Recently in BURA Category

I was cursing my luck on yet another early start this morning as I chucked the littley out to school early and chugged along the District Line to Berwin Leighton Paisner at the crack of dawn for a Women In Property Event on "Heritage in the 21st Century". I ask you! I was not at all clear why I'd been invited really and was feeling very grumpy with myself for having gotten into all this. I had accepted due to vanity (in large part) and, to a lesser degree, because they were kind enough to include me, as well as a very real admiration for the work of Fiona Alfred and Lesley Anne Avis of WiP.  Twenty five years of uphill struggle.
 
Well, I soon snapped out of it my grump as Baroness Andrews OBE, the wondrous chair of English Heritage, was so luminous as our keynote that I immediately reconnected with the role of heritage in regeneration projects. All feelings of curmudgeonliness evaporated. And I found myself rehearsing the very real fact that no (and that means NO) regeneration project which does not pay due deference to what has gone before, has any chance whatsoever of success.
 

Four days now then.  Are you panicking? I certainly am...
 


And it's been a long year since our last MIPIM.  A lot has happened.  So without much ado, you can expect me to be giving a full report of progress at our two UKR events on the first day we are there.  

Monday was the day that BURA ceased trading. And of course I'm sad. It was a bit like being at the funeral of a long-standing friend.

But blimey, we've got a lot of mates out there. I had spent the entire weekend prior responding to kind letters and e-mails and voicemails. Mostly admiring our bravery in taking the tough decision.

And things run their course, you know. BURA was an amazing success in many ways and everyone involved can be extremely proud of what has been achieved over the last twenty years. 

First, it put the concept of regeneration firmly on the map. Secondly, it brought together central government, local authorities, private sector companies, the community sector and academia (not always loving partners especially in the early days!) to look at regeneration in a coherent manner, taking into account all the factors involved: physical, environmental, economic and social.

Thirdly, it put together a great educational forum for the future, through its training modules.  But our most important contribution was the sharing of best practice through the formation and work of the Best Practice Panel, identifying what is successful in terms of regeneration.

I was booked to do a gig on Wednesday with Bell &Scott, the eminent Scottish lawyers, at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre, in concert with the Scottish Property Federation.

Sure as hell took my mind off my worries, although I had to confront the issue (of the imminent BURA closure) head on when I addressed the 150 or so movers and shakers in the Scottish property industry who were present. They are a well informed lot; I could hardly duck the problem.

What a delightful bunch! I don't think you could find a more charming host than Bell & Scott's managing partner, Paul Jennings; and the conference itself was rather cerebral and very coherent.

Andrew Smith, the chief economist of KPMG opened proceedings at the wake. Er...that is, I mean, the conference (I guess it's a tough call to spend all your days delivering an unpalatable series of messages, but blimey, what he had to say was depressing). He made some brilliant, if somewhat bleak (and probably very politically incorrect), jokes about Germans and Greeks.

A journalist called Kathryn Schulz has written a book about getting things wrong (Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error).

In it, she explores the well-observed phenomenon of how frequently people get things totally wrong.

An experiment, first conducted in 1902, of two actors faking a shooting in the street - subsequently oft repeated - has shown this to be an all too human, universal, condition.

Despite being eye witnesses, people remember details and "facts" that did not occur, such as seeing blood when there was none. And it would seem that folk have a preconceived notion of how things ought to be, or have been, even when cursory observation would indicate otherwise.

There is a grace to admitting that you are wrong about anything. And such grace certainly seems to be denied to anyone in public life.

In such pursuits of knowledge as pharmaceutical research, say, or road safety design, we make allowances for human error, devising systems to allow for it.

But in public life we treat all mistakes as shameful and deride those who change their minds as "u-turners" or inconsistent. It has to be unhealthy to deny the possibility of learning from our mistakes. Perhaps the deterrent is the serious dollop of humility required.

Huge messages of support, and of great sadness, over the demise of BURA, continue to pour in from every quarter. It's all very gratifying, if still a bit raw.

Board members past and present, and many staff too, have written and called. Our members have been generous to a fault and the trade press has been massively supportive.

