Peter Tyler

Department of Land Economy, St Catharine's College. Well Peter, thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, it is a great pleasure to be here today.

I would like to begin by adding my thanks and congratulations to all of the conference organisers [for] what I think has been a truly superb occasion and I really do feel it is an event which needs to be revisited in the future. I am going to be speaking directly from the paper that you have got in front of you, and referring to various parts of it so I hope you all have a copy of it. (A copy is available to download from here.)

As we saw this morning, this is not only a very important agenda but a vast agenda in terms of the various components that it encompasses. I wanted just to say a word or two about the nature of the challenge. My colleagues this morning more than adequately covered the sorts of issues that one faces in turning large cities around. On the very first page of the handout I put a little chart which I think demonstrates the nature of the task, the sheer order of magnitude that Britain and the whole of the UK has faced in trying to turn around its older cities.

In fact the chart here illustrates the relative fall in employment that has occurred in the large cities across the whole of the UK over the last 40 years or so. And shows just how dramatic it has been. And of course, as my colleague said this morning, what has actually happened is that a lot of the physical fabric of the cities and a lot of the human capital that used to be employed in industries and goods and services are not there now, or are either made elsewhere - so the challenges are actually enormous.

I think in some ways the sorts of improvements that have occurred [have been very impressive] given the sheer magnitude of what is required. And I do feel also, looking across Europe, that I don't see many countries that have had the challenges that the UK has faced with respect to its large cities.

Now, I think the real problem is that the adjustment we talked about this morning is relatively slow. I have come to the view after about 25 years of looking at this process of regeneration that so much of that process of adjustment is about people and institutions. Because I think the UK is blessed actually with a phenomenal resource base and a large amount of that is in cities. So in the session this morning for instance Brian mentioned that he had just come back from South Africa and was looking at some of the problems in a country like that. And of course we were recounting just how difficult it is for countries to regenerat[e] their urban areas. But so much of what we have got starts off with such really good news and I do believe it's about institutional reform and bringing about those changes which has been the subject of today.

The other thing I would like to reflect on is that, is [the way] a lot of people see globalisation as a massive threat for cities for places. But it is actually an incredible opportunity as I was listening to Tony Gibbons, who is quite an eminent sociologist, talking the other day to a number of students (many of whom seemed to be in a state of unconsciousness while he was in a state of really lucid consciousness) and he made the comment that globalisation gives you the opportunity as a place and as an individual, to be known everywhere. And that means of course, if you are good you can be known everywhere very quickly. If you are bad, you can also be known everywhere very quickly. But I think globalisation for a city like Belfast presents an enormous opportunity because in this day and age if you become a truly good global city everybody knows about it and everybody wants to come and to see you. I think that is a very important issue.

I spent a lot of my research career not just looking at issues [around] growth which are obviously very challenging, but also issues of sharing out that growth. Ensuring that people get a fair share of what is going on and I have remarked in the paper that, although I think the post-War period has been a time of significant growth, the last eight years a time of unparalleled growth. Although everybody in some sense has felt somewhat a little better well off (some a lot better off) there are still huge numbers of people in our society (who we call excluded) many of them in our inner cities but sometimes in our peripheral cities, who are not sharing in the benefits of city growth.

So what I want to keep in mind through all that I say today is that we [not only] need to make Belfast grow but we need to make it an inclusive society in a way [that] in the past has been difficult to do. And that is a big challenge for the whole of the UK and indeed the world. Because I believe if economic growth continues (and there is already evidence of this as my colleagues said) the disparities in our society will relatively widen. We will not all get better off but those disparities will relatively widen and this is a huge challenge for us.

Now there are a number of things that I just wanted to say fairly briefly and when Marie-Thérèse asked me to speak today, she asked me to reflect a little bit on experience elsewhere which is a truly global task, but I wanted to try to do that quickly. Just in relation to the sorts of outfits and partnerships which I have seen get there acts together and which seem to be bringing about effective regeneration.

