The Dundee City Council Regeneration of the Central Waterfront Area - Research Proposal Example

?Research Proposal on the Analysis of Optimum Land Use for the Dundee Council Regeneration of the Central Waterfront Area of Your Name Your University Abstract This paper examines the information and data needs of Dundee’s Central Waterfront Area regeneration project that is being executed and monitored by the Dundee City Council. It looks at how data can be collected and presented to various stakeholders, particularly investors, current and future residents. The paper zooms in to the models and data that needs to be collected and analysed to ensure that the project attracts the best possible investors and resident to ensure that The Central Waterfront Area and the entire city and region builds a competitive city that will attract and sustain the best individuals and institutions over the long-term. It finally identifies an ideal model for the presentation of this data to various stakeholders to ensure that they give their economic and social support for the regeneration of Dundee’s Central Waterfront area to a world-class city. The research ends with the description of deliverables that must be presented by Dundee’s Central Waterfront to various stakeholder groups. Keywords: Dundee City, Dundee Central Waterfront, Investors, Stakeholders, Competitive City Introduction Dundee City is embarking on a project to expand Dundee’s city centre down to the Central Waterfront Area (Dundee Waterfront Vision). The Dundee Waterfront area encompasses four main sections of the city of Dundee located near they Tay Riverside (Dundee Waterfront Business Current Project)This project is to create a new iron grid system reminiscent to the connections made by the Romans in the city over 1,500 years ago. It also seeks to improve numerous facilities in the city and also go further to regenerate various elements of the city to place it in the category of other competitive European and Global cities (Dundee City Official Website). The project started in 2001 and is expected to end in the year 2031. Currently, there is the need for investors to sink capital into the various projects to create the background for future development of the city. Also, there is the need to attract and promote the city positively before its stakeholders, particularly present and future residents. Research Objectives McMillan & Weyers (2010) states that every academically recognised research project must have a set of clearly defined objectives that the research will be based upon. The purpose of this research are to: 1. Create the definitive platform for the critical analysis of stakeholders to the Central Waterfront Area development project at this present point in time. 2. Identify optimum uses of sites for investors, settlers and stakeholders 3. The description of the data collection methods to be used for the collection of preliminary data for the project 4. The identification of investor and other stakeholder presentation model Literature Review Bryman, (2008) states that for an academic research work to have the relevant credibility and acceptability in the world of academia, there is the need for the researchers to review analyse and present groundbreaking definitions, models and system through secondary literature. First of all, the literature review of this research will be based on the elements and features of a competitive city. From preliminary analysis, the paper should focus on the sector approach, institutional approach and conditions for settlement defined by Sako & Murie, (2010) to lay out the potential and optimum land use type that the presentations to stakeholders must dwell upon. The sector approach involves the zoning of city centres being regenerated optimally between creative industries and knowledge intense industries. The creative industries include arts, media, entertainment, creative business services, publishing, advertising and designing. This will ensure that the city will be promoted in other places where consumers will use these patents that are produced in the city in question. Knowledge intensive industries include ICT, Research and Development, Finance, Law and Higher education. These sectors bring in very high revenues and incur little capital and expenditure costs so they are likely to fetch investors the highest returns and also give the city a prestigious image. The institutional approach talks about the establishment of proper institutions to regulate the services of industries that will be sited in the city. These institutions include efficient city authorities, tax regimes, up-to-date infrastructure and promote accessibility. Also, the condition for settlement by people in the region is an important criteria for the development of a competitive city. It includes the creation of effective professional and labour networks, improve the quality of life, promote urban absorption, security and diversity openness. Williams (2003) emphasised that the elements of the development of competitive city centres are: 1. The development of projects to promote competitive activities like international brands. 