South Coast Towns - 3rd annual conference - choosing a future, finding a role
13 July 2006
Despite the booming south east economy, many of the region's coastal towns have been in decline for decades. The conference heard about a range of different approaches being taken to bring about a revival of their fortunes. There are two main approaches to regeneration, concluded Tony Leonard, Director of Services at Rother District Council. It is possible to invest in people, or in bricks and mortar. In several South Coast towns in particular, the people approach is being taken - education, tourism and the arts are all playing a key role to play in the regeneration process. By Lucy Tennyson
Seafront at Bexhill
Regeneration-led renaissance
Hastings, and the Medway towns of Rochester and Chatham, are both putting education and training at the heart of measures to revive their economies and make the towns lively and vibrant places in which to live and work.
Hastings, like many other coastal resorts, suffers from poor transport links and has large areas of neglected and poor quality housing. Few new employers have moved to replace more traditional industries, such as tourism, which have collapsed, exacerbating what was already a low-skill, low-wage economy. Simon Hubbard, executive director of Regeneration and Planning at Hastings Borough Council said education has been made a top priority. They are striving to ensure that all sectors of the population are given access to skills and training.
In 2001, the Hastings and Bexhill Task Force came together to co-ordinate the town's regeneration, focusing on five points of activity: a new university centre, creation of new business facilities, the adoption of broadband, improvements to transport, and an urban renaissance.
The latter focuses on the Hastings Millennium Community, an area of 72 ha across three sites: Ore Valley, Hastings Station Plaza and West Marina. The long-term ambition is to integrate all three sites with a proposed metrolink. Substantial private-sector finance has also been secured for the programme, in addition to government funds contributed by English Partnerships, the South East England Development Agency (SEEDA), the Higher Education Funding Council for England, and from Europe through the Government Office for the South East.
Closed shops at Bexhill, one of many south coast towns which has seen traditional tourism decline.
Medway borough is the largest urban area in the Thames Gateway, said Brian McCutcheon, Local and Regional Transport Planning Manager with Medway Council. (It’s other claim to fame is as the original home of the 'chav', he added. The creation of a new town and large-scale riverside regeneration lie at the core of of the Rochester-Chatham renaissance, he said. Backed by £97m from the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, Medway Renaissance aims to transform a series of key riverside and town centre sites in Chatham, Rochester, Strood and Gillingham, delivering 8,000 new homes and attracting new business that will create 10,000 jobs.
The rise of the multiversity
A 'multiversity', along with a new city park and eight cultural projects are included in regeneration plans for Medway, as well as proposals to 'green the Gateway'. SEEDA is one major backer of the Multiversity at Medway bringing together the Universities of Kent, Greenwich and Mid Kent College, and Canterbury Christ Church University College and Kent Institute of Art & Design.
The Multiversity aims to raise participation in further and higher education, improve employability and combat social exclusion within deprived communities in the Thames Gateway. The Multiversity is being accompanied by improvements in housing and infrastructure, within a total public investment package of £50 million, including £15 million from the Sustainable Communities Fund and funding from the Higher Education Funding Council for England, Medway Unitary Authority and £8.6 million from SEEDA.
Professor Andrew Church, of the University of Brighton, is part of a team developing the Hastings and Bexhill coastal regeneration research centres at University College, Hastings (UCH). He spoke about the important role the university can play in regeneration, and how UCH is acting as a catalyst for change in Hastings. The Hastings multiversity opened in February 2004 with 700 students, following courses in four subject areas: business, computing, education and social services. As well as providing skills to the local workforce, the multiversity can bring about change through the process of “studentification” of an area, he said.
Can an artistic magnet draw a new market?
The De La Warr Pavilion
The conference was held in one of Britain's iconic buildings, the modernist De La Warr Pavilion on the Bexhill seafront. Commissioned in 1935 by the then mayor the 9th Earl De La Warr, the building is unique in many ways. It was the first major welded steel-frame building in Britain (both its architect Erich Mendelsohn and Mies Van Der Rohe had used this technique in Germany) and the competition to design it was the first for a public building in which a specifically modern solution was suggested in the brief.
Having fallen into disrepair, the building was refurbished at a cost of £9 million, reopening in October 2005 to a blaze of publicity and new programme of cultural activities. Alan Haydon, director, said the De La Warr Pavilion could now act as a 'cultural catalyst' along the lines of others such as the Gateshead Garden Festival and the Angel of the North. Within a year of opening, it is attracting 50,000 visitors a month, and has a £2 million turnover. He said it is stimulating demand in the town for better hotels and 'a better shopping experience', and that he was now working with the local authority on 'a broader vision for seafront development'.
Josephine Burns, Director of the Burns Owen Partnership, was another firm believer in the positive role the arts can play in helping to bring about economic revival. However, she likened trying to capture the creative industries (such as advertising, design, music production and publishing) as 'a bit like trying to capture stardust'.
She pointed out that the creative industries represent 1.8 million jobs (2004) in the UK, and are a fast growing sector. The south east is the second most significant region for this sector after London. She said that most creative ventures are small micro-businesses. These that need to be encouraged in order to stimulate a creative quarter as part of a programme of regeneration - no one industry can be created. Instead, it is necessary to respond to locally driven opportunities. An awareness of 'creative ecology' is needed, how the creative industries network and cluster together. 'It’s a question of building places and the environment, and creating the kind of social and environmental places that people will live in.'
Simon Radford-Kirby, of East Sussex County Council, spoke on how the declining port town of Newhaven was building on its waterfront legacy through a programme of new housing development. A 10 year masterplan was launched in January, and work on a new Enterprise Gateway, funded through £3.5 million of SEEDA money begins this summer.
A debate ensued on how arts and culture can be used to stimulate new creative industries. Newhaven was attempted to market itself as having a 'stunning location' and being a 'gateway to Europe' through the ferry to Dieppe. It was accepted that campaigns such as Glasgow's Miles Better play an important role in creating local pride. 'However, we can't all be Barcelonas,' pointed out Josephine Burns.
'It is important to be what you are.'It was agreed that it was essential to foster pride in local identities, and that architects have a huge role to play in this. The example of Gateshead was cited, where architects were involved early on in regeneration plans, and were able to make the fundamental changes needed to bring about successful regeneration.
