Is "Regeneration" Always About Big?

An interesting blog post from Tim Williams discussing some of his his thoughts after reading Edward Glaeser’s The Triumph of the City.

I don’t like the way that it splits the “how do you solve a problem like regeneration” into two options: the build it and they will come approach that we seem to have been trying in the UK for most of my lifetime; or the help people to escape from these failed cities and towns to a shiny new life somewhere else (which in the UK means within the draw of the M25).

What annoys me about it is that those options are presented as the only choices, and that they label certain towns and cities as “failed”. I don’t think that’s a useful endeavour, as it assumes that (a) everyone should, and will, make decisions based solely on economics; and (b) that moving most of the population into the South-East would be a desirable aim.

I’m proof that the first option isn’t true, otherwise I’d still be living in Cambridge rather than having moved back to Liverpool. And choosing Cambridge again, just because I’ve lived there and so have an understanding of some of the issues it faces, it’s already facing problems with the number of people who want to live there now, never mind trying to fit more in. It would be good for the value of my house though…

Where I do agree with Tim and Edward is in the argument that grand building projects aren’t going to fix things. I think edifice error is a nice term for it:

I suppose what confuses me is that I don’t see what’s gained by arguing that we need to help people flee the failed areas. Maybe it’s a belief that big companies are the only way that we solve unemployment and poverty? “We have to build big fancy office blocks for our ‘inward investment’ strategy to work and attract big companies here” played off against “big companies don’t want to open offices in poor areas, so we need to move the workforce to them”.

That’s where my view differs markedly. I agree that we should be investing in the people, rather than infrastructure, but we should expect and encourage them to build new companies and not be surprised if they stay where they are to do that.