Urban Regeneration Roundtable

Author: Dr Tim Leunig and James Swaffield   |  

This will demonstrate the solutions found in Vancouver, Amsterdam, Hong Kong, and the Ruhr to problems that are also endemic in the UK. The report will stress the importance of more local accountability of policy, more innovative policy ideas and greater freedoms for localities to put these ideas into play. The debate will feed directly into the conclusions presented in the third part of the project, Regeneration Road.

Dr. Leunig writes:

“The challenge for Britain is clear. How can we ensure that those close to the ground can generate good ideas, realistic ideas, effective ideas? And how can we ensure that they are given the freedom to act on those ideas, and therefore be able to regenerate communities that have now been too poor, for too long. It is these communities that deserve better from the British political system, and it is for these communities that we need to reform the way that we devise and implement urban policy in our country.”

Research Fellow James Swaffield will also be on hand to offer his insights. Urban Regeneration is one of Localis and Policy Exchange’s key areas of research, with the first of our three-part series, Cities Limited, released in December 2007 to great acclaim.