Robert Furbey

Urban ‘regeneration’: reflections on a metaphor:

Recent British urban policy has pursued ‘regeneration’. This article offers a critical reflection on this pervasive metaphor. ‘Regeneration’ is a signifier of profound change in many religious traditions and political ideologies, both radical and conservative. In practice, however, the more conservative meanings, deriving from individualistic spiritualities and ‘psychologisms’, sociological organicism and statist interventionism, remain dominant. Hence, for all its ‘holistic’ and ‘inclusive’ novelty, contemporary urban regeneration preserves some familiar limitations of perspective. In particular, in its quest for ‘social inclusion’, often the ‘excluders’ are not in view and the ‘excluded’ are not in focus.

Method and methodology in housing user research

Abstract In a context of growing housing shortage and decay pressure is mounting for a renewed programme of low‐cost housing for rent. Such a programme would raise again the question of appropriate design standards and the issue of user participation in new housing provision. The argument in this article is that the social survey method, despite its past use in positivist and architecturally functionalist (and therefore deficient) housing satisfaction studies and in the Department of the Environments Housing Appraisal Kit, does not necessarily entail positivism or a narrow functionalism and should be reconsidered as an option within the participatory design approach of ‘community architecture’ or as complementary to this approach.

Training for tenants: ‘Citizens’ and the enterprise culture

Abstract The recent growth of tenant participation in British council housing has been accompanied by widespread acceptance of the importance of tenant training for genuine and effective user involvement in housing decision‐making. This article focuses on the sponsorship of tenant participation and training by the Conservative central government. Official promotion of tenant training is linked to the distinctive models of ‘citizenship’ informing government strategy and its cultural project of creating an ‘enterprise culture’. Government‐financed training for tenant management organisations, focusing on ‘competencies’, is found to be formally consistent with these political principles. But it is concluded that, in practice, this training can have unforeseen outcomes and foster alternative views of ‘citizenship’.

Standards in housing design: A review of the main changes since the Parker Morris report (1961)

Summary This paper reviews trends in the standards of design of new dwellings in Britain, using the Parker Morris report as a benchmark against which to assess subsequent change. In the public sector the main priority now is for a broader set of standards than has often been employed in the past. Parker Morris floorspace standards, while no longer mandatory, still provide a guide to good practice. The need is to integrate this concern with floorspace within a broad approach which pays more attention to the external environment, which specifies full rather than partial central heating and which enables an increased choice of accommodation. In the private sector, the policy of successive governments of attempting to reduce the costs of entry into owner occupation has led to lower standards. The recent experience of starter homes reveals that private developers are unlikely to build sufficiently downmarket to replace a lack of public investment and that, if they try, they are likely to provide accommodation ...

Empowering communities: The experience of the Church Urban Fund

Outline This article seeks to report on ways of empowering local communities who are suffering multiple deprivation. It is set within the context created by the requirement for partnership in the submission of funding applications to City Challenge and the Single Regeneration Budget. This exploration draws upon an evaluation of the Church Urban Fund undertaken by the authors in 1993–4 funded by the Department of the Environment, the Church Urban Fund, the Paul S. Cadbury Trust and the Wates Foundation (Farnell et al, 1994).