Alan Mace

New East Manchester: Urban Renaissance or Urban Opportunism?

Abstract In this paper we ask how a shrinking city responds when faced with a perforated urban fabric. Drawing on Manchesters response to its perforated eastern flank —and informed by a parallel study of Leipzig—we use the citys current approach to critique urban regeneration policy in England. Urban renaissance holds out the promise of delivering more sustainable—that is more compact, more inclusive and more equitable—cities. However, the Manchester study demonstrated that the attempt to stem population loss from the city is at best fragile, despite a raft of policies now in place to support urban renaissance in England. It is argued here that Manchester like Leipzig is likely to face an ongoing battle to attract residents back from their suburban hinterlands. This is especially true of the family market that we identify as being an important element for long-term sustainable population growth in both cities. We use the case of New East Manchester to consider how discourses linked to urban renaissance—particularly those that link urbanism with greater densities—rule out some of the options available to Leipzig, namely, managing the long-term perforation of the city. We demonstrate that while Manchester is inevitably committed to the urban renaissance agenda, in practice New East Manchester demonstrates a far more pragmatic—but equally unavoidable—approach. This we attribute to the gap between renaissance and regeneration described by Amin et al. (Cities for the Many Not for the Few. Bristol: Policy Press, 2000) who define the former as urbanism for the middle class and the latter as urbanism for the working class. While this opportunistic approach may ultimately succeed in producing development on the ground, it will not address the fundamental, and chronic, problem; the combination of push and pull that sees families relocating to suburban areas. Thus, if existing communities in East Manchester are to have their area buoyed up—or sustained—by incomers, and especially families, with greater levels of social capital and higher incomes urban policy in England will have to be challenged.

Delivering Affordable Housing through Planning: Explaining Variable Policy Usage across Rural England and Wales

The delivery of affordable housing through local planning powers remains one of the most debated and controversial subjects with which policy and practice must grapple. A framework—for promoting the use of planning mechanisms to either reduce land costs or ensure that affordable housing forms part of a negotiated ‘planning gain’ package (i.e. a package of wider benefits, extending from a development, which a local authority may require as the price of planning permission)—has existed across England and Wales since the early 1990s and has attracted considerable attention throughout the last decade. Concern for how the policy operates and is operated has continued unabated since the first government circulars on planning and affordable housing were issued in 1991, with recent research being undertaken by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) (Bishop Associates, 2001), the Department of Transport, Local Government and the Regions (DTLR) (2002) and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (Crook et al., 2001). Academic attention has also been steadfastly focused on the subject, with recent analyses provided by Gallent (2000), Farthing & Ashley (2002) and Whitehead (2002). The majority of guidance and critiques tend to focus on the policy framework itself—with the exception of Farthing and Ashley’s analysis of the capacity of local authorities to negotiate social gains from housing development—and end by speculating on possible improvements, usually resting on increasing clarity in the national framework. Some analyses have examined the impact of regional context on the success of policy, arguing that it is easier for planning authorities to extract gains from development where land values are high and where developers are clamouring to provide new housing (Crook et al., 2001; Whitehead, 2002). Others have focused on local practice in terms of the ability of planning authorities to put in place the procedures that will enable them to capitalise on the current system (Tewdwr-Jones et al., 1998; Carmona et al., 2001). In this paper, our objective is to examine local implementation of existing policy and the willingness and capacity of authorities to use the present system to deliver affordable housing. We are mindful of course of potential changes to the way planning gain from housing and commercial development might be sought in the future with the publication of both English and Welsh planning Green Papers (DTLR, 2001; Welsh Assembly Government, 2001), with their focus on improving the de-

Delivering Local Plans: Recognising the Bounded Interests of Local Planners within Spatial Planning

In England spatial planning has been critiqued as being part of a postpolitical project which seeks to suppress the contested nature of policy and determining applications. A key aspect of this critique is that consensus overrides territoriality as the interface between local, bounded politics is underplayed in favour of the relational nature of place. In this reading local planners may be seen as caught between their professional understanding of, and commitment to, relational space and the bounded nature of local politics that informs their political masters at the local level. However, drawing on experience of policy development in Islington, London, it is argued that planners can themselves employ a bounded discourse of place, independently of local political demands. The Coalition governments localism agenda extends the premise of spatial planning—promoting the local and/or place but giving primacy to accommodating externally driven change; this paper explores the implications for planning practice.

