January 2012 Archives

The Financial Times yesterday carried a headline "Fewer cranes across UK" with a report that the number of cranes in the UK has fallen, with large-scale construction projects struggling to get off the ground. Figures obtained by McGrigors under the Freedom of Information Act show that only 523 tower cranes went up across the UK in the second half of 2011, compared with 575 in the previous six months.

Simple "crane counting" has always been an excellent ready-reckoner of course, on the state of the economy in any city.  Crucially, only 300 cranes went up in London (where the old construction models still - just about - work) down from 371.

So, in this context, I am thrilled to report one patch of London where, naturally (says she modestly), Yours Truly chairs the Neighbourhood Trust Board and the Partnership and where multiple cranes can be seen swinging into action every morning. I talk, but of course, of South Kilburn which has at least five tower cranes against its skyline. With the amount of visible progress being made, South Kilburn is seriously becoming a "good news" story: the decant programme is now significantly underway, under the stewardship of the London Borough of Brent, as master developer and landowner. Serious developments are underway. Confidence is being established.  Momentum is building. And we are so proud of all of this activity at a time when most of the UK construction industry is at a standstill. 

I want to support the guest blog by Cllr Paul Watson (posted on Nadia and Stacey's EG Focus blog) in respect of the Centre for Cities Report.  
 
UKR has a terrific working relationship with Centre for Cites, whom we've always regarded as close friends and colleagues. We rely heavily on their data for our analysis (and this has become ever-more critical now we're gearing up to place inward investment around the UK).  But we were a bit disappointed this time around with the Report, which was comprised solely of bald statistics and had no analysis attached at all. We understand the need for purity around the numbers and the indices (or Dr Evans does, at least), but a bit of interpretation is needed surely? Markets were ever about sentiment, as well as numbers, and this is only one reason why we in UKR feel we must come out in support of Sunderland.
 
It is fairly open knowledge that UKR is working closely with Sunderland. Why, you ask? Why, when you have so much to prove with UKR? Why, when you have to establish "proof of concept" for your model in the first place, to imbue market confidence?  Why, in circumstances when the market is jittery in any case, would you wish to work with a city in the North East of England?  Well, I will tell you why.  And there are a number of very good reasons.

It is quite a burden, being in charge of institutional memory, you know. In UKR we find that some of our very best sessions are almost akin to history tutorials as to what went on the days of yore.
 
On Saturday afternoon I spoke at a conference in Finsbury Park for FinFuture, a community organisation that is well placed, under localism, to become the nucleus of the neighbourhood planning team. I was asked to speak, simply because of this understanding of what went before. My brief was to paint the national picture for regeneration and to give some insight in to what I think localism means for a local regeneration charity.

I am a great fan of the Radio 4 Today programme, in the main.  Some of its reporters, such as the lovely Andy Hosken, still have an element of old fashioned investigative journalism, with a streak of campaigning edge, at their heart.  I listen every day.  But I really wasn't surprised about the recent furore over the lack of women participants (something that nobody could accuse Andy Hosken of perpetrating).  One of my (ex BBC) mates describes Today as "wallpaper radio" and, whilst I wouldn't go that far, I am convinced that the lack of diversity-in-voice on our leading news vehicle is definitely to its detriment. 

So I had a bit of "why oh why" moment when I heard Peter (Lord) Mandelson produced with a great flourish as the lead interview this morning.  Another white middle aged man talking in a monotone, seemingly on the basis that he'd self-selected to be at the Davos Conference.  And for what benefit?  I just don't understand why the BBC could have thought we, the beleaguered British public, would be interested in his views really ('imself just snorted as the interview was announced).  And indeed, listeners cannot have escaped the distinct impression that his Lordship was merely touting for a job with Mr Cable or Mr Willets, as he does seem to be rather addicted to being in government on any terms.  His main thesis seemed to be the wish to qualify his "I don't care how filthy rich you become" comment made in 1998, and then go on to renounce his views hitherto expressed ad nauseam on globalism.  This just sort of exposed the bankruptcy of it all really. 

