The Challenge of Urban Regeneration in Deprived European Neighbourhoods - a Partnership Approach



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THE ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL REVIEW

development policy explicitly oriented toward nurturing growth and
employment (1995, p. 233). Besides the new forms of public-private collabora-
tion in economic development, explicit public-private partnerships have
emerged in urban renewal and urban development efforts.

Most contemporary European cities face the problem of how to mange and
re-invent “excluded zones” - derelict neighbourhoods, sink estates, decommis-
sioned industrial buildings and land, and so on. Geddes (2000) observes that
recent research has placed particular emphasis on the “spatiality” of processes
such as social exclusion, “... reflecting not only the different positioning of
localities within shifting regimes of accumulation, but also political and policy
traditions embedded in welfare regimes” (2000, p. 783). It is within this
context that local partnership arrangements have become a feature of policy
for urban regeneration at the local level across European cities. The
“partnership turn” seeks to re-orient regeneration away from the free floating
flag ship project, and re-position the process at the heart of urban
communities and urban civil society. This turn represents an attempt to move
beyond the limitations of both a centralised “statist” form of governance and
its laissez faire market-driven alternative.

IV URBAN REGENERATION IN CONTEXT

Before examining the commonalities and divergences of experiences of
partnership across the case study cities, it is necessary to acknowledge the
structural conditions underpinning the contemporary urban form, and their
implications for any study of regeneration. Cities are in a continual state of
flux, and re-invent themselves over time. David Harvey argues that the urban
process entails the creation of a material physical infrastructure for produc-
tion, circulation exchange and consumption (1985). The built environment is
produced by the accumulation and organisation of capital. The urban
environment was built, and is continuously destroyed and rebuilt, for the sake
of creating a more efficient arena for capital circulation. This process of
“creative destruction” is continually accelerating, and is clearly visible, for
example, in cities like Glasgow, Copenhagen and Dublin, where financial
services, the “new information economy” and heritage tourism play a crucial
role in regeneration processes.

According to (Byrne, 2001, p. 47) the built environment matters for the
system because it is the basis of a crucial circuit of accumulation in a capitalist
system. However, even more relevant is the role that .
the actual physical
restructuring of urban space plays in particular de-industrialised places
. This
process of restructuring is intimately linked at all levels with what Castells



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