Sustainable Community Regeneration and Liverpool:
An Introduction
Irene Hall
This short paper is intended to be an introductory
overview of issues in UK urban policy as context for the current concerns
facing Liverpool and its communities. The first section includes a brief
look at the way policy has developed over the last 3 decades as a background
to New Labour’s approach to regeneration – then moves on
to current debates policy debates, concluding with some views on sustainable
community development and urban renaissance. The second section relates
these issues briefly to the city of Liverpool while the third section
concentrates on some features of the Liverpool case study area –
The Dingle.
Section One:
Community policy from the 1970s to New Labour
In the 1970s, the Government-sponsored Community Development Project
aimed to target “multiple deprivation” problems faced by
localities. Twelve pilot areas were selected (the writer was a researcher
on the South Wales CDP) and a model of action-research was adopted to
encourage local involvement in problem-solving. Monitoring and evaluation
strategies were deployed to help integrate government services, to ensure
greater communication and local focus. Although self-help was an important
value of CDP, many of the teams reported that greater external (i.e.
government) funding was required to tackle employment, improve housing
and raise educational standards. The value of CDP was in its emphasising
of meaningful local participation if community regeneration was to succeed,
while highlighting the limitations of any strategy which did not deal
with the causes of poverty (and with the need for substantial government
resources).
The neoliberal Thatcher government came to power
in 1979, and people and communities gave place to property as the focus
for regeneration, with state intervention being replaced by the market
as the solution for all ills. By the 1980s, this had led to regeneration
from the top, “with partnerships between corporate interests that
had little interest in encouraging grass-roots participation.”
(Imrie & Raco, 2003:11) Private investment in cities was encouraged
through subsidies, tax breaks, and reductions in planning controls.
Imrie & Raco argue that far from there being a successful “trickle
down” of wealth to local communities, the effect was a polarisation
of incomes, intensification of poverty, gentrification, rising land
values and social fragmentation with ‘sink estates’ emerging.
In Liverpool, the City Council reported in 1991 that 40% of Liverpool’s
population had lived in poverty in the previous year, a figure equal
to 6 out of every 10 households in the inner-city wards.
The early 90s (still under a Conservative Government)
saw a return to the ideas of community participation, although with
a shift of focus – to competitive bidding programmes (primarily
City Challenge and the Single Regeneration Budget Challenge Fund). Partnerships
were now required between local authorities, communities, private sector
and voluntary interests, although commentators noted that these programmes
did not alter much and had little “impact on the levels of alienation
felt by communities in the most deprived urban areas”. (Foley
and Martin, 2000: 481)
New Labour
The Labour Government was elected in 1997 with a commitment to ‘ignite
a new spirit of involvement in the community’ (Blair Speech, 1999).
The discourses of community and urban life which have developed have
generated a huge raft of policies and programmes, with a plethora of
targets and initiatives, presenting something of a minefield for those
seeking a simple and accessible route to understanding regeneration!
It’s clear, however, that New Labour is genuinely committed to
regenerating communities, to encouraging citizen participation and tackling
poverty through programmes which improve housing and educational standards
and which increase the capacities and skills of the unemployed and underemployed
in the inner city areas. However, contradictions inevitably exist, while
the power of the market remains the dominant force even for a Government
dedicated to Third Way solutions to urban and community (see below).
Ade Kearns (2003) notes how Labour policy discourse
was initially dominated by the language of social exclusion, but after
the second electoral victory (2001), the dialogue shifted to social
capital – drawing on the communitarian ideas of Etzioni and emphasising
the 3 main components for successful communities as being active social
networks, shared social norms and high levels of trust. The Social Exclusion
Unit in 2000 advocated ‘reviving communities’ through resident
consultation, and improved local management, with communities likely
to function well where there was:
A broad social mix
An agreed set of rules, consistently applied
Places to interact- such as shops and community venues
And volunteering was encouraged
Communitarian ideals find expression in the politics
of The Third Way, i.e. a middle route between the State and the market.
“Labour’s approach to urban regeneration is based, first
and foremost, on policies designed to provide people with the skills
and capacities to reduce (their) poverty and dependence on welfare”
(Imrie & Raco, 2003: 13). Partnerships, which include active citizens,
are still seen as an essential means of producing regeneration, through
Neighbourhood Renewal Teams, Local Strategic Partnerships (LSPs) and
Regional Development Agencies (RDAs). There are also 12 Urban Regeneration
Companies (such as Liverpool Vision) – a programme reminiscent
of the Thatcher quangos. Community self-help is therefore allied to
private investment and to local and national government programmes.
