I have worked in many major inner-city regeneration programmes in the UK, including on the Greenwich Waterfront Strategy and Stratford City Challenge during the early 1990s, and subsequently in Ealing, Bedford and Brent. I also worked in the development of the unsuccessful Woolwich/Plumstead City Challenge bid in 1992. It was an intensive and insightful learning process of exploring the mechanisms through which regions and areas decline and the increasing and changing repertoire of intervention ideas for regeneration that are being generated by a whole range of parties.
Many of us instinctively oppose ‘gentrification and feel that it’s a bad idea for a run-down area with many poor people as new facilities developed will not serve the existing communities. And that the gentrification processes introduced will inevitably force local poorer people to give way to richer people and move out to other poorer areas.
Through my practical experience and theoretical studies, I have realised that the regeneration of run-down poor areas cannot succeed without a degree of ‘gentrification’, for many interconnected reasons. And that gentrification of an area is only possible through private enterprise and private investment. Further, as the engine behind the private sector – the market forces – has its logic, it cannot be made subject to non-market constraints if it will deliver the results needed.
There can be no meaningful, sustainable public sector lead regeneration of rundown areas, but the public-sector can and should regular to ensure wider benefits without harming the private sector forces that will deliver the result. This means that the only way that locals can benefit more fully from the regeneration of their area is for planners and decision-makers to include ideas and initiatives that will also help existing communities to gentrify.