Radical renewal policies urged to transform poorest estates into ‘neighbourhoods of choice’

According to Bruce Katz, Vice-President of the Brookings Institution and a leading American authority on regeneration, such policies need to create ‘neighbourhoods of choice’ – places able to attract new, higher-earning residents, while encouraging local people to stay in the area when their own standard of living starts to rise.

At the same time, renewal policies must make sure those communities also become ‘neighbourhoods of connection’ that link local families to good quality education, training and other opportunities whether they are located within or outside the immediate locality.

Speaking at the Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s Centenary Event in London, Mr Katz will tell an audience of more than 350 senior policy makers, practitioners and researchers that neighbourhood policy must include components for both ‘people’ and ‘place’. He will say:

“If policy makers simply focus on improving housing stock and do not alter the socio-economic mix in neighbourhoods, then the opportunities of residents and their children may be constrained, particularly if the allocation of school places is simply based on local residence and proximity. On the other hand, if policy makers simply focus on improving the job prospects of individuals without addressing neighbourhood conditions, then people will simply move up and out as they gain jobs and income.”

While acknowledging that UK policy on neighbourhood renewal is generally better at ‘joining up’ the work of different agencies and services, Mr Katz will insist that Britain can learn from the best as well as the worst American experiences.

Among his main points, he will argue that:

• Special efforts should be made to identify and respond to the most pronounced concentrations of poverty in existing housing estates and neighbourhoods. Such responses could include the kinds of demolition and redevelopment efforts now underway in the United States.
• Large-scale developments of subsidised social housing that concentrate and isolate poor families must be avoided at all costs. The pressure to build new homes, particularly in the South of England, must not become an excuse to repeat past errors.
• Central government must be prepared to devolve more power to local government to encourage tailored solutions to the problems in individual neighbourhoods and encourage a climate of experimentation and innovation.
• The private sector needs to be engaged ‘early and often’ in the setting of local priorities and the rebuilding of local markets.
• UK cities can learn from the experience of places like Baltimore and Pittsburgh that are re-establishing themselves as ‘immigrant gateways’. Immigration is viewed as a necessity, not a luxury, for their future economic, fiscal, and social health. 

Mr Katz will point to parallels between today’s need for sustained action in neighbourhoods experiencing concentrated poverty and the need identified a century ago by Joseph Rowntree to achieve greater understanding of the underlying causes of social problems. He will conclude that:

“In the end, concentrated poverty is the ‘underlying cause of weakness or evil in the community’ that Joseph Rowntree was so concerned about 100 years ago. By contrast, the focus of most neighbourhood efforts – dilapidated housing, deteriorating town centres, poor educational performance – remain ‘superficial manifestations’ of the urban settlement patterns.

“It is this basic understanding – more than any clever financing tool or delivery mechanism or accountability scheme – that needs to inform and energise the neighbourhood policies of both our countries in the coming decades.”

[Note: The Chancellor of the Exchequer’s lecture is available on the HM Treasury website.]