Building blocks for the future

Everybody knows LEGO, the primary-colour building blocks that have been a staple of childhood for decades.

But LEGO’s latest release - produced in association with a company called Brickstructures - has muted the blocks’ normally bright, brash tones in order to create micro-scaled models of some of the world’s most iconic buildings.

LEGO's Architecture Series, launched in the US, will see scaled-down versions of New York's Empire State Building, the Burj Dubai Tower, the Guggenheim Museum and Chicago's Sears Tower going on sale, no doubt ready to be built by nostalgic architects and budding designers.

This is the LEGO version of the Guggenheim Museum in New York:

And this is LEGO's take on Fallingwater, a house designed by US architect Frank Lloyd Wright in 1934 in rural Pennsylvania:

As yet, no UK buildings have made LEGO's list. But if they were to, which UK structures do you think are worthy of the LEGO stamp of approval?

London's new commuter belt?

If you live in London in social housing, you may well be eligible for a new home in Cornwall or Shropshire under London mayor Boris Johnson's latest plans. 
 
In a bid to free up social housing for families in the capital, Johnson has announced plans to entice Londoners out of their social housing in the city by offering alternative housing by the coast or in the countryside.
 
And the newly relocated could still manage to hold down their existing jobs if they follow the recent example of Phillip Hanman, a council worker, who showed it was possible to make the 300 mile commute from Cornwall to London (if you are willing to camp out in Epping Forest along the way).
 
Johnson’s plans to halve serious overcrowding by 2016 have already got the stamp of approval from homeless charity Shelter. With 5,000 households already on the waiting list to move out of the capital, has Boris touched on the solution to the city’s burgeoning problem of overcrowding?

Wake for Wakefield

A trip up to Yorkshire last week set me thinking about unintended consequences and how good intentions are necessary, but are insufficient to turning around a town's fortunes.

The purpose of my trip was to review Wakefield College's new building - the Skills Xchange (don't blame me, I didn't think up the name) - which opened recently on the site of the former Glasshoughton colliery out of town towards Castleford. The building is splendid and the broader redevelopment of Glasshoughton is clearly going well, with the adjacent ski and snowboard centre Xscape (again, don't shoot the messenger) now one of the most visited tourist attraction in the country. Both the college's and the local supermarket's car park were practically full. In short, people are coming to Glasshoughton and spending their money when they get there. 

Things were a little less uplifting when I got back to Wakefield to catch the train south. It was 5.45 and the place was dead. Not just quiet, but stone-cold. I took a long walk around town in an attempt to find something to eat for the train. My options, I established after half an hour, were a takeaway pizza or McDonalds (incidentally, the only place boasting any sign of life at all). I went hungry. 

Now, I don't have the statistics to back this up, but I suspect that the people of Wakefield are getting in their cars and driving out of town to fulfill their shopping and entertainment needs, leaving the town centre a haven for visiting tumbleweeds. No one doubts the importance of revitalising our former coalfields, but if the resulting development helps finish off an already comatose town centre then something has gone awry. 

Beating the benefits trap

At yesterday’s Development Trusts Association Symposium a convincing argument was made to overhaul the benefits system so that community organisations can pay people to do part-time voluntary work without it affecting their benefits.

Naomi Alexander, who is coordinating a campaign to convince the Government to pilot the idea, told an audience at the Coin Street Neighbourhood Centre in London that the way the Government spends £92 billion a year on benefits payments is “one of the biggest barriers to neighbourhood renewal”.

Alexander said that something called the “earnings disregard” means that if Jobseekers Allowance (JSA) claimants do part-time work they are only allowed to earn £5 a week on top of their benefits. Anything earned and declared beyond this point is taken from weekly benefits payments. Shockingly, the level of earnings disregard for JSA claimants has remained the same since 1988.

