Urban Renaissance
Encyclopedia
Birmingham
Birmingham is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands of England. It is the most populous British city outside the capital London, with a population of 1,036,900 , and lies at the heart of the West Midlands conurbation, the second most populous urban area in the United Kingdom with a...
, Bristol
Bristol
Bristol is a city, unitary authority area and ceremonial county in South West England, with an estimated population of 433,100 for the unitary authority in 2009, and a surrounding Larger Urban Zone with an estimated 1,070,000 residents in 2007...
, Cardiff
Cardiff
Cardiff is the capital, largest city and most populous county of Wales and the 10th largest city in the United Kingdom. The city is Wales' chief commercial centre, the base for most national cultural and sporting institutions, the Welsh national media, and the seat of the National Assembly for...
, Glasgow
Glasgow
Glasgow is the largest city in Scotland and third most populous in the United Kingdom. The city is situated on the River Clyde in the country's west central lowlands...
, Leeds
Leeds
Leeds is a city and metropolitan borough in West Yorkshire, England. In 2001 Leeds' main urban subdivision had a population of 443,247, while the entire city has a population of 798,800 , making it the 30th-most populous city in the European Union.Leeds is the cultural, financial and commercial...
, Liverpool
Liverpool
Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough of Merseyside, England, along the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary. It was founded as a borough in 1207 and was granted city status in 1880...
, Manchester
Manchester
Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...
, and parts of London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
after a period of inner city
Inner city
The inner city is the central area of a major city or metropolis. In the United States, Canada, United Kingdom and Ireland, the term is often applied to the lower-income residential districts in the city centre and nearby areas...
urban decay
Urban decay
Urban decay is the process whereby a previously functioning city, or part of a city, falls into disrepair and decrepitude...
and suburbanisation during the mid-20th century.
Regeneration was achieved through a number of initiatives including tax incentives and the lifting of some planning
Urban planning
Urban planning incorporates areas such as economics, design, ecology, sociology, geography, law, political science, and statistics to guide and ensure the orderly development of settlements and communities....
restrictions, as well as positive state intervention encouraging business and residents back into city centre areas. It differs from the New Urbanism
New urbanism
New Urbanism is an urban design movement, which promotes walkable neighborhoods that contain a range of housing and job types. It arose in the United States in the early 1980s, and has gradually continued to reform many aspects of real estate development, urban planning, and municipal land-use...
popular in North America, but could be considered the British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
equivalent. Large developments such as the London Docklands project have helped to encourage people back into the city, assisted by gentrification
Gentrification
Gentrification and urban gentrification refer to the changes that result when wealthier people acquire or rent property in low income and working class communities. Urban gentrification is associated with movement. Consequent to gentrification, the average income increases and average family size...
.
Often, 17th and 18th-century canals and docks are redeveloped to create expensive modern inner city flats, and old railway yards
Rail yard
A rail yard, or railroad yard, is a complex series of railroad tracks for storing, sorting, or loading/unloading, railroad cars and/or locomotives. Railroad yards have many tracks in parallel for keeping rolling stock stored off the mainline, so that they do not obstruct the flow of traffic....
and derelict industrial sites have been regenerated by 'Urban Renewal Companies
Development Corporation
In England and Wales, Development Corporations are bodies set up by the UK government and charged with the urban development of an area, outside the usual system of Town and Country Planning in the United Kingdom...
' and 'Regional Development Agencies' to provide mixed use developments with public art and high-quality streetscapes. Derelict but attractive historical buildings are often converted into residential or commercial premises (dubbed "loft apartments" in the US) with generous grants or tax relief.
Efforts to revitalise urban areas often involve ideas of downtown
Downtown
Downtown is a term primarily used in North America by English speakers to refer to a city's core or central business district ....
/city centre as an art
Art
Art is the product or process of deliberately arranging items in a way that influences and affects one or more of the senses, emotions, and intellect....
and cultural
Culture
Culture is a term that has many different inter-related meanings. For example, in 1952, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn compiled a list of 164 definitions of "culture" in Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions...
hub or arts district
Arts district
An arts district is a demarcated urban area, usually on the periphery of a city centre, intended to create a 'critical mass' of places of cultural consumption - such as art galleries, dance clubs, theatres, art cinemas, music venues, and public squares for performances. Such an area is usually...
, somewhat akin to Richard Florida
Richard Florida
Richard Florida is an American urban studies theorist.Richard Florida's focus is on social and economic theory. He is currently a professor and head of the Martin Prosperity Institute at the Rotman School of Management, at the University of Toronto. He also heads a private consulting firm, the...
's concept of making the urban core friendly to the Creative Class
Creative class
The Creative Class is a socioeconomic class that economist and social scientist Richard Florida, a professor and head of the Martin Prosperity Institute at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, identifies as a key driving force for economic development of post-industrial...
. City leaders may promote events such as First Friday art walks and the construction of convention center
Convention center
A convention center is a large building that is designed to hold a convention, where individuals and groups gather to promote and share common interests. Convention centers typically offer sufficient floor area to accommodate several thousand attendees...
s and theatre
Theatre
Theatre is a collaborative form of fine art that uses live performers to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music or dance...
s in order to attract visitors who live in suburbs.
Many American cities have renaissance-themed agency and building. An example is the Renaissance Center
Renaissance Center
Renaissance Center is a group of seven interconnected skyscrapers in Downtown Detroit, Michigan, United States. Located on the International Riverfront, the Renaissance Center complex is owned by General Motors as its world headquarters...
and Detroit Renaissance Board in the city of Detroit, Michigan
Detroit, Michigan
Detroit is the major city among the primary cultural, financial, and transportation centers in the Metro Detroit area, a region of 5.2 million people. As the seat of Wayne County, the city of Detroit is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan and serves as a major port on the Detroit River...
. Many American cities have seen at least a modest bounce in interest in core cities and older neighborhoods in recent years with a special emphasis on condominium projects, often in formerly non-residential structures. Most practitioners would agree that Britain's city centres have turned a corner, although some inner cities around the Central Business District
Central business district
A central business district is the commercial and often geographic heart of a city. In North America this part of a city is commonly referred to as "downtown" or "city center"...
s.
Criticism
In a 2008 report, the Policy ExchangePolicy Exchange
Policy Exchange is a British conservative think tank based in London. The Daily Telegraph has described it as "the largest, but also the most influential think tank on the right"...
think tank
Think tank
A think tank is an organization that conducts research and engages in advocacy in areas such as social policy, political strategy, economics, military, and technology issues. Most think tanks are non-profit organizations, which some countries such as the United States and Canada provide with tax...
argued that policies to regenerate struggling cities over the previous ten, twenty or even fifty years have failed - "we can’t buck economic geography... Places that enjoyed the conditions for creating wealth in the coal-powered 19th-century are often
poorly positioned today. There is no realistic prospect that our regeneration towns and cities can converge with London and the South East. There is, however, a very real prospect of encouraging significant numbers of people to move from those towns to London and the South East." The report was criticised by a number of British politicians.