Summary: |
The UK property development industry is a key player in regeneration projects, which conventionally have been focused around area-based initiatives. Emerging policy has attempted to interlink a ‘sustainable development’ agenda with a ‘sustainable brownfield’ agenda. These twin policy agendas, based on further normative policy aspirations, have found an additional focus through the UK government’s ‘Sustainable Communities Plan’, predicated on the drive to provide additional housing (underpinned by the Barker Review), and engender market renewal in key areas in England. This paper examines the emergence of these agendas and related policies, and analyses the role of the property development industry in the regeneration of six key brownfield sites, based in Thames Gateway and Greater Manchester. The paper investigates the perceived ‘sustainability’ of these projects, in terms of key aspects of the ‘triple bottom line’ approach and the development of a related conceptual model, and highlights key lessons emerging from the experience of developers, and their engagement and dialogue with other stakeholders in the brownfield regeneration process on these case study sites. The research adopts an inductive approach, based on more than 50 structured interviews with a variety of stakeholders, including developers, planners, consultants, and community representatives. A key message emerging from the research is that although the property development industry is coming to terms with brownfield risks, including contamination, major policy barriers are hampering effective regeneration. Furthermore, resolving other issues, relating to density and infrastructure, are key to successful brownfield regeneration. Finally, a developer’s checklist is formulated as a result of the research, to highlight perceived emerging ‘best practice’, and related policy implications, in sustainable brownfield regeneration. The research is based on the latest findings from an EPSRC-funded research project based at Oxford Brookes, and which is part of the SUBR:IM programme of research. |