Loyal readers of this blog have been most kind to a woman and a man. I had the loveliest phone conversation with Hartley Booth, the BURA Founding Chairman yesterday (who was extremely gracious about our efforts with his "baby" which was rather statesmanlike of him in the circs).

Nigel Hugill, now Chair of Centre for Cities of course (as well as having his U&C hat), texted me to send a "virtual and actual hug" and promises of support. Liz Peace of BPF sent a charming e-mail (as only she can). And others, too numerous to mention, you know who you are. People have really rallied round. And my heartfelt thanks to you all.

Well, it's nice to know you have friends. And certain groups of the regeneration family are convening in pubs and wine bars over the next few days to have a drink and a laugh about old times.

It is certainly an extraordinary new world! We continue to watch open mouthed as the government piles announcement on announcement and it is becoming clear that incremental change may not be enough.

It would seem that, in almost every walk of life, a radical solution may be called for.

In that vein, you may have read the sad news that the board of BURA - with the most extreme reluctance I've ever seen from any single group of people - voted last week to put the organisation into voluntary liquidation. We felt we had to control our own destiny.

To say it was a very sad day would be a bit like saying Tiger Woods has all the characteristics of a Trappist monk. I had to march the entire board across the road to a well-known hostelry immediately after the meeting, to drown their sorrows in no uncertain style. I've never seen such commitment.

I have an excellent team at BURA, both the board and the staff team have been superb. And those-in-the-know will tell you that no stone was left unturned in an attempt to make the membership subscription model work for new world.

We live in difficult times and they're getting harder all the time. We're having to make even tougher choices in the regeneration sector right now, in recognition that incremental change is not enough.

One of the things facing us is the fundamental question of how we network and represent regeneration practitioners AT ALL in this hostile climate, let alone how best to do it. The important thing (and this is now a mantra with us) is not to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Talking of which.....I'm still a bit bewildered about the sudden swoop on the Audit Commission (see blog on 16th August ). Unloved and unlovely in many ways, as the Audit Commission certainly was, we may definitely live to regret this.

People have forgotten that the thing was set up - by the Tories - 30 years ago, primarily, if the truth be known, to sort out Liverpool. The Audit Commission has now been abolished to "save £50m a year".

Some helpful bod sent me a link to a website called UrbanMashup and an hilarious blog entitled "Big Society has big shoes to fill" where the author asks the question "ever wondered why people throw shoes over telephone lines?

Apparently the (widespread) shoe-tossing phenomenon is called "shoefiti" and suggested explanations for it range from the bizarre to the downright rude.

Regeneration practitioners tend to buy into something called the "broken windows theory"  which suggests that small acts of vandalism, such as broken windows that are left unrepaired, encourage other larger acts of antisocial behaviour, because they send out the message that no one cares.

Although this theory has been challenged (notably in Freakonomics), we tend to hold this pretty much as a truism. And it is the case that people who manage built space tend to quickly repair such damage, believing that vandals are then much less likely to break more windows or do further damage. "Zero tolerance" espouses similar principles.

Now then, UrbanMashup wants to know: what does this mean for the challenge facing the Big Society? We don't know who put the shoes up there but - far more importantly - for the management of our urban realm in the Big Society: whose job is it to take them down? Hilarious.

Being a bit old fashioned, BURA is British (our name is a bit of a giveaway for starters) as we were formed well before devolution, and we have a brilliant relationship with the devolved governments of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

In fact, in the BURA Community Inspired Best Practice in Regeneration Awards (the very essence of Big Society in that we start from the premise that if communities are to be truly empowered, they have to empower themselves) has the solid support from the Department for Social Development Northern Ireland, the Scottish Government and the Welsh Assembly Government as well as the HCA/CLG.

And this is in equal measure, not pro rata per head of population, or anything complicated.

But there is a tension when members of the cabinet (or the parent department, the CLG) talk about Big Society. The assumption seems to be that it is for Britain, when technically, in reality, it is only for England.

Mr Phillip Blond and Lord Wei therefore have an interesting controlled experiment on their hands: if we can make the principles of Big Society work in England and if this becomes the model of best practice in regeneration activity, then will it be translated across the borders? I think we can help here.