Urban Renewal, Community and Participation

Through comparing and contrasting two neighbourhoods in Hong Kong, this chapter aims to examine how the broader evolving socio-economic and political contexts affect competing place-framing discourses. It is argued that in a liberal political economy dominated by the state, urban renewal adopts primarily a ‘slash and burn’ approach, redeveloping the physical fabric for more intensive growth, breaking up communities and diminishing the sense of place and community. The Kwun Tong Town Centre Redevelopment Project was announced in 1997 but due to financial reasons, actual redevelopment did not take place until 2012. As landlords stopped maintaining the buildings, the district suffered from serious urban blight and a vicious cycle of poor environmental conditions, faltering social capital and sense of community. The story is completely different in the Blue House, a cluster of tenement buildings providing various services to the community. When the renewal authority announced in 2006 a HK$100 million project to displace residents and transform the 80+ years old building into a shopping mall, local residents and civil society organisations worked together to change the place-framing discourse to a need of enriching the urban fabric with creative and entrepreneurial uses, strengthening of bonding, bridging and linking capitals among different stakeholders and their sense of community. Eventually, the Government was persuaded to include the Blue House building cluster into the Revitalising Historic Buildings Through Partnership Scheme. The local alliance eventually succeeded in bidding for the project, turning the building cluster into residential cum community facilities to serve local socio-economic needs.

The Gorbals area of Glasgow, Scotland, is widely regarded as a successful example of urban regeneration. However, this neighbourhood, like many similar working-class urban areas, has been subjected to repeated cycles of renewal. This chapter seeks to explore the history of a ‘successful’ regeneration, looking both spatially and socially at what has happened in Glasgow’s Gorbals over the long term. In the past, ‘regeneration’ was often a process enacted on behalf of residents by planners, architects and municipal authorities. We posit a multi-method approach, tracking changing policy ambitions, physical change, and exploring the resulting physical and social environments in order to investigate the complex inter-relations between space, place, community and time. The authors argue for the centrality of the narratives of those who have lived in the area both in the past and today in any assessment of relative ‘success’.

Engaging communities in neighbourhood regeneration processes is vital for achieving inclusive cities, particularly when vulnerable groups belong to these communities. In the UK, different governments have implemented diverse strategies, funding schemes and approaches to social housing estates’ regeneration, which have implied various degrees of involvement of the residents in decision-making processes. This paper explores the approaches to community participation in the regeneration of social housing neighbourhoods since 1997—when the New Labour won the general elections—until today. Within this period, it identifies two models: the government-led regeneration scheme New Deal for Communities implemented by the New Labour Government, which provided funding for intervening in deprived areas and which included representatives of the community in the decision-making board; and the Big Society approach implemented by the Coalition Government in the context of austerity, which advocates for a state-enabling approach and has changed the planning system to involve communities in decision-making. The paper explores how these two models have addressed the participation of residents in social housing regeneration. For doing so, it looks at the policy context and case studies in these two periods. The paper concludes that community participation needs easier processes, which do not require such a strong effort from community groups. It also concludes that both funding and support is needed to promote community engagement in regeneration processes, which can, first, serve as an incentive to be more actively involved in the regeneration of their neighbourhood, and second, do not rely on private investment for the improvement of council estates.

Gentrification is a contentious form of urban regeneration as it has been associated with class conflicts and the displacement of working-class residents. However, with the evolution and intensification of gentrification, its once clear-cut ties to displacement have been obscured and displacement is now often denied and contested in the literature. Indeed displacement has declined as a research question and as a defining feature of gentrification. Furthermore, a number of recent studies have provided quantitative evidence of the limited extent of displacement and have questioned whether low-income residents are indeed displaced and whether gentrification is detrimental to the poor. However, these studies all share a particular understanding of gentrification-induced displacement as a process primarily concerned with the eviction of people from a certain area. However, displacement occurs via a number of other processes and in this study, Marcuses’s conceptualisation of displacement is used in exploring the experiences of displacement of inner-city residents in Johannesburg, South Africa, where gentrification processes are emerging. A qualitative approach was used in uncovering the experiences of working-class residents living in gentrifying areas, as well as those who have been excluded or physically displaced by gentrification processes. The findings of the research suggest that although gentrification is a relatively new phenomenon in South Africa, it has the potential to displace many poor inner-city residents, who may not necessarily gain access to alternative, affordable housing.

