Urbanism: urban regeneration and the architecture crisis

Urbanism: urban regeneration and the architecture crisis is the fourth article assessing the dialectic of architecture and urban design in the urbanism field. I will go through this relationship from the top scale of urbanism in the city to the smallest scale of urbanism components of urban space.

In the last twenty years, the terms urban regeneration and urban renewal were and are used interchangeably in the urban literature. Urban regeneration and renewal are one of the major tasks of international organization’s mission to develop and enhance the quality of living in many destructed areas in the world like Asia and others. Architecture and the built environment creation became of the poorest quality and lack innovation and purpose. Urban space is deprived because of the poor quality of urban design and urban design strategies.

The purpose of this article is to assess first the difference between urban regeneration and renewal and why the built environment is facing problems of decay, and why architecture and urban design produce poor-quality projects in the first place that need renewal and regeneration.

Leary¹ articulates the difference in terms of approaches. He says that the two terms are familiar in urban literature and renewal is more into physical approaches but regeneration is more into a holistic response. Maria² discusses the two major differences saying that in the 19^th century, Europe conducted wide renewal to the city, especially in Paris, London, and Barcelona to provide proper sanitation and engineering work to the services by demolition and reconstruction of new buildings and to provide quality air and light to the city. Urban regeneration is conducted to solve the multifaceted problems of urban areas and to improve the economic, physical, social, and environmental conditions of deprived areas. Kulsrisombat³ illustrates that urban regeneration is defined as a comprehensive and integrated vision and action which leads to the resolution of urban problems and which seeks to bring about a lasting improvement in the economic, physical, and environmental condition of an area that has been subject to change.Martins⁵ says that urban renewal is the efforts and intervention to reconstruct the built environment while urban regeneration includes the development of the physical, economic, social, and environmental conditions.

Cities, neighborhoods, and towns face several problems see Figure 1. As indicated by the researchers in the definitions some are social, economic, and environmental. But, to define the effect of urban regeneration on architecture urban regeneration processes or approaches need to be identified.

Urban regeneration is thought to be in the public interest while in other practice arenas are thought to be shifted from place oriented to people oriented. Urban regeneration takes a strategic approach that includes regions in addition to local vision. Including regions with the integration of various agencies and authorities. An integrated urban regeneration policy for that is introduced and all regions participate in implementing it. Another approach is fiscal intervention from public resources to solve the targeted urban regeneration problem.

Policy and public funds are the main tools of urban regeneration for any part of the city. Policymakers are from different professional backgrounds. Politicians, urban planners, geographers, historians, and social science professionals are involved in the policy-making of urban regeneration. Public funds may take several forms to many locations. For human health or to improve the medical service of the targeted area population. Funds are essential to support the social network labor force in times of unemployment. Student study programs are essential to supply the labor market with skilled professionals. Developing existing labor market by development programs that require funding from the public sector.

The main problems that may occur in a city that requires urban regeneration are physical, environmental, and social. In practice, these problems occur separately and officials and relevant political and authority responsible look into these problems separately. But do all related officials deal with these problems or assess these problems in depth? Social, economic, or environmental problems can not happen in isolation from each other.

One of the main urban problems that are repeated mainly in European and other developed countries is deprivation see Figure 2. As per their indices of deprivation, it deploys the following domains: health deprivation and disability, education, skills, and training, barriers to housing and services, crime, and living environment. Leary¹ discusses and mentions the agencies, organizations, and government efforts to tackle the environmental problems in his book but does not mention what are these problems in reality and how these related bodies have solved the problems, and why they have occurred.

Now let’s discuss how these problems occur together and where the role of architecture and architects exists whether within the urban regeneration process or as external consultants.