2. The establishment of proper infrastructure that promote efficiency like CCTV, security measures, information and signage. 3. The creation of central elements identifiable to the city 4. Embark on transport projects 5. Promote the Public realms like the creation of international tourist attraction elements 6. Embark on public art projects. Freeman defines stakeholders as entities that are affected by the activities and operations of a given organisation (1994). This implies that although the project is being executed primarily by Dundee City Council, there are other core stakeholders like the actual entities that will be outsourced to handle the actual projects. The second category of stakeholders is the investors, whose capital must be sunk into the project to ensure that the plans are efficiently and effectively executed. Another dominant category of stakeholders is the group of current and future residents who will be attracted to the city. There are several other stakeholders and they need to be identified and satisfied in a way that will ensure the efficient and effective use of resources in this development drive. Research Methodology The research approach will focus on the following issues, using the following methods: First of all, the various stakeholder groups must be identified. All potential stakeholders, including those who can actually and those who can potentially affect the operations of this entity. This can be done by critically analysing the stakeholders in house and also interviewing the staff of Dundee City Council to find out the stakeholders they have had to deal with over the past years they have operated. This way the various stakeholders will be identified and noted. This will be followed by the critical analysis of stakeholder political power and impact on the project using a stakeholder impact grid. The Johnson, Scholes & Whittington (2008) Grid that places the power and interests of stakeholders into categories like high and low will be analysed. This will zoom in on investors and current and future residents of the regenerated city. The next step in such an analysis will be to identify the various stakeholder effects and affects in relation to the objectives of the Central Waterfront Development project (Kahr & Thomsett, 2005). This way, the stakeholders can be ranked in order of importance. The second major phase of the research will attempt to identify the optimum land use capacity of each site. This will involve the use of experts in providing several alternative land use zoning plans for the regeneration of the Dundee Waterfront project as defined by Sako & and their respective discounted value. This next step is to use the discounted to estimate the returns of various investors if they choose to invest in the area in question. This must be done tactfully because the clients need to “lower property yields, taking a longer term view of the period (20 years, 2011 – 2031) over which the development will need to show a return before it can be considered viable by the private sector.” Adams et al (2005). Thus the cashflow analysis must take into consideration the entire time frame (Singh, 1997) 20 year period and state clearly, where the various investors will potentially break even. Other specific stakeholder postulations must be analysed and presented. For example, current and potential residents might want to see how the standard of living will be varied over the 20-year period. The data collection methods to be used include, but are not limited to: 1. City council plans 2. City council statistics and postulations 3. Historical background of Dundee 4. Industrial analysis of the various sectors 5. Business profiles of major business 6. Surveys with residents of Dundee over what they really want to see in a rejuvenated Central Waterfront 7. Consultations with environmentalist groups to ascertain human and biological systems. Basic background information available on (BioDundee Website) 8. Interviews with authorities of the city like the Mayor, MP, and lawyers 9. Analysis of the businesses the City Council is targeting 10. Data on the profile of the major target businesses 11. Analysis of the operations of other nearby city authorities like Manchester and Glasgow on their various city regeneration projects Data Analysis When this data is collected, they will need to be processed to information and presented to investors and other stakeholder groups. The model to be used is the Geist (2006) model of stakeholder briefing on optimum land use. It is as follows: Fig. 1 Optimum Land Use Presentation Model in Geist, Helmut (2006) Land Use & Land-Cover Changes: Local Process & Global Impacts Berlin: Springer Verlag p. 133 From the Geist Model, different presentations and visualizations will be preperd for distinct stakeholder groups. This will be done by creating narratives and quantitative systems based