The Neighbourhood Renewal Unit (NRU) spearheads
the policy of concentrating public spending to benefit the most deprived
areas (i.e. “bending" mainstream funding) with Public Service
Agreements (PSAs) setting service delivery targets (such as the2000
target for local authorities and social landlords to reduce by 33% the
number of households living in non-decent social housing). Alongside
mainstreaming are the Area Based Initiatives (ABIs) which are locality-based
– such as Health Action Zones (HAZs). The New Deal for Communities
(launched in 1998) aims to empower communities by increasing the number
of people in work, raising educational levels, reducing crime and improving
health. At present 80% of NDC resources are targeted at the 65 most
deprived areas in Britain.
Some criticisms can be noted. Partnering may deliver
linking social capital (Putnam, 2000:) but it means that power is being
shifted from the community level - and even from the level of city government
– with increasing importance now being given to players with a
wider remit, including those operating at regional level. Finding partners
is time consuming and is difficult for small, community based organisations
or individuals without the networking skills and opportunities of professionals.
The targets which community and voluntary organisations have to meet
are centrally set, and impose what has been termed the new managerialism
on groups which are expected to meet unrealistic standards of accountability
set by professionals at the top. Independence is giving way to control
by experts.
Criticisms have also been made of the NDC –
because the emphasis on capacity-building and skills training assumes
that deprivation is due to individual deficiency. For Schneider and
Ingram (1997) such an assumption is characteristic of a “degenerate”
policy design - i.e. a policy which separates the deserving and the
undeserving, with the latter being subject to increasingly punitive
policies. Kearns (2003: 53) notes that the communitarianism of The Third
Way is optimistic about the creative potential of individuals, but it
can also have authoritarian overtones, and is an approach which “avoids
the issues of structural inequalities and redistribution of power and
resources, since the ethos is to ‘help others to help themselves’”.
This seems to bring us back full circle to the CDP dilemmas of the 1970s
and appears to underestimate both the focussing of Government resources
on to communities in need, and to the recognition (in documentation
at least) that active involvement of communities is essential for regeneration
to succeed.
The nitty-gritty question, of course, is how to
get communities actively involved. A number of research findings have
been published in the UK (often sponsored by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation
and published by the Policy Press). One such study by Purdue et al (2000:2)
notes the emphasis on the role of community leaders, “individuals
who are elected, selected, nominated, self-appointed, arm-twisted, or
otherwise chosen as the ‘leaders’ of a ‘community’.
Increasingly such ‘leaders’ are members of a regeneration
partnership…” After conducting research in 9 localities,
the report concluded that “Most power does not lie in the hands
of community leaders…but in government policies and the structures
of central and local government. The shift from local government to
local governance heralded by the plethora of partnerships in recent
years has left many established power relationships undisturbed…The
reality is that community leaders have responsibility but little power.”
(Purdue et al, 2000:44) The study concludes with a number of recommendations
for enhancing community leadership, such as reducing bureaucracy and
simplifying the bidding process for partnerships, better training and
support, and more inclusive programmes for recruitment of community
representatives. Not mentioned, but of importance to the US-EC Project,
is the role of the university in all this.
Loretta Lees (2003: 61) raises the final issue
for this paper – how the metaphor of urban regeneration is being
replaced with that of urban renaissance. After analysing the Urban Task
Force (UTF) Report 1999 and the Urban White Paper of 2000, she notes
that “regeneration…expresses anxiety about social degeneration…renaissance
is the medicine for urban malaise” (Lees, 2003: 66-67). She applauds
these papers for balancing US and West European models in a policy which
is more holistic and longer-term than previous policies, noting that
renaissance is used interchangeably with urban sustainability to denote
concerns for social and economic issues as well as the physical environment.
In practice, however, urban sustainability tends
to be restricted to environmental rather than social concerns, and relates
mainly to urban densification, with housing being zoned to brownfield
rather than greenfield sites to create a compact ecological city with
less traffic, lower pollution and a reduced impact on global warming.
