies. The review of changing approaches to renewal suggests that regeneration is not simply a response to the current economic situation in the western world, but a culmination of a long standing trend, and one that should be used even at times of economic prosperity.