Ausgabe 1 - Fachschaft Raumplanung

St.u.P.i.D. 1/2012
THAMES GATEWAY IN THE LIGHT OF UR-
BAN REGIME THEORY:
Urban Regime Formation and its Consequences
for Europe‘s Largest Regeneration Area
von Camilla Chlebna
An Executive Summary:
At the centre of this study lies Europe‘s largest regeneration area, the
Thames Gateway. A derelict, post-industrial area, stretching about 40 miles
eastwards along the Thames from London. The area used to be home to manufacturing
and other ‚hard industries‘ which, due to the general economic structural
change, gradually were forced to relocate to other areas for cheaper labour
or closed their businesses for good. What the area was left with was often contaminated,
derelict sites and deprived neighbourhoods.
In the late 1980s the Secretary of State for the Environment under a
Conservative government recognised the need for extensive urban regeneration
defined and emphasised the necessity of the use of existing transport infrastructure
and brownfield land. When after several years the hoped for private
sector contribution was not realised a new Labour government stepped in and
committed to the regeneration of the area by designating it as one of four major
growth areas. Extensive funding was made available and the programme was
very popular with civil servants since it bore such potential to accommodate
the much needed housing and employment growth on brownfield land without
having to touch the politically contentious greenfield land. Money was spent on
setting up bodies, on drawing strategic plans and writing papers, celebrating the
new ‚partnership-approach to development‘ that was being taken. It became
more and more difficult to identify where financial aids were flowing to and who
were the beneficiaries. In 2007 the National Audit Office published a report
that suggested that the Thames Gateway as an overall regeneration programme
had not been delivering on its promises in terms of housing and employment
and that more coordinated effort and leadership was needed. Then, in 2008
the programme was hit by the global financial crisis as private sector ‚partners‘
became even more hesitant to invest. The incoming coalition government in
2010 announced the abolition of many semi-governmental bodies and the discontinuation
of a ring-fenced budget for the Thames Gateway. This will mean a
big change for the Thames Gateway and its way of operating in the future.
The author‘s initial conjecture has been that, faced with a retracting
state the private sector is taking over development and planning matters in the
Gateway, leading to favouritism of shorter-term profit-making over longer-term
sustainable development. A theoretical framework around Urban Regime Analysis
has been deployed to investigate this matter of conflicting interests. Empirical
research has proved the conjecture wrong. The Gateway isn‘t dominated by
an eager private sector but it appears that development has stagnated and that
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