Gentrification is ignored in the Government’s urban policy documents,
and Lees points out there is an assumption that the new city dwellers
will all be middle class, a prioritising that “inevitably leads
to displacement and social polarisation”. Gentrification research
has found that social mixing does not take place, and that when couples
have children, they tend to leave the city (with its lack of schools
and child facilities) for the suburbs. Amin’s criticism is more
strident. “…working-class people will find a niche –
servicing-middle class people, acting as evidence of multicultural cosmopolitanism
or exemplifying the problem communities. What they will not be is central
to urban regeneration”. (Amin et al, 2000: 22 - 23) The regeneration/
renaissance/ gentrification of the cities is market-led, with the Government
assisting by lack of intervention and it does appear that without controls,
there will be a considerable clash with the ‘new spirit of involvement
in the community’ with which this section began. The property-led
regeneration of the Thatcher years has not gone away.
Liverpool
In Liverpool: Gateway of Empire (1987) Tony Lane notes that “The
condition of Liverpool today is a direct outcome of the changing fortunes
of the port”. After becoming an independent port in 1647, Liverpool
became a major port in the slave trade to the point that by the end
of the eighteenth century it had captured nearly half of the European
slave trade and over half the British trade (Wilks-Heeg, 2003: 39 –40).
After the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade in 1808, the port
became a principal centre for handling cotton, coal and manufactured
goods and from the mid-19th century, Liverpool was also a key departure
point for emigrants to the New World. After 1914 the port declined,
although in recent years the decline has reversed to the point where
it is now handling more cargo than at any other time in its history.
Wilks-Heeg notes that “there is now widespread recognition of
the city’s claims to be spearheading an urban renaissance…The
city boasts a booming cultural scene, has become an increasingly popular
tourist destination and, outside London, is rivalled only by Manchester
in its explosion of ‘loft living’. However…Liverpool
continues to experience some of the worst poverty of any UK city and
doubts remain about the real extent of the city’s economic recovery”.
(2003:50)
Regeneration in the city followed the pattern of
UK policy outlined in the previous section. During the Thatcher years,
there was a market-oriented and property-led approach to urban regeneration
with private investment being encouraged through the Merseyside Development
Corporation. The enforced sale of Council houses during this era reduced
the amount of social housing available, while many homes on the big
council estates in Liverpool and on its periphery fell into disrepair
because of the Conservative policy of cutting government support to
local authorities. During the 70s the re-organisation of local government
split the powers of waste collection and disposal between the district
and county councils, responsibility for public transport was removed
from the city to the (then) county and a regional water authority took
over water supply and sewage disposal. According to Couch (2003) this
seriously eroded corporate planning, so that today Liverpool has to
work with a complex set of inter-corporate policy makers.
In the 1990s Couch indicates a more holistic approach
to regeneration was adopted, with New Labour giving the City Council
renewed responsibilities as facilitator/ co-ordinator rather than service-provider.
The successful City Challenge and SRB Challenge bids required wide consultation
and partnership with other agencies, though the regeneration headed
by English Partnerships and the North West Development Agency remained
top-down. As most regeneration since 1993 has been supported by the
latter agencies, Couch notes that sustainability has not been a priority.
The Dingle
The Dingle is an inner-city area within Liverpool 8 (or ‘Toxteth’),
south of the city centre and traditionally associated with the docks.
There is a mix of housing, ranging from early Victorian terraces, social
housing (council and housing association), housing co-operatives (working
class self-build schemes) and gentrified redevelopment of properties
facing the waterfront.
There used to be a community spirit but I think
that the reason why it isn’t the same now is that people are more
fearful and they won’t trust people the way they used to.
The shops have just declined, they’ve just
gone, there’s nothing.
We haven’t even got a bus.
No, not down Mill Street.
Hall, (2003:207) who provides these quotations from residents of the
Dingle, notes that there have been a number of regeneration programmes
in the area, the latest being ‘Dingle 2000’ (SRB-funded)
and despite the pessimistic quotes, residents had been involved in decisions
affecting the physical environment (notably ‘alley-gating’
or blocking access by criminals and others to the alleys which back
their homes).
However the negativity of local Dingle people can
be explained by the observation by Imrie and Raco that core public services
such as healthcare and transport are increasingly being controlled and
operated by private companies, intent on profit maximisation often at
the expense of poorer communities with less consumer power.
