Community Regeneration and National Renewal in the United Kingdom

Abstract

Contemporary regeneration initiatives stress the need for a comprehensive strategic approach that simultaneously addresses social, environmental and economic issues. The process should involve all stakeholders and permeate all mainstream government budgets, in the planning, design, implementation, evaluation, and crucially financing, of policies. Of particular importance is the focus on engaging the ‘community’ in identifying what is needed and determining how these needs should be met. Thus current UK initiatives are adopting, at least at the level of rhetoric, a more holistic approach that recognizes both the multiplicity and the interconnected nature of issues confronting a growing and significant section of the population (LGA 1997; SEU 1998). Typically, these issues include unemployment or precarious and/or low waged employment, poor health, low educational attainment, inadequate public and private services, a damaged or deteriorating physical environment and ‘social exclusion’, though this last is more difficult to define. In addition, there has been growing acknowledgement of the increasing, and unacceptable, gap between the rich and the poor and the potential danger to social order as a consequence (Commission on Social Justice 1994; Joseph Rowntree Foundation 1995; Donnison 1998). This contrasts with what is acknowledged as the failure of earlier initiatives over the past 30 years.