urban regeneration in deprived european neighbourhoods 413
infrastructure. Under the scheme, tax incentives were available for the
construction and refurbishment of residential accommodation and associated
commercial development of premises in the designated streets. In 2005,
Goodbody Economic Consultants carried out a review of the scheme. Of the
five cities designated under the scheme, Dublin accounts for the highest level
of expenditure at just over €20 million. The discounted value of the total tax
costs to mid 2006 is 35.5 million. The limited take-up of the scheme, however,
has meant that there has been no discernible impact on the supply of
residential or retail property in the designated areas. Difficulties encountered
included the prohibitive cost of developing old, often listed buildings; long
term ownership of non-viable retail units by persons unwilling or unable to
sell or invest; adjoining owners not willing to participate and difficulties
establishing title to some properties (Goodbody Economic Consultants, 2005).
What the discussion above shows is the multi-faceted and complex nature
of partnership at the ground level in urban neighbourhoods. It is relatively
easy to engage individual creatives or entrepreneurs who require start up
support, and much more difficult to “sell” urban regeneration to hard-nosed
developers, and to the wider commercial community. Furthermore, while
economic regeneration and the regeneration of the built environment can
embrace elements of the private sector, there is still an enormous reliance on
the public sector for social provision. Municipalities and regeneration agencies
ultimately must rely not on private sector investment, but on funding from the
European Union, national government and the local state to set urban
regeneration projects in motion.
VII ENGAGING THE LOCAL POPULATION
In every city there is an explicit recognition that the community be
acknowledged as an important stakeholder in the urban regeneration process.
The form that this acknowledgement takes, and how it is practiced, differs
across the participating cities. As Geddes (2000) has pointed out, while
community involvement is a dominant theme in the discourses of local
partnership in the EU, the effectiveness of “community” involvement in local
partnerships is variable. Furthermore he contends that
... this discourse of inclusion and community engagement frequently
glosses over an uneasy mixture of diverse strands - from traditional
“community development” and community power (Harding, 1997) to the
new communitarianism (Etzioni, 1995) and from liberal, individualised
conceptions of community, democracy and citizenship to much more
solidaristic and collective principles, (Geddes, 2000, p. 793).