Regeneration Policy - Essay Example

Examine and evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of a regulationist approach in explaining change in regeneration policy Introduction Spatial planning can be defined as "the methods used by the public sector to influence the distribution of people and activities in spaces of various scales. Spatial planning includes all levels of land use planning including urban planning, regional planning, environmental planning, national spatial plans and in the European Union international levels" (Barker, 2006). Thus spatial planning is regarded as a wider approach and this report would basically focus its attention on spatial planning in urban areas and how the regulations and policies which can directly impact on urban renewal. In fact urban planning is about determining the future plans for the design and organization of urban space and activities. Basically the urban spatial planning is provided by the local government and country planning system in order to use it optimum manner (Valler, Wood, & North, 2000). Urban spatial planning is regarded as integration of both the land use and transport planning in order to develop the area economically and socially. Thus spatial planning in urban areas is not a single tool, process and activity and it consists of urban renewal which would already lack in investment with fewer developments (Jessop, 1990). In fact it identifies strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats throughout the particular area and proposes how it can be developed with some distinctive approaches in order to address the desired objective. This report would concentrate on spatial planning in urban areas and would delineate a series of suggestions for the improvement of physical arrangements in existing urban area, thus obviating the need for occupy the strategic resources. 2. Analysis The local government's current plan is to efficient use of lands in the urban areas which would goes beyond the traditional system of land use planning and integrate policies and regulations which has been necessitated by sustainable development and sustainable communities. Thus urban spatial planning assumes a very complex dimension against the backdrop of rising uncertainties in the external environment (Jessop, 2002). This report will have a strategic focus on the outcomes related to spatial planning in urban areas perspectives and will outline in good measure the type of accommodation that enhances the land use performance paradigm of the local government, while location, the role of planners and other variables have a very clear impact on the land use planning. A dynamic feature of this aspect of the urban spatial planning is the particular government's ability or inability to add value to existing land capability. Therefore it's the bounden duty of the urban planner to examine and adopt innovative land use techniques to achieve sustainable development including, community welfare and economic and social development (Midttun, 2005). Urban spatial planning can be identified as wider spectrum of activities, processes, tools and decisions which actively impacts on the urban renewal and rehabilitation. Thus it consist set of spatial planning activities along with different actors and agencies which would drive to the sustainable development in the area (Cochrane, 1991). In fact spatial planning in urban areas would not isolate from the public policies as well as it became as an important instrument to identify market failures, minimize the negative externalities and maximizing the positive externalities when providing the public goods and infrastructure facilities to the community. 2.1. A regulationist approach in change in regeneration policy A regulationist approach is characterized by a system of rules and regulations that imposes certain constraints on the spatial planning process. For instance the British regulationist approach has many elements from regional planning bodies incorporated into it though the scope and its impact are less known due to the fact that the spatial planning process in the UK has not been regulated to be extent that which should have been the governmental and local authority intervention in the spatial planning process and its selectivity has some deterministic regulatory parameters that are sought to be explained in academic and non-academic situations (Aglietta, 1987). In other words the situational parameters of spatial planning and the regualtionist approach have been more or less determined by the model building exigencies of time and space, Thus leaving little or no freedom to the planner. This constraint has persistently impacted on any genuine efforts made by spatial planners to integrate tractable divergences seen in the regeneration of the urban planning process. Independent spatial planning process is less likely to accommodate such divergences though them extent of the existence of convergences in the spatial model planning building efforts cannot be accurately predicted. But post-fordist approaches couldn't accomplish some of the severe regulationist approaches would have successfully accomplished (Jessop, 1997). This is despite the fact that the existing regulationist approaches are seemingly unable to impress urban planners on the need for seamless integration of rules and regulations into the architectural environment that presumably