Transcript

Voiceover:

This is a podcast for the Bartlett Review, sharing new ideas and disruptive thinking for the built environment, brought to you by the Bartlett Faculty for the Built Environment at University College London.

Peter George:

The biggest number one crisis in local government today, particularly in London, is homelessness.

Prof Lauren Andres:

The focus is on equity, is on liveability, on trying to tackle the vulnerabilities that are characterising our cities.

Dr Sonia Freire Trigo:

There are many examples where the processes frankly have not really benefited the people who were supposed to get some benefits out of it.

Prof Lauren Andres:

Hello and welcome to this latest episode of the Bartlett Review podcast. I'm Professor Lauren Andres. I'm director of research at the Bartlett School of Planning, and I'm an expert in planning and urban transformation. Today we're going to talk about urban regeneration. This term urban regeneration has been used to look at the transformation of cities from the 1980s onwards. However, urban regeneration has changed dramatically. It is characterised by a lot of new priorities and new challenges from climate change, from increasing urban and social economic inequalities. This is really why we need to question what is urban regeneration today? And to do this, I have two experts with me. First of all, my colleague Sonia Freire Trigo. Sonia is a lecturer in urban regeneration and she's been working in this field for the past 10 years. She's an expert in this topic and she's actually also leading currently the new campaign to Urban Regeneration. Sonia, welcome to the podcast.

Dr Sonia Freire Trigo:

Thank you. Delighted to be here.

Prof Lauren Andres:

I'm also very pleased to welcome Peter George. Peter is Strategic Director of Economy and Sustainability at Ealing Council. Peter studied on our MSc programme in Urban Regeneration, and he has been working in various places in London. Peter is an expert on urban regeneration. Peter, welcome to the podcast.

Peter George:

Thank you. It's great to be back.

Prof Lauren Andres:

Delighted to have both of you today. So we are going to start our discussion by questioning what is meant by urban regeneration. Sonia, can you just tell us a little bit about it?

Dr Sonia Freire Trigo:

Yeah, thank you. So this is something that I get asked a lot. What is this thing about urban regeneration interventions and how are they different from other redevelopment interventions? So for me, urban regeneration should be an urban transformation process that prioritises the wellbeing of people living in the declining areas that are receiving that regeneration. The problem is that this definition, this personal definition, is quite different from the original urban regeneration definition or indeed what we could see as the current one. So for example, if we look back at the first urban regeneration approaches that emerged after the Second World War to tackle the large destruction across European cities, we find an urban policy that linked urban decline with physical decline for obvious reasons. And so the solutions adopted at the time focused very much on rebuilding homes and replacing slums, but without much attention to the social networks that were destroyed in the process.

 

And so towards the end of the 1990s, urban regeneration became a multi-sectoral policy field that not only delivered bricks and mortar, but also was delivering social and employment programmes to improve people's socio-economic conditions. That was also the time, by the way, where you see public-private partnerships emerging for the first time as the preferred policy delivery model for these types of interventions. And then came the global financial crisis and the economic austerity that put an end to that multi-sectoral approach and replaced it with an economic growth approach. It's a regeneration approach that looks at low land value areas. Declining areas have those land values that are low and through their transformation into a high density residential schemes, the land value uplift is used to cover construction and land acquisition costs and obtain a profit, but leaves very little for anything else like affordable housing, et cetera, which is usually why people complain about urban regeneration because of the unwanted effects of these type of approaches. So it is really against this way of thinking about regeneration, this very economic fair led approach that many scholars like myself are calling for a new understanding and the prioritisation of the wellbeing of the people living in those areas.

Prof Lauren Andres:

You mentioned the credit crunch. Clearly the pandemic had an impact on urban regeneration and also tackling other priorities like for example, the climate emergency. Peter, how do you approach this and what do you think is the urban regeneration in its current definition for London but also for other cities?