And so what I would just like to begin with is to ask first of all, what makes for relative success? The sorts of aspects that have stood out. Then I'd like to talk a little bit about the general relative strengths of those approaches and in particular I'd like to look at some of the aspects that have lead to overall achievement and to mention one or two of those successful cities as I have seen them. And try to conclude with what sorts of organisational structure might be appropriate for Belfast at this very important time.

On page four of the handout I have tried to summarise briefly three key basic points from a body of research that I have been involved in over the last nine years.

I have been looking at the overall regeneration scheme in England called the Single Regeneration Budget which, now the evaluation is finished, it has revealed that it has spent £26 billion in a large number of relatively run-down areas in England and involved 128 regeneration partnerships. So if you think you have partnership problems then SRB has been truly about partnership issues.

Over that period of time, because I have been able to track what the regeneration process has been about over those nine years, I have been able see and ascertain for myself what makes for successful partnership. What seem to be the crucial elements and what one needs to do and avoid.

And I think in a sense the three points that are made there about: All are probably pretty obvious. But those three elements, those three crucial issues do not come together in necessarily the most serious way and in the way that produces the best outcomes in all the areas I have looked at. In fact only a very small number of areas actually get this right and usually only a small number of areas are able to sustain the process of regeneration.

The other big study that I'd like to just briefly refer to is one that I am still involved in which is using a comparative American and UK approach to look at how areas produce enterprise in places and how they sustain that. And in doing that I have had the benefit of working with a number of Americans who are looking at cities like Boston in relation to other UK cities and trying to again ascertain what makes for success.

And again the more I look at it the more it seems to me that it's about getting your act together; it's about institutional change; and it's about people operating together.

Now on page five (at the bottom) in terms of making economic progress, the really successful cities have been really those in terms of their economic turnaround that have been able to bring together the four 'realms' (as I call them) - crucially the 'knowledge realm', the 'financial realm' and, overall, the state or government players together with their industry.

And (I have mentioned on page five) that I think successful outcomes require what I call 'entrepreneurial activity' in all those areas. It requires not just the industry realm to be entrepreneurial, but it requires all of the stakeholders demonstrate an overall process and awareness which we might call enterprising or entrepreneurial.

One can't underestimate the importance of the knowledge base of this city. I believe, and I know my colleagues this morning have emphasised this as well, that the knowledge base forms a hugely important component for where Belfast will be in years ahead.

Those virtuous interactions between the individual stakeholders, and also across them all, will determine the future of this city. I'd also like to say that in some ways the other issue is that each of those realms needs to think about the place.

And one of the most amazing things I think about the post-war period in the UK is the way we lost sight of place in the way our Victorian forefathers would never have done. Then the place was everything, but many of us we have lost track of the place as being something which we play to and maximise its success as a route to our success. And I think companies have also been like that.

Companies have changed and expanded and moved and become more global, but there is tendency to lose sight very much of the role of place in their well-being as much as that of the individual.

So I think that framework has helped in thinking and looking at many of the enterprising places and successful outfits to consider what makes for success and obviously [it is crucial] to bring in those players (those stakeholders) with a common vision and a common mission.

Now on page 6 I have got another little diagram to try to encapsulate what I think requires to be done and which of course is already being done in places. I think we are going to adopt a strategic approach and I think that chart to me summarises the broad elements required in the process. And I am sure that there is not a single person in this room who would disagree with this diagram, and the elements in it.

It's not rocket science.

It doesn't seem to me that people would disagree with it but bringing it about is what lies at the heart of a successful city regeneration and also successful neighbourhood regeneration as well. What [seems] so obvious when you look at it is very difficult to achieve given the institutional maze and resource bases that we work with. As I also say on page six in my experience the regeneration strategy for the city has to do all of the three things and in my experience if you only do one of them or two of them you will fail, in terms of the overall goal in the regeneration of the city.

It needs to strengthen the economic base - that [is] obviously crucial. It needs to raise the competitiveness of the work force - the labour force and that's obviously important. But it also needs to be about physical and spatial change, and those three, need to come together virtuously. And if we fail on some of those, the history of UK urban renaissance tells its own story.