Given the existing problems of shrinking traditional markets and declining commercial competitiveness in South Korea, hereafter referred to as Korea, the country’s national agencies and local government have launched various market revitalization programmes to assist with modernizing market facilities and improving business management. The 2006 Jagalchi Market Modernization project is an example of facility modernization that entailed the redevelopment of an existing building in one of the most historic seafood markets in Busan Metropolitan City. Established during the Korean War (1950–1953) while Busan was the city with the most war refugees, the market is a significant historic place that is imbued with a unique culture created by the people who have sustained the market over the past 60 years. This chapter highlights the significance of the market’s historical particularities and authentic sense of place, which are reflective of the people who have inhabited the marketplace. It also problematizes the outward-looking nature of the Jagalchi Market Modernization, which is represented by the architectural design of the new Jagalchi Market building and the street renovation project targeting outside visitors, and it discusses the unique sense of place that was either neglected or compromised during the process of market modernization.

The phrase ‘wrong side of the tracks’ is widely understood. It implies not only the spatial separation created by railway lines but also the social, economic and cultural differences caused by this separation. However, there is limited understanding of the social, cultural or economic development of neighbourhoods located on the ‘wrong side’ behind large stations, separated from city centres. London has more railway terminals than any other city, most built during the nineteenth century. It is, therefore, the ideal location for studying the long-term relationship between terminals and surrounding neighbourhoods. This chapter looks at Paddington and Marylebone during two time periods, the 1890s (the height of railway activity in London) and the 2010s. A combination of historical investigation, land use mapping and built form analysis is used to test the hypothesis that the presence of railway structures in the urban fabric creates separation, with long-term outcomes for neighbourhood development.

Traditional expert-led heritage conservation is challenged from dissonance and multi-participation perspectives. Researchers highlight the importance of involving residents who encounter heritage every day and value heritage differently from professionals. However, professionals in our study in Qingdao complain about a lack of enthusiasm from the public. This paper explores the advantages and disadvantages that local professionals see when considering resident involvement in heritage conservation. Results indicate that residents recognize the significance of heritage and have some knowledge of heritage, but ignore their responsibility of heritage conservation. Inhabitants who reside in old buildings pursue other priorities than conservation. Attempts are made to involve residents but in practice, professionals still perceive residents’ understanding and willingness from authorized perspectives, and prefer to reduce gaps of knowledge through ‘educating’ the public.

Cities/regions across Europe are increasingly using events to catalyse culture and aid community development. The European Capital of Culture promotes economic production using culture to drive the restructuring of social legacies, job creation and civic repositioning. This chapter assesses how residents of Matera, Italy view their destination’s competitiveness ahead of the 2019 European Capital of Culture using the Integrated Model of Destination Competitiveness. Because the survey was completed by local residents, a new determinant is considered (Social Conditions to Improve Local Well-being) to understand how the event will benefit the local city community of Matera. This chapter analyses results from 200 competitiveness surveys completed by residents from Matera and the immediate Basilicata region. Respondents identify strengths and weaknesses of 83 indicators organised by determinant of destination competitiveness. Sample mean values (\(\bar{X}\)) and standard deviations (SD) for each indicator are presented, and the discussion of the findings reflects on the preparedness of Matera ahead of 2019. While the results are often measured to indicate elements of tourism, gaining insight from local residents offers insight on the need for urban renewal, social impacts and community well-being as the destination prepares to host events and for increased tourism in 2019.

Citizen participation is a key element in publicly funded community development projects, but the key to citizen engagement is not yet fully understood. In Ohio, applications for a competitive element of the Community Development Block Grant were declining, and program administrators were considering scrapping the program entirely based on community feedback on the difficulty of the requisite citizen participation. In urban areas, a direct connection between traditionally disenfranchised populations, neighborhood identity, and increased participation has been observed. However, in rural areas, the link between socioeconomic indicators and engagement is often harder to find, as demographics are often more homogenous than urban areas. Neighborhood identity may also stretch to a broader regional definition in small cities. This research seeks to discover if demographics or neighborhood identity play a strong role in citizen engagement, in order to develop a predictive model for participation.

Cities are facing economic, social and environmental challenges of growing complexity. Solutions will only be possible by value-based, integrative and inclusive concepts, approaches and processes. Therefore, transdisciplinarity and new governance methods, such as Urban Labs, are needed to meet today’s ‘Grand Challenges’. The transdisciplinary approach of this chapter is based on city-specific societal challenges, which are supplemented by specific scientific challenges leading to science–society interactions and knowledge exchange using participatory experimental platforms, like Living Labs and City Labs. Real-life experiments in these Urban Labs support networking, social and reflexive learning for joint visions, capacity building and co-designing beyond hierarchies, unequal power relations and the dominance of economic interests. Consequently, these novel forms of governance lead to new coalitions and networks, technical and social innovations that foster the capacity of urban actors to cope with complex change dynamics.