Bringing the community on board
Former Lord Mayor of the City of London and Chief Executive of the Spitalfields Development Group, Sir Michael Bear, shares his insights on the keys to success for large-scale urban regeneration.
Sir Michael Bear, now the Chairman of the UK Trade & Investment Regeneration Investment Organisation(RIO) and Co-chair of the UK-China CEO Infrastructure Forum, understands what it takes to get large-scale urban regeneration projects over the line.
After all, Sir Michael brought one of London’s biggest such projects – the Spitalfields regeneration – to a successful conclusion.
The key to this success? Fostering a sense of community ownership for the project.
“The secret there was to get the local community on board,” Sir Michael explains.
“We spent a lot of time selling the benefits of regeneration in the Spitalfields context.
“We spent quite a bit of time and effort in resourcing our communications program to make sure we actually went out and spoke to people.
“There’s a huge amount of innuendo and pre-judgement that goes on when you’re doing changes in a city environment. And people don’t realise that with regeneration comes good spaces. It makes the area more liveable but it does take a bit of time to get there.”
The transformational point for the Spitalfieds regeneration came when the local community was empowered to take on a sense of ownership of the project – spurred by a novel way of involving the community in consultations.
“I held consultations with the local committee and I actually gave them each a little camera and I said, what do you want in your public spaces? And they went around London taking photographs,” Sir Michael recalls.
“They wanted sculptures. There was a big demand for an allotment. So for one of our public spaces, we actually organised for one of our local schools to be allowed to grow runner beans and tomatoes there – just little things that can make a huge difference. And suddenly the local community believed that Spitalfields was their field, their project.
“Whose fields were Spitalfields? And that, in fact, was I think a game changer for us when we got them on board because it meant that the local politicians felt relaxed, they weren’t meeting opposition, the government realised this was deliverable because there was support and it would bring employment, it would bring taxation, it would bring rates.
“There is a whole continuum around what makes a successful project but it is very much around getting support,” Sir Michael concludes.
Sir Michael points to London’s Kings Cross as another example where public amenity and public spaces became the clincher for capturing public support for regeneration.
“What made that blighted area work were the open spaces, the people spaces. When you visit it now it is a fantastic place, but boy was there opposition for about 10 years!”
At the end of the day, successful regeneration comes down to good process – to a full and frank engagement with the community.
Reflecting on the Spitalfields experience Sir Michael said that those who participated in the consultations, be they for or against the project, all “felt the process was fair, was inclusive and recognised their agenda and that’s the most important thing.”