This system discourages unemployed people from taking steps back into work. Alexander said that this hinders community organisations that want to pay unemployed people for part-time or sessional work. This work, she said, has the potential to have a “transformational effect”. Here’s a YouTube clip to underline her argument:



Alexander’s Create Consortium is calling for the Government to pilot a “community allowance” project to enable unemployed people on any benefit to undertake part-time work that strengthens their neighbourhood without it affecting their benefit.

The consortium has already had tentative commitments from the Government to piloting the project, including in the 2008 Community Empowerment White Paper. But it is hoping a more concrete commitment might emerge from a meeting at the Department for Work and Pensions next week, when officials will consider a bid for funding from the consortium to run a pilot version of the scheme.

Business guru tells public sector how to foster innovation

Mike Harris’s credentials as a business innovator are pretty solid. He was the founder of two pioneering banking brands: First Direct, which popularised telephone banking in the UK, and Egg, which led the way on internet banking.

Yesterday he was speaking at the British Council for Offices conference in Edinburgh, telling builders, owners and occupiers of office space how they can beat the recession, as long as they are prepared to “relentlessly” search for new ideas.

His message was clear, and just as relevant to economic development professionals as to people who build offices.

First, according to Harris’s credo, innovation is not something that occurs unpredictably as a result of individual flashes of genius. Instead, he says, “innovation can be methodological, reliable and low-risk”.

Second, it’s wrong to imagine that recession creates poor breeding grounds for innovation. “People said the oil shock of 1972-74 was the end of capitalism,” he says. “But no-one told Bill Gates, Steve Jobs or Richard Branson [all of whom founded pioneering new businesses at that time]”. Hence, he says, at the current time it is more important than ever for businesses to identify their customers’ unmet needs and satisfy them in ways that beats the competition.

I asked him how effective he thought public sector economic development agencies were at fostering innovation. His verdict was mixed.

He said that the public sector had played a valuable role in providing seed capital to some potentially valuable businesses that that private sector backers had ignored.

But he complained that public sector money was still too hard for these companies to obtain. This was because it was handed out in large chunks, he said, making the agencies involved very cautious about who they gave it to. Instead, he said, the public sector should make smaller grants, but ensure that they were more readily accessible.

He also said that it should be made easier for young entrepreneurs to win public sector work. At the moment, he said, this was far easier in the US than the UK. In America, he said, “they are not going to ask you for 25 references, and they are aware that the money that they put into a new company’s first project might not come back”.

Match of the Day 2

I blogged earlier this week about the important economic role that football clubs can play in their local areas. The blog highlighted the fact that five of the 10 most disadvantaged local authorities in England are home to a Premier League club. All but two Premier League clubs are situated in the 20 per cent most deprived local authority areas, according to the analysis.

But the methodology we used focused on local authority-wide deprivation. This meant that Manchester United, for example, recorded a low deprivation score, despite undoubtedly being located in a rundown area.

Below is a table ranking deprivation in the super output areas in which the Premier League's 20 clubs are located. There are nearly 35,000 SOAs in England, with an average of 1,500 residents. The table shows that big football clubs are located in some of the most disadvantaged areas in England:

Club	IMD ranking (2007)
Bolton	20,216th most deprived
Newcastle	17,087
Fulham	17,053
Portsmouth	14,573
Blackburn	11,009
Manchester United	8,510
Sunderland	7,275
Chelsea	5,762
Arsenal	3,978
West Ham	1,744
Stoke	1,642
West Brom	1,470
Aston Villa	783
Hull	770
Everton	630
Tottenham	547
Wigan	412
Liverpool	108
Manchester City	74
Middlesbrough	71

The table shows that three clubs – Liverpool, Manchester City and Middlesbrough – are located in the top one per cent most deprived SOAs in England. 

According to accountants Deloitte, English Premier League clubs reported a combined revenue in excess of €2 billion in 2006/07. There should be more debate about how this huge wealth could be used to revitalise the often very disadvantaged areas around their grounds. 

The deprivation Premier League

Much has been made recently of how the dire fortunes of the north-east's major football clubs are adding to the region's economic gloom. Newcastle United and Middlesbrough go into the last weekend of the season struggling for their Premiership survival, while local rivals Sunderland should be safe from relegation – but only just.

