Unpacking new labour's ‘Urban Renaissance’ agenda: Towards a socially sustainable reurbanization of British cities?

Introduction

Since 1997 the UK New Labour government has put cities at the core of its agenda, launching new initiatives in neighbourhood renewal to address social exclusion as well as championing a new agenda for the ‘Urban Renaissance’ of British cities. The ‘Urban Renaissance’ agenda is a positive step change following decades of negative political and media discourse on the inner city and a long history of English ‘anti-urbanism’ (Amin et al., 2000; Gordon, 2004). It has, however, been critically analysed for its potentially ambiguous effects on urban communities, in particular in terms of gentrification and the transformation of public space. This contribution aims to critically analyse the ‘Urban Renaissance’ agenda from the perspective of its long term capacity to address the sociospatial polarization of British cities. It is based on a comprehensive review of recent research by geographers, sociologists, planners and political scientists who have analysed New Labour's discourse and practices of urban policy from different disciplinary perspectives.

The key themes, arguments and concepts underpinning the policy documents forming the discursive framework of the ‘Urban Renaissance’, as well as the contradictions, tensions and ambiguities shaping this agenda, will be discussed. As a practice review piece, the article sets the framework for further empirical studies of urban regeneration projects under New Labour, based on the premise that a careful examination of the ambiguities of the Urban Renaissance policy discourse is a necessary prelude to empirical investigations of the ways in which this agenda is being played out and implemented in practice. Throwing light on the assumptions and principles embedded in the discourse allows us to ‘challenge the rhetoric of apparent diversity, density and sustainability’ (Atkinson, 2004, p. 126) and unpack the potential practical implications of this agenda for future sociospatial trends in British cities.

The first part of the article will briefly set out the socioeconomic and political context in which the Urban Renaissance agenda emerged. In the second part, four key themes structuring the narrative of the Urban Renaissance policy agenda will be considered in turn. These themes have been identified through a comprehensive review of recent UK research as well as a critical reading of key policy documents. The third part of the article will provide a critical analysis of some of the practical implications of the Urban Renaissance agenda for UK cities on the basis of emerging research evidence. The article will conclude that in the context of current debates on the ‘Renaissance’ of British cities (and the creation of more ‘sustainable communities’), the need for more empirical research on the practical outcomes of urban regeneration strategies derived from this agenda is pressing, in order to assess their socially sustainable character and their long term capacity to address the sociospatial polarization of British cities.

From reurbanization to a proactive Urban Renaissance agenda? The context for new labour urban policies

There is a certain poetic injustice in the withdrawal of the middle classes from central neighbourhoods in the late 19th century and their subsequent recolonization of these areas within the past half-century. (Atkinson, 2003a, p. 2343)

Urban demographic trends in the UK since the 1960s have been characterized by a continuous process of counterurbanization (or ‘urban-rural shift’) of jobs and people, a process caused by deindustrialization and the changing geography of employment in a post-Fordist service economy (Champion, 1989; Atkins et al., 1996; Turok & Edge, 1999; Townsend, 1993). Until the early 1990s all large cities and conurbations lost population whilst other non-urban areas (small towns, coastal and rural areas) experienced a steady demographic growth (Atkins et al., 1996).1 In London the process of counterurbanization started much earlier: from the mid-nineteenth century onwards, part of the middle class abandoned early nineteenth-century inner suburbs (such as Islington) to move to ‘new’ suburbs, leaving the inner city to the working class (Hamnett, 2003, p. 162). As those migrating out of inner cities were primarily middle- or upper- income groups, across the UK this counterurbanization process fuelled socioeconomic polarization between major urban cores and other areas, as well as within inner cities. This trend was reinforced by the crisis of the manufacturing sector, which generated spatially concentrated pockets of unemployment and deprivation in industrial urban cores.

Throughout the 1990s non-urban districts still grew faster than urban areas. However, the population of the core of the so-called ‘metropolitan cities’, such as Manchester, began to increase again,2 whilst in other urban areas the pace of demographic decline slowed down (Atkins et al., 1996; DETR, 2000). These trends may signal the emergence of a process of ‘reurbanization’, fuelled by the locational preferences of growing sectors in the service and knowledge economy such as banking, media, arts and entertainment (Lever, 1993; Cheshire, 1995). The residential preferences of specific socioeconomic groups are also changing as a consequence of changing household forms and occupational structures. Various studies have shown that the attractiveness of inner city living is growing, in particular among higher socioeconomic categories (URBED et al., 1999; Todorovic & Wellington, 2000; Heath, 2001; Tallon & Bromley, 2004). An additional factor that influences the trend towards reurbanization is the forecasted increase in the number of households in the UK—an additional 4.8 million by 2026 (ODPM, 2006a).

It may be too early to state whether reurbanization will be a long-term trend in the UK, since the continuing process of economic transformation creates the potential, but not the necessity, of a new phase of growth in urban cores (Cheshire, 1995). The 2005 report on the State of the Cities draws prudent conclusions on that matter. Regional demographic and employment performances display major differences between the south and the north of England (ODPM, 2005a, p. 20), between the city centres of major cities and non-central inner areas (Guy et al., 2005, pp. 235 – 236) as well as the more peripheral former industrial towns (URBED/ODPM, 2002). Finally, whilst the majority of new households that will form over the next 20 years will be small and childless and may therefore be keener to live in an urban environment (Urban Task Force, 1999), there is also evidence that residential preferences remain strongly ‘anti-urban’, especially among families with children (Ford & Champion, 2000; Stead, 2004).

Since the mid-1990s the projected increase in the number of households has triggered a major planning debate in the UK (Breheny & Hall, 1996), as there is a clear mismatch between current levels of housing provision and anticipated housing needs. National policy responses have since 1995 been based on the principle that new development should as much as possible be accommodated on urban brownfield sites, thereby minimizing the loss of greenfield space (DoE, 1995).

