With reference to examples, discuss the overall effectiveness of urban regeneration schemes (40)
Many inner cities have suffered from urban decline in the past 30 years due to many reasons. Urban decline is generally defined as when an area starts losing businesses, people lose their jobs, people move away from the area as the local economy shrinks meaning the desirability of the area as a whole also falls. In response to this urban decline, many local governments have introduced urban regeneration schemes.
Urban regeneration is the attempt to reverse that decline by both improving the physical structure, and, more importantly and elusively, the economy of those areas. Re-urbanisation is the movement of people back to live in old city centres and inner city areas that have been redeveloped. The four different processes that drive re-urbanisation are Gentrification (Notting Hill), through partnerships (Sheffield City Centre and Park Hill Flats), property led regeneration schemes (Sheffield Development Cooperation in the Lower Don Valley) and Urban Re-Generation in Mumbai.
One partnership scheme which aimed to achieve urban regeneration was the Urban Splash scheme in Sheffield which focused on the regeneration of the Park Hill flats just outside the city’s CBD. The flats were built in 1957 to ease the problem of developing slums in the area. However over time the flats have become an eyesore. They were rundown and crime and vandalism became a problem. The regeneration scheme worked towards improving the aesthetics of the flats by adding coloured panels and glass to the exterior and by making the flats a listed building in the hope of attracting investment. The scheme was not a huge success overall, although the project did succeed in brightening up the exterior of the flats to a degree. It also served to benefit the community as residents could work together to improve their area and it did not lead to relocation issues which could have arisen if the decision had been made to demolish the buildings. However the scheme cost more money than it was first estimated and not everyone was satisfied with the improvements to the exterior which are not to everybody’s taste. Also the scheme resulted in some conflict between residents and developers which has slowed the project down.
Another partnership scheme in the regeneration of Sheffield City Centre, this scheme was set up by Creative Sheffield, Sheffield City Council, Yorkshire Forward and English Heritage, all with the same goal to improve the appearance of the city centre. Many areas such as Sheaf Square, Tudor Square, the Winter Gardens and the Peace Gardens were all regenerated to give the city a more modern look. One of the more successful areas completed is outside the railway station. A water fountain feature and a long steel blade fountain were built which creates a great first impression for people coming to the city by the train (Sheffield Gateway). Several thousand pounds were provided by Yorkshire Forward to complete the square and it was opened in 2009. Another success was the creation of the Gold Route. This is a walk from the railway station to the end of Division Street that allows visitors to see all the newly generated areas, therefore making it desirable to attract people. The walk is lit and has CCTV cameras making it safe to walk both and day night, allowing people to feel safe and comfortable using this walkway.
A lesser success was the Sheffield Development Corporation. This was formed to take in hand the regeneration of the city’s industrial heartland, the Lower Don Valley after problems arose in the late 19th century. By this time, Sheffield had established a number of powerful steel making companies which drove the local community. Much terraced housing was built along the Lower Don Valley on the eastern side of the city, close to the growing number of steels works. The factory owners on the other hand chose to build their larger housing on the pollution free, west side of the city. Until the 1970’s, Sheffield was thriving, with virtually full employment. However, the global oil shock of 1974 and the increasing globalisation of manufacturing dealt a major blow to British industry and Sheffield was among the cities hardest hit and as a result 47,000 jobs in the steel industry alone were lost in total between 1979 and 1989. So in 1988 this is when the Sheffield Development Corporation was formed, as they controlled a 2,000 acre stretch of land on the left hand side of the Lower Don Valley and had a budget on over £50 million from government funds, they began first by demolishing most of the valley’s abandoned steel mills. The SDC then attempted to improve access to the area by laying down a major road through the middle of the region and creating a link road from J34 of the M1. In 1997, Sheffield City airport also opened on land that had previously been mined for coal and was being used as a waste tip, however, economically this did not improve much access as it closed in 2008 due to it being financially unviable, it wasn’t that well known in the UK compared to Manchester and Leeds Bradford and was only used occasionally was commercial flights. The most famous development came in 1987 with the building of Meadowhall at the end of the Lower Don Valley. Meadowhall opened in September 1990 on the brownfield site of the former Hadfield’s steelworks and has a 1.5 million sq ft on floor space. It created over 8,000 jobs, nevertheless Meadowhall had a negative effect of the central business district (CBD) and in particular the economic decline of the CBD, e.g. football in the CBD fell by 60% and never recovered, as well as the 8,000 jobs it created were mainly part time and favoured women and so the SDC did not help and manage the mass unemployment of men connected with the steel industry. This scheme as tried to improve the environment quality of the area by planting over 160,000 trees and shrubs and regenerating the Sheffield ad South Yorkshire navigation which is a system of canals that ran through the city. Although the SCD ceased in 1997 the area continued to thrive and since 1997 the lower Don Valley has also seen further investment due to its links. Valley Centertainment, including one of the country’s largest cinema complexes, has also been built since 197 as well as Sheffield Ice. Environmental factors have occurred as a result of the increase of development of large car parks connected with Meadowhall, Don Valley Centertainment and Sheffield Ice has been linked to contributing to the Sheffield flooding of 2007 and in particular that of Attercliffe in the Lower Don Valley.
