Designing the Urban Renaissance

Sustainable and competitive place making in England

verfasst von: Francesco Vescovi

Verlag: Springer Netherlands

Enthalten in: Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" , Springer Professional "Technik" , Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

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Über dieses Buch

This book is an academic essay about the urban regeneration policies which have been changing the physical - and partly social - outlook of many English cities during the last 10-15 years, eventually giving birth to a process which is also known as ‘Urban Renaissance’. The main focus is on urban design: the way it has been promoted by the government as an important means for delivering attractive places in more sustainable and competitive cities. The research describes the support given to local authorities for this purpose through new laws and powers, the publishing of planning and design manuals and the delivery of especially dedicated funds, bodies and programmes. It also explores the character and purpose of new developments such as scientific parks, creative/cultural quarters, retail and commercial dis-tricts, public realm works, describing recurring design rules and features.

Readers interested in urban policies, architecture and the built environment will find a concise yet comprehensive explanation, enriched by more than a hundred pictures, on why and how many towns and cities like Birmingham, Nottingham, Leicester or Sheffield have been changing during the last decade.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Frontmatter

Chapter 1. The Recent Reform of the English Planning System

Abstract

Although some of the major cities of the United Kingdom such as Glasgow, Birmingham and Manchester have launched own policies and plans aimed at reversing their relentless physical and economic decline already in the late 1980s, it is with the gradual reform of the territorial government that began in the next decade that the urban renaissance process, a movement that has become widespread nationally, found its own institutional framework. To better grasp the scope of the changes introduced by the New Labour executive of Tony Blair, it is therefore useful to give a brief account of the planning system in force in England before the important changes made by the ‘Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act’ of 2004.

Francesco Vescovi

Chapter 2. New Strategic Drivers for the Regeneration of Cities

Abstract

Since 1997, when the Planning Policy Guidance note 1 (PPG1) was revised, the English government has attempted to reinvigorate and update the role of planning in policies of local and national territorial control. Several documents explicitly stressed the new task of active intervention that should connote the actions of local authorities in assuring adequate qualitative standards for the enhancement and development of urban areas, not merely from a spatial perspective but also in terms of their social and economic profiles. Given the complex knit of objectives to be pursued in any attempt to wed competitiveness and sustainability, legislation placed particular emphasis on the plan as a flexible and indispensable instrument for controlling and verifying development processes.

Francesco Vescovi

Chapter 3. Stakeholders, Programmes and Strategies

Abstract

The English urban renaissance conducted over the last two decades was made possible largely due to the technical and financial direction of the national regeneration agency English Partnerships (EP), merged in 2008 into the new Homes and Communities Agency (HCA), which reports to the Department for Communities and Local Government. The complex and broad mandate of English Partnerships was to promote economic and social development through policies of land transformation aimed at improving residential, environmental and infrastructural conditions, with four areas of intervention: sustainable regeneration; social housing; the strategic reconversion of brownfield sites; the promotion and dissemination of best practices in terms of urban redevelopment; and quality of design and environmental compatibility. The tasks and programmes of the old agency, often administered in partnership with other agencies or ministries, were transmitted in full to the new Homes and Communities Agency, which also took on those formerly assigned to the Housing Corporation (housing policies) and to the Academy for Sustainable Communities (research and training), both now merged into the new entity.

Francesco Vescovi

Chapter 4. Elements of Design Strategy

Abstract

The design of places, together with and through that complex network of subjects, instruments and policies described so far, in most cases has confirmed its paramount importance in interpreting and linking together coherently the great amount of development opportunities and needs arising from the fabric of the cities. It helped to coordinate within clear strategic frameworks the huge investments made by the private sector – supported by a particularly positive economic climate during the years that preceded the present global downturn – as well as the interventions promoted by the government and other public bodies. Very often different cities share common objectives, both because their urban regeneration policies face very similar situations and necessities and because many regional and national guidelines narrow the range of planning priorities and options. Thus, it is possible to define some recurrent design issues and trajectories – although variously interpreted by each Core Strategy and its more specific supplementary guidance – giving a description of the way they induced, during the last decade, even some radical changes in the British urban landscape.

Francesco Vescovi

Chapter 5. Conclusions: Short Notes on the English Lesson

Abstract

The new English planning system has been able to plan lucidly its development policies in the context of the global market economy. On the one hand, it has strengthened those control levels which fit the new territorial dimension of the knowledge economy, that is, the metro-regional and local level, by introducing new mechanisms, bodies and management tools aimed at achieving practical, safe and timely results. The central government has thus been partly devolved within a renovated hierarchy of powers and skills more related to the local scale – now even more reinforced by the recent actions of the Liberal Democrat Coalition – and to hybrid public-private bodies, widely promoted and disseminated at various levels and in different fields.

Francesco Vescovi

Backmatter

Titel: Designing the Urban Renaissance
verfasst von: Francesco Vescovi
Verlag: Springer Netherlands
Electronic ISBN: 978-94-007-5631-1
Print ISBN: 978-94-007-5630-4
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5631-1