Peter George:

I think just following on from what was said, what it has to mean is the comprehensive regeneration of a site in terms of social, economic, environmental, and physical. However, I think the term gets used quite loosely, and many in this sector typically use that kind of language when what they're actually describing is simply developing land for housing. And I think good urban regeneration should and must result in the land usage being better for people compared to what came before it. In all regards, however, as I think Sonia has said, what it can often mean because the approaches are rarely comprehensive, it can often result in those that have lived their prior feeling left behind and feeling that the only real outcome has been gentrification. There's always public private partnerships, which I'll talk to more, but in terms of the balance, it very much relies on private sector leadership and there's a lot that they have to seek to deliver in developments not just for the site, but also their own profit margins and balance sheets. Thinking about urban regeneration in London, what it typically means is there's a lot of estate regeneration. So the redevelopment of council estates, town centre regeneration and thinking about the future of high streets, and there's a lot of development of large brownfield sites, particularly those that have a form of industrial kind of usage. I guess some of the biggest examples of urban regeneration projects in London over the last decade or so would be at King's Cross and at Battersea.

 

Prof Lauren Andres:

When I listened to both of you as we're talking about people, we're talking about housing, we're talking about left behind, we're talking about gentrification, and that seems to be a very important point here is there's not one type of regeneration. How and why is it a crucial process to addressing crisis and disruptions? Peter?

Peter George:

I think just looking at the last five years, London and beyond are still reeling from what I would describe as successive crises. I think Brexit was very destructive around the same time we had the pandemic. But the other crisis I would mention is actually the Grenfell tragedy where a council estate burnt down very tragically resulted in serious loss of life. And that has resulted in the Building Safety Act that came forward in 2023 and there's now rightly a much stronger emphasis on building safety. But I guess the overarching crisis is the climate crisis, and I think urban regeneration practitioners are still grappling with how best to respond to that. I think in response to the climate crisis, a lot of social landlords, councils and housing associations are going to rightly switching their investment focus from developing new build pipelines to investing in their existing stock.

 

So making them more climate ready and higher interest rates has also been a factor that's all resulted in a significant drop off in new housing. A good example is in Ealing where I'm responsible for housing planning. In 2024, we had no new major planning applications for residential housing. What was happening was landowners where they were promoting land were flipping what would've been residential sites into student housing, co-living or hotels rather than deliver homes. So I always say that the real test of public private partnerships is not when the sun is shining, but during challenging market conditions such as this. And unless those parties pull together and work more tightly than what you see is significant stalling of urban regeneration projects.

Prof Lauren Andres:

This is fascinating, Peter. I mean when I listen to you, I hear all the different range of key themes that resonate with urban regeneration. We're talking about crisis, poly crisis. We are talking about intersectionality and intersectional burdens in relation to social economic inequalities and how this translate into housing, but also really thinking about mixed uses in the future of the cities. I hear as well about key political challenges and Brexit in the UK being one of them. But other European countries, other European cities have been doing this. And obviously Sonia, you've been working in different countries around Europe. So just tell me about how you are approaching urban regeneration in other non-UK context.

Dr Sonia Freire Trigo:

For me, a very interesting thing is this thing that I was talking about earlier, how urban regeneration, the solutions, the different types of urban regeneration that we were talking about are always shaped by what are seen as the key urban problems to address. So for instance, in China, it highlights very specific concerns about the obsolescence of the numerous towns that have been built in the last 40 years. So that has become a really key urban problem that they want to address and a key focus in the way they think about and deliver urban regeneration approaches. But say our colleagues from South Africa will be concerned about housing segregation. So what I find fascinating is how urban regeneration means different things in different places. So the Sustainable Development Goal 11, which is about improving human settlements, making them safer, making them better in general for the people that live there. So building safe and affordable housing as Peter was mentioning by protecting, for example, cultural heritage of marginalised communities that live in these deprived areas by making old council estate more energy efficient, for example. So these are things that perhaps previous ways of thinking about urban regeneration didn't take into account that much, but they are nonetheless these new crises, new issues that we need to tackle in urban regeneration and doing so we are helping the renewal of our cities and we are getting closer to our Paris Agreement promises.

Prof Lauren Andres:

I mean all this is super interesting. Sonia, you were mentioning already climate change and what it means in terms of anticipating for the impact of increase of temperature. So how do we deal with heat in the new urban regeneration projects? How do we deal as well with possibly an increase of rain and hence flooding? I would like to come back and ask you what do you think about the combination of the pandemic and the post pandemic changes? So this issue of people, workers not going all the time to the office, and Peter you mentioned hybrid working and its impact on gentrification. So there's new shift, new ways of working, new ways of living, but also as well how finance and funding really are leveraged now for urban regeneration.