on the research findings and illustrated in the form of scenarios which will come with various visual aids. The next step is to identify land use types of various stakeholders from the research. These land use types will be designed using simulation models, tools and techniques. This will be presented in a cold review to internal project team members, potential stakeholders and of course the hot review, where it will be presented to actual stakeholders. Their feedbacks will be considered and re-incorporated into the land use types and ultimately, the narratives and qualitative information. After that, the impacts of human and biophysical systems of the urban re-generation project taken from social, economic and environmental analysts will be considered. From there, a final deliverable will be presented for each stakeholder group. When stakeholders and investors identify their ends, feedback will be taken and immediately, the models used by the professionals on the team will be re-evaluated. From there, other external driving forces will be taken into consideration and then the scenarios will be amended as appropriate and new presentations presented. Timescale Month 1: Project specifications will be clarified between us (the clients and the Dundee City Council). Preliminary hiring of external staffs will be commenced at this point Month 2: Detailed analysis of stakeholder needs and preliminary interviews with the client Month 3: Analysis and creation of optimum processing models by the external consultants on the project. Month 4: Data Collection and analysis Month 5: Submission and preliminary evaluation by core project team Month 6: Creation of presentations for stakeholders by core project team using the Geist Model. Month 7: Presentations and amendments of presentations and narrations. Deliverables 1. Detailed Stakeholder list 2. Stakeholder grid and 3. Stakeholder ranking 4. Four optimum land use zoning plans for the Central Waterfront regeneration site 5. A discounted cashflow of how much can be potentially earned by investors from various sectors and other public institutions. 6. Case studies and scenarios of the break-even analysis of some key potential institutions and industrial investors. 7. Standard of Living charts and graphs for various sectors and industries 8. Other specific stakeholder forecast documents prepared over the 20 year period (like city crime analysis, terrorism profile of Dundee and the bigger picture.) 9. Land Use and Coverage Change Model 10. Presentations for various stakeholders using the Geist Model Personnel & Resource Input 1. Core project team members put together by the consultancy firm bidding for the project with approval from Dundee City Council, the Client 2. External Consultants: Financial Analysts – 3, Planning Officers – 2, Social/Economic Impact Analysts – 2, Environmental Analysts – 2 3. Remuneration will be tied to the going rate of hourly pay based on qualification and experience of selected staff. 4. Data Collection team to be made up of 60 lower and middle ranked personnel in the various areas of interest. 5. Specific logistic needs will be sourced from professionals on the team Works Cited Adams, David, Watkins, Craig & White, Michael (2005) Planning Public Policy & Property Markets Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. Print BioDundee. Biotechnology in Dundee. Website. Available at: http://www.biodundee.co.uk/ Accessed: 16th March, 2011. Bryman A (2008) Social Research Methods, 3rd ed. Oxford, Oxford University Press. Print. Dundee City. Dundee City Official Website. Website. Available at: http://www.dundee.com Accessed: 16th March, 2011 Dundee Waterfront, Dundee Waterfront Business Current Project. Website. Available at: http://www.dundeewaterfront.com/projects.htm Accessed: 16th March, 2011 Dundee Waterfront, Dundee Waterfront Vision. Website. Available at: http://www.dundeewaterfron.com/ Accessed: 16th March, 2011 Dundee Waterfront, Dundee Waterfront Board Available at: http://www.dundeewaterfron.com/ Accessed: 16th March, 2011 Freeman, Richard Edward (1994) “The Politics of Stakeholder Theory: Some Future Directions” Business Ethics Quarterly 4(4) pp 509 – 422. Journal. Geist, Helmut (2006) Land Use & Land-Cover Changes: Local Process & Global Impacts Berlin: Springer Verlag. Print. Kahr, Joshua, Thomsett, Michael (2005) Real Estate Market Valuation & Analysis Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons Johnson, G. Scholes, K. Whittington, R. (2008) Exploring Corporate Strategy London: Pearson Education Ltd. Print. McMillan, K. & Weyers, J. (2010), How to write Dissertations and Project Reports, Pearson Education ltd. Sako, Mistard & Murie, John (2010) Making Competitive Cities Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Print Singh, Kumar Ajit (1997) Land Use Environment & Ecomic Growth in India. New Delhi: MD Publication PVT Ltd. Print. Williams, Gwyndaf (2003) The Enterprising City Centre: Manchester’s Development Challenge London: Spon Press. Print. Read More