Urban Regeneration, Social Inclusion and Large Store Development: The Seacroft Development in Context

Abstract

Of central importance to the policy debate which emerged during the late 1990s in the UK on the topic of 'food deserts' were the causes of the perceived worsening access to food retail provision in certain poor neighbourhoods of British cities. The 1980s/early 1990s era of intense food superstore development on edge-of-city sites was seen as having unevenly stripped food retailing out of parts of those cities, or having repositioned that provision downwards in range and quality terms. By the late 1990s, however, tightened land-use planning regulation had begun significantly to impact the development programmes of the major food retailers and those retailers increasingly came to adopt an urban regeneration agenda to drive forwards the new store development vital to their corporate growth. Simultaneously, issues of social exclusion rose to prominence on the political agenda and 'tackling social exclusion' began to be promoted as a possible new criterion for retail planning policy in the UK. In this paper, we explore this nexus of interest in urban regeneration and social inclusion. Using the example of a major retail development in the deprived area of Seacroft, Leeds, we outline the characteristics of the increasingly important regeneration partnerships involving retailers, local authorities, government agencies and community groups. We ask to what extent such partnerships can be dismissed merely as 'clever devices to get stores built and passed by planners' and discuss the implications for retail planning policy of attempts to address both the social exclusion and public health agendas of deprived and poorly served areas of British cities.

Deprivation, Diet, and Food-Retail Access: Findings from the Leeds ‘Food Deserts' Study

“…In response, it recommended`p olicies which will increase the availability and accessibility of foodstuffs to supply an adequate and affordable diet ... [and] which will ensure adequate retail provision of food to those who are disadvantaged'' (Acheson, 1998, pages 65^66). The issue rapidly became what should those policies most appropriately be, and what was the role of retail planning policy in tackling these issues (Wrigley et al, 2002a). The consultation report of PAT 13 (DoH, 1999b) strongly favoured local small-scaleretailer-oriented solutions based upon explicit involvement of the local community and its key stakeholdersöthe development of what it termed`local retail strategies'.…”

“…This will involve defining the food shopping needs of local people within a retail strategy and identifying`food deserts'öareas that lack retail services within say a 500-metre radius' ' (Beverley Hughes, in DETR, 2000a). The major retailers, however, for sound commercial reasons öwhat they freely described as`enlightened self-interest' (Martin Venning, Tesco plc quoted in Brauner, 2001, page 21)öbegan aggressively to adopt a large-store-centred urban regeneration agenda focused, in particular, around redevelopment of former industrial`brown field' sites and the increasingly derelict 1960s/70s district shopping centres serving local authority housing estates (Wrigley et al, 2002a). These urban regeneration schemes (for examples, see Carley et al, 2001) were typically based around partnerships involving local authorities, employment and enterprise agencies, and community organizations.…”

“…In 1998, the United Kingdom's largest food retailer, Tesco, as part of a wider adoption of urban-regeneration-based schemes within its store-development strategy (Butterick, 2000;Wrigley et al, 2002a), sought planning consent to demolish the entire Seacroft district centre and to redevelop it around a 97 000 ft 2 gross (69 500 ft 2 net) superstore plus ten smaller shop units öpromising the city council that priority in employment in the new store would be given to long-term unemployed residents of the area. Planning consent was granted (see Williams, 2000;Wrigley et al, 2000a) and Tesco jointly developed the Seacroft Partnership with Leeds City Council, the property developers Asda St James, the employment services agency, the shop workers' union The survey and its methodology Knowledge that a major food superstore would be opening on the site of the old Seacroft centre, and that access to food-retail provision in the area would suddenly be significantly improved ö allowing the opportunity for a major`intervention' study ö was available to us during the design stage of the Food Deserts in British Cities project.…”

The economic and social role of small stores: a review of UK evidence

“…In such localities, consumers are highly dependent on convenience stores as they often provide the only remaining access to grocery stores, with the consequence that consumers in these areas tend to pay higher prices and have a more restricted diet (Whelan et al 2002). At the other extreme, a handful of major studies have explored the effect of provision interventions from the opening of major multiple-owned superstores in food deserts in Leeds (Wrigley et al 2002a;Wrigley et al 2003;Wrigley et al 2002b) and Glasgow (Cummins et al 2008), attempting to assess the effects on diet. These findings provide contrary evidence that such large-scale initiatives have a positive effect on the dietary patterns of local households.…”

Retail-led regeneration and store-switching behaviour

“…Acheson, 1998, Department of Health, 1999a, 1999b, 2004, Wanless, 2004, though this relationship was unproven. Excellent summaries of this background are presented in Wrigley (2002) and Wrigley et al et al (2002a).…”