As New Labour came into power in 1997, many voices urged for radical changes in the orientations of urban policy: a stronger role for local government, the end of competitive bidding, more democratic partnerships, community-led regeneration and greater integration between regeneration funds (Allmendinger & Tewdwr-Jones, 1997; CITY 2020, 1997; LGA, 1998). A plethora of academic studies and evaluation reports demonstrated the shortcomings of property-led regeneration as practised in the 1980s, in particular the limitation of the so-called ‘trickle-down effect’ and the negative social costs of flagship projects such as the London Docklands (Parkinson, 1989; Lawless, 1991; Turok, 1992; Healey, 1992; Imrie & Thomas, 1993; Loftman & Nevin, 1995; Shaw & Robinson, 1998). The 1980s witnessed a substantial increase in poverty and social inequality in Britain. In 1999 approximately 14.5 million people lived in poverty—26% of the population compared to 14% in 1979 (Gordon et al., 2000). The greatest concentrations of deprivation and exclusion were located in inner cities, in particular (but not only) in council housing estates which became increasingly ‘residualized’ (Forrest, 1990).

In response to this increase in inequality in British society, New Labour put ‘social exclusion’ at the heart of its discourse (Macleavy, 2006), exhibiting at least rhetorically a value shift ‘from materialism to a more caring society’ (Colenutt, 1999, p. 234). Immediately after the 1997 election, the government set up a new ministerial body, the Social Exclusion Unit, to coordinate and monitor policies tackling social exclusion (SEU, 1998, 2000, 2001). Two new area-based initiatives were launched: the New Deal for Communities in 1998, targeting 39 of the poorest neighbourhoods in the country, and the National Strategy for Neighbourhood Renewal in 2001. These programmes were characterized by a new political language of social inclusion and ‘people-based regeneration’ (Colenutt, 1999; Cochrane, 2000; Watt & Jacobs, 2000; Wallace, 2001; Imrie & Raco, 2003; Hills & Stewart, 2005), and promoting joined-up action in the fields of health, crime, housing, education and employment through partnerships between the public, private and third sector (Evans, 2001).

Besides these neighbourhood renewal programmes, a new discourse on ‘Urban Renaissance’ quickly emerged as a key theme within the government's urban agenda, fed by reflections and debates that started in the mid-1990s. The period of Tony Blair's leadership preceding the 1997 general election saw a significant transformation of the Labour Party (Fielding, 2003). During that time, New Labour's thought on cities and urban policy was strongly influenced by the architect Richard Rogers, a close advisor to Labour Members of Parliament. Richard Rogers' book advocating ‘A new London’ (Rogers & Fisher, 1992) was funded by the Labour Party and promoted several principles that became cornerstones in the Urban Renaissance agenda, such as the key role of urban design, public spaces, density and community involvement. Some of these ideas found their roots in the revival of inner city neighbourhoods and ‘soft’ urban renewal practices that had started in continental European countries in the 1980s (for example in Germany with the 1984 – 1987 International Building Exhibition), as well as in American New Urbanism.

In 1998, Richard Rogers was appointed by John Prescott to lead an ‘Urban Task Force’ in charge of identifying the causes of urban decline in England and recommending practical solutions to bring people back into cities. The Task Force took up the concept of ‘Urban Renaissance’ in its final report (Urban Task Force, 1999), which contained over 100 recommendations in various policy sectors to encourage design excellence, brownfield site redevelopment and higher densities. The report was very influential and the term ‘Urban Renaissance’ has permeated policy discourses and official documents since. The objective of the ‘Urban Renaissance’ is ‘to construct new sustainable urban realms, founded upon the principles of social mixing, sustainability, connectivity, higher densities, walkability, and high-quality streetscapes with the express aim of attracting the suburban knowledge and service industrial demographic back to the city’ (Rogers & Coaffee, 2005, p. 323; see also Gordon, 2004).

Taking on board many of the recommendations of the Urban Task Force report, the government then published an Urban White Paper setting the agenda for the implementation of the ‘Urban Renaissance’ (DETR, 2000). The Urban White Paper was the first document of its kind since the 1977 White Paper on the Inner City, and marked a significant break with a long tradition of ‘anti-urbanism’ in English urban policy whereby, from the mid-nineteenth century onwards, ‘the scale and physical form of modern cities were held responsible for a wide range of pathologies observed there’ (Gordon, 2004, p. 374). Cities are now portrayed as solutions to economic and social problems. In this respect the White Paper reflects the ‘new conventional wisdom’ promoted by the OECD and the EU which views successful urban development as key in securing a ‘combination of competitiveness, cohesion and effective governance required for survival in the new economy, with environmental sustainability as a bonus’ (Gordon, 2004, p. 373). At the first Core Cities summit in Manchester in 2002, the Urban Renaissance agenda was explicitly tied up with the question of the economic competitiveness of the ‘core cities’ outside London.

The Urban White Paper was accompanied by £1 billion worth of tax measures to increase investment in urban areas (Hetherington, 2000). However, many urban practitioners argued that it did not go far enough. Lord Rogers himself criticized the government for overlooking some of the most radical recommendations made by the Urban Task Force, in particular financial measures to create a more level playing field between urban areas and greenfield sites (Hetherington, 2000). Lord Rogers later blamed the government for its slow progress in implementing the urban renaissance at a wide scale (Hetherington, 2002) and independently published a new Urban Task Force pamphlet calling for a ‘strong’ urban renaissance (Urban Task Force, 2005). The most recent evolution in the government's urban policy agenda is a new strategy to tackle the housing issue, the Sustainable Communities Plan (ODPM, 2003). The term ‘Sustainable Communities’ has gained momentum in national policy discourse after 2003, and has since been used more widely than that of ‘urban renaissance’.3

New Labour's urban policy thus encompasses two key agendas: a ‘neighbourhood renewal’ priority focusing on tackling social exclusion in the poorest areas in the country, and a design-led ‘Urban Renaissance’ agenda fostering the physical, aesthetic and economic regeneration of all cities (Holden & Iveson, 2003; Cochrane, 2000, 2003, 2007). These agendas are potentially complementary, but also contradictory (Cochrane, 2003, 2007). The Urban White Paper partly brought together these two dimensions (URBED, 2005), but it did not acknowledge the tensions between the two agendas (Cochrane, 2007, p. 93). The fragmented nature of New Labour's approach to cities was noted early on by academic commentators:

We have Rogers on the ‘urban’, the Social Exclusion Unit on poor ‘neighbourhoods’ and the local government White Paper on local ‘governance’. The consequence of this is to provide one set of policies for the urban middle classes, one for the urban poor, and another for the partial reform of the political establishment governing both. (Amin et al., 2000, p. vii).

