What is Placemaking and Renaissance?

Barra Mac Ruairi

Barra Mac Ruairi, Strategic Director Department of Regeneration, City of Bradford Metropolitan District Council.

Renaissance Is About People

If we forget the people rooted in a place when we regenerate, we will fail to drive a place forward – people are the greatest asset of any “renaissance”.

“This town, is coming like a ghost town – Do you remember the good old days before the ghost town? – We danced and sang, and the music played in a de boomtown”

June 1981, The Specials.

So where are the forgotten people? Where did they go or did we stop looking? People are the greatest asset of any place. Without their activity and engagement you have, “a ghost town” as The Specials put it.

The reason why any investor should engage with the people of an area is firstly, to understand the situation; and secondly, to release the power resting within the people of the area. This power often lies dormant due to circumstances beyond peoples’ control. We should not judge communities by how they appear, just as we do not judge books by their covers, youths by their swagger, or investors by theirs. People are rarely born guilty; fashion, swagger or pinstripe suits are not evidence of capability, trust or honour.

People: investors, champions, artists, employees, arguing couples, kids playing on the corner, community elders, politicians, youths, mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers; all need to be regarded and treated as the life and not the death of a place.

The expertise, patience and effort required to maximise the life, and minimise the death of a place is immense. It starts with the attitude of all parties to the future. All engagement efforts around regeneration projects are there to break the spiral of decline and instigate an upward spiral of growth. This is slower and more difficult to achieve than the downward one. It is easier to let things fail than to work to make them a success. The intervention timing, manner and honesty of engagement are crucial to win success for any development.

The key motive for engagement by investors in any place is that it secures and returns a profit for all. The profit referred to needs to be a medium to long-term profit. Short term profiteering lacks sustainable impact and is often counterproductive as it reinforces the image of failure in an area. A little grass cutting or weeding will not do the job. We need to cultivate our failing urban areas; seed them with ambition and a desire to bloom.

To be involved in regeneration you must become part of the whole community. Regeneration is not something done to the people; it is done with them, and better still, by them.

As a stakeholder or shareholder you must understand the objectives of all and seek a consensus, not a mediocrity. The regeneration industry must seek to develop the “No Sector” sector, where there is no “public”, “private” or voluntary and community sectors; it needs to be one sector driving one place forward.

The greatest characteristic of Britain is that its people are largely born free, but it is their social and economic environment that shapes their future; a future that can be as diverse as restricting poverty or free prosperity.

Our social and economic environment does not occur in the abstract. It is formed and then expressed in the streets, squares, parks, living rooms, offices, classrooms; all the places which make our society. When seeking to regenerate we must never give up on the idea of place being the anchor of our history; a primary tool for the development of our society in the future. Yet, often in our society, our places, the cashless classes, young people and poor people become the liability. If kids were as valuable to a development as a Starbucks coffee shop, then every corner would have at least a couple of teenagers.

The point is, if we seek to regenerate only through the medium of spending power, we will only “gentrify”; and fail to provide a society with the rebirth it truly needs to break its downward spiral and get on with the job of being successful.

Towns and cities exist only because of people and their economic activity. They need to be free places with open doors, and a realm for the public. How these places then address their national and global position is the crucial factor in the shaping of their future. This can either be a condition of prosperity or one of mediocrity or poverty due to the loss of “de boom town”; be they thriving mining villages, busy steel towns, processing towns, trading cities or seaside resorts.

It is now up to all places to engage in the global economy through their activities and actions taken locally. The global economy provides us with greater choice, opportunity and innovative solutions. But we mustn’t let it seduce us into overlooking the primary significance of place and the specific character of different places; from their vegetables to their door details, or colloquialisms, or types of beer.

People can become deactivated and disengaged because of their perceived lack of power to respond to global and national forces of change in their lives. They can lose the drive to take responsibility for their lives. They need skills training, support, and aspiration, to be strong, articulate and capable of making their future better than their past.

The 70’s/80’s decline in extraction and large manufacturing-based industry resulted in tracts of towns and cities losing their work, the culture it supported, and the source of their civic pride. Towns were particularly affected as they are economically less flexible than cities. They often exist with a narrower economic foundation, featuring a singular industry which supports a massive supply chain; from accountants to shopkeepers, toolmakers and doctors. They often have less migration of people and miss out on the benefits of associated economic and cultural investments which migrants bring.

Towns are more prone to failure when there is a downturn because of their weaker economic foundation. Similarly, they are less ready to respond to an upturn. The legacy of failure is a downwards spiral. The only way to break this spiral is to re-engage with the town’s greatest asset, people.

With de-industrialisation came the loss of investment. Many towns and cities gave up on themselves. When investment did arrive, it was often at any cost, with the fabric and foundations of society pillaged by big retail boxes, ring roads and out-of-town entertainment centres. If you couldn’t afford a car, your own urban environment began to exclude you.

Too many investments still insulate themselves from blighted areas, generating their own growth and security. Such developments are autonomous but parasitical, living off the limited human and economic resources of their hinterlands without doing much for them in return.