2.5 Community participation group Recommendations

Aim: Community participation means empowering the community, creating a new division of responsibility in which the community shares responsibility for urban regeneration with the regeneration agency or municipality, and other key actors.

Local level

• Adapt a flexible model for instituting and mobilising community participation

-Agencies and municipalities work at different levels and in different ways, and must constantly review and update techniques for gaining access (e.g. the internet may be a new vehicle for community participation)

-Agencies and municipalities need to deploy a range of different and complementary strategies of involvement depending on the particular issue or the context of the local regeneration.

• Involve residents in defining the neighbourhood as a first step toward regeneration

-Agencies and municipalities need to identify very specific “ micro-level” strategies for gaining the trust and involvement of the target group. Such interventions produce a useful “snowball “effect in the community.

-Latent and manifest “ deficits of belief ” must be addressed within the community.

- Trust can only be built up in a community on an incremental basis. It is not possible to do serious participation work with a community, without guaranteeing continuity across time. If the time scale of a regeneration project exceeds one year, benchmarks must be put in place to retain the commitment and trust of the community.

-Regeneration agencies and municipalities must balance planned initiatives with sensitivity and respect for community. The messages that are sent out must be positive, and people must be encouraged to embrace positive self-definitions.

-Gentrification and consequent displacement of older, inner-city communities are frequently an unintended consequence of urban regeneration. A guarantee that displacement of the indigenous community will not take place and that new housing for the indigenous community will be developed alongside private sector developments is a recipe for community acceptance of regeneration.

-An audit of neighbourhood is a key pre-requisite before embarking on action. This helps to define the problems, potentialities and what people want.

• The “community” should be as broadly defined as possible and special efforts should be made to involve “hard to reach” groups in the community's regeneration.

-The “community” is a term that hides a diversity of interests and roles. The community includes not only residents –both owners /occupiers and tenants –but others who work in the neighbourhood or who use the area for leisure. Different people will seek different levels of involvement. Regeneration agencies and strategies should strive to be inclusive in their strategies for community involvement, so that community representation does not become “unrepresentative” over time.

-Locality is a very important principle for businesses, it is to their advantage that local infrastructure is to a high standard, and that the community enjoys good quality of life. The private sector has to be made aware of the benefits to be gained from doing business in the area, and teaming up with the regeneration agency and the community. This will involve clarifying whom should be mobilised within the business sector of the community, and develop strategies for engaging them.

For example, it has not proved difficult to engage private companies in community regeneration where tax incentives and community gain policies are in place. These mechanisms provide for a stake for the private investor in the process. Both private development and the community can gain from the common gain objectives, set down on a statutory basis, and monitored by elected community representatives, during implementation.

-Special strategies for inclusion should be developed to integrate minority groups and local ethnic economies into the community and neighbourhood. Regeneration agencies and municipalities can act as arbitrators between indigenous community needs and the “new” community needs.

• Exploit the capacity of third sector intermediaries to bring the private and public sectors together in urban regeneration .
   
• The public sector should provide continuity across time by spearheading regeneration programmes that are not time-limited, in the same way that individual projects are .

-Special areas with special needs cannot be regenerated over a short-term time span. Local projects are by definition time-limited, and this can militate against long- term betterment of the community and the neighbourhood. Strategies on the ground then need to be embedded within a larger macro-framework.

• The special skills required for neighbourhood management should be codified and should include such essentials as university level education or equivalent, practical experience on the ground, and experience of working with intercultural groups.

National level

The process of urban renewal must be taken seriously in order for it to have an impact on the ground. To this end, it is recommended that urban regeneration projects must be anchored at the highest governmental level through national legislation or the advocacy of a high-level governmental group or task force.

Administrative reform and restructuring would obviate the need for a plethora of agencies at local level. Nevertheless, it is generally agreed that area based service provision in which the regeneration agency or municipality devolves into the neighbourhood, provides a crucial point of contact with the community .

• Measurements of success in the mobilisation of the private sector need to be developed so that urban regeneration agencies and municipalities can evaluate their initiatives. Such measurements of collaboration should take into account a number of dimensions including:

• • policy provision for private sector participation
  • consultative/advisory work provided by private sector personnel
  • financial investment or grants made available by private sector
  • networking between private and public sectors

• Look outwards rather than inwards .

-Regeneration programmes should engage in an active promotional campaign to raise their national profile, push regeneration higher onto the political agenda, highlight the success of programmes, and encourage new investment, new people and new ideas.

-Allied to this is the need to develop a coherent message to sell to the community, the potential investors and to the private sector.

-Civic boosterism and in particular, the desire to make places more attractive for tourists is a key theme that links all regeneration projects across all the cities. But residents interests and those of potential tourists do not always cohere, (Karolinenviertel, Kilmainham, Castle neighbourhood, Lisbon , Uzupis, Vilnius )

EU Level

• Networking among European cities engaging in community-based initiatives should be promoted as a means of sharing knowledge and skills, as well as developing new competencies and improving general practice.
   
• Networking among European universities with special competencies in architectural design, urban planning and community development should be encouraged through, for example, a dedicated programme aimed at staff and student exchanges.
   
• Much of the experience and practice of urban regeneration is fragmentary and nationally specific. The EU could develop a coherent framework document or directive which would offer a more integrated and coherent approach at the supra-state level.
   
• Cities should be conceived of as special areas with a particular role to play in the new expanded EU. There should be an EU wide cities strategy which could provide a basis for developing and fine-tuning national and local city strategies.
   
• Candidate countries should be supported and facilitated in developing urban renewal strategies , which should build on the expertise and experience of urban regeneration programmes that have already taken place across other European countries and cities.