Applying the Lessons Learnt
| Author | Amanda Smith |
| Published date | 01 April 2008 |
| Date | 01 April 2008 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0952076707086252 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
© Public Policy and Administration
SAGE Publications Ltd
Los Angeles, London, New Delhi
and Singapore
0952-0767
200804 23(2) 145–152
Applying the Lessons Learnt
Community Involvement in Regeneration
Amanda Smith
Nottingham Trent University, UK
Abstract
Community involvement is now seen as central to regeneration policy and
practice. Yet it is by no means easy to achieve. This article explores the
popularity of community involvement and points to some of the key lessons
that can be drawn from recent, and past, research on the topic. I suggest that
many of these lessons are not being applied and provide some suggestions for
why this may be the case. I conclude that central government could do a lot
more to enable the application of both individual and organizational learning.
Keywords
community involvement, learning, regeneration
The Popularity of Community Involvement
The issue of community involvement in regeneration has received considerable
attention in England (and elsewhere) since the 1980s (Atkinson and Cope, 1997).
The issue has been of importance to regeneration since the 1960s and the deploy-
ment of the Urban Programme; however, it was the analyses of the Thatcher
government’s neo-liberal market-led experiments in urban regeneration during
the 1980s that focused our attention clearly on the ‘community’ and their ‘role’ in
regeneration processes and outcomes. Indeed, a plethora of critiques highlighted
the travesties in policy that were ‘not about improving the lives of disadvantaged
people and communities’ (Robinson et al., 2005: 13), but more about promoting
physical redevelopment, economic leverage of private sector monies for public
sector investment, and with claims that such benefits would ‘trickle-down’ to local
people (deprived communities) in the longer term (Brownill, 1990; Imrie and
Thomas, 1993). There were numerous calls for community-based regeneration
initiatives, bottom-up approaches to counteract the perceived failures of the top-
down market driven approaches that dominated the 1980s (Smith and Schlesinger,
1993).
DOI: 10.1177/0952076707086252
Amanda Smith, School of Arts & Humanities, Nottingham Trent University, Clifton Campus,
Nottingham NG11 8NS, UK. [email: amanda.smith02@ntu.ac.uk]
145
Public Policy and Administration 23(2)
The Government responded to such calls with City Challenge in 1991 and the
Single Regeneration Budget (SRB) in 1994, both of which stressed the role of
local communities in the development of regeneration strategies, in partnership
with local government, the private sector and voluntary bodies. SRB was also
characterized by an emphasis upon the allocation of funds in a competitive
manner, leading to criticisms of the programme as a ‘beauty contest’, with inher-
ent geographic bias and limited equity (Oatley, 1998). In addition, while there
were efforts to engender community engagement, these often amounted to little
more than consultation with affected communities (Atkinson and Cope, 1997;
Colenutt and Cutten, 1994; Davoudi and Healey, 1995).
Towards the end of the 1990s, the newly emergent Social Exclusion Unit (SEU)
significantly influenced regeneration policy and practices. The SEU was estab-
lished by the ‘New Labour’ Government, in 1997, in order to reduce ‘social exclu-
sion’. There was a recognition that previous approaches had failed to ‘set in motion
the virtuous circle of regeneration’ (Social Exclusion Unit [SEU], 1998: 9). Upon
election the Government set about undertaking a comprehensive review of regen-
eration policy, which was largely led by the work of the SEU (Tiesdell and
Allmendinger, 2001). In 1998 the SEU published Bringing Britain Together: A
National Strategy for Neighbourhood Renewal, which stressed the need to learn key
lessons, including the need to involve communities and not ‘parachuting’ in solu-
tions. This is a theme that has become a mantra for neighbourhood renewal policy:
unless the community is fully engaged in shaping and delivering regeneration, even the
best plans on paper will fail to deliver in practice. (Tony Blair in SEU, 2000: 5)
It was considered necessary to build the confidence of communities and encour-
age residents to ‘help themselves’ (SEU, 2000). Policies and initiatives developed
under New Labour, such as New Deal for Communities (NDC), reflected attempts
to tackle some forms of social exclusion by ‘empowering’ certain communities,
groups or individuals to have a more ‘inclusive’ role in society (Duncan and
Thomas, 2000). There now exists a distinct focus upon the enabling of ‘govern-
ance’, working in partnership with community and local institutions to deliver
initiatives, and a move away from controlling ‘government’ (Tiesdell and
Allmendinger, 2001). Yet evidence suggests that regeneration initiatives (and
other...
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