This recent article, published by The Guardian, argues that the renaissance of Newcastle United in the 1990s was linked to economic boom times. According to the newspaper, Newcastle United chairman Sir John Hall repeatedly stated that the club would be a rallying point for regeneration in the north-east. "The club will be a major industry, marketing the north-east," he vowed.

It is impossible to establish a link between economic conditions in the north-east and the fortunes of the three clubs. If any of the three are relegated - and it is likely that they will be - it would be largely down to the quality of the clubs' squads.

But the issue does highlight the important economic role that football clubs can play in disadvantaged areas. The table below lists the 20 teams currently in the Premier League against their respective local authority's ranking on the 2007 Index of Multiple Deprivation.

Club	IMD ranking (2007)
Manchester United	178th most deprived
Portsmouth	93
Wigan Athletic	67
Chelsea	59
Fulham	59
Bolton Wanderers	51
Newcastle	37
Sunderland	35
Tottenham Hotspur	18
Blackburn Rovers	17
Stoke City	16
West Brom	14
Hull	11
Aston Villa	10
Middlesbrough	9
Arsenal	8
West Ham	6
Manchester City	4
Everton	1
Liverpool	1

The table shows that Premier League clubs are located in some of England's most deprived areas. Five of the 10 most disadvantaged areas in England are home to a top flight club (Liverpool, Manchester, Newham, Islington and Middlesbrough). All but the two top clubs on the table (Manchester United in Trafford and Portsmouth) are located in the 20 per cent most disadvantaged areas in England. Their economic importance to those areas must not be underestimated.

Fans of Manchester United – crowned champions on Saturday – should not necessarily view their team's position at the top of the table (and bitter rivals Liverpool's position at the bottom) as another reason to celebrate. The IMD scores are for whole local authority areas. Manchester United's stadium is located in a very deprived part of Trafford, but because the local authority has affluent outlying areas, the borough, overall, does not score highly on deprivation indicators.

What do you do?

The Government's framework for regeneration, published earlier this week, contained this definition of regeneration:

'Reversing economic, social, and physical decline in areas where market forces will not do this without support from government'

The document says that regeneration is a time-limited investment that transforms places and economies so they do not need long term subsidy. It also says that regeneration success will in future be judged against impacts it has had on economic performance, business growth and creating places people want to live. 

What do you think of the definition? Does it apply to the work that you do? Does it overplay the role of the state? Please comment below.

“More of the sea, less of Margate”

Last night’s eagerly anticipated episode (at least by the Regeneration & Renewal newsdesk) of The Apprentice saw the two teams draw up plans to rebrand Margate, the Kent seaside town.



The two teams were given two days by Sir Alan Sugar to come up with a place branding strategy to make Margate popular again, and present their plans to a panel of branding experts and Margate residents.

Here’s our verdict on what the teams came up with:

Team Empire

Headed by Deborah, Team Empire aimed to make Margate appeal to the gay community and cash in on the pink pound. James suggested the idea because, he said, gay people go on more holidays and spend more money than other groups.

Mona thought that the idea would not be suitable for Kent, because the gay market is not a “big thing” for local people. But the team pushed on, casting men for their poster campaign.

Our verdict

The idea had potential, but was badly let down by the execution. Despite decent photography, there were too many words on the poster and the leaflet was unfinished.

The low scores given by the branding experts and residents didn’t lie.

Team Ignite

Team leader Yasmeena decided to market the resort to credit crunch-hit families. Ben said the task could be difficult because Margate “isn’t exactly the Seychelles”. He spent most of his time pretending he was David Bailey, making a frame with his fingers. “More of the sea, less of Margate,” he declared.

The team settle on a slogan: “See Margate through children’s eyes." 

Our verdict

A pedestrian idea that lacked distinctiveness, but a much more professional presentation, which was the reason behind the team’s victory.