Beyond the official message of policy documents, a number of academics have suggested that a critical reading of the ‘Urban Renaissance’ discourse is necessary (Lees, 2003; Atkinson, 2004) to throw light on the following questions: which principles and concepts underpin the discourse on Urban Renaissance? Which visions of the city do they convey, for which social groups, with what potential effects (Gordon, 2004)? On the basis of an in-depth review of recent British academic research on the Urban Renaissance agenda, associated with a critical reading of the key relevant policy documents (Urban Task Force, 1999; DETR, 2000; ODPM, 2003), it is argued that four key themes underpin this agenda: the construction of a new urbanity and ‘urban idyll’; the concept of social mix as engine of cohesion and sustainable communities; strong ‘local communities’ as instruments and outcome of the Urban Renaissance; and the dialectics of good urban design, civility and citizenship. These themes are explored in turn in the next section.

Unpacking the Urban Renaissance agenda: Key themes and ambiguities

As part of a wider ‘discursive turn’ in social sciences, a number of authors have used discourse analysis as a methodology to analyse contemporary urban, environmental, regeneration and housing policies (see among others, Hajer, 1995; Rydin, 1998, 2003, 2005; Hastings, 1999, 2000; Jacobs, 2006; Lees, 2004), using in particular the work of Norman Fairclough (1995, 2000). Fairclough's ‘critical discourse analysis’ emphasizes how the linguistic strategies deployed by key actors and the content of specific formulations, terms and arguments legitimize action and structure the parameters of policy intervention (Jacobs, 2006, p. 42). A discursive approach to urban policy can thus help unpack the moral and ideological underpinnings of urban policy agendas. In order to analyse New Labour's urban and social policies, some authors have used discourse analysis in a rather strict sense (Lees, 2003; Fairclough, 2000), whilst others have taken inspiration from discourse-based approaches to carry out a more generic critique of the key themes and concepts underpinning dominant policy discourses (Hoskins & Tallon, 2004). These approaches can play an ‘early warning’ role to highlight the tensions, ambiguities and contradictions embedded within Third Way urbanism—tensions that are likely to be reflected in implementation and outcomes.

Promoting the new ‘urban idyll’

Imagine strolling through a dockland area digesting Friday's lunch one summer's afternoon. You cross paved walkways punctuated with illuminated water features and hear the liquid patter of a fountain's droplets overlaying the hum of a not-too-distant business district winding down for the week; you negotiate the clutter of plastic art planted sporadically in the concrete and circle a twelve-foot anchor drenched in treacle-like gloss paint; you approach an arcade and hear people conversing around brushed steel tables of coffee houses whose interiors invoke an impression of Latin-American Moderne. Drinking expresso, soy latte, or the finest bottled Belgian beer, these people are part of the new British metropolitan bohemia and while your cynicism compels its condescension you secretly fancy yourself as a member. (Hoskins & Tallon, 2004, p. 25)

Policy discourses on the Urban Renaissance have been based on research showing that public policies can influence people's residential preferences and encourage ‘urban living’ (URBED et al., 1999). Hoskins and Tallon (2004) have demonstrated how the active construction and promotion of a new ‘urban idyll’ has been a necessary prelude to, and a major element of, the Urban Renaissance discourse. ‘Reinvented’, positive visions of urban life aim at counteracting the cultural prevalence of the ‘rural idyll’ and the myth of suburbia as ‘the archetypal utopia’ (MacLeod & Ward, 2002, p. 158). The creation of the new ‘urban idyll’ is also linked with the electoral agenda of New Labour, ‘particularly when one recalls how the imagery and electoral appeal of Thatcherism was so deeply implanted in the leafy English shires’ (p. 158). The Urban Renaissance agenda, however, can also potentially appeal to countryside voters as it seems to reconcile the needs of ‘city’ and ‘country’ and restrict rural and suburban development (Lund, 2002, p. 118).

The process of constructing a new ‘urban idyll’ involves the reinterpretation in an urban context of a number of themes traditionally associated with the countryside—such as the ‘local community’, ‘nature’, ‘heritage’, the ‘village’—in order to create an appealing vision of urban living through association with traditional concepts (Hoskins & Tallon, 2004). The concept of the urban village, explored by Franklin and Tait (2002), is closely related to the themes of the local community and of the ‘neighbourhood’ explored below. The imagery of the ‘urban village’ is underpinned by references to a civilized urbanity, in which human behaviours and encounters are encouraged and framed by well-designed public spaces, streets and spaces of socialization such as cafés. This vision is partly rooted in the American ‘New Urbanism’ movement4 and in recent US debates about ‘smart urban growth’ (Guy et al., 2005, p. 234), but more so in an idealized vision of the traditional urbanism of continental European cities (Atkinson, 2004). Powerful examples of design-led regeneration in cities such as Copenhagen or Barcelona are often referred to as success stories in policy documents (Urban Task Force, 1999). The discourse on Urban Renaissance is thus being internationalized (Raco, 2003a; Holden & Iveson, 2003; Atkinson, 2004), although the main point of reference has become a ‘positive West European vision of cities as sources of economic and social well-being, cultural mixture and citizenship’, rather than US models of urban regeneration which prevailed in the 1980s (Amin et al., 2000, p. 2).

Beyond official policy documents, the process of ‘reimaging’ urban living has been fuelled by the development industry and the media. The role of the media as a ‘critical infrastructure of consumption’ aiming at generating new residential consumption practices was explored by Sharon Zukin (1998) in the American context. In the UK, MacLeod and Ward (2002) underline the key role of TV programmes on real estate and home improvements, newspaper supplements and lifestyle magazines that celebrate urban living. They stress that media representations of the ‘urban idyll’ are strongly associated with spaces of consumption—what Pine and Gilmore call the ‘experience economy’ (1999). A number of authors thus point out that the imagery of the new ‘urban idyll’ displays a specific, selective aesthetic model that stems from, and promotes certain socioeconomic groups in the urban landscape (MacLeod & Ward, 2002; Lees, 2003)—young urban professionals, single or childless, with a high disposable income and high social, educational and cultural capital.

