Regeneration Strategies in Shrinking Urban Neighbourhoods—Dimensions of Interventions in Theory and Practice

Abstract

The article aims at addressing questions of shrinkage processes and regeneration strategies in urban neighbourhoods. It focuses more specifically on a case study that corresponds to the relevant developments and challenges of urban regeneration in Switzerland. Regeneration strategies have indeed been implemented during recent years in Swiss cities, and several industrial wastelands have been transformed into new residential areas. As a result, Swiss cities have been experiencing a new period of demographic growth since the end of the 1990s. However, some urban neighbourhoods, peripheral cities and suburban municipalities face the threat of shrinkage and decline. The Tscharnergut is an urban neighbourhood with high-rise buildings from the 1950s, concentrations of socially disadvantaged groups and a rather bad image. In that sense, Tscharnergut is representative of many neighbourhoods in European cities where regeneration is a key issue. Based on an agreement between public and private actors, the Tscharnergut neighbourhood is at the beginning of a structural change process: (a) improving residential housing and living conditions, renewing building stock as well as urban physical structure (hardware interventions); (b) strengthening future socio-economic structures (social and economic interventions); (c) improving urban governance, based on an agreement between the housing associations (owners) and city authorities, and the internal and external image of the declining area based on identity and participation (software interventions). The paper gives valuable insights on strategies applied at the neighbourhood level to counter decline and degeneration. It follows a deductive approach, i.e. examining planning approaches to apply it to a concrete case study.