Urban Renaissance Research Articles

Regional development agencies and physical regeneration in England: can RDAs deliver the urban renaissance?

Regional development agencies and physical regeneration in England: can RDAs deliver the urban renaissance?

Designs on the urban: New Labour's urban renaissance and the spaces of citizenship

The contours of the so-called 'urban renaissance' in British cities have been the subject of increasing amounts of critical attention from urban scholars. In particular, many have noted the exclusionary consequences of the renaissance for urban public spaces in revalorized city centres. In this paper, the authors ask whether New Labour's urban policy might also be opening up new political opportunities for progressive interventions in contests over the meaning of the urban. After considering the influence of New Labour's social liberalism in the recently released Urban White Paper, the authors identify key tensions within British urban policy and show how both the re-scaling of urban governance and the urban design process have emerged as key strategies to overcome these tensions. The emphasis on urban design, it is argued, is opening up a new public sphere through which visions of the 'good city' might be contested. The political possibilities of this emergent public require further empirical investigation. Because it is relatively deterritorialized, it could offer an alternative space of urban citizenship to the over-privileged 'local community'.

臨海部の活性化

Waterfront area has been created by land reclamation and others, and has supported our social and economic activities. This paper first reviews the transition of the use of waterfront area under the change of economic, social, and industrial situation our country has been experienced. Then a summary of the recent policies concerning the use of waterfront area such as Special Zones for Structural Reform, Urban Renaissance, development of grove at waterfront, wide-area disaster prevention bases, and wind power generation are briefly presented. Furthermore, technical aspects to promote redevelopment of the waterfront area including reclaimed land are introduced.It is important to recognize the characteristics of coastal zone in redeveloping and revitalizing the waterfront area as well as reclaimed land, which would contribute to social and economic revitalization in the 21st century.

A Study of the Evaluation Methodology of Urban Policy in Britain

In this study, we examine how the impacts of urban policy are assessed in Britain. An assessment of urban policy and evaluation is made by reviewing the evaluation systems and methods that are used in practice. The evaluation of urban policy is examined from two different perspectives: national and local public. Based on the study of urban regeneration evaluation in Britain, we make a number of suggestions for evaluating the recently introduced urban renaissance plan in Japan. We also discuss the potential for the assessment of urban policy evaluation.

Selling Urban Housing in London. Can High-density Urban Living Be Sold to a Sceptical British Public? Distinction, Mobility, and Control over Environment

Marketing materials from brownfield housing developments in London are analysed in order to evaluate the extent to which the British government's 'urban renaissance' goals can overcome public scepticism and a historical distaste for high-density urban living. A case study of Tunnel Wharf in Rotherhithe is presented along with a broader analysis of marketing materials from other developments. These marketing efforts suggest that urban living can be successfully sold to some segments of the British public, in large part by playing to cities' natural strengths. However, these sales pitches rely heavily on appeals to such themes as exclusivity and the ability to control one's environment, and thus raise broader questions about the viability and coherence of the urban renaissance vision. Specifically, it is suggested that the psychological response to increased urban densities may imply possible trade-offs between the preservation of countryside and the promotion of 'urbanity' in cities.

Culture versus commerce: societies and spaces for elites in eighteenth-century Liverpool

Our understanding of an eighteenth-century renaissance in English towns is based around the emergence of cultural infrastructures and organisations which formed the cultural capital of a polite society concerned with both sociability and differentiation. Urban improvements are seen as spreading to a wide variety of towns including a number of large commercial centres. This paper explores the experience of this urban renaissance in Liverpool, focusing in particular on the ways in which cultures and counter cultures were created around the changing social and economic infrastructure of the town. The changes occurring in Liverpool were characteristic of wider debates about the relationship between commerce and culture. The town had ambitions to cultural grandeur, a wealthy corporation and a growing number of middle-ranking professionals, merchants and tradesmen. And yet many of its social and leisure facilities were lost as Liverpool grew into the leading provincial port of late eighteenth-century England. Rather than see the fate of these spaces and societies as the triumph of commerce over polite culture, or as a reflection of an alternative culture, the paper argues that their demise can only be fully understood in the context of political and ideological conflict between elite groups, especially over the slave trade. The gradual resolution of these conflicts around the turn of the nineteenth century encouraged growing investment in cultural capital in the town.

