2. Local Economic Development: the role of
place and diversity
Sarah Longlands
Research Fellow (CLES) Centre for Local Economic
Strategies
27th September 2011
3. Why do we need a new story for economic
development?
We‟ve had more than a decade of economic
development but inequality between and
within places has grown. Many places still
struggle. Why?
Process of place making and objectives of
economic development are not always well
aligned and frequently disjointed
Legacy of regeneration suggests we need
to look again at who really benefits from
place-making?
6. A better place = a ‘resilient’ place
“Resilience is the capacity of a system to deal with negative change
without collapsing, to withstand shocks, and to rebuild itself and learn”
Places which go.....
8. The development process model
• Anticipation - being clear on the concept for the place, and why
• Initiation - projects that will kick start the process of making the
concept „real‟
• Design - turning the concept into physical form and service
delivery proposals
• Implementation - processes supporting how the place is built
• Stewardship - long term maintenance and management necessary
to grow place VALUE over time.
Scottish Government (2011) Delivering Better Places in Scotland. A
guide to learning from broader experience.
9. Delivering resilient places
• Effective working relationships between public, commercial
but also social partners
• Leadership – place delivery must not depend solely upon rules
and regulation. Also needs vision and imagination
• Important role of the public sector – identifying opportunities,
organising partners, providing resources, de-risking projects. Also
political dimension
• Economic value of place making process – eg through
procurement and employment - making better use of the resources
that we already have
• Place policy = economic policy! –connecting economic
development with other policies of place. Resilience model as a tool
to support the design and development process.
Editor's Notes
THANKSIntroduction - explain who I am and CLESI’d like to begin by telling you a little bit about myself and CLES, the Centre for Local Economic Strategies.I have been working in economic development and regeneration for the last 11 years. I started off working in rural development in the North East of England and Yorkshire but the last 6 years has been spent working at CLES as their Director of Policy. Earlier this year I was given the opportunity to take up an ESRC studentship at Glasgow University where I am going to be working on a PhD over the next three years on the challenge of economic peripherality. My PhD will build on my work with CLES on place resilience that I’m going to be telling you more about this afternoon. What I’d like to do this afternoon is examine how the work you will be doing on the design of three areas in Stirling is closely linked to economic development and particularly the links between the design process model you will be using and the CLES model of place resilience.You are trying to answer the question – how do we design better places. For me the question would be how do we design “resilient places” and I am going to share with you CLES thoughts on what we mean by resilience and our model for strengthening resilience of place. For those of you who don’t know us, CLES is a membership and research organisation which operates both nationally and internationally and is based in Manchester. CLES was formed in the 1980s in recognition of the need to support those areas that were undergoing, what we euphemistically call ‘industrial restructuring’ . CLES works with organisations from across the UK trying to create new ways of working which will support employment and create opportunities for all in society. Since the recession, CLES have been calling for a new approach to economic development which is focused less on growth as an end in itself abut why do we need a new model of doing economic development which But why do we think we need a new story? What has gone wrong with the current model of economic development?
Growth not enough: Over the last 15- 20 years, economically speaking, the UK has done well. We’ve had a decade of strong growth with high employment levels and productivity. But inequality is rising, and many places are not good places to live and will struggle to grow longer term. We don’t have a cogent vision for the future of these places. Even in those areas that did grow during the good times, the growth didn’t always ‘stick’. Eg, in parts of South Staffordshire – eg Cannock chase – strong growth during teh good times – melted away as soon as trouble beginDisconnect between players in placemakingI suspect that this may be because the process of place-making and the objectives of economic development are not always aligned/frequently disjointed. Economic Development has become too much about growth as an end in itself which has meant that issues such as quality of design, sense of community and stewardship have tended to become secondary to the short term requirements of growth. Similarly, economic development practitioners have become concerned that place making is more concerned about design and the look of a place, rather than how the local economy will operate. professionals often don’t work close enough together – planner and economic developmentCuritiba – reference Who are the place makers and who really benefitsRegeneration – dark side – property developmentDisoloation between people and propertyEg of Paraisoplis and favelas
Curitiba claimed to have achieved high level of integration between economic, spatial and transport planningExemplified by their high speed rapid bus transit system.
Who are the place makers?This is Parsopolis Sao Paulo, one of the most famous favelas in Sao Paulo and home to more then 60,000 people. These informal types of settlement perhaps seem rather remote to what we are discussing at this conference, but for me it raises some interesting issues.In the favelas, the people are the place makers, they build the houses, they organise their own services (water, electricity, internet), they run their own businesses and they manage their own security. These are often dangerous and lawless places, but they are also where people live and work. For many years, Sao Paulo City Council were embarrassed about the favelas and had a policy of clearance. However as this didn’t work and the favelas continued to grow, over time, the council have changed tack and have now recognised, although by no means ideal, the favelas cannot be simply ignored or eradicated. The favelas are a part of the city and the city must work with the original place makers to improve the quality of life in these areas. So the city are implementing what they call ‘urban acupuncture which aims to work with residents to improve conditions within the favela so that there is access to services such as health, education and safe sanitation and water supply.Challenges our perceptions of quality of place – that our perceptions about the quality of place might be very different to the people who live and work thereSo what do I think are the solutions to these problems – or at least part of the solution?
I would argue that this is not simply because the place has had economic growth – its more to do with resilience which we define as the ......or put another way – places which go boing!For many years, I’ve been fascinated by the question of why some places, when faced with a economic , social or environmental shock, some places are able to galvanise, organise and over time manage the negative impacts on the area and survive whilst other areas simply crumble and never fully recover.At CLES, we’ve spent a lot of time trying to understand the component part of resilience and we've summarised them in this place resilience model
Provide a brief description of the CLES resilience Model in the usual way emphasizing that the model aims to reconceptualise theMake the point that this model is about re-conceptualising the economics of a place – the transactions between public, social and commercial players in a community and also the different issues (eg government, identity) which influence the way in which the economy operates. But how does this correspond to the delivery of better places? What are the parallels between what CLES are saying about how you create resilient economies and with what you are saying at this conference about the design of better places?
This model was developed by the Scottish Centre for Regeneration (SCR) in the Scottish Government, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) Scotland and Architecture + Design Scotland (A+DS), and the University of Glasgow (copies?).Briefly describe the 5 stages.This 5 stage model will be used as a framework for testing the concepts that you develop over the course of this conference and by reading through it you can start to understand the importance of this process in the delivery of better places and why place making is a complex and challenging process. I had the chance to explore this challenge through some international research with the Norfolk Trust last year which examined the challenge of community resilience internationally.What we found echoesPlace links location, community, and opportunity