The Urban Task Force report and Urban White Paper are both geared towards attracting these categories of professionals—and possibly a wider middle class—back into the inner city, partly as a mechanism to tackle the concentration of poverty in inner city areas. The discourse on ‘Urban Renaissance’ views the ‘civilized middle class’ as role model and saviour of the inner city (Atkinson, 2003a), but at the same time it avoids the class constitution, and the implications, of the processes which are encouraged (Lees, 2003). Hoskins and Tallon argue that the imagery of the new ‘urban idyll’ is therefore not only a ‘technology of representation’, it is also a ‘technology of renewal’for and through middle-class professionals involved in the new service and knowledge economy:

New Labour's championing of an urban renaissance is rapidly establishing pockets of development recognizable as the urban idyll, and this urban idyll is as much a technology of representation as it is a technology for renewal, reproducing guidelines for a favoured kind of urban citizenry, figuratively embracing them in a landscape informed by a bohemian aesthetic while other residents are rhetorically and materially recast as outsiders. (Hoskins & Tallon, 2004, p. 36)

The ‘technology of renewal’ involves the actual reshaping of the residential, commercial and public spaces of the inner city in favour of specific socioeconomic groups and the needs of the ‘knowledge economy’ (Amin et al., 2000, p. vi). A number of authors have highlighted how renaissance strategies geared at attracting middle-class residents and consumers are often associated with new mechanisms of social control and surveillance, as will be discussed in the third section.

‘Social mix’ as engine of social cohesion and sustainable communities?

The discourse on Urban Renaissance is characterized by the desire to recreate patterns of social and functional mix in inner cities to counteract the negative effects of decades of counterurbanization, which have left highly concentrated pockets of deprivation in urban cores. The concept of ‘mixed communities’ used in recent policy documents (ODPM, 2003) raises a series of questions: what ‘mix’ are we talking about? At what scale, and of which nature? In the Urban White Paper (DETR, 2000), the concept of ‘mix’ refers to the mix of uses and functions (‘mixed development’), as well as to a form of social mix (‘mixed communities’). In the most recent definition of ‘sustainable communities’ (ODPM, 2006b), however, the term of ‘mixed communities’ is not present; ‘inclusive’ and ‘fair’ are used instead, referring to the recognition of cultural and ethnic diversity in the city.

The French urban sociologist Jacques Donzelot, in the aftermath of the French urban riots of 2005, critically deconstructed the use of the concept of ‘social mix’ (mixité sociale) in French urban policy over the past 20 years (Donzelot, 2006). Although patterns of sociospatial segregation are different in French and British cities, his analysis can to a large extent be applied to the current use of the concept within New Labour's Urban Renaissance discourse in the UK, where ‘mixed communities’ have become a new ‘professional orthodoxy’ (Bailey, 2005). Donzelot shows how ‘social mix’ has consistently been presented in policy discourses as the key tool to generate social cohesion, address spatial concentrations of poverty and fight against spatial, social and ethnic segregation in urban areas (2006, p. 78). In France, the concept was translated into two types of policies: imposing minimum quotas of social housing to all local authorities; and encouraging ‘middle class residents’ back into deprived neighbourhoods (mostly postwar housing estates) through selective demolition and housing differentiation measures. Donzelot stresses how, in this understanding of social mix, the ultimate goal is to increase the variety of housing types on offer and encourage home ownership, rather than promote the mix of population groups with different incomes as the primary objective (p. 93). He also notes that the implementation of the concept often involves enticing middle-class residents into deprived neighbourhoods, rather than deprived households into affluent areas (p. 120). This analysis is partly applicable to the UK, where the concept of ‘mixed communities’ is often reduced to ‘mix of tenures’ and housing types.

In key policy documents, the concept of tenure mix is presented as the tool to deliver income mix, social mix and social interaction (Rowlands et al., 2006, p. 1) and more widely social cohesion and ‘sustainable communities’ (ODPM, 2005b, p. 9). This is based on specific assumptions about the positive impacts of mixed tenure on sustainable communities, which are supposed to be achieved through four mechanisms: dilution of disadvantage, improved sustainability [of services], change in resident behaviour and change in non-residents perceptions (Williams & Daly, 2006, p. 6). The supposed ‘civilizing’ and socialization influence of tenure mix is also often referred to: it is hoped that the motivation of deprived groups or individuals will be enhanced by contacts and interactions with ‘role models’ from a different socioeconomic background (Jupp, 1999, p. 9; Atkinson & Kintrea, 2000).

However these concepts of mix—tenure, income, social—are distinctive, even if they partly overlap (Rowlands et al., 2006, p. 1). Recent research has shown that whilst tenure mix is a necessary precondition for social mix, it is not sufficient to achieve it. Williams and Daly (2006), through a case study of the City Challenge area of Hulme, Manchester, have shown that tenure diversification did not lead to more sustainable communities, primarily because it did not significantly change the unbalanced age and household composition of the area, and fuelled patterns of fast population turnover. Other empirical evidence from mixed-tenure housing estates shows that there often is little social interaction between owners and renters (Jupp, 1999; Allen et al., 2005). However, there is also successful evidence, in Scotland for example, of changing the image of former public housing estates by bringing in owner occupation (Guy et al., 2005, p. 236). Overall, across the UK there are less noticeable achievements in bringing more affordable housing into monotenure owner occupier suburbs (p. 236).

These outcomes can be interpreted in light of two key issues: the issue of scale and the issue of the scope or nature of the mix. The scale at which the mix is supposed to be realized is crucial. In Hulme, Manchester, tenure diversification has been a reality at ward level, whilst at the subward level ‘tenures are spatially separated as a result of the land assembly methods of the programme …, this not necessarily being conducive to social integration’ (Williams & Daly, 2006, p. 23). In London, the social class composition of Inner Boroughs is now more mixed than three decades ago but local micro segregation is much higher (Hamnett, 2003, p. 177). In areas of the East End that have been rapidly regenerated and gentrified over the past 10 – 15 years, there is a quasicomplete separation between the residential units and the social worlds of different categories of local residents—between the refurbished loft apartments and newly built secured developments on Hoxton Square and Kingsland Road and the social housing estates located a few blocks away. In many cases, the reality of urban renaissance creates a mosaic of ‘utopian and dystopian spaces’, ‘physically proximate but institutionally estranged’ (MacLeod & Ward, 2002, p. 154). This can lead to actual conflicts over the use of green, cultural, social or retail spaces and to feelings of alienation (Goldman, 2005; Richards, 2005; Taylor, 2005). Richard Rogers himself stressed that although city centres were fast improving, other urban areas were not, thus raising the potential for urban unrest and segregation ‘with “haves” occupying the trendy new apartments and the “have nots” living not far away in substandard housing’ (Hetherington, 2002).