Peter George:

I'll start by just talking a bit about some of the challenges through the lens of a public sector urban regeneration practitioner. The biggest number one crisis in local government today, particularly in London, is homelessness. And that is one which is most councils are really struggling to respond to. They can't build quickly enough, particularly given everything I just described. And we're having to contemplate really tragically having families and children in hotels and other kind of inappropriate accommodations. So that's a real challenge. Council's ability to address that challenge is limited.

I read recently that in the best case scenario, it will take 10 years to address London's homelessness crisis. I guess a reflection on all the investment we're having to put into council housing is also a reflection of the quality of the council housing that was built, particularly in that post-war era. One of the lessons from the post from that pandemic era was how much all of us came to really value green open space. For example, in Ealing we've got two of the biggest growth zones in London, Southall and Acton, which are collectively due to have an extra 35,000 homes over the next 15 years. So how can we also plan for parks and social infrastructure to cater for the demand created by all the extra population in a strategic way. So rather than just expect developments to have the right amount of parks, we're actually working on the creation of a regional park for the whole of West London that will help to respond to population growth.

Prof Lauren Andres:

The way you describe urban regeneration and the way you're approaching urban regeneration really demonstrate this sort of people led approach where really the focus is on equity, is on livability on trying to tackle really vulnerabilities that are characterising our cities and doing this in a very integrated way.

 Voiceover:

This is a podcast for the Bartlett Review, sharing new ideas and disruptive thinking for the built environment, brought to you by the Bartlett Faculty for the Built Environment at University College London.

 

Prof Lauren Andres:

So we touched earlier on gentrification, but we haven't really discussed it further. I think it's really interesting to unwrap a bit more, I mean this link between gentrification and urban regeneration knowing that it's often something local communities are going to be afraid of.

 

Dr Sonia Freire Trigo:

Yeah, I mean it is a fascinating topic and we do actually in the programme, in one of the modules, we discuss it with the students. We put this question to them, is urban regeneration possible without gentrification? So yeah, that process of a social restructuring of a place usually displacing the most vulnerable communities, the low-income communities from the original places and being replaced by middle classes and higher classes, the term has evolved. The academic work around that concept has evolved a lot. Looking at, okay, so who is to blame for that process? Are the pioneers, the artists that go to the cool crappy studios? And then they are seen as the ones that initiate the trend of gentrification because then it captures attention from investors, et cetera. Are they really the gentrifier or do we have to look at more structural reasons like who are the landowners, who are all the actors, private sector actors that benefits from the land value uplift that usually are associated with these transformation processes? Ownership of land, but also how you redistribute that land value uplift is so important to, in a way make sure that you are not triggering this process of displacement that you're very careful at making sure that despite the improvement to the built environment, you keep providing affordable workspaces and affordable homes for the existing communities that were living there and made that a place and a home and are not just being perhaps not directly displaced, but over time indirectly because the rents around them are going up, the shops around them are the kind of places that they can't afford to go and do their shopping in.

So yes, I think that making sure that you have mechanisms to redistribute that value uplift in a way that benefits the existing communities. It's important. I don't know whether you want to jump in Peter.

Peter George:

Yeah, no, happy to share some thought. So I think what you are saying is to an extent, and I agree that gentrification is unavoidable.

Dr Sonia Freire Trigo:

No, I was saying that we could try to avoid it

Peter George:

I think within a red line. So for example, on an estate regeneration project, you can, and I think London's pretty good at this now. So I think in the last few years the mayor of London has mandated that prior to redeveloping a council estate, that has to be a ballot of the people and therefore the ballot is subject to an offer which the residents get to vote on. And typically the offer would include the replacement of their council homes

Compared to other cities, London is good at delivering affordable housing and all residential developments are expected to deliver 50% affordable housing. They're expected to deliver a minimum of 35% by the mayor. So that means that there's always going to be a level of affordable housing within London. I think where it is unavoidable though is as you was touching on Sonia, is what happens outside of that red line because typically the replacement development is partly funded by private housing, and the private housing typically will achieve higher land values than what replaced it, which can likely result in some people no longer being able to afford live in that neighbourhood. I think that to a degree is somewhat a product of urban regeneration, which I think is very difficult to avoid.