We have often been working at the margin and what sometimes is needed is far more dramatic change, which is about resources. I also feel that one great thing about the evidence this morning that came out was just how much attention is being paid to the baseline - where we start from so we know where we can go.

Again, when I looked at these different partnerships, it really is fascinating to see how often cities, that are seeking regeneration and using funds from various mechanisms, don't know where they are, so it's highly unlikely that they will know where they finish off if they don't make excessive improvement.

Obviously, as I say on page 6, land and property market interventions remain crucial for the whole regeneration challenge, that again I cannot emphasis enough, that they are only part of the whole thing. A pretty important part but we mustn't lose sight of the need to systematically over time in our cities improve service delivery for all of the citizens of the city and that is where future cities will be.

I have mentioned that both those physical things and those people things need to come together and all of the stakeholders that deliver that need to come together. This [may be] obvious but many of the things that I have looked at over the years some component of the equation often plays in splendid isolation. And playing in splendid isolation is something which certain players in UK cities have been good at in terms of actually avoiding or not achieving regeneration. It is bringing them back together which is the important thing and [which] is so difficult to do.

I can't emphasise enough that whatever we do we need to think about inclusion. The really significant thing about the strategic approach is to recognise how much we do know about what works and why.

I have worked, as I said, in Belfast for over 20 years looking at most initiatives here, at some time or another and it is a huge body of experience about what instruments will bring about what change, about what really works, what delivers success.

I think increasingly problems with cities are about how to raise finance. But what it really comes down to again is there have been hugely successful models. When I have looked at the States and compare it to the UK, I think the one big thing about the States is the ease with which they raise finance. But having said that I have seen examples of very innovative financial approaches that have overcome the log-jam which sometimes holds cities back. And I think Belfast can be on the forefront of that, as it used to be many years ago. So I think the instruments are there and if we can bring them together coherently then I think we have the makings of turning the cities around and Belfast at the forefront.

I was asked to consider the issue of formal structures. My colleagues and I have spent many years looking at the different sorts of models that have been used to bring about regeneration. Of course since the early 1990s the concept of 'partnership working' has become universal. Probably there a few terms that have been so badly used and abused as 'partnership working'. I think there is so much of it that we take it very much for granted but I actually believe that bad partnership working is better than no working at all. I think it sometimes brings about all sorts of aspirations and expectations which if they are not met make the thing even worse than it was to start off with. So if we are going to work together in partnership, looking at my 2026 partnerships comparatively, you have got to work well in partnership otherwise it becomes a very disappointing experience.

I have laid out the merits on page nine of coordination and synergy - fancy words but making it happen in practice is about people and getting the institutional log-jam broken. I was just reflecting when I put together this short paper about some of the models we've used to try to bring about effective local regeneration, particularly in our urban areas.

Many of you of course will be familiar with the urban development corporation model, which began in the early 1980s and which was being used by a very large number of areas. I have itemised some of them on page 10. [The model] was orientated toward physical redevelopment regeneration and focused heavily on removal and dereliction and bringing about overall growth of economic sort.

As you can see on page 10, some of the regeneration development corporations have been huge. [London] Docklands, which I evaluated for the Department of the Environment, managed to spend not far short of £13 billion, of which £3 billion came from government. It managed to reclaim huge numbers of hectares and generate large amounts of floor space and additional jobs. But the reality is [that it] wasn't a very inclusive experiment and that was one of the complaints against development corporations of the early sort.

Overall, of course, there has been a very successful version here, again which I had the pleasure to work along side colleagues in evaluating. Laganside has brought about a truly amazing achievement over the years it has been working and it has implications for what we might do in the future. As you can see the disadvantage (and it has often been mentioned about these sorts of models) reflect on how much they bring in the community. How good they are at producing 'trickle-down'. And trickle-down effects have often been weak, particularly for inner city areas and that is something that we have to bear in mind thinking about a recommendation for regeneration vehicle here.