The scope of the social mix is a second, related issue. Tenure mix might bring about a relative physical proximity between different socioeconomic groups, but it does not necessarily translate into a real mix in public spaces, schools, public services or shops. The ‘spaces of socialization’ of old and new inner city residents are often separate (Robson & Butler, 2001; Butler, 2003). The question of ethnicity and ethnic mix is also left out of the Urban Renaissance agenda (Amin et al., 2000, p. 4). As noted with reference to Brixton, South London, there is ‘something of a gulf between a widely circulated rhetorical preference for multicultural experience and people's actual social networks and connections’ (Robson & Butler, 2001, p. 77). Tenure mix alone is thus an insufficient tool for ‘delivering social mix and longer term sustainability’ (Rowlands et al., 2006, p. 2). Issues of ‘scale’ and ‘scope’ of the mix are neglected or underplayed in the ‘Urban Renaissance’ discourse, whilst in the long term they appear to be fundamental elements in the sustainability of ‘socially mixed’ urban communities. More fundamentally there seems to be a discrepancy between the rhetoric of ‘mixing’ and other New Labour policy initiatives, in particular on crime and disorder, as will be mentioned in the third section.

Strong ‘local communities’ as Key instrument and ultimate outcome of the Urban Renaissance

The rhetoric of the ‘local community’ and ‘active citizenship’ (Brannan et al., 2006) is dominant in New Labour's discourses on social and urban policies. Blair's first speech as Prime Minister, on the Aylesbury estate in June 1997, focused on the need to ‘recreate the bonds of community’, partly to tackle ‘the desperate need for urban regeneration’ (Brickell, 2000). ‘Community’ is perceived as both as source of social integration and as the locus of self-governance (Newman, 2001). In the framework of the Urban Renaissance agenda, the assumption is that the empowerment and mobilization of communities are key to spearhead urban change (Raco & Imrie, 2003). The rhetoric of the ‘local community’ is often associated with that of the ‘neighbourhood’. In the early agenda for the modernization of local government there was little attention paid to ‘neighbourhoods’; however, they became key in subsequent neighbourhood renewal programmes (Meegan & Mitchell, 2001; Stewart, 2003, pp. 28 – 29). The neighbourhood is portrayed as the ideal scale for the production of social bonds and social control and the mobilization of the community—what Whitehead (2004) refers to as the new ‘moral geographies’ of contemporary urban policy.

This renewed rhetoric of the ‘community’ (and its associated spatial expression through the ‘neighbourhood’) raises a number of conceptual and empirical problems that have since long been explored by sociologists and political scientists: is there such thing as a (local) community? If so, how can we define its boundaries? What is the ‘community’ ultimately mobilized for? Sociological research has demonstrated the conceptual and empirical difficulties involved in assuming the preexistence of structured or coherent local communities (Schofield, 2002). The social, ethnic and economic profile of inner city residents is often too diverse to allow the identification of a homogeneous ‘local community’ (Amin, 2002). Even if this was possible, it does not imply that the identified group will be structured and organized as a ‘community’ pursuing its own interests and agenda (Imrie & Raco, 2003, p. 29). The mobilization of participation channels by organized interests, not necessarily the most representative or the most ‘in need’, is also a common finding in studies of ‘community participation’.

The Urban White Paper displays an ambiguous position about the existence of ‘local communities’, as noted by Holden and Iveson (2003): in some places they seem to preexist, in others their development must be encouraged by public action. The narrative of local citizenship and community participation reveals that contemporary urban policy discourses partly reframe the problem of urban decline and deprivation as a lack of mobilization of ‘communities’. Some authors have critically argued that this implicitly (re)creates a subtle form of ‘pathologizing’ of the urban poor through a distinction between the deserving, competent, empowered and proactive citizens and the others (Imrie & Raco, 2003). Some even read a ‘paternalistic moral authoritarianism’ (MacLeod, 2002, p. 616) in New Labour's rhetoric of active community building.

Finally, a number of authors have analysed the political instrumentalization of the concept of ‘community’ in the wider context of the changing role of the State under New Labour. The role of local communities and of the third sector is recast within a process of state restructuring in which individuals and social groups are called upon to play a bigger role in their governance and welfare (Newman, 2001; Holden & Iveson, 2003; Raco & Imrie, 2003; Prideaux, 2005; Cochrane, 2007): ‘Modernising Britain, in Blairite terms, requires a re-articulation of active citizenship, with the state's role moving from that of a provider of [welfare] services, to that of a facilitator—enabling communities and individuals to take more responsibility for the conduct of their own lives’ (Raco & Imrie, 2003, p. 1). The political narrative of community and individual responsibility can deflect attention from the causes of poverty and the issue of wealth distribution (Imrie & Raco, 2003, p. 30) as well as from the ‘rolling back’ of certain welfare functions previously provided by the State. New Labour's combination of neoliberal and neocommunitarian approaches (Fyfe, 2005) thus displays some degree of continuity with Thatcherite policies (Levitas, 1998; Heffernan, 2001).

The dialectics of good Urban design, ‘civility’ and active citizenship: Urban design as the saviour of inner cities?

The Urban Task Force Report, the Urban White Paper and the Sustainable Communities Plan all emphasize the key role of urban design and quality public spaces in the delivery of an Urban Renaissance. The underlying argument is that a well-designed space will encourage ‘civilized’ behaviours, foster social interactions and reduce the motivations and opportunities for antisocial, deviant or criminal behaviours. This is rooted in a tradition of Anglo-American theories about the link between the physical environment and human behaviours (Newman, 1972, 1997; Schneider & Kitchen, 2002), which have influenced planning and policing practices (Morton & Kitchen, 2005). To reduce incivility, it is argued, environments need to be civilizing (Banister et al., 2006, p. 926). This, in turn, will positively influence investments by potential residents and investors (Bannister et al., 2006).

A related argument is that there is a strong link between the restoration of quality urban public spaces and the recreation of a sense of identity and local citizenship (Amin et al., 2000, p. 32), as illustrated by Richard Rogers' quote ‘People make cities but cities make citizens’ (DETR, 2000; Holden & Iveson, 2003, p. 58). An active form of local citizenship will only emerge if citizens are involved in the design of their local environment (Holden & Iveson, 2003), but also if their environment invites them to act as proactive citizens. In that respect Holden and Iveson highlight a crucial paradox about the role of urban design in the Urban Renaissance process:

The paradox at the heart of New Labour urban policy is that a good-quality urban public realm is seen to be necessary for fostering social cohesion and community, and yet improvements to the quality of the public realm seem to require the prior formation of social cohesion and community which are found to be wanting in many existing towns and cities. (p. 66).

