Urban design, regeneration and the entrepreneurial city

Abstract

This paper explores whether and how forms of entrepreneurial governance effecting deprived regions of the UK have embraced urban design as a necessary and distinctive feature of regeneration efforts. It applies established theory and thinking to work completed in the city centre of Liverpool since the late 1990s. The article examines the economic and governance context through which new forms of urban design policy and guidance have emerged, and discusses whether and how they have been applied to developments emerging across the centre. The case has embraced an urban design agenda and this can firmly be attributed to entrepreneurial forms of governance, although the attributes of the built form sometimes credited to such places were not so evident. Principles embedded in policy and guidance have dovetailed with substantive thinking within urban design and can be recognised in significant projects. Whilst there should be a concern for the privatisation of the public realm generally, issues such as gentrification and a more general concern for placelessness are overstated. Iconic forms of development have not materialised. Forms of over development, such as tall buildings, have been moderated by policy and guidance. Large scale projects can be designed to fit into and enhance the fabric of the city when urban design thinking is clearly embraced by partners. Established critiques of the relationship between urban design and entrepreneurial forms of governance have not always explored the multiple meanings and discourses that the built environment can contain, but where urban design is concerned the discussion must at least embrace the criteria urban designers themselves employ to design schemes or judge the results.