Promoting Sustainable Community Development
Submitting Institution
Edinburgh Napier UniversityUnit of Assessment
Architecture, Built Environment and PlanningSummary Impact Type
SocietalResearch Subject Area(s)
Studies In Human Society: Policy and Administration, Sociology
Summary of the impact
Communities have now become key measures of social need and welfare. Over
the past 10 years
Professor Mark Deakin's research has provided the means to turn around
those communities
previously deemed "unsustainable". This has been achieved by not only
providing the means to
tackle the inequalities of social exclusion and combat the culture of
area-based deprivation, but by
assembling the instruments (policy briefings, guidelines and decision
support systems) that are
needed for the value-adding and cost-saving measures of the urban
regeneration programmes
being promoted to succeed in meeting the welfare agenda which surrounds
sustainable community
development.
Underpinning research
The research began in 2002 as a community-outreach programme on urban
regeneration and the
promotion of sustainable development in Scottish cities [3.1 & 3.2].
Until this point urban
regeneration had focussed on the inequalities of social exclusion and
culture of area-based
deprivation. The questions subsequently raised in the 2004 Egan Report on
Sustainable
Communities, shifted attention towards social-inclusion and assembly
of the resources needed for
urban regeneration to sustain the development of communities as a key
measure of the UK's
Urban Renaissance. This commitment to social-inclusion was subsequently
endorsed by all EU
nation-states under the urban regeneration and sustainable community
development provisions of
the 2005 Bristol Accord.
Responding to this call for social inclusion, Deakin has continued to
research the opportunities
urban regeneration offers to sustain the development of those communities
deemed
"unsustainable". Over the past decade this has involved the following:
- conducting an extensive literature review on social-inclusion, urban
regeneration and
sustainable community development;
- undertaking a series of intensive case study reviews of situations
where social-inclusion
has been used in urban regeneration to promote sustainable community
development;
- reflecting on the socially-inclusive visions such urban regenerations
advance and
sustainable community developments they promote;
- assembling a decision support system able to implement the vision of
social-inclusion such
urban regenerations advance and build the scenarios this
quintessentially civic (egalitarian,
inclusive and democratic) model of sustainable community development
promotes;
- applying this highly participative, consultative and deliberative
model of urban regeneration
to analyse sustainable community developments in Edinburgh, Birmingham,
Chicago and
Vancouver;
- evaluating how this model of urban regeneration meets social need and
matches them to
the welfare requirements of sustainable community development [3.3].
This research has found that, concentrated either within the inner city,
or in peripheral housing
estates, these urban regenerations account for between 1-5% of the
population and up to 10-15%
of public expenditure. Whereas their regeneration was previously deemed
"unsustainable", with
levels of social need that not only put pressure on public services, but
strain on the ability which
the state has to finance their welfare requirements, the value adding and
cost-saving measures
they now embody provide examples of how the development of "run down",
"low income" and
increasingly "marginalised" communities in the UK and across Europe, can
be sustainable [3.4 &
3.5]. Key in turning the focus of attention away from social exclusion,
the culture of area-based
deprivation and inequality, has been the ability of the research to draw
upon the literature review
and critical insights the intensive case studies offer [3.6, 3.7 &
3.8]. For what these reviews and
critical insights offer is the opportunity to not only reflect on what
socially-inclusive visioning means,
but make the case for urban regeneration to assemble the instruments
(policy briefings, guidelines
and decision-support system) also needed for their value-adding and
cost-saving scenarios to
meet the public participation, consultation and deliberation requirements
of the welfare agenda
surrounding sustainable community development.
References to the research
3.1 Deakin, M. (2003) Developing sustainable communities in Edinburgh's
South East
Wedge: the settlement model and design solution, Journal of Urban
Design, Vol. 9, No. 2,
137-148. DOI: 10.1080/1357480032000108134
3.2 Deakin, M. and Allwinkle, S. (2007) Urban regeneration and
sustainable communities: the
role of networks, innovation and creativity in building successful
partnerships, Journal of
Urban Technology, Vol. 14, No. 1: 77-91.
DOI:10.1080/10630730701260118
3.3 Deakin, M. (2009) A community-based approach to sustainable urban
regeneration,
Journal of Urban Technology, Vol. 16, No. 1: 91-112.
DOI:10.1080/10630730903090354
3.4 Deakin, M. (2011) Learning from what works in sustainable community
development,
Sustainable Cities and Society, Vol. 1, No. 4: 195-201. DOI:
10.1016/j.scs.2011.07.006
3.5 Deakin, M. (2011) Intelligent cities as smart providers: CoPs as
organizations for
developing integrated models of eGovernment services, The European
Journal of Social
Science Research, Vol. 25, No. 2: 115-135.