Rethinking urban design

In the UK today we have realised that we have to think again about towns and urban renaissance and this is high on the political agenda, but we are only just beginning to realise that we need to start at the local level and are still searching for the tools to do so. This presents a real challenge for urban design professionals—to make urban space work, for quality-of-life reasons as well as for productivity. This paper discusses these issues, with particular emphasis on new initiatives such as Returning Roads to Residents, Placechecks and Home Zones.

Rethinking urban design

In the UK today we have realised that we have to think again about towns and urban renaissance and this is high on the political agenda, but we are only just beginning to realise that we need to start at the local level and are still searching for the tools to do so. This presents a real challenge for urban design professionals—to make urban space work, for quality-of-life reasons as well as for productivity. This paper discusses these issues, with particular emphasis on new initiatives such as Returning Roads to Residents, Placechecks and Home Zones.

Hypochondriac geographies of the city and the new urban dystopia

This paper questions the 'peculiar epistemological framework of problems' (p. 107) through which the city has come to be considered in the academic and policy arena, in politics of both the Left and Right, and in urban sociology, planning, architecture and other areas of urban study. Baeten argues that contemporary terminology, for example, displays a negativity towards the city, a fear of the unknown city, by turns explicit (in a discourse which favours a lexicon of 'exclusion', 'deprivation' and 'polarization') and implicit (an 'urban renaissance' presumably emerges from an urban Dark Age). In these current projections of dystopia the author identifies parallels with 19th-century obsessions and frameworks of urban morality - the categorization of an underclass, and positioning of the city's poor as 'deserving' or 'underserving'. Baeten uses recent work on Orientalist constructions of the Other in a bid to contest such negative presentation of the city in current urban studies. There are interesting links here with Gil Doron's work in this issue of City.

The Bad Sheets

The following work represents a recent unauthorized public art project by Gil Doron and the group Transgressive Architecture, consisting of several interventions into urban public space in London, and associated photographic and textual documentation. This project is recorded here in three forms: a critique of the UK Government's influential Urban Task Force report , Towards an Urban Renaissance (1999); a compendium of terms which both suggests the intentions of the project and develops its imagery; and a series of photographs of the 'bad sheets', taken from the film that recorded the individual interventions. This work relates closely to Doron's ongoing research, for example, 'The Dead Zone and the Architecture of Transgression' ( City , 4: 2, July 2000), an exploration of urban 'dead zones' which criticized the organizations, authorities and processes through which spaces become seen as 'void' or 'dead', despite their frequent use by communities outside of the city authorities' 'vision' of urban public space and its 'legitimate' usage. Here the multi-layered metaphor of a sheet, reminiscent of a shroud or tombstone, and placed as 'monuments to street communities who were cleansed from the public space', is used to question the conception of urban public space posited by the Task Force. The project was widely published in the general London and international press,2 bringing increased public attention to an influential report which warrants closer scrutiny than it has otherwise received. Here for the first time, is the full account.

Land Policy and Urban Renaissance: The Impact of Ownership Constraints in Four British Cities

This article explores the potential contribution of four types of land policy to delivering an urban renaissance. These four types are regulatory, financial and developmental land policy measures and the provision of information and guidance for the land market. Although such measures are implicit rather than explicit in recent visions of urban renaissance, the article reveals that between 1991 and 1995, ownership constraints disrupted plans to use, market, develop or purchase 64 of 80 large redevelopment sites investigated. Such constraints need to be the target of a specific urban land policy and not the by-product of broader urban renaissance policies.

