With reference to examples, evaluate the success or otherwise of urban regeneration schemes in combating the causes and consequences of urban decline (40)

Urban decline was a problem faced by many inner city areas in the UK from the 1970’s onwards, and occurs when people move out of an areas because of factors such as deindustrialisation and depleting job availability. This leads to areas becoming unsightly, dangerous places to live which this government has tried to reverse in the past 40 years, with varying levels of success. In this essay I will be investigating the varying levels of success that different decision making governments have had at regenerating Hulme in Manchester, the city centre of Birmingham and Greenwich in London.
Hulme is located 1½ kilometres from the central business district (CBD) of Manchester. It reached what could be said to be its lowest point of decline in the 70’s, shortly before conservative leader John Major introduced the Hulme City Challenge Partnership. At this point in time, 98% of the 5500 dwelling in Hulme were council owned; half of these were part of a deck access system which were very unsafe and the layout helped to facilitate crime. As well as this, many of these dwellings housed single parents or people with social problems, which provided evidence for the idea that the local authority had used the area to ‘dump’ some of its more unfortunate residents.
The Hulme City Challenge Partnership was introduced in 1992, where plans were made to build 3000 new homes with shopping areas, roads and community facilities. A more traditional pattern of housing was designed, where two storey houses, bungalows and low-rise flats replaced the dangerous deck access concrete high-rises. It was funded by a new funding mechanism called competitive bidding. This involved neighbouring authorities competing against each other to win the funding for their ideas. Competitive bidding encouraged new ideas as the local councils had to work with businesses and local communities to come up with a regeneration plan that was then submitted to the national government. This attracted the private sector to Hulme as it was an interesting idea, but neighbouring areas such as Mosside suffered as local authorities worked against each other rather than together. This was a disadvantage to the competitive bidding mechanism as disadvantaged areas rarely coincide with administrative boundaries. However, competitive bidding worked out for Hulme, and by 1995, 50 hectares of land had been reclaimed, 600 rentable homes had been built and over 400 homes had been either improved or refurbished. The Zion centre (a community centre) was also constructed in the area, alongside the refurbishment of the shopping centre and the addition of an ASDA supermarket.
The City Challenge Partnership in Hulme was a fairly successful scheme. The new housing and services made Hulme a much more attractive place to live, which led to a population increase of 3.3% in the 10 years from the start of the scheme; this was 16.5 times more than Manchester as a whole. As well as this, Hulme and Mosside received approximately £400 million of private and public investment between 1997 and 2002 which meant that businesses moved into the area, jobs could then be created so employment fell substantially. This was almost a complete turnaround as it was the opposite to the spiral of decline that Hulme was in before the scheme. However, Hulme was still a poor area as 47.5% of the population still live in council housing and unemployment in the area is still high in comparison to the rest of Manchester. These socioeconomic disadvantages put the successfulness of the Hulme City Challenge Partnership into question, however it provides a good example of how a socially challenged area can be improved by the conglomerate of the public and private sectors.
The Flagship scheme in Birmingham is the second most successful scheme out of the three that I have chosen to analyse. The Bull Ring was a shopping centre built as part of the Flagship scheme and was completed in 2003 in order to replace the previous out-dated shopping centre. Although it has become the second busiest shopping centre in the UK outside of London and 8000 jobs were created due to its formation, the Bull Ring cost £530 million to construct making it economically unsustainable. To add to this unsustainability, it is predicted that the Bull Ring itself could become obsolete itself by 2040 so it’d have to be replaced again. However, there are other features of the Flagship scheme that help to make this regeneration project more successful than the Hulme City Challenge Partnership. For example, in the late 1980’s the International Convention Centre was opened as it was believed that Birmingham could become the business hub of the UK. As well as this areas were developed around Broad Street including the Hyatt Regency Hotel, which helped to attract many more businesses and developers to the area who developed many new city centre apartments. These were all very successful at regenerating Birmingham City centre, but it is actually the layout of the centre that makes it so successful. The designers incorporated the old buildings in the centre with the new, so the buildings complement each other. For example, the Bull Ring curves around an old church, so the church is assimilated into the new centre rather than being ignored. As well as this, the land use is fantastic as they interspersed offices with shopping areas and public buildings, so the area is pleasant to walk around for whatever reason you’re there.