Cities in the 21st century are faced with increasingly complex challenges, reconciling the drive for economic growth with concerns related to social cohesion and inequalities. There is a growing tension between a globally focused urban growth agenda, which looks to maximise investment and economic prosperity, and the growing socio-spatial inequalities, related to housing affordability, access to public services and social justice. Currently, these tensions are particularly manifest in the arena of urban regeneration, where the conflicting interplay of public, private and civil society interests impacts on governance mechanisms. Despite a number of academic studies exploring urban regeneration governance in specific national contexts, there is a lack of cross-national comparative research exploring how specific governance processes contribute to more socially sustainable projects that reconcile the inherent tensions between economic drivers and social inequalities.
The key objective of this project was to address this important gap, with an international comparative study of urban regeneration governance in Canada and the UK. It adopted an innovative comparative research framework, and employed an arts-based participatory method, photovoice, to critically examine stakeholder involvement in urban governance processes in two different contexts (Europe and North America). It explored whether, and how, participatory processes through creative and arts-based methods, contribute to more socially-just regeneration projects, and ultimately, their impact on a city’s ability to build a more socially-sustainable future.
The project’s scientific objectives were as follows:
1. To review the national institutional, political, economic and socio-cultural frameworks and policy discourses, in Canada and the UK, as context for the research;
2. To develop an innovative theoretical and conceptual framework for the analysis of urban governance, that integrates interdisciplinary theoretical approaches from planning, geography, sociology and political science;
3. To apply this theoretical framework to explore the dynamics of urban regeneration governance in the two different national contexts, taking case studies in the cities of Vancouver and Oxford;
4. To assess how and to what extent different components of governance within specific urban regeneration settings provide openings for socially just outcomes, exploring the potential of the photovoice method;
5. To maximise the impact of the research, through a three-month secondment at “European Alternatives”, a Paris-based NGO that works closely with practitioners and communities in regeneration areas throughout the EU;
6. To disseminate the findings to a wide audience (academics, policy-makers and the general public), including organising an impact workshop, as well as drafting practical recommendations for practitioners and user groups on how regeneration projects can be delivered in a more socially sustainable way.
The research showed that the arts-based method of photovoice has the potential to contribute to urban governance, by feeding into participatory planning as part of a range of methods to access community voices in different ways. It provides opportunities for alternative and reflexive dialogue, that can shed light on community perspectives that are excluded from more traditional methods, and thus has the potential to provide openings for more socially-just outcomes in a neighbourhood planning setting.
