The strategic re-use of brownfield land for housing in the late 1990s in England is a policy instrument introduced to achieve multiple sustainability and urban regeneration objectives. Previous research, mostly relying on qualitative data and local authority case studies, tends to focus on barriers and drivers of brownfield regeneration, rather than on its impact. This study aims to bridge this research gap by examining the impact of residential brownfield development in the most deprived urban areas during 2001–08. Policy impacts in terms of changing housing markets, residential density, population growth and economic deprivation are systematically examined with a series of indicators through GIS analysis and the analysis of variance tests. Conclusions are then drawn on the effectiveness of brownfield development in tackling deprivation and the relevance of these findings for the international debate about planning and land use policy.
Containing urban sprawl and limiting greenfield developments has become an important aim of land use planning policy over recent decades. Traditionally planning instruments such as greenbelt designations and restrictive development controls have been used to achieve this aim. Beyond that in recent years the systematic reuse of brownfield land has become an important policy objective, which could in turn ease the pressure to develop on greenfield land. The aim of this paper is to identify factors explaining differences in the success of such strategic brownfield reuse policies in England and Germany. To do this the paper explores the underlying spatial development paradigms in both countries as well as differences in planning policies and institutional settings.
European regional policy evolved partly as a response to the distinctive needs of the UK following its accession to the then European Economic Community in the 1970s and remains a key and well-regarded ‘British contribution’ to the present-day European Union. Inspired by this rarely acknowledged reality and the aftermath of the UK’s European Union referendum in 2016, this paper first reflects on the position of regional policy within the wider ‘European Project’. It then outlines the material, symbolic and political impacts that European regional policy has had on Britain and its deprived regions and communities over the past four decades. The outcome of the UK’s 2016 European Union referendum is then reviewed from a territorial perspective, and some of the key spatial and placed-based contradictions which it embodies are unpacked. A reflection on the prospects for place-based policy in a post-European Union Britain then follows emphasising that the new context invites a reappraisal of the purposes and forms of regional development policy. Five tentative scenarios of the UK’s future relationship with European Union territorial development policy are then presented. The conclusion recalls the crucial role that European Union regional policy has played in UK regions and communities and calls for close attention to be paid over the coming years to the distributional territorial impacts of leaving the European Union.
Cities in the UK have undergone an urban renaissance since the late 1990s, when New Labour started an initiative of the same name. However, the effects of urban growth have been limited mainly to the cores of second-tier cities, creating new challenges in the urban fringe of city regions and for cities outside the major agglomerations. In this article, we examine the process of reurbanisation in the Manchester and Liverpool city regions and to take a closer look at on one of the local authorities in the fringe of these city regions which is trying to grapple with the challenges posed by a new urban age. We find increasing evidence that places in the spatial in-between of urban regions face particular challenges as a result of the urban renaissance, with the already problematic areas requiring increased attention to avoid structural urban problems similar to that of the inner urban areas in the past. * This article belongs to a special issue on reurbanisation
This document is the author's post-print version, incorporating any revisions agreed during the peer-review process. Some differences between the published version and this version may remain and you are advised to consult the published version if you wish to cite from it.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.