Why do areas in a city, town, or neighborhood become deprived? Environmental pollution, disease, or pandemic may cause the area to be infected and damage happens to the main physical environment, urban space surrounding it, landscape, and softscape all make the area not suitable for living. In the process of creating any town or neighborhood many organizations in the world call for international seminars and gathering to turn the specialist’s attention to this matter but architects and urban designers are involved in the process of the urban planning and design of these towns and neighborhood from the initial stages of political decision? Are they or the architectural decline is the cause of the bad architectural quality?

Environmental changes like hurricanes, storms, and floods might hit the physical environment causing much damage to the buildings, homes, streets, and public service components making the area not suitable for living. Did these organizations alert the architecture bodies or architects involved in the creation of the relevant built environment object about these issues and how they are going to reflect these issues to create solutions to prevent damage?

Climate problems like high humidity or water problems in the service system might create damage to the buildings and softscape making the area not suitable for living. Here how did architects respond to these problems when designing towns and neighborhoods?

Social deprivation happens when various issues rise in a town or neighborhood. One of these issues is problems related to race and the segregation of ethnic groups. In many cases in the world, this problem happens because of human psychological status. These problems happen in the built environment when it is tracked and assessed, in closed towns and areas where the place lacks suitable urban spaces for social activity. Community centers are not considered and people or citizens are forced to gather in an unsuitable place where they in most cases annoy other people creating problems of race and segregation. Is architecture responsible for this decline and area problem? Are the authorities aware of the effect of a low-budget reserved for development might cause on urban design or architecture? In many cases within this issue happening people start using street recreation, walls for demonstrating their opinions, politics, and other, as well as for punk art, alleys will be used for drug dealing or night drinking.

People with low income will not have sufficient funds to take care of their homes repair or related authorities do not provide much funds. In this manner, people will leave their homes to other places leaving these homes damaged and the authorities will not take action till public fund from the government is assigned and approved. This area will sink in extreme damage leaving the homes for drug dealers and gangsters and irresponsible youth to use for non-proper uses like prostitution. How do the authorities sit and decide and plan for new development for social housing? where are the architects and how architecture is involved in the process to prevent this issue from happening? Lack of jobs and high unemployment force people to move from area to area to obtain suitable jobs to support their families and living. If people are considered properly within the plan of support to use public transport and facilitating them for people this shift will not occur in high percentage. How the development of towns and neighborhoods are studied, planned, and implemented? Who are the people involved in this matter? How much architectural knowledge do they have? Are they concerned about this matter or not?  

 Problems are more than I have discussed here if you think about them where ever it happens. Why do all these problems happen when we have specialists in architecture and urban design, urban planners from an architecture base? Why shouldn’t we consider these matters at the beginning of creating towns, and neighborhoods and wait for the problems to happen to find solutions for them?

Many European countries in the world abandoned physical planning for the excuse of its damage to society, creating segregation, and lack of liberty and non-democratic practice. It is proper to have a collaboration of specialists involved in the urban planning development but architecture should not be a minor subject but a major one. Now did these problems disappear or still happening regardless of the great international attention and introduced policies and treaties?

For free-form policy, see my previous articles, in the recent century we are still facing the same problems, at the very least in developed countries, regardless of the change of planning approach from fixed policies to free-form policies. What is the main cause and why these problems are recycling creating damage to the physical environment and architecture produced in very low quality?

I will leave this question for you to answer.

references:

1. Leary, M.E. and McCarthy, J. (2014) The routledge companion to urban regeneration. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.
2. Maria , G. and Tabasso, M. (2016) From urban renewal to urban regeneration: Classification criteria for urban interventions. Turin 1995–2015: evolution of planning tools and approaches [Preprint].
3. Kulsrisombat, N. (no date) ‘De facto urban regeneration: A case study of chiang mai city, Thailand’, Sustainable City Regions:, pp. 77–100. doi:10.1007/978-4-431-78147-9_5.
4. Martins, M.L. and Santos Pereira, A.L. (2019) ‘Urban regeneration in the Brazilian urban policy agenda’, European Planning Studies, 27(6), pp. 1129–1145. doi:10.1080/09654313.2019.1598021.