Urban Planning Perspectives Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Urban Planning Perspectives - Essay Example Today 'community' is another name for paradise lost but for a paradise which we still hope to find, as we feverishly search for the roads that may lead us there.† Bauman, Z., 2001, Seeking Safety in an insecure world, Cambridge: Polity Press, pp.1-3 1. Discuss with reference to recent Labour and current Liberal/ Conservative coalition policy initiatives in the fields of neighbourhood regeneration and planning. The property-led urban regeneration that has dominated urban policy during the Thatcher governments was characterised by the removal of many constraints to corporate investment in cities, including the minimisation of local government and community involvement in planning and other regulatory controls. Despite the decades of urban policy, a prominent feature of British cities appeared the stark inequalities between rich and poor neighbourhoods with significant differences in terms of deprivation, levels of mortality, crime, educational attainment, or per capita income; wh ich have particularly been in relation to ethnic and other, geographically segregated and socially excluded groups (Imrie and Raco, 2003, pp. 3-4). Not surprisingly therefore, the Labour came to power in 1997 with a highly ambitious bid â€Å"to regenerate Britain’s cities by recourse to social inclusion, neighbourhood renewal and community involvement† (Imrie and Raco, 2003, p.4). ... d Renewal Fund (NRF) provided nearly 3 billion pounds to some of the most deprived authorities in England, perhaps the most significant initiative operated by the NRU became the New Deal for Communities (NDC). The idea behind the NDC partnerships has been to produce a local response to five key indicators of social deprivation – unemployment, educational under-achievement, crime, poor health and housing, and the physical environment, although the NDCs were lacking major resources for large-scale rebuilding programmes (Jones and Evans, 2008, p.20). The critical reception NDCs have received was due to intentions and actions being at cross purposes – as the targets have been set locally, the locally agreed targets were subsequently rejected at national level. The creation of Local Strategic Partnerships (LSP) – being run by representatives from partner organisations, like local authorities, local police authorities, alongside health and education sectors, etc. - is believed to have further reinforced the tension in community policy; while the NDCs are targeted to specific areas, the LSPs take a larger-scale overview. On the other hand, being considered a low profile and with tendency to take credit away from elected politicians, the local community-led initiatives have been overshadowed by prestigious projects like the ‘Northern Way’ - a strategy for regional development in the North of England, published in 2004 (Goodchild and Hickman, 2006, pp.121-133). During the economic downturn in 2008, a gradual reduction in resource for and attention on policy initiatives has been compounded, and reached its peak at the announcement of the Comprehensive Spending Review in October 2010 (Broughton, K., Berkeley, N. and Jarvis, D., 2011, pp.85-86). The dramatic change in