Again the new kid on the block from the white paper in the early parts of this century was the Urban Regeneration Company [URC] a model which has now been adopted extensively across England. From the beginning, as the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister has argued, the role of urban regeneration companies has been seen as being one of co-ordination and engaging with the private sector. It is seen as being a better version of UCD as it has brought the local authorities in and it is seen in many ways to be more inclusive. It is an interesting model though in terms of the appetite of various areas to go for it because in many ways it doesn't bring with it funding of its own in the way the urban development corporation did. But it does bring funding from the players, which can be significant.

There are a number of points that we can talk about but the latest urban regeneration company will be one next year for East London, and the spatial coverage for that will be very large indeed. As you can see, the one in Thorpe, part of the Thames Gateway experiment in England, is also a large area and has implications for what could be done here.

I was also asked to mention briefly local strategic partnerships. I know you have local strategic partnerships here as well but in England the local strategic partnerships has been seen to be the government's response to getting people at the local level [and] service providers to work together to overcome regeneration problems, particularly at the neighbourhood level.

In England, all of the 88 most deprived areas have a mandatory local strategic partnership, and increasingly the model is being rolled out in virtually all English districts. Most English districts now have a local strategic partnership and their role is over-ridingly that of co-ordination, of endeavour, of bringing together the stakeholders to improve the quality of service delivery in the respective areas. But again, this model of partnership is at the moment not really engaging private sector activity. It is also struggling to be an effective agent of change, because it's not really itself about implementation. It's about co-ordinating some issues to talk about there. It's backed up in the 88 most deprived areas with public sector agreements. In England most delivery of regeneration is backed up by some floor target, and some regeneration target and so delivery itself has been brought into this issue of measurement of change.

It seems to me if I look across the different sorts of models for regeneration at the local level, the characteristics which stand out, and which tend to vary, are those which are on page 15. The geography (the geographic spread of the initiative) varies significantly. The emphasis given to the economic, the physical and social varies significantly. The formal powers they have to plan, to provide infrastructure, to hold and vest plan. The degree of stakeholder representation and whether they are narrow or broad in their approach varies considerably. The lifespan and the instruments they can deploy varies considerably and particularly the resources they can commit from their own funding.

All of these things are the criteria and issues that help to form our thinking today as to where Belfast might go in the immediate future. As you can see on page 15, I have just tried to summarise what people see to be the advantages and disadvantages of each of these models and they tend to hinge around the degree of how not to be 'too economic' or 'too physical', not being 'social enough'.

These are the sorts of issues. But again I come back to where I started and that is - whatever model one looks at, the degree to which it attains success is often not so much [in] its formal structure, but [in] how well the partners in the model work together and how well they are prepared to rise to the challenge. And how effective and senior the representation is in the model at partnership level.

So I think as I was saying a moment [ago]. Whatever model Belfast decides to go for in the near future, to bring about and hasten the process of urban regeneration, I do think it is important that the model itself (in terms of its exact details) is often not so important as how effectively it comes together - and that again is probably [down to] common sense. But I think it is important to realise.

Now on page 17 I just wanted to touch briefly on the thorny area of what makes for a successful partnership. I know [in Belfast] there is a view that partnership has been used so often that the term 'death by partnership' (as in England) has become almost synonymous with the word and every time it is raised. Many of the things that I mentioned briefly on page 17 and 18, are things which have come from the research over the years that I have looked at as to what makes for systematic partnership.

For useful partnership working the big thing that appears to me about partnership delivery is that the relative performance is not systematically related with the objectives, the size, duration or the theme of the partnership. It really is all to do with the degree to which the things I have mentioned come together well. The organisation, the management, but above all, as my colleagues mentioned this morning, the degree of trust.

If the trust is there then the partnership delivers. And, of the 128 I mentioned earlier, some of those have delivered truly amazing things. So good partnership working can deliver but it is an elusive product and we need to think about the implications for that. I do believe that ultimately (as I say in the back of the final part of page 18) the partnership has to recognise, and the partnership members have to recognise, the benefits to them of improving the place and the virtuous benefits to the place itself of them being there. And I think bringing together the trust element that we mentioned is absolutely crucial.