Effectiveness of the SDC’s work was overall a mixed thought and opinion conclusion; positive effects were the clearance of abandoned, ugly buildings and factories, making the Don Valley a lot nicer looking and appealing. This can be related to the scheme in Notting Hill without knocking any buildings down and just renovating the inside and outside, still making it look presentable. In the Tinsley area near to the Meadowhall centre, residents had no say on the construction. This may have been due to the matter of urgency in order to get Sheffield back on its feet as soon as possible and as long as it was passed by the government, then plans were able to go ahead. The main environmental impact the amount of impermeable surfaces laid down allowing no water drainage. This contributed to the summer floods in 2007 forcing Meadowhall to close down for a few days.
Gentrification is the conversion of what have been working class districts within the inner city into areas of middle/high class residence. After this process, there are considerable changes in environmental benefits and changes occurring in shops and services which are directed at a different type of financially diverse set of people. It first started to be developed in the 19th Century after grand houses were being built on fringes of areas known for its brickfields. These houses were then divided into separate rooms for rent for poorer tenants who were mainly migrants from the West Indies (which then created the Notting Hill Carnival). Many riots were happening throughout the 1950s due to ethnic segregation and racial tension. The first stage was in the 1960s and 1970s, where much of the Notting Hill Population was dominated by younger public sector professionals and managers alongside teachers as well. This was overall starting out to have a social effect on the other residents who were financially less off compared to this new set of people. Exponents of pioneer gentrification engaged in a process called sweat equity where they purchase properties and renovate them into huge family homes; the property choice were the huge Victorian houses divided up for rent. Stage 2 of gentrification took place in the 1980s and 1990s and was ‘mature’ gentrification. This was dominated by high earning professionals in design, media and financial services. These groups of people had already purchased properties that were already improved by others through sweat equity. The properties in Notting Hill are now extremely high with further gentrification works going on throughout areas adjacent to this. The effectiveness both had positive and negative reasons after gentrification to the Notting Hill area had finished; the main positive effect was that the area looked a lot better than it was 30 years previously with all the housing redeveloped and renovated and a gentrified area like this benefiting from local government funding and private investors also. The house prices rose as they were planned to due to the aim of gentrification allowing a suitable quality living area for the middle to higher classes. The nature of services such as shops, cafes and restaurants changed due to this increasing amount of richer people so would’ve improved the quality of their products increasing their price. Negatively, this had an undesirable impact on the poorer people who were no the minority of the area. It proved difficult for them as all the prices and possibly land prices too had risen forcing them to live in a less desirable area with cheaper housing and prices.
The final scheme is of Urban Re-Generation in Mumbai, India. Mumbai has a population of 14 million people with 1 million people living with a square mile of each other. This area is known as Dharavi and is the biggest slum and squatter settlement in Asia. It lies north of Mumbai’s CBD with the land being worth millions of dollars however it needs to be cleared first which leads to conflict between locals and developers. Consequences of rapid urbanisation include; overcrowding, congestion, organic pollution, inequality divisions, waste, pressure on services and noise pollution. Urban regeneration options were building high rise flats to rehouse people living in Dharavi; site and service schemes were also divided into individual plots and new roads expected to be built, people working together to improve areas slowly and finally, private sector partnership; where a developer sells land for commercial and residential use. This was followed by the Slum Rehabilitation Authority (SRA) stated that developers could have 1.33m cubed of land for every 1m² they provided for dwellers. Improvements to infrastructure such as wider roads, electricity and fresh water supplies were also created. Overall, the positives were that many families were given fresh water and sanitation in order to survive and all signed up families were guaranteed at between 1 and 5 years. Negative impacts were that this guarantee went over five years living in shacks still. We can relate this back to Sheffield and the Park Hill flats regeneration where the people were instead given rooms and flats which were all regenerated from government funding.
Overall, the effectiveness of urban regeneration has had both positive and negative impacts; such as the Sheffield Development cooperation where the Lower Don Valley was restored however bringing footfall down in the CBD by 60%, the Park Hill Flats case where yet locals and developers collided in the regeneration, and the Notting Hill gentrification where all the houses were renovated. These were all in MDCs where government funding was available compared to LDCs where government funding is less available. In Mumbai, the positive of this was that Dharavi was getting smaller step by step in order for development to take place, however the residents in Dharavi are also at conflict between developers and residents.