sustainable regeneration at a local level
Located in the rapidly changing socio-economic and urban environment of Britain’s second largest city, Birmingham Eastside is the largest current city-centre redevelopment scheme in the UK, and it presents complex challenges to a range of stakeholders in both the public and private sectors. The Sustainable Eastside project, funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), was active in the early planning and conceptual stages of the regeneration project from May 2003 through June 2008.
The aim of the Eastside Sustainability Project was to explore how sustainability is addressed in practice in the regeneration decision making process and to assess the sustainability performance of completed development schemes against stated sustainability aspirations. The timing of the research, at the very beginning of the regeneration project, allowed findings to influence positively decision-making and test claims of sustainability concept integration in a real-life urban regeneration programme.
Sustainable Eastside’s early involvement also helped to ensure that sustainability objectives were set from the beginning of the project. By establishing and incorporating sustainability indicators and benchmarks at project inception, researchers surmised that there would be a higher probability of their informing the regeneration process. Although sustainability solutions may be incorporated retroactively, this is typically substantially more costly than incorporating them from the start.
What is ‘sustainable’ is determined locally: local conditions set local priorities
What is ‘sustainable’ is determined in part by local conditions and the social and economic fabric of a place helps to shape these local conditions. The ‘gritty’ industrial character (a relic of the industrial revolution) and heritage in Eastside create a unique sense of place.
In this way the existing cultural richness of an urban regeneration area can play an important part in its regeneration and in Eastside in particular, the arts and creative sector has been an important catalyst for regeneration.
Existing businesses can also help integrate the new to the existing community but they may need support to survive the regeneration period thus maintaining social and economic diversity.
Therefore Maintaining and Supporting the socio economic fabric of Eastside was an key priority in ensuring the sustainability of the regeneration project.
How? Maintaining and Supporting the socio economic fabric of Eastside
Collaboration with Eastside’s residential and indigenous business communities also shows how the loss of small firms and services can fracture important social and economic networks in regeneration areas. It highlights how planning processes often overlook the critical role that small businesses such as food and drink establishments can play in evolving local economies and it emphasises the importance of supporting such enterprises through difficult transition periods.
Collaboration with Eastside’s residential and indigenous arts community was also a key way of maintaining and supporting the socio economic fabric of Eastside. The creative sector can be an important catalyst for regeneration but it must be treated in a manner that respects it unique characteristics and nurtures its growth with generating displacement of artists and start up companies.
Findings:
The mechanism for achieving sustainable development lies in the variety of decision-making processes that together make up an urban redevelopment programme. Within such decision-making processes must be found the key enablers that will allow ‘three-pillars’ sustainability to become the central vision for the built environment. Currently, a lack of policy coherence in the full range of sustainability innovations is threatening to limit the overall success of the Eastside regeneration programme, particularly in relation to economic regeneration, the efficacy of biodiversity mitigation measures, and the inclusiveness of Birmingham’s culturally diverse communities in decision-making.
For more information visit www.esr.bham.ac.uk or contact co-investigator:A.Barber@bham.ac.uk and reserch fellow CarinaWeingaertner: C.Weingaertner@bham.ac.uk at Birmingham University; or co-investigator Dr Libby Porter: L.Porter@lbss.gla.ac.uk at University of Glasgow.
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