So the Daily Telegraph says that the BBC's move to Salford has been unpopular and expensive, and asks whether "it was worth it".  Well, strike a light!  

It is all been far too easy really, for developers and others, to look to the public sector (or the quasi-public sector) to be the anchor tenant of developments over the past few years. I've lost count of the number of project teams I've been a member of who've (seriously) asked their host local authority to take space in the their developments (some of them even did it!). The Lyons Report was a fig leaf behind which many developers cowered, right the way through the boom years. As a result, and other top-down initiatives, we became supine and supplicant, waiting for government to do things.

We failed to grow the economy properly throughout the noughties, and we seriously need to get a grip now. And shifting bits of your machinery around the country to try to even things up in the economy was never going to be a recipe for real growth. It serves only to dislocate your talent and skills, who may well vote with their feet. 

Market realism means recognising just why London is our capital city. That doesn't mean we don't need to - urgently - support the move to rebalance the economy away from London and the South East. But we need to do it quite differently. Inward investment will always play its part of course, but it is growing our own indigenous local economies, city by city, that will really work. We must develop radical strategies for rebuilding the economy in our great city regions.  But it needs to be bottom up, not top down. 

I am incensed!  Apparently Gary Streeter, the  South West Devon Tory MP Gary Streeter has condemned Plymouth's 15-storey Civic Centre as "the ugliest thing outside Dudley".  I am truly outraged.  How very dare he?  

Close readers of this blog will know I am very proud indeed of my long-term association with Brierley Hill in Dudley, and my relationship with Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council, one of the most proactive (and good fun) local authorities it has ever been my privilege to work with.  Has Mr Streeter ever even been to Dudley?  I demand to know.  Well, I wouldn't care to comment on the Plymouth Civic Centre (and I am sure it is not an architectural masterpiece) but Dudley Town Hall is a very fine arts and crafts building at the top of the market street, and its rather compelling entrance lobby boasted an inspired and uplifting interior of duck egg blue (and I trust it still does).  

And of course, Dudley has a splendid castle and grounds (just don't mention the zoo).  Dudley town centre itself could do with a bit of tender loving care (but couldn't they all?) but it certainly enjoys enough historic streetscape to deliver a potential renaissance under the careful tutelage of Robin Butler of Urban and Civic, still involved from his Chelsfield days, who chairs Dudley New Heritage Regeneration...

 [A momentary diversion, while I'm on town centres. Yet again - did anyone pick up on the bonkers piece in the THES about the "Retail Navigator Team", established by the Economic and Social Research Council, which "will talk to shops to find out how existing and new research could help their businesses" and "how they might help to regenerate the high street with different offerings" to deliver "creativity and innovation in the supply chain, social media, ethical shopping, and how to sell goods on both the high street and online". These ideas seem to consist mainly of selling broccoli by the floret, rather than the whole head. Rather joyously, David Willetts (I assume the MP?) came online immediately to comment "Lesson for greengrocer from the social scientist - make sure your customers can buy carrots one at a time. Please cut funding for this drivel." You just have to smile.]

I'm in love again.  What do you mean, you see I'm still a bit loose with my favours?  I only fall in love twice a month these days (after all, it used to be twice a day!) and I am a little more discerning altogether in my old age.  

No, I am hugely in love.  The new object of my affections is Martin Kingston QC, the silky smooth planning Silk from No 5 Chambers. Ooh!  He is gorgeous! A more fragrant and dapper figure you could not meet!  So very clever.  And what a mellifluous voice; a voice like Belgian chocolate!




I don't hold much with superstition really, and I won't point out that it could be construed as unfortunate that the government published two documents on regeneration - its response to the recent select committee report, and a refreshed regeneration toolkit - on Friday 13th January.

There are no real surprises in either document.

Further to last Wednesday's blog (and I must apologise for the increasingly rabid nature of these postings, but spare a thought for me sometimes - it really is wearing being this incandescent with rage the whole time).

