Three generations of urban renewal policies: analysis and policy implications

Housing Abandonment and Demolition: Exploring the Use of Micro-Level and Multi-Year Models

“…Earlier discussions of planned interventions for distressed urban residential areas in the U.S. and Europe were summarized as three approaches to policy: bulldozing, neighborhood rehabilitation, and revitalization [21]. The first approach, bulldozing, not only destroys bricks and mortar but devastated the African-American communities emotionally [22].…”

Three scenarios for the greater Hamburg region

“…We will give a brief overview of current approaches and lessons learned and indicate where these are reflected in the scenarios. Four core features of current urban policies can be identified: First, economic, societal or political and physical renewal are increasingly recognised to be linked and pursued in conjunction [12,9,3,10]. Second, in most Western cities and city regions there is a shift from government to governance [12,3,58,52].…”

“…Early urban renewal policies, which began in the UK and the US in the 1930s and were centred around massive deconstruction and rebuilding of housing units have revealed that changes in the physical environment are blatantly insufficient to resolve social problems and stimulate new economic developments [9,3]. Later generations of urban renewal are gradually taking on a more integrated approach.…”

“…The aim is to improve the effectiveness of urban government in terms of responsiveness to changing requirements, resource efficiency and capital recruitment, social inclusiveness, equity and participation [52]. In some European cities, projects aim to empower residents to manage their own lives and continue to take action after the respective policy program has ended [12,9,3]. In other cities we find intermediate levels of reforms in the public sector [52], for instance in the form of increased autonomy of public service providers or increased and more reliable financing for public sector programmes.…”

“…In addition, scenarios are extremely useful to illustrate the interconnectedness of the different fields within which decisions and changes occur-such as port and economic development, city renewal and population patterns. The interrelatedness of economic, societal and political change has been a core insight gained in projects of urban renewal in Western countries within the last few decades [12,9]. The scenarios illustrate this interdependence by depicting that different routes taken in one field, such as port development, enable entirely different outcomes in other fields-city development, quality of life, the state of the environment and the development of the wider metropolitan region.…”