does not help the spatial planning process to overcome exogenous hindrances. For example when Margret Thatcher was succeeded by John major as the British prime minister, the latter had to adopt a less articulate regulationist approach in urban spatial planning, irrespective of the Conservative Governments persistent efforts to re-demarcate the lines of spatial planning against regulationist tendencies. Since local authorities do have problems associated with regulationist approach in spatial planning, thus it would create innumerable space opportunities for the people in the UK cities (Eisenschitz, & Gough, 1998). Also, regeneration policy would provide opportunity for unskilled and low-skilled people to earn. Having an urban spatial planning will lead to developments in social and economical infrastructure in the area. This in turn will increase local authorities' revenue. Thus the area surrounding the housing market, transnational corporations and technologies will develop, and more people will come and settle in the area. However the esthetics of the urban country side could be improve due to the setting up of urban spatial planning projects. Preserving the country side should be of high priority. Due to the increase of traffic and the development of commercial infrastructure such as airports and offices there would be sound and air pollution. These waste products could flow to the rivers and canals in the vicinity thus giving rise to water pollution. Certain species of birds and animals endemic to this area could be driven away as a result of acquiring land to set up the urban renewal projects. This could lead to protests from environmentalists (Peck, 2000). One of the major economic effects of the proposed urban renewal would be on the local shopping centers in the city. The first major issue of an out-of-town retail development is the loss of business by the local shopkeepers. Acquiring of land and the demolition of existing buildings would mean that the local council would have to pay compensation to the property owners and relocate them. The greatest strength of the regulationist approach lies in its degree of predictability associated with regional and sub regional systems of regulatory governance (Goodwin, Duncan, & Halford, 1993). For example at the county level the regulationist approaches have successfully been implemented through a system of cross functional integration. On the other hands its greatest weakness lies in a fact that the process lacks dynamism and therefore a capacity to percolate down to the bottom layers of the system. In other words regulationist rigidities in the spatial planning system within the UK have compelled urban planning authorities to abandon some of the most practical and revolutionary aspect of the spatial planning adopted elsewhere, especially in North America. 2.2. Fordism, Post-fordism & urban spatial planning Fordism has variously been interpreted as a multi dimensional phenomenon in equally diverse and social settings. For instance its current evolutionary phase is centered on both the physical and aesthetic dimensions of regeneration of urban centers. Its economic aspectual framework of analysis is basically determined by such fast evolving changes including those directly related to economic booms and some (Goodwin, & Painter, 1996). Given a scenario of highly articulate economic strategy and policy formulation in both the national economy and private enterprise, spatial planning efforts in urban settings tend to be treated with policy dichotomy by the government local authorities and private enterprise. The individualistic nature of the evolving phenomenon has been characterized by a sense of urgency on the part of the central government, a sense of regeneration on the part of local authorities and a sense of fast evolving strategic compulsion on the part of private enterprise. Fordism first acquired a larger degree of significance when its theoretical basis were nuanced with the economic and social regenerative principles that bordered on and otherwise development oriented progressive concern for changes in the sphere of spatial planning and economic welfare. The social dimension was equally influenced by the planning administrator's desire to keep up with parallel changes that were fast taking place elsewhere in urban city centers across the globe. Fordism related social phenomena can also be seen in respect of a tendency on the part of both the planner and the main stakeholder to move away from rural city centers to urban locations where regeneration policy is much stronger than anywhere else (Gough, & Eisenschitz, 1996). The social evolutionary process concerning such mobility has invariably been the subject of neoclassical social and economic theorists. It is this particular development that has led to the current perception of ideology based spatial planning and urban regeneration. Thus Fordism created a large houses as well as factories in the cities with the social classes. Spatial planning and selectivity received a further boost during the tenures of the former British Prime Minister, Margret Thatcher. Though agency related dialectics weren't specifically articulated by city and town planners, its influence could be noticed during Thatcher's era to a greater extent in the backdrop of evolving monetarists economic influence as much as Thatcher believed in Regan's supply side