Now I just am going to mention one or two examples of areas, which, it seems to me, reflect a turnaround from some of the experience and evidence. One area that I thought it was interesting to bring to your attention is Dundee in Scotland. Dundee is not a big city - it is probably only 150,000 population. But when I was looking at the different partnership structures I was taken by some of the similarities [between] Dundee [and] Belfast. Dundee is an old town in the sense that it was full of the old traditional industries. Dundee's shipbuilding equipment was huge, and in one time it employed 40,000 people. It now employs virtually nobody. It has been an economy in decline for much of the post-war period. It has been an economy that has been losing population and contracting. It has been an economy that is trying the inward investment route, with some success in the immediate post-war period. It attracted NCR in 1947, it attracted Timex but it lost [them] in the early 1990s (and many of you already remember that very protracted dispute). Dundee became synonymous with an image of the old industries of yesteryear. Of the old practices and all of those things that were associated with no change.

In the 1990s some of the leading city figures began to get together. They formed a partnership which failed; they then got together again and formed a partnership which has now delivered a phenomenal achievement. The partnership structure is playing to exactly what I think Belfast should play to. Exactly the elements that I began with, it has now on the technology side managed to establish a leading track record in biomedical techniques attracted three of the world's leading experts because as they say themselves, they like Dundee as a place - a place they want to live in and a place they want to see prosper. And that is a truly impressive achievement [with] three Noble prize winners.

They have managed to achieve this essentially through the binding of the organisations concerned and the staff from the respective stakeholders. On page 20 I have just very briefly summarised what seems to be some of the elements in their relatively recent success. But again I play to this concept of each of the stakeholders practising what I would call, enterprising and entrepreneurial behaviour. They are playing hard to their strengths and [don't] keep dumbing-down their weaknesses.

They have built heavily on the knowledge-base asset in the way Belfast can and they have encouraged rigorously the view that the city centre is a place that people should want to come to and stay in. [They have spent] £400 million on an urban regeneration scheme, city retailing scheme and related things. And the commitment of working together well and building trust is now so profound that it is just rolling forward. The other thing they are able to do is increasing the area of the city out into its hinterland.

Relationships between the city and its hinterland have historically been very poor [so] they are establishing a true city sub-region model and that itself is building connectivity and attacking transport issues (that we were discussed this morning) particularly around an airport. The analogy with Belfast, although on different scales, is really very significant. And the turnaround, which came relatively recently after years and decades of no success, is inspirational and these models exist.

On the next page (although I don't want to get into this territory, because we have a colleague [Bob Kerslake, Chief Executive of Sheffield City Council] speaking at the dinner this evening) I think it is interesting to look at Sheffield as well. And I will be interested to see what my colleagues think. Sheffield was a city which (again to adopt a phrase from this morning) most people saw to be a very poor performer for most of the post-war period after its decline.

Decline for Sheffield occurred relatively late in the day with the collapse of the steel industry in the 80s. It was a city which had growth and lots of prospects and then it was a city which had neither. It's a city with huge problems of deprivation. It's a city that was not getting its act together one bit at all in the 1980s. And like many northern industrial cities and towns [it] had a reputation for poor partnership working and a failure to deliver any effective change despite its competency asset base.

And yet in recent years, through a model of strategic partnership working, which I think we will probably hear [about] this evening, has great strengths but also I suspect issues that still need resolving. It's begun to turn a corner.

On page 21 I illustrate the sort of approach that has been adopted in the Sheffield First partnership. It works on a basis of a central core of high-powered people, and works with a devolved power delivery structure and that's a feature of many partnerships of this sort. They don't necessarily need a huge central basis. They work through devolution of delivery. But it works through many of its partnership structures which have been well established. It has taken the opportunity to rationalise those into its overarching strategic framework and it's delivering - which again, as our colleague this evening will say, is [an] impressive outcome compared to the past.

There are many other examples [and] its invidious to pick particular areas, but as long as we are seeing areas that are turning around, and I think there are no areas that couldn't share that experience because (I think as Mike [Parkinson] said this morning) when it comes down to it, it's in the interests of everybody in the UK to see all the UK cities prosper and this is not a displacement zero summary evaluation.