Hotpot

Overall, we felt that both team’s efforts were disappointing and lacked imagination. But the same cannot be said for a fantastic new video produced by Blackpool’s tourism bosses. The new YouTube film – complete with sexy French accents – promotes Blackpool as a sophisticated place.



Your verdict

What did you think of the wannabe apprentices' attempts to rebrand Margate? Was Suralan right to fire Mona? Is the new Blackpool video brilliant or bonkers? Please comment below.

Jargon

When I interviewed John Healey last week, we had an enjoyable exchange abut the plethora of meaningless jargon and buzz phrases that have come out of Eland House over the years. Healey admitted he had no idea what the phrase "liveability" means, despite the fact part of his brief is an overview of liveability. As amusing as I found it, I didn't blame Healey (who took the jibe very well) for this. After all, much of the jargon is a by-product of the policy officers and speech writers of Whitehall, often hugely intelligent Oxbridge minds who communicate eloquently and concisely in conversation, yet are prone to destroying the Mother Tongue once they put pen to paper. This week's utterly baffling release by Isle of Wight Council suggests local government could be even worse.

As it goes, liveability is one of the more tolerable jargon phrases. I always inferred that it simply meant improving quality of life and environment in an area, without actually saying that. But others are harder to understand. Certainly, this week's new framework for regeneration is full of them. 

I've drawn on the expertise of Regeneration & Renewal's expert readership to attempt to define some of the more popular choices, but we'd be delighted to hear more. 

Please send in your entries...

Partnership working 

The suppression of mutual loathing in pursuit of a grant. (Thanks to Nigel Smith of Rics for that one.)

No one-size-fits-all solution

No solution.

Liveability

The eradication of dog poo. 

Single conversation  

A meeting that has an end result other than sparking another meeting. 

Double devolution 

Collecting ones own rubbish. 

Pigs obscure the green shoots

In the battle of the pigs and the green shoots, the pigs have it. 

Last week it was hysteria over swine flu; this week it's the entertaining expenses merry-go-round over snouts in the trough. This all fills airtime, but it's a shame that it obscured the serious economic story that even in the embattled US things look nowhere near as bad as some predicted, and that the recession in the UK may have bottomed out. 

Although some serious news organs have carried this, notably the consistently fair and balanced Financial Times, many others, including the BBC, seem more interested in pigs, sneezes, chandeliers and eyeliner than investigating whether the green shoots that some can see are real or illusory. 

Certainly, it needs looking into. Regenerators will be buoyed by more data this morning that there are even signs of recovery in the moribund housing market. In other news, UK retail sales have risen at their fastest rate for three years; and the decline in UK manufacturing has slowed up. 

This is all fascinating – and important to all our lives. You'd think that after the blanket coverage of the economy when things appear to be dropping off a cliff, the press would be interested when things show signs of improvement. Not so. The pigs will surely die soon, but the press will keep flogging them. 

Will the new city-regions agree to establish a senate?

Regeneration & Renewal carries an interview this morning with John Healey, the local government minister. In it, he tells me that the passage towards greater devolution of powers from Whitehall will be smoothed somewhat if Greater Leeds and Greater Manchester accept the government's model of governance, the opaquely-named economic prosperity board.

EPBs effectively turn the leaders of each constituent council in a city region into senators, who have one vote on policies expected to be run at the city-regional level, such as regeneration and skills. Crucially, if there's one or more councils who disapprove of a policy, but who are out-voted by their other 'senators', the policy is carried. 

I think Healey is absolutely right to push for an EPB. Why? Well, councillors used to tell us that such robust systems are unnecessary, as decisions can be made across boundaries merely through collaboration and agreement by committee. Unfortunately, the fiasco over congestion-charging in Manchester undermined that argument. If the city-regions are not going to going the way of Greater London and establish a directly-elected mayoralty, they need to show us how tough decisions will be made in times where constituent councils in an area fail to agree on a policy.

Although neither Leeds nor Manchester have yet agreed to an EPB yet, sources in Leeds City Region (which, interestingly, now has its own .gov website) say they are ready to consider it if the Government deems that its existing system comes up short.