Dr Sonia Freire Trigo:

Yeah, I mean whenever we start talking about urban regeneration without realising we inevitably go into the topic of delivering affordable housing and they're so interlinked, there's such a big housing crisis that is almost impossible to think about regeneration without an element of that affordable housing, and that is a problem. One of the problems with this world affordable housing though, is that it is an umbrella term for many different types of affordability. And you were mentioning before homelessness. I mean there are certain types of affordable homes that are not so affordable, and the ones that we really, really need to, for instance, help local authorities with their homelessness, the temporary accommodation and all of that is social rent and people, there aren't all those. The majority of the state regeneration projects that we've seen have completely, not completely, but they have resulted in a drastic reduction of social rent units in them to replace them with more profitable type of unit shared ownership, for example, and just to make the whole scheme viable. Yes, shared ownership is a type of affordable housing and is tapping into the need of a certain sector of the population, but there needs to be more support for the lower end of the affordable housing. And at the moment we are not having that. So all those things I guess, is what are the reasons why people are so scared about urban regeneration and because there are many examples where there hasn't been enough transparency and the processes frankly have not really benefited the people who were supposed to get some benefits out of it.

Prof Lauren Andres:

So we talked a lot about housing and the delivery of different types of housing for me resonates with the fact that urban regeneration is hugely complex because there's a spatial issue, there's a scale issue. Often urban regeneration is very big, very large, but in some cases is smaller. The other thing as well is urban origination takes time. I mean, we're talking sometime about project that will take 10, 15, 20 years and all this really question the way it is going to be governed, it is going to be led by, and this goes by to the vision, the initial vision by the local authority, by the local communities, by the developer, and as a result as well, how then power is shared, what type of regulation is happening. I mean, we talked a lot about what's happening in the UK, in London, especially if you are looking across Europe, there's various ways actually to address urban regeneration.

One example we tend to use quite a lot as probably quite a good example, is what happened in Germany, in Hamburg, in Halfen City, where here it's a very different model in relation to how urban regeneration was delivered as a waterfront redevelopment where really the local authorities and the organisation in charge of the regeneration kept control over what was happening on the site in relation to affordability, the quality of urban public spaces, but also really tackling issues around climate change and sustainability. I mean, I'm sure there's a lot of other examples across Europe.

Dr Sonia Freire Trigo:

I was last October part of an urban regeneration workshop that was organised by the University of the Basque Country. There were experts from all over Europe invited to that workshop. And the idea was to use our knowledge, pick our brains and work with the university, the regional government and two local authorities outside San Sebastian to help them with a case study, a real case study, the regeneration of a former small community around a paper mill industry that had closed back in 2000s. And how do you do that? I thought it was very interesting to see was this very strong alliance between regional government, local government, the university, very clear and very close agenda on what needs to happen, a very strong public sector if you like, but with very strong involvement from the private sector as well and how that strong public sector managed to in a way have more equal relationship and dialogues and negotiations with the private sector. I'm not saying it's perfect and if my colleagues from the Basque Country are listening to me, they surely will have lots of things to say. But it was refreshing to see perhaps that stronger public sector and working in collaboration with the university to find new ways and different ways of thinking about urban regeneration.

Prof Lauren Andres:

So we touch on partnership, we touch on housing, we touch on, I mean equity liveability, we haven't discussed that much, the connection between urban regeneration and transport. And I'm wondering, Peter, if you could just expand a little bit on this because it is crucial to really understand urban regeneration as well.

Peter George:

So I grew up in East London and therefore I've seen a lot of change in East London, particularly Stratford, which is I think currently the fifth busiest station in London and seen a lot of investment around the Olympic sites. In Ealing we've benefited from the Elizabeth Line and there's been significant growth in and around those Elizabeth Line stations, particularly in Southall, Acton and West Ealing, which has brought a lot of growth. But it's also brought some tension with the local communities because if you've lived in an area your whole life, which has only really experienced gentle density, then you have a first class train station and tube line such as Elizabeth Line in your local neighbourhood, that then catalyses a lot of growth. And what we're having to think about as a planning authority is making sure that the growth is benefiting places and people's lives rather than they're feeling that they're just losing out on a loss of space for housing.