DOI:10.1080/13511610.2012.660324
Professor Deakin acted as lead researcher for 3.6 and the principal
investigator for 3.7 and 3.8.
3.6 LUDA (Large Urban Distressed Areas) funded under Framework 5 of the
EC's
Environment and Climate Programme (200,000Euro) 2003-2006.
3.7 LfWWs (Learning From What Works in Sustainable Community
Development). Funded
by the ESRC & ASC (Association for Sustainable Communities)
Sustainable
Communities Programme (£98,000) 2007-2008.
3.8 SURegen (Sustainable Urban Regeneration) Funded under Phase 2 of the
EPSRC
Sustainable Urban Environment Programme (£290,000) 2007-2012.
The research has also allowed Professor Deakin to be appointed as a
Member of the Evaluation
Panel for the UK's ESRC Programme on Sustainable Community Planning (2006)
and to influence
he formation of the EPSRC's Sustainable Urban Environment (SUE) 1 and 2
Programmes (2006-2010).
Professor Deakin also sat on the Advisory Committee for the National
Demonstration
Project for Community Land Trust Development, funded by the Esmee
Fairbairn Society (2006-2008).
Details of the impact
Policy briefings held between 2008-11 with the Scottish and UK Government
and leading charities,
such as the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation and Association for Sustainable
Communities, have
allowed Professor Deakin to produce a set of Guidelines for
Socially-inclusive Visioning in the
Community-based Approach to Sustainable Urban Regeneration. The Planning
Journal's
(30/09/2009) review of these guidelines highlighted the need for
stakeholders involved in urban
regeneration to:
"...upgrade their skills and engage with communities in a vision that
is less utopian and is
grounded in their social and material needs [something] which requires a
new mindset, involves
planners getting off the treadmill of bureaucracy and putting themselves
closer to the communities
they are seeking to promote." [5.1]
These guidelines underpin the urban regeneration strategies and support
the sustainable
community development initiatives both Scotland and the UK have adopted to
alleviate poverty,
enhance welfare and bring about improvements in education and wealth
[5.2]. The decision-
support system assembled to underpin these urban regeneration strategies
and support their
sustainable community development initiatives, provides the "material"
needed and "new mind set"
required for planners to get "closer to the communities they are
seeking to promote". It achieves
this by providing both the learning material needed and knowledge
management system required
for the public to join Community Councils and Neighbourhood Management
Boards as members of
Urban Regeneration Partnerships [5.3, 5.4 & 5.5].
In Craigmillar, Edinburgh and Attwood Green, Birmingham, the Urban
Regeneration Partnerships
learn about social needs and gain knowledge of the respective communities'
welfare requirements
by way of public consultations and through deliberations. These public
consultations and
deliberations provide Community Councils and Neighbourhood Management
Boards with the civic
decision-making powers, budgets, resources, skills and competencies needed
to meet the value
adding and cost saving requirements of public service improvement
programmes. This has been
achieved by way of Community Policing Strategies, through Work Programmes
and the
construction of Home Zones. These Home Zones provide for the construction
of over 2,000
affordable homes (of mixed income and tenure), with supporting schools,
learning centres and
health facilities.
Official government statistics (Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation:
2004, 2006, 2009 and 2012:
http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Statistics/SIMD),
show that the impact of these interventions on
the social need and welfare requirements of Craigmillar is marked. In
2004, 60% of Craigmillar's
data-zones ranked within the 15% most deprived in Scotland; whereas by
2012 this had fallen to
38%. Relative improvements are also evident in the domains of income and
employment, where
85% of the data-zones in 2012 now show improvement in the income domain
and 62% in the
employment domain. There has been a further 11% decrease in the number of
people claiming
health-related benefits between 2009 and 2012 and in terms of educational
attainment; there has
been a 60% increase in performance scores at SQA Level 4 between 2009 and
2012. The rate of
pupil absences is also down by 9% on 2009 figures. Crime is also down,
with 28% fewer crimes
per 10,000 in 2012 compared with 2009. This means that in 2012 over 60% of
the official data sets
used to calculate the impact which poverty alleviation strategies and
welfare-related initiatives have
in Scotland now indicate Craigmillar shows a marked improvement.
Deakin reported on the success of this urban regeneration to the Scottish
Government in May
2011 as part of their ongoing review of the Sustainable Community
Initiative and ADI's
(Architecture and Design Scotland's) monitoring of the Sustainable
Development Strategy. This
evaluation provided evidence to support the claims that policy briefings,
guidelines and decision-support
systems do provide the instruments needed for the public to directly
participate in urban
regeneration, not only by way of consultations and deliberations, but
through the civic decision-making
powers, budgeting and allocation of resources which are also required for
them to be
competent in promoting sustainable community development [5.6].