“At the same time, poorer communities are often isolated from
circuits of consumption because providers of core private sector services
such as banking and food retailing have, with the assistance of planning
policies, deserted poorer locations in the search for profits elsewhere
(Rose, 200c). Arguably, such trends have impacted upon the everyday
lives of urban residents and communities to a far greater extent than
the various urban policy initiatives that have been designed to assist
them”. (Imrie & Raco, 2003: 30)
Currently Dingle Community Regeneration Trust (DCRT)
remains to carry on the work begun by Dingle 2000, working alongside
other regeneration agencies. A Report by an MSc student, Sarah Bailey,
noted that “the fact that they are a small sized regeneration
agency … means that they are approachable and unintimidating to
those who call in” (Bailey, 2003:21) although the limited budget
of the Trust meant that they were struggling to make local residents
aware of their existence and potential.
There is evidence of sustainability in the Dingle,
and one of the reasons for selecting the area for the US-EC Project
is to explore this activity. DCRT is housed in the Toxteth Town Hall,
which operates nowadays as a Community Resource Centre. Other organisations
which use the facilities include a successful social enterprise, Energywise
Recycling, where another MSc student has recently conducted an evaluation
of the “blue bag” scheme. (Atkinson, 2004). There is also
an active and high profile Credit Union in the area (Hall, 2000) and
there have been successful housing co-operatives locally, beginning
with the well documented experiences of the Weller Street Co-operative
(McDonald, 1986).
Another student, conducting research for a faith-based
charity in the area, made a positive comment that the designation of
Liverpool as European Capital of Culture 2008 could have an enormous
impact, with the promise of the title bringing “approximately
£2 billion to the city’s cultural and tourism infrastructure
over the next five years”, and with the Dingle being located on
one of the main thorough-fares to the John Lennon airport, it stood
a good chance of benefiting (Rundle, 2004). However, this is likely
to be a mixed blessing, as the Capital of Culture award has already
led to house prices soaring this year in Liverpool, and the local media
has been publicising the activities of speculators arriving from London
to buy up streets of poor quality homes. Homelessness has doubled this
year, and part of the Dingle case study research will be to explore
whether gentrification is being increased as a result of the Capital
of Culture with the consequent detriment – rather than benefit
– to local residents.
References:
Amin, A, Massey, D & Thrift, N (2000) Cities for the many not the
few, Bristol: The Policy Press
Atkinson, K (2004) Evaluation of the “Blue Bag Scheme”,
submitted as Mscdissertation, Liverppol Univeristy
Bailey, S (2003) Evaluation Study for Dingle Community Regeneration
Trust, MSc Disssertation, Liverpool University
Couch, C (2003) City of Change and Challenge: Urban Planning and Regeneration
in Liverpool, Ashgate
Etzioni, A (1993) The Spirit of Community Fontana Press
Hall, D (2003) Chapter 10 ‘Images of the City’ in Munck,
R (ed), Reinventing the City? Liverpool University Press
Hall, I (2000) ‘Credit Unions: Delivering Material and Social
Capital to the Working Class?’, ‘International Society for
Third-Sector Research Conference, Dublin
Imrie, R & Raco, M eds (2003) From Urban Renaissance? New Labour,
community and urban policy, Bristol: The Policy Press
Kearns, A (2003) in Imrie and Raco (ibid) Chapter 2
Foley,P & Martin, S (2000) ‘A new deal for the community?
Public participation in regeneration and local service delivery’,
Policy and Politics, vol28, pp479 – 91)
Lane, T (1987) Liverpool: Gateway of Empire, London: Lawrence &
Wishart
Lees, L (2003) in Imrie and Raco (ibid) Chapter 3
McDonald, A (1986) The Weller Way, London & Boston, Faber &
Faber
Munck, R (2003) (ed), Reinventing the City? Liverpool University Press
Putnam, R D (2000) Bowling Alone: the collapse and revival of American
community, Simon & Schuster: New York
Rundle, D (2004) Reflexive Report, Dissertation, Liverpool Hope University
College
Schneider, A & Ingram, H (1997) Policy design for democracy. Kansas:
Kansas University press
Wilks-Heeg, S (2003) ‘From World City to Pariah City? Liverpool
and the Global Economy’ in Munck, R ed, Reinventing the City?
Liverpool University Press
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