13 January 2006
The government's ambition to create sustainable, mixed communities in city centres is flawed, a new study claims.
The report, City people, from the Institute for Public Policy Research, finds that the people moving into regenerated city centres over the past ten years are mostly single and between the ages of 18 and 34, not the mixed communities sought by the 2000 urban white paper.
The young inhabitants have brought important economic and cultural boosts to once-dilapidated centres such as Liverpool, Manchester and Dundee, the report says. New retail outlets and bars have opened, making areas safer and cleaner.
Yet the government is in danger of undermining the benefits of such regeneration, the study's authors argue, as its Sustainable Communities framework — launched in 2003 — ties much health, education, transport and development funding to the creation of mixed communities.
Making city centres more attractive to families, by reducing congestion, night-time noise and building larger homes and facilities such as parks and schools, would be expensive and would risk losing the 'core demographic' of young people, say the researchers.
'City centres work quite well as communities for single people. It's not practical or achievable to turn them into mini suburbs — which is what families say they want,' said Max Nathan, senior researcher at the IPPR's Centre for Cities.
The researchers argue that government efforts would be better directed at regenerating existing rundown residential areas close to the city centres.
But funding arrangements would need to be overhauled. Funding tends to be attached to the size of the existing population, creating a 'Catch 22' situation in which a lack of facilities and infrastructure discourages settlement, said Nathan.
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