Leeds says its existing system is not too far away from an EPB, although constituent councils can pull out of the city-region with a year's notice. And it would be really something if Leeds City Region bites the governance bullet first, considering Manchester made most of the city-regional running in recent years. 

One thing certainly seems true: if the city-regions want new decision-making powers, they need to show Whitehall they are capable of making decisions. 

Time to bank on women

Have you ever wondered what a planet run by women may look like? Maybe not quite like that spoof dystopian sketch by the Two Ronnies in which women rule England while men are housekeepers and wear women's clothes and law and order is managed by female guards in boots and hot pants.

This week equalities minister Harriet Harman has suggested that if more women held senior positions in banks we may not now be in a deep financial crisis that we are in. She hinted that the Government might use equality legislation to force the appointment of more women managers in banks. This is not something some males in the industry were pleased to hear.

When I interviewed former Dragon’s Den judge, Rachel Elnaugh, the other month, she said she had done away with her previously ruthless attitude to business and that less competitiveness and more collaboration is important to surviving the downturn. She said: “Alpha male competitiveness is actually quite outdated. Feminine businesses these days are what are needed. They are much more collaborative."

Her views echo those of some in the social enterprise sector who think socially responsible institutions are the future, after the economic crisis has left the public disillusioned with the hubris and greed of commercial banks.

Trevor Phillips, who heads the Equalities Commission, believes that putting more women in charge would go a long way towards restoring public confidence in financial institutions.

And what’s more, Muhammed Yunus, who founded the Grameen Bank 26 years ago to give loans to the poor of Bangladesh, started it with the principle to lend only to women because it had a more beneficial social effect.

Despite the male grumbles, Harriet Harman may well be onto something.

Hitting the buffers

The railway has run into yet more problems as it emerged that the operator of the key East Coast Mainline franchise, National Express, may have to relinquish its contract amid falling passengers and a slump in profits. NX is worried that it won't be able to make the repayments to the Government by their due date of 2015. This comes just a year after the Government was forced to sack the former operator GNER, after its holding company went bust.

But regenerators ought not worry that the UK's most famous and alluring main line breaking down: there will continue to be trains serving Newcastle's dramatic river vista, the spectacular Northumberland coast and Edinburgh's vast Waverley station, come what may. The UK is not a Mickey Mouse nation, and its railway cannot be allowed to cease operation.

Indeed if, as expected, NX hands back the franchise, regenerators may find it easier to coordinate trains services and operations with their plans than they currently do. Regeneration professionals often complain that they find it hard to align the plans of privatised train companies with their own. In theory, things should be easier with a public body. If NX withdraws, the Government may have to the renationalise the service temporarily as it did with the South East franchise, after sacking operator Connex after it ran a dismal service.

Fishy market

The regeneration sector saw some interesting business news this afternoon when developers' share prices made large gains.

By three o'clock St Modwen's price had risen by more than 10 per cent; Quintain's by eight per cent and Hammerson's by seven.

The Footsie as a whole had had another good day but, by way of comparison, it closed just shy of two per cent up.

There was no immediately apparent cause. So what was the cause of the fishy fillip? Sources suggest that, as is often the case with the markets, its something of a case of sticking with the shoal.

Word from the traders this afternoon is that one major brokerage house was out "shopping for shares this morning".

This, in turn, led other traders to think they may have missed a trick. As a result they started fishing for under priced stocks – and the lucky developers happened to be the catch of the day, the trader suggested.

But, our source warns: "This doesn't mean it'll happen tomorrow."

UPDATE: May 7, 10.25 am - All three developers mentioned above are up in early trading.

Hammerson up 2.8 per cent
St Modwen 2.75 per cent
Quintain by 1.13 per cent

And Developer Land Securities is up 4.42 per cent so far this morning.