Urban task force

The Urban Task Force Report has brought to our attention, that English towns and cities today require a new renaissance. The comprehensive planning has retarded urban living (Urban Renaissance, Sharing the Vision 01.99, 1999). Forty percent of inner-urban housing stock is subsidized 'social' housing. A review of the demographic and development trends have lead to the UK Government?s new urban policy that prioritizes the regeneration of towns and cities by building on recycled urban land and protecting the countryside. As result, Urban Task Force (UTF) was founded the with the following aims To identify causes of urban decline in England; To recommend practical solutions how to bring people back into cities; To establish a new vision for urban regeneration based on the principles of design excellence, social well being and environmental responsibility within a viable economic and legislative framework (Urban Task Force, 1999:1). This paper represents the analysis of the economic and political effects of the program and its viability.

Urban renaissance: A tale of two cities

Urban renaissance: A tale of two cities

Urban renaissance: A tale of two cities

Urban renaissance: A tale of two cities

Reuniting Urban Form and Urban Process: The Prince of Wales's Urban Design Task Force

This article explains how the Prince of Wales's interventions of the 1980s in architecture gave rise to his Institute of Architecture and his Urban Design Task Force (UDTF). It points out that both institutions were intended to foster closer dialogue between theory and practice, and to embed formal architectural and planning typologies in building process. A distinction is drawn between the approach of the UDTF and the 'urban village' thinking which underlies The Prince's Foundation (successor body to the Institute of Architecture). The Institute of Architecture and the UDTF were helped by the fact that Leon Krier and Christopher Alexander, respectively leaders of the formal and process-orientated (or 'structural') schools of urban design, supported their efforts. The unique encounter between the two suggested a 'Third Way' for urban propositions, able to mediate between political extremes (e.g. between historical reconstruction and a modernist tabula rasa ), and to provide clear formal strategies of an inclusive and broadly accessible kind. The article looks in detail at the 1997 UDTF in Lebanon-in which Samir Younés and Hajo Neis, acolytes of Krier and Alexander, worked on the design of a new urban quarter adjacent to the ancient city of Sidon-and estimates the value of the resulting dialectic between master plan and generative processes at work in the city. Also discussed are the nature of 'tradition', the meanings and limitations of the master plan document, the 'hidden hand' represented by latter-day building processes, and the value of 'restitution' as against 'restoration'. In conclusion it is asked how an 'urban renaissance' can be brought about in a period of economic and political liberalization.

Adaptive re-use of offices for residential use

Planners and politicians increasingly have to find solutions for development pressures that consume less land, generate fewer private car miles, use existing urban resources and conserve energy. One solution advocated by policy makers is to increase the number of homes within city centres as an integral tool of regeneration and sustainability policies (Department of the Environment, 1995. Our Future Homes: Opportunity, Choice and Responsibility — the Government's Housing Policies for England and Wales, White Paper, 27 June. HMSO, London; Department of the Environment, 1997. Planning Policy Guidance note 1: General Policy and Principles, February. HMSO, London; Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions, 1998. A New Deal for Transport: Better for Everyone. HMSO, London; Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions, 2000a. Planning Policy Guidance Note 3: Housing. HMSO, London; Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions, 2000b. Our Towns and Cities: the Future: Delivering the Urban Renaissance, White Paper, 16 November. HMSO, London.). Equally, dealing appropriately with the physical legacy of the recent past is a challenging problem. Changes to existing towns and cities, however, open up the opportunities for entrepreneurs to exploit obsolete buildings to meet the needs and aspirations of the present. Indeed, Jacobs (Jacobs, J., 1961. The Death and Life of Great American Cities: The Failure of Town Planning. Random House Inc., New York.) identifies that: “time makes the high building costs of one generation the bargains of a following generation. …time makes certain structures obsolete for some enterprises, and they become available to others.” This paper examines the background and process of the conversion of obsolete post-World War II office buildings to residential use. A comparative study of North America (Toronto) and Europe (London) will focus on the experiences of two cities where conversions have registered a significant impact in terms of new homes created and had a positive impact upon the respective city centre.