There are many things I could say about that [b]ut I just wanted to get on to suggesting what might be a model for the way forward here in Belfast in light of all that we have heard this morning.

I tried on page 22 (having [listed] all the documentation in one paragraph) to put all the bad news together in one paragraph so we could get it out of the way quickly. That paragraph I suppose, is not encouraging. It was discussed at great length this morning but I suppose in many ways it does reflect the broad problems. But overall that [is] what we have now got to overcome.

In terms of delivering the goods [page 23] I think at the present time it is very difficult not to be too prescriptive about exactly what format or structural delivery one needs to take things forward and I believe (in the light of what I have listened and the work I have been able to do with colleagues over here) that we are going to need to evolve the model over the next five years. [This is in] recognition of the various reviews that are going on and some of the other factors that are yet unknown.

There is a [graph] on page 23, which I find enticing [that] shows the growth of employment as an indicator of prosperity of the [Irish] Republic. I have been fascinated by the Republic's growth experience and the factors that have brought that about. Many people in the Republic tell me it's all about how well they have been able to bring about the delivery. How strategic they have been. You'll know better than I will if that is true.

The EU has been very helpful [to the Republic] but then again it has been to Northern Ireland [as well]. It is truly amazing when you look at that chart just how dramatic the overall expansion of the Republic has been in a short space of time compared to twenty years before that.

Academics in the south [have] told me [that in the past] they did not have their act together and they didn't bring things together in a virtuous way for growth. It seems to me that Belfast (as we said this morning) is such an important part of the whole of Northern Ireland. The rate of growth [in the Republic] should be attainable [here] with all the right things done in the place with the attributes and the vitality that Northern Ireland and Belfast have.

I don't want to over elaborate this but I do believe in clusters. I do believe that there is a big cluster to be generated. Not generated because it exists but to be really encouraged around the things I mentioned on page 23. I won't get into greater detail (I haven't got the time) but I do believe that that is the way of the future. Building on the harbour lands and some other lands in the city. Pushing out this axis and looking at this knowledge base that we talked about. [There are] any other things [that could be said] there.

Much remains unknown but if we want to see Belfast in the future being the sort of international city (that we have mentioned this morning) then we are going to have to play hard to overcome the quality of service delivery in certain areas. We are going to have to recognise where that is going across the whole of the UK. There are all sorts of interesting models there and I think we are going to have to recognise the need to be inclusive across the deprived neighbourhoods and that's another issue.

I've come to the view that given the uncertainties and the circumstances that exist, but given the need to move forward fast now, the best thing to do is to go for an urban regeneration company. Part of my logic in that is that this is an accepted model now elsewhere in England and parts of Northern Ireland and I think it could be moved [along] speedily given the circumstances. There [are] lots of detail behind that but that is the model I think offers a way forward quickly. (Page 24)

On page 25 [are] the elements of the model, I just lay out what might need to be done. The detail is all important but, overall, I do feel that a lot could be achieved with that model. The underlying conditions, that I reflected earlier on, are good. The asset base is there. There are plenty of things to build upon and I do believe that if we can overcome the institutional mix problems - the maze of partnerships and structures that don't deliver - then there must be a way to cut through this and go forward.

I believe that the uniqueness of Belfast (coming back to my globalisation point). When I came here twenty odd years ago I was made so welcome [and] I've come back because of its uniqueness. I believe the uniqueness of Belfast will establish it as a truly global, international world city that will play up to its increasing strengths in the years ahead. But, as I have emphasised here - to bring about the vehicle of regeneration that I am suggesting, to bring about that change we have argued - the institutional change which you surely need requires resources, goodwill [and] above all trust. And I think without that Belfast can't move forward. If it does achieve what I believe Belfast will achieve its rightful place amongst the core league of cities.

Ladies and Gentlemen thank you.

(Applause)

Peter McNaney
Chief Executive, Belfast City Council
Well, on behalf of us all I'd like to thank you Peter, for your lucid and erudite explanation of the regeneration mechanisms. And I am always struck when I listen to you that you manage to pack in an enormous amount of experience and detail and wisdom into only half an hour.

(Applause).