‘Good’ public space (and good design) is therefore both the outcome of a successful Urban Renaissance as well as a tool for mobilizing communities to deliver this Urban Renaissance (Holden & Iveson, 2003, p. 69). The urban design process itself is presented as a mechanism to resolve this tension. Influential organizations (such as the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment founded in 1999 as a statutory body) and a new class of mobile urban design professionals have emerged, guiding local communities and decision-makers in the formulation of renaissance visions for their city. Their influence on the public discourse about urban form, public space and the ‘good city’ as well as on the design of major regeneration projects across England is growing (Holden & Iveson, 2003, p. 66).

The key role assigned to urban design in the process of ‘Urban Renaissance’ is thus heavily based on the assumption of a positive link between urban form and individual and social behaviour. This assumption has been subject to criticisms, in particular regarding its deterministic aspect—the ‘crude conceptions of the relationship between urban forms and urban behaviour’ (Raco, 2003a, p. 244)—and its neglect of structural social and economic factors. Amin et al. (2000), in their early critique of the Urban Task Force report, argued that this overly design-led vision is in continuity with the ‘environmental determinism’ of many urban policies since the 1960s. Many researchers have also investigated how the redesign of inner city spaces often goes hand in hand with increased disciplinary mechanisms and socially selective controls, as will be discussed in the next section.

‘Blueprint for gentrification’ or ‘Revanchist Urbanism?’ A critical reading of the implications of the Urban Renaissance agenda

The Urban Task Force Report and the Urban White Paper both pursue two objectives: getting middle classes back into cities and tackling inner city deprivation. The assumption is that a return of the middle classes to the inner city is a key way of reducing concentrated poverty and its long-term effects, as well as rehabilitating run-down housing (DETR, 2000, p. 110). But is one the solution for the other? Are the implications of these objectives compatible? A number of authors have reflected upon the practical consequences of this fundamental ambiguity in the Urban Renaissance agenda. Some have stressed the inherent gentrification risks attached to a discourse which fosters the ‘recolonization’ of the inner city by the middle class. Others have focused their critique on the new forms of control over public space which have accompanied urban renaissance strategies, as well as the tensions emerging from the ‘crime and disorder’ agenda promoted by New Labour. These three themes will now be considered in turn.

Social mix through the return of the middle class? Urban Renaissance and gentrification

A number of critics have labelled the Urban White Paper a ‘blueprint for gentrification’ or ‘state-sponsored gentrification’ (although the term ‘gentrification’ is never used in policy documents) (Lees, 2003). The Urban Renaissance vision of urban liveability, mixed-use and sustainable community development displays a ‘language of urban pioneers and revitalization familiar to many gentrification scholars’ (Atkinson, 2003a, p. 2346; MacLeod & Ward, 2002). L. Lees, in her analysis of the Urban Renaissance discourse (2003), argues that the vision embedded in the Urban Task Force report is remarkably similar to visions of gentrification. But what does ‘similar’ concretely means? A conscious policy objective? A negative side-effect? A badly understood or unanticipated process? The nature of the relationship remains to be clarified. The link between gentrification and the middle classes has been explored by Hamnett (2003) and Butler (2003), who have extensively analysed the impact of the growing professional managerial and technical middle-class on the inner London housing market over the past 40 years. By making ‘middle class recolonization’ (Atkinson, 2004, p. 126) a key policy objective in the Urban Renaissance agenda, are policy-makers explicitly promoting a strategy of gentrification?

The vast literature on the impacts of gentrification will not be discussed. A review of four decades of empirical research on gentrification concludes that in spite of the positive impacts that gentrification may have at local level, it also has largely negative impacts on many neighbourhoods in terms of population displacement, conflicts over the ownership and use of local space and social costs of household dislocation (Atkinson, 2004). The normative assumption underpinning recent critiques of the Urban Renaissance agenda is thus that whilst a degree of increased social mix through the return of the middle class to the inner city is desirable, a rapid gentrification is undesirable and unsustainable, as it can in the long term increase sociospatial polarization and social conflict at the scale of the city-region. Hamnett, in opposition to Atkinson (2000a, 2000b), has argued that ‘gentrification’ has not led to large-scale displacement in London, since long-term structural changes in the occupational structure of the economy meant the decline of the traditional ‘working class’ (2003, pp. 180 – 184). He argues that what is witnessed in the London context is ‘replacement rather than displacement’. The policy issue therefore becomes how to retain, or give the possibility of decent living to, the new lower income groups in the service economy—the ‘great numbers of people employed in a wide variety of manufacturing and service industries which do not form part of the classic Blairite image of the new economy’ (Amin et al., 2000, p. 22)—the clerical, sales, construction workforce, drivers and machine operators.

R. Atkinson discusses whether it is possible to label the ‘Urban Renaissance’ agenda of New Labour an explicit strategy of gentrification and concludes that this remains a debatable point, ‘even if the unintended consequences may yet be similar’ (2003a, p. 2347). The link between new urban policies and gentrification should be addressed in a differentiated way, as the problematic of urban renewal and urban renaissance differs considerably between the south-east and the north of England (Atkinson, 2004, p. 126). So does the role of the State in addressing these issues. In the south-east, the State appears to try and tackle overheated housing markets and the unsustainable impacts of market-led gentrification in a context of demographic growth and restricted land (ODPM, 2003), although the effectiveness of public policy instruments is limited. In the centre and the north, policies to encourage an Urban Renaissance are linked with goals of economic regeneration in regions which have, since the 1970s, been hit by large-scale deindustrialization. In ‘Housing Market Renewal’ areas, the government aims to recreate a viable housing market by attracting a critical mass of middle-class households into areas of low housing demand through selective demolition, renewal and new construction (Guy et al., 2005, p. 236). There is empirical evidence that Housing Market Renewal constitutes a new form of gentrification (Cameron & Coaffee, 2006; Johnstone & MacLeod, 2006). In this context, gentrification seems to be explicitly promoted by policy-makers as a strategy for housing renewal which avoids addressing the structural causes of regional economic decline in the North of England (Atkinson, 2003a, p. 2346). This approach is not conflict-free: tensions arise between the necessity to attract a critical mass of wealthier residents and the need to maintain and involve existing residents, between the objective of ‘urban renaissance’ of the city as a whole and that of ‘urban renewal’ in deprived neighbourhoods (Cameron, 2003, 2006).