The long-term (2008-13) effect of what EUROCities defines as: "these
high impact services", have
acted to augment these "grass roots" and "bottom-up" improvements in urban
regeneration and for
the Cities of Edinburgh, Amsterdam, Groningen, Kortrijk, Bremerhaven,
Osterholt-Scharmbeck,
Karlstad, Kristiansand and Norwich, to mainstream sustainable community
developments across
Europe [5.7 & 5.8]. The impacts associated with this rapid
proto-typing of 24 public services
(covering safety and security, employment, health, education, transport
and mobility), have in turn
generated the intelligence community organisations, charities and
voluntary groups need to be
smart in integrating the core value adding and cost-saving requirements of
such a trans-national
programme into the European Network of Living Lab's (ENoLL's) model of
sustainable community
development [5.9 & 5.10].
Sources to corroborate the impact
[5.1] The impact of the research undertaken as part of the LUDA and LfWWs
projects [3.6 & 3.7] is
reported on by: Kochan, B. (2009) Sustained Solutions: a major study into
the skills sets needed
and competencies required to build sustainable communities, The
Planner, October.
http://www.planningresource.co.uk/article/948780/sustained-solutions
[5.2] This "profound impact" is also reported on by the Homes and
Communities Agency (2010),
The Vision Thing, HCA, Leeds and as a set of "Key Policy
Implications":
http://www.strath.ac.uk/media/departments/geographysociology/suscoms/pdfs/researchsummaries/Deakin.pdf
[5.3] The LUDA project [3.6] assembled this material as The LUDA
Compendium. The significance
of this Compendium lies with the support system's engagement of
communities, involvement of
civic organisations and direct participation of the third sector in
decision making across the public
realm. http://www.luda-project.net/compendium.html
[5.4] The particular reach, significance and contribution of the decision
support system's material
and communication system, has been reported on by: Poveda, C. and Lipsett,
M.(2011) A Review
of Sustainability Assessment and Sustainability/Environmental Rating
Systems and Credit
Weighting Tools, Journal of Sustainable Development, 4 (6): 36-54.
DOI:10.5539/jsd.v4n6p36
[5.5] The significance and reach of the research is reported on by:
Stanati, T., Oaoadopoulos. T.
and Drakaelis, M. (2012) Transformational Services, in Shareef, M, Archer,
N., Yogesh K. Dwivedi,
A and Pandey. K. ed., Transformational Government through EGov
Practice: Socioeconomic,
Cultural and Technological Issues, Emerald, London. ISBN-10:
1780523343.
[5.6] This was undertaken as part of the SURegen project [3.8]. The
impact of SURegen has been
taken up by the European Investment Bank in collaboration with the
Directorate General of
Regional and Urban Policy and used to modify the EC's JESSICA (Joint
European Support for
Sustainable Investment in City Areas) Funding Programme.
http://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/thefunds/instruments/doc/jessica/jessica_horizontal_study_smart_and_sustainable_cities_en.pdf
[5.7] This Smart and Sustainable Cities fund secures the capital
investment programme needed for
urban regeneration to meet the social need and welfare requirements of the
EC's 2020 Strategy
for Smart, Sustainable and Inclusive Growth and balance them with
the environment and climate
objectives this sets.
http://ec.europa.eu/eu2020/pdf/COMPLET%20EN%20BARROSO%20%20%20007%20-%20Europe%202020%20-%20EN%20version.pdf
[5.8] The impact the Strategy for Smart, Sustainable and Inclusive Growth
is having on civic
organisations and what this ongoing transformation of the public realm
means has been reported
on by the Times, Guardian and Telegraph.
- E for Efficient (Raconteur on Smart Cities), Times, 1st
June, 2010.
- Everyday life but made better and tailored solutions, Guardian,
9th September, 2010.
- Preview: What is a smart city? Sunday Telegraph, 1st
October, 2013.
[5.9] Edinburgh Napier University (ENU) organised the first National
Conference on Smart Cities
and Communities, held at Westminster's QE11 Conference Centre, London in
December 2011.
Deakin chaired the Conference; Cabinet Ministers and the Mayor of London's
Office gave keynote
speeches at the Conference; and approximately 750 delegates attended the
event. This was
reported on by STV (Scottish Television).
http://www.eauc.org.uk/shop/mms_single_event.php?event_id=1943
[5.10] ENU has also written the Smart Cities web page on Wikipedia. In
the past 3 years this has
been read by over 350,000 members of the public.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_cities