The suburbs as sites of ‘within-planning’ power relations:

Despite a longstanding and varied body of literature on suburban difference, a simplified narrative of the suburbs persists that is represented by a city–suburb binary. This is damaging as it undermines our understanding of the social dynamics of the places in which, in the United Kingdom, the majority of the population live. This article looks at the reasons for the persistence of a city–suburb binary. It engages with suburban housing as a Bourdieuian field in order to show how simplified characterisations of the suburban serve the interest of particular groups, including within planning. Bourdieu’s field theory offers a powerful means to understand how judgements of the suburbs are naturalised and so become common-sense truths. As field theory indicates ‘within-planning’ power relations that support particular truths, it offers the possibility of challenging these by exposing the taken-for-granted norms of the city-suburb binary.

Tenure change in London’s suburbs: Spreading gentrification or suburban upscaling?

This article looks at the distribution of social upscaling across London linked to changes in tenure between 2001 and 2011. Against a background of discussions of suburban decline, it shows that there are a number of Outer London areas which have seen upscaling trajectories linked to the private rented sector. The analysis reveals that this particular type of upscaling was made possible by the variegation in the Outer London landscape: within a space dominated by early to mid-20th century semi-detached and terraced (row) housing, areas of distinctive architecture and excellent accessibility offer a diluted version of the metropolitan milieu gentrifiers seek in the inner city. Buy To Let gentrification in Outer London can thus be understood as an overspill by those uninterested in, or unable to access, ownership and priced out of high house price Inner London.

Spatial capital as a tool for planning practice

This purpose of this article is to look at the potential benefit to planning practice of engaging with spatial capital – a concept derived from the social theory of Bourdieu. Doubt is expressed about the theoretical basis for spatial capital; nevertheless, it is argued that it may have merit as a trope for planning practitioners. Spatial capital has a strong empirical basis, making it accessible to planning practice and offering a new means for interpreting and communicating the combined effects of a range of individual urban events such as the gating of communities, differing mobilities and schooling tactics. By focussing on the interplay of social positioning within place, it emphasises the joined-up nature of disadvantage and highlights the limits of environmental determinism. However, its use is not without possible drawbacks. Here, the experience of social capital is informative, as this has been appropriated by groups with quite different readings of its implications for policy.

The role of Leipzig's narrative of shrinking

ABSTRACT An important claim for the categorisation and study of shrinking cities is that the experience of governance across these cities may offer an alternative to hegemonic discourses of growth. However, there are methodological problems associated with categorizing then researching shrinking cities. Two key problems are: first, the category hides a multiplicity of cause and effect and; second, the danger of fetishizing the city against the reality of broader urban drivers of change. It is argued that the use of governance narratives is a means to addresses this, as narratives focus us on cities as places of practice. We apply the approach to Leipzig, once shrinking but now one of Germany’s fastest growing cities. We conclude that while there was a significant attempt to articulate an alternative to growth, it remained dominant suggesting the need to develop a taxonomy of shrinking cities where not all offer an alternative vision of “development”.

The suburban perimeter blocks of Madrid 10 years on: how residents’ level of satisfaction relates to urban design qualities

ABSTRACT In the 1990s, the suburbs of Madrid saw the substantial development of new housing. New plans provided for 200,000 new homes over 7200 Ha of land. These developments eschewed earlier modernist forms of suburbanization in favour of the perimeter block that superficially echoed the ‘traditional’ built form of the city. But the new perimeter blocks and neighbourhood design varied from their inner-city counterparts and have been the subject of near universal criticism. Some 10 years after their occupation, we reappraise the development importantly adding the perspective of residents. While many of the design failings identified in the past are confirmed, we also reveal qualities that residents value. The study demonstrates the value of post hoc evaluation after residents have settled in and leads us to argue for the importance of better integrating the everyday life (lived experience) perspective into evaluations to achieve better places.

Whiteness, class and place in two London suburbs

ABSTRACT This article addresses a specific intersection of class, place and whiteness by focusing on distinctions between middle-class owner-occupiers in suburban London. Where whiteness is constructed through association with an imaginary of the unchanging nature of rural England and, in particular, the village, some suburban places provide a more ready village metaphor in support of whiteness than others. In a securely middle-class suburb residents are able to misrecognize their neighbourhood as a village, and beyond the metaphor, report feeling at home in rural England. In a marginal middle-class suburb whiteness is founded on weaker claims to the English village metaphor and, moreover, residents feel less at home in rural England. This article demonstrates the need to go beyond the often made distinction between the tactics of middle class (owner-occupiers) and working class (tenants) by identifying distinctions within the former group.

Neighborhood Planning, Participation, and Rational Choice:

The focus of this article is the development of neighborhood planning in England, in particular its guiding principle of local people as rational actors. The article looks at neighborhood planning in its own terms; that is, it looks at the rationality of engagement in a new system that seeks to tip the balance of rationality in favor of communities following the UK government’s aims of overcoming local resistance to the development of new housing. While there is evidence that neighborhood planning is enjoying some success, this is a delicate settlement.