Whilst it is probably inaccurate to label the Urban Renaissance agenda an explicit strategy of gentrification, it may thus be fair to argue that some processes encouraged in this agenda are traditional engines of inner-city gentrification. The adverse effects of gentrification are rarely, if at all, mentioned in official policy documents. Hamnett, however, ironically stresses that whilst academics have lamented the middle class flight to the suburbs, they now criticize their return to the inner city, and contends that ‘it is not possible to reduce class segregation and simultaneously to resist gentrification’ (2003, p. 179): gentrification and urban renaissance, in this perspective, are two-sided words.

The control and sanitizing of public space in the renaissance city

Any conception of ‘publicness’ we ascribe to the new Renaissance sites is highly selective and systematically discriminating. (MacLeod, 2002, p. 605)

In contradiction with a rhetoric of social mix, diversity and inclusion, a number of authors have demonstrated that the physical and economic renaissance of urban spaces is often accompanied by new forms of social control that can actually stimulate processes of exclusion and marginalization (MacLeod, 2002; MacLeod & Ward, 2002; Holden & Iveson, 2003; Lees, 2003; Raco, 2003c; Johnstone, 2004; Coaffee, 2005). Before New Labour came into power, there was already evidence that the (Labour-led) ‘entrepreneurial’ urban regeneration politics of various city councils had been accompanied by new practices of redesigning, reordering and controlling public spaces (MacLeod, 2002, and Belina & Helms, 2003, on Glasgow). More recently, however, it has been stressed that the promoted visions of the ‘urban idyll’ and the ‘good city’ often exclude those groups perceived as a threat or those who cannot participate, i.e. consume, in the newly regenerated urban spaces (Cooper, 1998; MacLeod & Ward, 2002; Holden & Iveson, 2003; Atkinson, 2003b; Lees, 2003; Hoskins & Tallon, 2004; Coleman et al., 2005). The ideal public space of renaissance is ‘too often evoked as a neutral space where all can come together unproblematically’ (Amin et al., 2000, p. 4), which is not the case in practice.

Whilst most authors recognize that the erosion of public space described by US commentators (Davis, 1990; Sorkin, 1992) have no equivalent in Europe, they highlight the development of practices of control, surveillance and regulation of public space in UK cities (Fyfe & Bannister, 1998; Lees, 1998; Coleman & Sim, 2000; Merrifield, 2000; Flutsy, 2001; MacLeod, 2002; MacLeod & Ward, 2002; Coleman, 2003; Fyfe, 2004; Bannister et al., 2006). This process involves different techniques. ‘Soft’ methods include the careful design of the built form, including street furniture—what MacLeod (2002) refers to as the ‘interdictory architectures of the new built environment’. Subtle modes of exclusion are also embedded into the expansion of consumption uses surrounding public spaces—uses that are associated with expectations of specific behaviour enforced through better maintenance and surveillance (Atkinson, 2003b). This is what Zukin refers to as ‘domestication by cappuccino’ (1995). In such spaces non-consumption can be a form of deviance.

Many inner city public spaces are now subject to ‘hard’ surveillance and control techniques such as increased policing and video surveillance though Closed Control Television (CCTV). The UK is one of the largest CCTV markets in the world (Norris, 1998; Coleman, 2004). Research has shown that CCTV control is characterized by a ‘selective gaze’ onto specific categories of people (teenagers, ethnic minorities) considered ‘suspicious’ (Coleman & Sim, 2000; Coleman, 2003, 2004). Some authors thus suggest a ‘disciplinary’ reading of the production and management of public space in new strategies of city centre renaissance, as they trace evidence of implicit and explicit measures that discriminate about who can be permitted access and what activities can be undertaken—what Flusty (2001) calls the ‘displacement of diversity’. Various pieces of research have provided evidence on the displacement of homeless, street entertainers, beggars and sex workers in the central districts of several British cities (MacLeod, 2002; Hubbard, 2004a), through warden and town-centre management schemes, Business Improvement Districts or police intervention. Youth-related activities such as skateboarding or ‘hanging out’ are particularly targeted, as part of a ‘moral panic’ over youth (Rogers & Coaffee, 2005). The physical exclusion of specific groups or individuals, however, often means displacement towards other (usually deprived) urban areas (Schneider & Kitchen, 2002, p. 113), which replicates ‘the logic of exclusion inherent in suburbia and urban sprawl’ in a different geography (Macleod & Ward, 2002, p. 158).

From the control of public space to the ‘politics of behaviour’–‘Urban Renaissance’ and the ‘respect’ agenda

The Urban Renaissance agenda has to be set within the wider context of New Labour activities in other policy fields, in particular crime and disorder. Tony Blair announced early on his desire to be ‘tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime’, blending left- and right-wing thinking on the issue (Charman & Savage, 2002). The Party manifesto of 1997 promoted a ‘Zero Tolerance’ approach to crime, mirroring the policies set up by Mayor R. Giuliani in New York inspired by Wilson and Kelling's ‘broken windows’ theory (1982). Youth ‘crime’ has been particularly targeted by the 1998 Crime and Disorder Act and 2003 Anti-Social Behaviour Act, which introduced new tools to enforce controls over the youth. These tools—Anti-Social Behaviour Orders (ASBOs), Child Curfews, Parenting Orders—have been very contentious in their rationale and their effectiveness. Such tools go beyond ‘crime’ to include a wider spectrum of incivilities and ‘disorderly’ or antisocial behaviours (Charman & Savage, 2002; Flint, 2006; Flint & Nixon, 2006).

The Home Office Respect Action Plan (Respect Task Force, 2006) is the latest development in this emerging ‘politics of behaviour’ (Field, 2003) which blurs the distinction between disruptive and criminal behaviour (Charman & Savage, 2002, p. 216). It seeks to empower majority groups to enforce respectability in public spaces by removing forms of ‘intimidation’ and ‘tyranny’ (Bannister et al., 2006). However, the precise nature of the ‘culture of respect’ that the government wishes to enforce remains undefined, as well as what the ‘majority’ is (Bannister et al., 2006), although the favoured target group seems to be the ‘respectable’, consuming urban dwellers (Coleman et al., 2005; Bannister et al., 2006). The relationship between the Urban Renaissance agenda and the Home Office Respect agenda is thus highly ambiguous: on the one hand, there is a contradiction between the rhetoric of ‘mixing’ and that of ‘cleansing’ (Bannister et al., 2006), but there is also a form of convergence between the objectives assigned to both agendas, i.e. the safe use of public spaces by urban dwellers (Atkinson, 2003b). Bannister et al. (2006, p. 928) make a useful, subtle distinction between the processes at stake in (commercial) city centres and residential inner city neighbourhoods:

In city centres, it seems clear that civility is founded on the removal of ‘otherness’ or contrary actions and behaviours. In residential areas, the picture is more ambiguous and confused. On the one hand, communities are being encouraged to use similar tools of purification and regulation (supporting respectability), but at the same time social mixing is being promoted as a means of generating civility and respectfulness.

