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Abstract
Through this paper, I seek to draw attention an apparent fundamental resignification of regeneration that has been taking shape over recent times. Conceptually, I engage with political economy theory in order to examine how élite economic interests have resignified the nature of state articulations of regeneration. The argument is developed that this implies a profound subversion of more marginal socio-economic interests traditionally at the heart of regeneration interventions or at least the customary ‘targets’ of such policy. Empirically, the analysis draws upon interviews conducted with those operating at the coalface of policy, politics and practice, augmented by my practical experience of the English regeneration milieu. Documenting the contested evolution of policy practice during what I term the ‘regenerating for recovery’ phase, I investigate the interactions and interconnections between meanings, modes and scales of practice. This analysis helps to demonstrate dual aspects of the resignification of regeneration as both cause and condition that has effectively legitimated and been legitimised by an austere state strategy.
Notes
1. This paper is limited to analysing one of many different varieties of regeneration. Other popular variants include ‘community regeneration’ and ‘market regeneration’ that remain beyond the scope of this research.
2. The ‘regenerating for recovery’ heuristic is not intended to generate a sharply defined periodisation. Rather, it is intended to characterise the policy and economic environment in the immediate aftermath of the credit crunch and the years that followed.
3. State is defined for the purposes of this paper as including local and national government, state agencies (e.g. QUANGOs) and state-sponsored regeneration vehicles and governance arrangements.
4. Counter-strategies, such as community-led conservation projects, can be mobilised to ‘fight back’ against state-led regeneration projects.
5. The retreat from deprived areas was tempered by those places deemed to exhibit ‘untapped potential’, such as edge of city locations with relatively low land values, through the kinds of regeneration processes that Harvey (Citation2003) describes as ‘accumulation by dispossession’.
6. Technologies of governance, such as Local Strategic Partnerships, largely struggled to coordinate and/or make scalar complexity and confusion more legible.
7. The claim, by Labour, that the effectiveness of regeneration was ultimately contingent on broader economic growth was subsequently extended by the Coalition as they espoused the need to work with market forces, irrespective of social costs associated with unforgiving market restructuring (HM Government Citation2010b). Such a view would appear to support managed decline as championed by Leunig and Swaffield (Citation2008) as part of their socially and environmentally insensitive prescriptions to ‘make regeneration work’.
8. It was claimed that in the 12 months between each version of Regeneration to enable growth that ‘Government has made considerable progress with its growth and localism agendas, which has added several new tools to the regeneration toolkit’ (Communities and Local Government (CLG) Citation2012: unpaginated), although supporting evidence was not forthcoming.
9. Distinct from Labour’s regeneration framework was the brevity of the Coalition’s regeneration toolkit – less than 4 pages of text embellished with 20 pages tabulating a strange mixture of regeneration ‘tools’ and ‘resources’, seemingly a compound of activities, initiatives, services and policies that central government was already doing, or intending to do, and with little direct relevance to holistic interpretations of regeneration.
10. Largely self-funded forms of community-led regeneration, a purported ‘tool’ in the Coalition’s barren ‘regeneration toolkit’, have been put forward as an alternative to state-funded regeneration programmes, suggesting in an overly simplistic manner that it will emerge organically where community groups deem it preferable.
11. In essence, the RGF replaces the RDAs’ Single Programme but with some key differences, namely a reduced overall funding pot, managed by central government rather than regional QUANGOs, and a realignment of priorities favouring businesses to focus on the Coalition’s objective of ‘rebalancing the economy’, whereas the Single Programme was intended to support sustainable regional development. Following Lord Heseltine’s review (Citation2012), a single Local Growth Fund intended to support ‘key economic levers’ is to be created and is anticipated to be operational by 2015 (HM Treasury & BIS Citation2013). Indicative analysis of Local Growth Deals demonstrates the relative absence of funding to regeneration objectives: of the 352 supported projects clearly named, less than 3% relate to regeneration schemes.
12. With the demise of the British Urban Regeneration Association set up in 1990, which entered into voluntary liquidation in August 2010, the sector no longer has a central mouthpiece, though some think-tanks and other networks continue to make their voices heard in Whitehall.
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Notes on contributors
Lee Pugalis
Lee Pugalis is Reader in Entrepreneurship at Northumbria University where he chairs the Research Group for Economic Development, Innovation and Entrepreneurship (REDIE). His research interests include enterprising places, urban policy and governance and spatial justice, on which he has published widely. He is a World Social Science Fellow, an expert advisor to the Assembly of European Regions, an Associate Director of TWRI Policy & Research consultancy, Vice Chair of the Urban Design Network and serves on the board of the Centre for Local Economic Strategies (CLES).