Uneven Redevelopment

Since the mid 1980s, European cities and regions have become increasingly concerned with competitive restructuring and economic growth. This concern goes hand in hand with a rediscovery of the central role of cities in the performance of regional and national economies as a whole. But, in a context of radical transformation of production and demand conditions globally, the performance of cities is mediated by their capacity to lead a process of competitive redevelopment. To meet the challenges posed by the changing global competitive climate, the policy agenda of many cities has been drastically reorganized. On the one hand, the search for growth has transformed urban revitalization in one of the main domains of urban intervention. On the other, the new urban policy agenda is singularly framed in a language of competitiveness, improved efficiency, flexibility, entrepreneurship, partnership and collaborative advantage that underwrite the remaking of planning objectives, functions and instruments. In this article, we examine the rise of new urban policies in Bilbao (Spain), a city where two decades of manufacturing decline and economic restructuring are gradually giving way to so-called urban renaissance. During the 1990s, Bilbao has followed on the tracks of other old industrial cities adopting a revitalization strategy focused around large-scale and emblematic redevelopment projects. The article discusses one of these projects, Abandoibarra, a paradigmatic waterfront development that embodies the new logic of urban intervention.The first section of the paper presents an analysis of economic restructuring and sociospatial fragmentation dynamics in the city in the last two decades. The second section discusses changes in urban policy-making locating Bilbao’s regeneration strategy in the context of the ‘New Urban Policies’. The third section focuses on emerging governance dynamics and the critical role of new governance institutions in the management of Abandoibarra’s redevelopment scheme. Finally, the fourth part of the article attempts to provide an evaluation of the impact of the project, highlighting the shadows behind what is presented as a new success story in urban revitalization.

Briefing Sheet: Urban White Paper 2000 Our towns and cities: the future—delivering an urban renaissance

Briefing Sheet: Urban White Paper 2000 <i>Our towns and cities: the future—delivering an urban renaissance</i>

Walking and cycling and the Local Transport Plan

This paper looks at the opportunities for promoting walking and cycling through five-year Local Transport Plans (LTPs), which have recently replaced the annual Transport Policies and Programme (TPP) scheme as the means for securing funding approval for investment in local transport. The paper examines the key differences between LTPs and TPPs in terms of the greater scope LTPs offer for facilitating more sustainable travel patterns, which include permitting expenditure on ‘soft’ measures such as travel awareness campaigns, in addition to the traditional ‘hard’—infrastructure—measures. There is a summary of the variety of engineering, educational and enforcement measures local authorities are being encouraged to employ to encourage walking and cycling, such as dedicated facilities, vehicle-restricted areas, home zones, speed management, clear zones. The opportunities for targeting different types of travel are looked at: commuting, school journeys, recreation and leisure trips. The relevance of travel patterns, and thus LTPs, to wider policy objectives—health, urban renaissance, social inclusion, air quality, children's social development—is acknowledged, as is the importance of integrating transport and land-use planning to facilitate non-motorised travel patterns. The paper includes a list of criteria used by the DETR in assessing the quality of LTPs with respect to the national objectives of encouraging walking and cycling for local transport.

Walking and cycling and the Local Transport Plan

This paper looks at the opportunities for promoting walking and cycling through five-year Local Transport Plans (LTPs), which have recently replaced the annual Transport Policies and Programme (TPP) scheme as the means for securing funding approval for investment in local transport. The paper examines the key differences between LTPs and TPPs in terms of the greater scope LTPs offer for facilitating more sustainable travel patterns, which include permitting expenditure on ‘soft’ measures such as travel awareness campaigns, in addition to the traditional ‘hard’—infrastructure—measures. There is a summary of the variety of engineering, educational and enforcement measures local authorities are being encouraged to employ to encourage walking and cycling, such as dedicated facilities, vehicle-restricted areas, home zones, speed management, clear zones. The opportunities for targeting different types of travel are looked at: commuting, school journeys, recreation and leisure trips. The relevance of travel patterns, and thus LTPs, to wider policy objectives—health, urban renaissance, social inclusion, air quality, children's social development—is acknowledged, as is the importance of integrating transport and land-use planning to facilitate non-motorised travel patterns. The paper includes a list of criteria used by the DETR in assessing the quality of LTPs with respect to the national objectives of encouraging walking and cycling for local transport.