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Urban regeneration refers to the process of transforming cities, towns, or other areas that have experienced physical, social, or economic decline. These processes encompass residential, commercial, and open spaces that display symptoms of decline. Many prosperous cities have experienced economic and physical decline over the last fifty years as a result of deindustrialization, leading to various social problems such as unemployment, poverty, crime, poor amenities, education, and housing.
Since the 1970s, there has been a growing interest in using cultural initiatives, projects, and investments as catalysts for urban revitalisation and transformation. Initially, this interest was related to culture's role in improving quality of life. However, from the 1980s, culture began to be viewed as a key factor in attracting companies and qualified labour force to cities. This line of thinking culminated at the turn of the century with the popularisation of ideas like the "creative class" and "creative cities" by advocates such as Richard Florida and Charles Landry.
Evans and Show (2004) identified three models that explain how cultural activity is integrated into the process of regeneration. These models are culture-led regeneration, cultural regeneration, and culture and regeneration.
Culture-led regeneration refers to using cultural activities as a catalyst for regeneration. This usually involves a significant investment in culture – so-called flagship projects – building design and construction for public or mixed-use, reclaiming open spaces or introducing a program of activity to rebrand a place, such as arts festivals, events, and public art schemes. On the other hand, cultural regeneration refers to a process where cultural activities are included as part of the drafting of a regeneration strategy, but other activities in the environmental, social, and economic spheres are expected to play a more significant role in the area's regeneration. Finally, in culture and regeneration schemes, cultural activity is not fully integrated at the strategic planning stage. However, even when introduced at a later stage, small cultural interventions can have a positive impact on the regeneration process. These interventions can come in various forms, such as enhancing the facilities and services that were initially planned or introducing new activities that can help rebrand a place.
Well-known examples of urban regeneration using cultural resources include Barcelona's El Raval district, The Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, The South Bank of the River Thames in London, Glasgow's Merchant City, Manchester's Northern Quarter, Federation Square in Melbourne, The High Line in New York City and others.
In the study written by Nick Ennis and Gordon Douglass (2011), the reported economic impacts of cultural investment include direct and indirect employment, inward investment and business relocation, attraction for an educated workforce, the rise of property values, and visitor and resident spending. Environmental impacts comprise the reuse of redundant buildings or open spaces, improved public realm, increased use and sense of safety and reduced vandalism and pride in place. Finally, social impacts embrace raised confidence and change in perception of area and person; increased levels of social capital and volunteering; community cohesion, improved educational and skills achievement; health and well-being; and crime reduction.
However, there is limited evidence on how much flagship and cultural projects contribute to various regeneration goals. Measuring the social, economic and environmental impact of the cultural aspect in the regeneration of an area is difficult, and the "evidence" is rarely strong. Often, the attention given to high-cost and high-profile culture-led regeneration projects is inversely proportional to the strength and quality of evidence regarding their regenerative effects. (Evans, 2005).
In addition, a feature of many flagship developments has been resistance by, or bypassing of, local communities (MacClancy, 1997; Rodriguez et al., 2001), with the legacy of event-based regeneration not delivering sustained benefits or ownership by residents (Kroller, 1996; Garcia, 2004). (P.C.)