 

But I think the final thing I would say is that London's housing target is going up from 52,000, which has never been achieved to 88,000. And there's already a lot of development around all of the main tube and rail stations in London. So one of the things we're having to think about in Ealing for our next local plan is how we can continue to develop growth in areas that perhaps aren't near rail stations but are around high streets. And I think with the significant move to hybrid working, I think it can now be viable and sustainable to build around high streets because not everyone will be going into work as often as they were. So I think the hybrid working therefore changes the dependency on transport hubs and development.

Prof Lauren Andres:

I'm just wondering if you could tell us what could be your wish list in relation to how urban regeneration could be improved? I mean, does it mean, for example, having a stronger local government, having more power given to communities, having more regulations, having more control, and also what does it mean for the current government and for how the planning process and planning system is being completely challenged currently?

Dr Sonia Freire Trigo:

Yeah, you said a stronger local government, and for me that is one of the priorities on my wish list. That would be it, especially in London, any opportunity area that you can think about, you're going to be negotiating not just with your local developer. You have international national actors all coalescing in one single place and you are a local authority trying to get the best out of that deal. How do you do that? Unless you have the appropriate resources, you're not going to be able to be in a strong negotiating role. And the other thing I would also add to my wish list is to have communities engaged in this process from the outset. So not just towards the end of the plan making where they are shown the plans and asked about the colour of the trees. No, no, no, really at the beginning saying what needs matter to them, what should be the priorities? So having community voices from the start, not just as a consultative voice, but as an active actor of that plan making, I think it's important. Would you agree with that?

Peter George:

Yeah, I would agree with that. A lot of residents, a lot of communities feel understandably really alienated by the pace of growth and they won't necessarily understand all the complexity of the planning system. So the greater extent to which you can improve transparency and increase trust and give people more kind of agency and control over what happens, I think it is better outcomes all round. Just a couple of other points, I think. So realistically, the country's and London's economy isn't such where I'm expecting significant increases to local government funding in order for us to be able to resource up in a way that Sonia has described whether or not it's preferable or not. So I think that to deliver the change that London and beyond needs, the model is going to have to adapt so that there is stronger partnerships between the public and the private sector.

 

I think the economy is such where we're always going to have to rely for the short to medium term on a private sector led financing model. Therefore, the challenge is how can you therefore create an alignment of interest? And I guess a good example is in the commercial market occupiers, the operators, the shareholders are now really lobbying for and demanding sustainable commercial premises as part of any new development or part of existing land holdings. And that's a good example where objectives are aligning and we're getting more sustainable commercial that isn't happening in the residential industry at the moment, not getting that kind of consumer demand for sustainable housing in the way that we are for offices.

Dr Sonia Freire Trigo:

I mean, I guess that shareholders of this big patient capital companies and their interest in ESG growing, so the S for standing for social, and that could be one way. If we managed to create a narrative where we're shaking conscious of those shareholders and ask them to pay more attention to the S and not just the E of the ESG metrics that are used then by these companies to get shareholders' money, then that could be one way in which we could more effectively tap into that private sector and aligned their interests with the interests of genuine regeneration.

 

Prof Lauren Andres:

And this tell us a lot about knowledge and knowledge sharing and how it is important to learn from previous experiences in London and elsewhere to share and to have those community of practise available to learn from good practises, but also to learn from failures. And here there's really scope to learn from London to learn from the UK. And I'm thinking, I mean the role we're playing in shaping the knowledge of our students. For example, our Chinese students, I mean Sonia, you have half of your cohort who's coming from China. And really when you're looking at what's happening in Chinese cities, it's not about growth and urban redevelopment. It's very much around thinking and rethinking urban development and urban regeneration. So here I'm in the Bartlett School of Planning and you and your team are really playing a key role here, which I think is fascinating.

And I mean listening to you Peter, it really highlights how and why we really need to continue learning from London because it demonstrate all the complexity of urban regeneration in our current context. I'm very conscious we need to finish this podcast. So my thanks to Sonia Freire Trigo and to Peter George. It's been a pleasure to have you on the podcast today. And just to reiterate, for more information about the Bartlett School of Planning at University College London, you can visit our website, ucl.ac.uk forward slash Bartlett, and follow us on LinkedIn at the Bartlett UCL Faculty of the Built Environment. Thank you again, both. It was a real pleasure.

Dr Sonia Freire Trigo:

Thank you. Likewise.

 

Peter George:

Thank you. Yeah.