Sustainable communities and urban regeneration: Two sides of the same aim. Lessons from Castlefields

Abstract

Over the past few decades, UK cities have been subject to severe social and economic pressures, which have had a disproportionate impact on the urban environment. Consequently, this has increased the concentration of the most deprived households in the worst urban neighbourhoods. The Governments have attempted to tackle the physical, social and economic consequences of these changes through a variety of mechanisms and policy initiatives with varying degrees of success. The current objective can be interpreted as an attempt to implement regeneration projects or create sustainable communities/places through multi-agency or partnership programmes. The nature and extent of urban problems are now very well documented; there has been a considerable learning process in the development of different urban regeneration programmes. Over the 20(th) and the beginning of 21(st) centuries, the nature of the urban regeneration policy has changed direction several times and has applied different focus. Today, a "sustainable community" is a key issue in an ambitious Government programme "umbrella". As objective of present programme, the UK government has introduced the Sustainable Community Plan since 2003, describing a vision of how our communities are to be developed over next 20 years, economically, socially and environmentally while respecting the needs of future generations. The paper focuses on the Regeneration Programme in Castlefields and assesses how closely it is aligned to the Sustainable Communities Plan. The case study research within several surveys gives the discussion to the concepts of sustainable communities and regeneration, which have certain parallels and functional overlaps.