A number of British academics have raised the hypothesis that an element of ‘Revanchist Urbanism’ characterizes New Labour urban policies in the UK (MacLeod, 2002; MacLeod & Ward, 2002; Atkinson, 2003b; Raco, 2003c; Hubbard, 2004b; Bannister et al., 2006; Cameron & Coaffee, 2006; Johnstone & MacLeod, 2006). The concept of ‘revanchist urbanism’ was developed by Neil Smith (1996) to describe the ‘reconquest’ of the inner city of New York by professional middle classes from the 1970s onwards, involving ‘a revengeful and reactionary viciousness against various populations accused of ‘stealing’ the city from the white upper classes’ (p. xviii). Whether the concept can appropriately be transferred from New York to the UK context is open to debate. A number of key features distinguish the British experience and point towards a highly mixed, ambiguous picture of public and residential space transformation in different UK cities (MacLeod, 2002). What seems to happen in the UK is ‘a selective appropriation of the revanchist political repertoire’ in order to deal with the escalating contradictions of urban entrepreneurialism (MacLeod, 2002, p. 602), with varying degrees of support within local political systems. The Urban Renaissance agenda is, in that sense, a reflection of the contradictions of New Labour's Third Way political project (Holden & Iveson, 2003, p. 57; Levitas, 1998). It can be interpreted both as an attempt to deal with, and address, the adverse impacts of neoliberal political and economic restructuring on the inner city, whilst also being part and parcel of the neoliberal urban project (MacLeod & Ward, 2002; Ward, 2003; Jones & Ward, 2004).

Conclusion

This critical reading of the Urban Renaissance agenda promoted by the UK New Labour government has highlighted a number of ambiguities and tensions surrounding the key elements underpinning the Renaissance discourse—‘social mix’, ‘local communities’ and ‘urban design’. In spite of a new rhetoric of social inclusion and mix, some of the practical implications of the Urban Renaissance agenda have the potential to increase the fragmentation and social polarization of urban areas, as explored in the previous section. Besides, the Urban Renaissance agenda has to be read within the wider context of policy reforms undertaken by the government in other fields such as crime, welfare and public services, which altogether have ‘a much bigger impact on the lives of many urban residents than any government regeneration scheme’ (Raco, 2003a, p. 246).

It might be too early to judge the overall impacts of New Labour urban policies on the welfare of urban dwellers across the UK. Successful and relatively inclusive cases of urban regeneration delivering a real ‘renaissance’ for cities and neighbourhoods in decline whilst benefiting existing communities can be identified. In practice, however, local urban regeneration agendas remain often dominated by market-led and economic competitiveness objectives, in high-growth areas (Raco, 2003b) or in more depressed areas (Colenutt, 1999; Cameron, 2003, 2006; Ward, 2003). This often leads to ambiguous effects on different social groups—in particular in terms of gentrification and exclusion from inner city spaces.

In the context of the current UK policy debates on ‘sustainable communities’, more reflections are needed on the social dimension of the concept: what is a socially sustainable community? What visions of equity should be embedded into it (Kennedy & Leonard, 2001)? Is some degree of exclusion a necessary price for policies which seek to get the middle class back into the inner city, promote public spaces and increase the quality of life of the majority of urban dwellers (Atkinson, 2003b)? An analysis of the discursive framework of the Urban Renaissance agenda can perform an early warning role and throw light on some of the contradictions and tensions inherent to the key concepts framing the ‘Urban Renaissance’ discourse. However, this has to be complemented by further empirical research on the implementation of urban renaissance strategies in various cities to study their impacts on different socioeconomic groups (Atkinson, 2004, p. 124). Key policy concepts such as ‘social mix’ and ‘sustainable communities’ need to be empirically explored in more depth, for example by studying the microdynamics of social interaction in ‘regenerated’ areas. There is still little established research evidence on the way in which ‘tenure mix is discussed and negotiated within the broader discourse on regeneration and housing policy’ (Williams & Daly, 2006, p. 2), although several researchers and organizations are developing further inquiry into this direction (Joseph Rowntree Foundation/Chartered Institute of Housing, 2005 – 2006).

Acknowledgements

The ideas developed in this article benefited from the critical feedback of colleagues at several seminars and conferences in 2005 – 2006 at the Centre for Metropolitan Studies, Berlin; the Department of Civic Design, Liverpool University; the Planning Research Conference, University College London and Columbia University, New York. Thanks to all those who provided critical comments on these occasions, and to Claudio de Magalhaes for his comments on the first draft. Thanks to Peter Hall, Michael Edwards and Nicholas Falk for useful hints on the genealogy of the Urban Renaissance agenda. Thanks to two of the anonymous referees for their detailed comments and to Vincent Nadin, editor, for his helpful, constructive guidance.

Notes

1. London was an exception: after experiencing a net decline in population throughout the 1960s and 1970s, the city started gaining population again during the 1980s, largely due to international migrations.

2. The city centres of Manchester and Liverpool had 10,000 residents in 2005, as opposed to a few hundreds a decade before (Guy et al., 2005).

3. The concept of ‘urban renaissance’, however, has been taken up by towns and cities across the country, with a host of delivery bodies, such as Bedford or Harlow Renaissance, using the term. I am indebted to Nicholas Falk for pointing this out.

4. The American ‘New Urbanism’ movement emerged as a reaction against the visible failures of modernist urban planning in the US: urban sprawl, social breakdown, car dependency and inner city decay (Ellin, 1999). It aims at restoring quality public and residential spaces at a human scale to generate a renewed ‘sense of community’. John Prescott, former UK Secretary of State in charge of urban policy between 2001 and 2006, often referred to New Urbanism in his speeches.