Boris's Ponte Vecchio pontificating

In the latest news from the London mayor’s office, Boris Johnson has spoken of his vision of a Ponte Vecchio-style pedestrian bridge between Waterloo and South Bank. The mayor told LBC radio that he wants to create a ‘living bridge’ lined with shops, cafes and homes, and a greenhouse containing tropical trees and plants.
 
Johnson said the bridge would create “something that would once again provide a commercial zone, a place that you could live on, a bridge that actually had residential and commercial property on it as the old London Bridge did".
 
And this isn’t just a whim. Johnson has apparently based his vision on designs published 13 years ago by French architect Antoine Grumbach, who won a Royal Academy  competition to design a habitable bridge. According to The Times the plans were given clout by a study by accountants KPMG that showed it could be built without dipping into the taxpayers' wallet.
 
But critics are quick to point out the problems in comparing his dream with that of the Old London Bridge. After all, as the rhyme goes, this did in fact fall down.  In yesterday's Guardian, architecture critic Jonathan Glancey slammed the plans. 
 
So what’s the solution? In theory, the idea of another pedestrian crossing over the Thames sounds like a good idea.  But would pedestrians want their route to the office to include a journey through a giant greenhouse?

BY SUSIE SELL

Barrow blues

Next Wednesday (12 May), Sir Alan Sugar’s team of wannabe apprentices take on perhaps their trickiest task yet – to rebrand Margate, the Kent seaside town. Rumour has it that one contestant wanted to rebrand the town as a gay resort. We'll be blogging next week on the contestants' efforts.

But this weekend, a different TV programme demonstrated all too clearly the challenge of place branding. On Sunday night, Channel 4’s the Secret Millionaire documentary – which sees millionaires go incognito into deprived communities and agree to give away tens of thousands of pounds - visited Barrow, Cumbria.

You’d think that the people of Barrow would be grateful. Not so. Local councillors have blasted the show for portraying the town in a negative light. Barrow’s mayor Dave Roberts said that the programme – which included background shots of grim looking buildings and washing blowing in the wind – had undermined the town’s Love Barrow campaign.

He told the North West Evening Mail: “I was really hoping it wouldn’t show Barrow in a bad way.

“It’s just sad that they chose to focus on the negative because that’s how we are now going to be perceived by people watching the show and we all know it’s just not like that.

“It just defeats everything Love Barrow is trying to do when they put things like this on.

“The last thing we want is for Barrow to be shown in a negative light because we all know it’s just not like that.”

In a separate story, the newspaper reports that Colin Biggs, who runs charity Thrift – which was handed £10,000 by Secret Millionaire Rob Calcraft on the show – now wants to give the money away. He said that the show has effectively “shut the door on Barrow” to tourism and investment. “I was just disgusted at how they portrayed the town,” he said.

Readers of the newspaper are being asked to take part in a poll asking whether the programme was good for Barrow - by texting GRIM or GREAT. At the time of posting this blog, 82 per cent said the show was not good for the town.

It's hard to disagree. Changing the public's perception of a town or area takes time and a lot of effort. And that hard work can be undermined very quickly by a TV show or newspaper article.

Paris plans: egotistical or ambitious?

Earlier this week Nicolas Sarkozy revealed further details of his “Greater Paris” plan, which aims to leave a lasting mark on the French capital, notably by subsuming the marginalised suburbs into a wider metropolis. Ten of the world’s leading architects, including Richard Rogers and the Pritzker Prize-winning Jean Nouvel, unveiled their proposals, while, in his typically understated manner, Sarkozy pledged to create an eco-city that would embody “truth, beauty and grandeur” – a sentence it’s hard to imagine a British politician uttering.

Sarkozy is hoping to follow in a proud tradition of French presidential legacies: Georges Pompidou left the stunning eponymous art centre, Francois Mitterand the glass pyramid outside the Louvre. But are Sarkozy’s – suitably vague – plans merely egotistical or admirably ambitious? Moreover would a British prime minister – Gordon Brown or otherwise – envisage change of this scale for London on any other major city?

BY SHAFIK MEGHJI