Regeneration: how should the problem be addressed? A discussion paper commissioned from the Regeneration and Economic Development Analysis Expert Panel for the Regeneration Futures Roundtable

What is the ‘problem’?
The problem to be addressed is rooted in the uneven spatial distribution of economic activity and how this is constantly shifting over time.1 Historically different phases of economic development produce particular spatial and temporal fixes with their own geographic patterns of growth and deprivation. Evolving patterns of uneven economic development result from the constant interaction between wider processes of economic change (e.g. globalisation, sectoral change, technological change etc) and the existing geographically differentiated landscape. This process is particularly apparent at the current time, as the severe economic downturn produces the conditions for a new round of investment/disinvestment and an associated reconfigured geographical landscape.
The process of uneven development creates and maintains regional imbalances and produces different regional and local dynamics of growth and decline. The most acute problems for regeneration occur where area decline is dramatic, and/or involves a fundamental restructuring of the industrial base, and/or extends over a long period of time. The nature and types of the impacts rooted within wider processes of economic restructuring upon localities/cities/regions are mediated through their interaction with a range of interrelated processes (e.g. within housing markets; local labour markets; private investment flows; and public investment strategies).

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