approach, she thought that social transformation was possible through an economic revolution based on the same regenerative principle of empowering the worker by giving him part of the ownership of the company in which he worked. However the reality was not to be completed until spatial planning activity in the urban areas of England was treated with the same respect that her monetarists' policies received (Goodwin, & Painter, 1997). During the 1980's post Fordism acquired a still larger degree of significance and its relevance for spatial planning for the first time began to be felt across fast developing urban centers of the world. For instance within the UK cities like London, Birmingham, Newcastle assiduously adopted spatial planning and regeneration policies in conformance with what was then considered to be the greatest influence of Post-Fordism on and otherwise snail-phased process of urban and town regeneration. The evolution from Fordism to post-Fordism had directly impact on the spatial planning and regeneration policies. Thus in the periods of Fordism, raw material and the labor regarded as the main factors which determined the location of the factory. In the time of post Fordism, attainability regarded as the main location factor (Hay, 1995). Therefore it required good infrastructural facilities in the cities and it has to replace the current centre of the city to a periphery. In this scenario agglomerations became as a new phenomenon. The main elements or otherwise pillars of post-Fordism can be identified as diversity, integration, flexibility, dispersal, decentralization and optimalism. However the post-Fordism increasingly emerged with the diversity and the flexibility in the changing society. Post-Fordism is characterized by some of the attributes including emerging technologies, types of consumers with emphasis on social class, increase in the service industries and white collar workers, exponential growth of female workforce and financial market globalization. Therefore Fordism and post-Fordism can be directly impacted on urban spatial planning and developments of the cities. In fact it's impacted on urban space both the ways of physical and social (Stoker, 1991). Urban regeneration in the UK can leads to many positive impacts on the economic and welfare development of the society. Especially the urban spatial planning would directly impacts on the quality of the housing market with the effectively using of the urban space. Also it may have economic, social and cultural benefits with regard to the global competitiveness of urban cities. Thus the policies and regulations related to the urban renewal has been changed under different circumstances and urban renewal projects have involved with demolishing the existing houses, factories roads and replacing with new housing projects, freeways, expressways and organizational networks. Conclusion Spatial planning has been subject to a series of changes and its process of transformation has come from a number of sources. For example regulationist approaches have brought about changes in the regeneration policies and environments. All these changes are based on the fast evolving spatial planning environment. Governments and local authorities have played a crucial role in determining policy direction of spatial planning. To such an extent that any regulationist approach tends to influence not only the decision making approaches but also the policy implementation process. Spatial planning and selectivity in urban planning have brought about not only assessable changes but also un-assessable outcomes such as social and economic uncertainties are based on both theoretical and conceptual framework of analysis. The regulationist approach has heavily impacted on spatial planning systems to such an extent that planning and implementation rigidities have ham herd the process of adaptation and flexibility in conformance with other fast developing spatial planning processes elsewhere. However it must be noted that within the UK context the government and local authorities especially in the times of Margret Thatcher have infused an ideological variance to the spatial planning process. This ideological shift has both a social and an economic influence on the ultimate outcomes. For example the current debate on the regeneration policy in urban centers has been focused on setting a trend in spatial urban planning efforts. To what extent such efforts could succeed would depend on the current process of transformation from rigid planning to lea regulated environments of strategy formulation and implementation. References 1) Aglietta, M 1987, A Theory of Capitalist Regulation, Verso, London, 2) Barker, K 2006, Barker Review of Land Use Planning, Stationery Office Books, Scotland. 3) Cochrane, A 1991, 'The changing state of local government: restructuring for the 1990s', Public Administration, vol. 69, no. 3, pp. 281-302. 4) Eisenschitz, A & Gough, J 1998, 'Theorising the state in local economic governance', Regional Studies, vol. 32, no. 8, pp. 759-768. 5) Goodwin, M & Painter, J 1996, 'Local governance, the crises of Fordism and the changing geographies of regulation', Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, vol. 21, pp. 635-648. 6) Goodwin, M & Painter, J 1997, 'Concrete Research, Urban Regimes, and Regulation Theory' in M. 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