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Learning to learn
Read my blog for New Start asking how we can learn from each other to make better places “We can’t afford to ignore evidence that might point us in the right direction; we can’t spend our way to conclusions that have already been reached.” Image credit: Colin Bottomley Twitter: @ColinNW1
Star stuck
Read my article for CLES-New Start on the new phenomenon of celeb-regeneration “I spoke too soon. Regeneration isn’t dead. It’s been given the air-kiss of life by celebrities.” Image credit: Colin Bottomley Twitter: @ColinNW1
Prick Tees
Read my review of ‘A Passion to Build’ and ‘A Quiet Catatrophe’ for 3AM Magazine “Sex, power and money – corrupting influences are at the heart of two books about city building and branding.” Image by Ian Britton: http://www.ianbritton.co.uk/
A sorry state
Read my article for CLES-New Start on the role of the state in reviving poor places “The current debate is stuck, sterile and simplistic. Do you want top-down regeneration or bottom-up regeneration? I don’t want either.”
My old house – one year on
Read my article for CLES-New Start on my old house – one year on “Derelict houses have been a familiar sight in my career. But that doesn’t soften the impact when the problem is brought home in a stingingly personal way.”
Children of the Jago
Read my review of The Child of the Jago for 3AM Magazine As Orwell put it in his essay on Charles Dickens, the heroes are saved, but the author “delights in describing scenes in which the “dregs” of the population behave with atrocious bestiality”
Fragile cities
The return of anti-urban development. Read my review of 2011 for the European Centre for the Creative Economy “Keeping the economy running is all that matters; but concrete makes a very poor engine fuel.”
Public Policy in the Community – review
Read my review of Prof. Marilyn Taylor’s revised Public Policy in the Community “If we want ‘community’ to be a meaningful agenda with radical potential, we have to engage with its difficulties and paradoxes. If we don’t, it becomes the Werther’s Original of the policy cupboard, something nice and sweet, but not very fulfilling.”
Social policy and social media
Read my article for CLES-New Start on how social media is shaping social policy “There will always be a need for specialist social policy journalists. And if we value them, we must find ways to pay for them. But the role they play in future will be different.” Image credit: Colin Bottomley Twitter: @ColinNW1
Regeneration in hard times
Download the presentation I gave to the Economic Development Resource Centre at the University of Greenwich More info from the event is available here: http://edrec.wordpress.com/ Keep an eye at the Centre’s important thinking on ‘economic insurgency’.
We need to talk about conflict
Read my article for CLES-New Start on the need to deal with community conflict As Saul Alinsky put it, ‘Change means movement. Movement means friction. Only in the frictionless vacuum of a nonexistent abstract world can movement or change occur without that abrasive friction of conflict.’
When a Book is Not a Book
Read my review of Shaun Keaveney’s appalling ‘R2D2 Lives in Preston’ “Shaun Keaveny’s R2D2 lives in Preston is not a book. It has words and two covers, but so does a sick bag. R2D2 Lives in Preston is not a book.”
The end of regeneration
Read my article for CLES-New Start on why the end of regeneration is just the beginning “It was clear then that the assumptions and business models which had underpinned regeneration for decades no longer worked. They had been beached by post-crash financial realities, and lay in the sand ‘like old systems which await / The […]
Prospects for poor neighbourhoods
Read my conference presentation on neighbourhood renewal My neighbourhood renewal conference presentation explores the impact of the National Strategy – and looks at the prospects for the poorest neighbourhoods.
Dockers and Detectives – a review
Read my review of Dockers and Detectives for 3AM magazine “Dig Where You Stand”. Never has an intellectual manifesto been so powerfully condensed into a single compelling instruction. Read my review of Ken Worpole’s classic study of working class readings habits.
LEPs – Will growth happen?
Download my CLES Summit 2011 presentation How are Local Enterprise Partnerships developing? How likely are they to drive sustainable growth? You can read some thoughts here, drawing on research by Shared Intelligence. Image by Vera Kratochvil
Reflecting on the riots
Read my article for CLES-New Start on why we should respond to the riots in England by listening “Just as there are thugs who will turn a protest into a riot, so there are people who will turn a riot into a political campaign. And we know that deprived areas make a very tempting battle […]
Jacobs Crackers
Read my article for CLES-New Start why the new critics of Jane Jacobs have got it wrong The manifesto set out in The Death and Life of Great American Cities is far from being an orthodoxy in need of retirement: it’s still an insurgency, fighting to be realised in cities across the world. Jane Jacobs […]
Empty homes – empty tomorrows
Read my article for CLES-New Start on why my old house is still a wreck – and what it means for all of us We need to get much better at re-using our existing assets, starting with my old house. Image credit: Colin Bottomley Twitter: @ColinNW1
England no longer expects…
Read my article for CLES-New Start on why England should retain the duty to involve Without the duty to involve, community engagement will once become an ‘optional extra’, a frilly add-on, all over again. Image credit: Colin Bottomley Twitter: @ColinNW1
Bureaucracy: Do not cross
Read my article for CLES-New Start on why poor people get poor services This article asks why public services are still committing ‘a million little betrayals’ by failing to deliver a basic service the most vulnerable people. Image credit: Colin Bottomley Twitter: @ColinNW1
She sells sea shells
Download my presentation on social tourism and seaside regeneration In March 2011 I gave a presentation with Benedict Rickey on the contribution that social tourism can make to regenerating seaside towns.The event was the first of a series of seminars organised by NET-STaR. Image credit to Markles55 via Flickr.
Play ball…
Read my article for CLES-New Start on baseball’s lessons for urban renewal This article looks as what urban renewal can learn from the ‘Moneyball’ philosophy that drove the impoverished Oakland A’s to unprecedented success. Image credit: Drew Gereats
Poverty, power and policy
Read my article on the Community Empowerment Programme, co-written with Toby Blume, for the Journal of Urban Regeneration and Renewal. This article tells the strange history of the community empowerment programme in England over the last decade – and the lessons we should learn from it for the Big Society and much else.