Dr Evans and Twitter drew my attention to the truly excellent definition of the Thames Gateway to be found in the UKR Regeneration Dictionary, viz: The Thames Gateway "A slightly silly name (how can a gateway be 40 miles long?) for a blameless and still largely unknown part of the South East where the standard of living is shockingly below the rest of the region for a surprisingly large proportion of the 1.5m population, and which, with thoughtful long-term planning and investment could become a much better and more attractive place to live and relieve the development pressure on other more congested locations elsewhere; but which had the misfortune to become a focus of government action, and a battleground between ill-informed brownfield romantics, development fetishists, regeneration fantasists and disaster junkies."

The lovely David Thame of EG called me to pick my brains about his upcoming feature for the magazine on the prospects for London regeneration schemes.  In a (somewhat breathless) list he was seeking intelligence on Elephant and Castle, the East End (Stratford, Bromley by Bow, Royal Docks) and Battersea Power Station ("just because something is up for sale", he asked, "does that mean there will be activity?") with Nine Elms generally.  Oh, and for good measure, Earls Court, Wembley, the Greenwich Peninsula, Canning Town, Lewisham Gateway and Brent Cross/Cricklewood.
 
Whew! I said.  Calm down dear, for goodness sake, you'll have a hernia!  
 
But he was seeking some proper thoughts on which of these could be serious prospects for progress in 2012, and which might end up moving a little slower, so of course I tried to be helpful.  But you won't be surprised to learn my prognosis was a little bleak.

Ever since the social unrest over the summer of 2011, the UKR lobby has been wistfully recalling the Heseltine paper "It Took a Riot", which is widely credited with being "The Daddy" of the urban regeneration sector.

Our misty recollection of this (undoubtedly radical) document manifested itself through the work of the EG/UKR Build a Better Britain Regeneration Commission, of course, (cracking article forthcoming from the John Lewis Partnership in this week's magazine btw) but also UKR held a number of seminars on the subject, including one where the great Mike Gahagan (who was at the DoE at the time of the Heseltine paper) issued the immortal words: "Of course, the French have always been much better at rioting than us!" This went down very well, as you can imagine.
 
But none of us, not even the real saddos, actually had a copy of the original "It Took a Riot" document. Nobody, it seemed, had kept it for posterity. Nobody knew where to lay their hand upon it. There were veiled threats and mutterings that we might ransack Eric Sorensen's attic, but naturally that was not for the faint-hearted, and we continued to keep an eye out in a desultory manner, for a copy of this seminal work, to no great effect.

The New Year continues on its sluggish January way. I don't know many folk that aren't seriously struggling to crank it up.
And we are only just beginning to catch up with a few things snuck out on press releases by CLG just before Christmas.  Honestly, anyone would think that the department was trying to bury bad news. And actually, most of it seems like pretty good news.

One of the releases (put out on 21 December) is that a Peter Schofield has been appointed to be CLG director-general for neighbourhoods. A quick straw poll around the regeneration lags quickly confirmed that none of us know him.  And, sure enough, he joins CLG from HM Treasury, where he was director of the enterprise and growth unit.

Greetings to 2012, then!  Can I wish (as one of my more shy and retiring friends texted to me on January 1st ) that "the fleas of a thousand camels infest the **** of anyone who gets in your way and may their arms grow too short to scratch it".  What a delightful sentiment. 

But, before you ask, I've decided (from a wisdom born of years of failure) that New Year's resolutions totally suck.  So... I've not made any resolutions this year.  But let me be utterly foolhardy and make a prediction: this is the year when the private sector will truly step forward in urban regeneration.  

I know I've been preaching a variant of this for some time but I genuinely think it will happen this year.  It will always be the case that the quality of places, and the quality of life for the people who live in them, will ultimately depend on a combination of private and public actions. But as the public sector steps backwards, especially in terms of funding and control, the private sector, especially business, just HAS to step forward to fill the gap. So how to do it, you ask?  Well the EG/UKR Build a Better Britain Regeneration Commission will continue to give you hints and tips in the weekly articles in the magazine. But, whilst you wait with bated breath for all of that, here are some quick and practical ideas on how to set about it: