1. Community development and sustainable community
Community development is the process which harnesses the collective energy of communities to improve quality of life through provision of facilities, services and networks. It involves social interaction and people working together, providing mutual support, using recreation and leisure time constructively, recognizing local culture and expressing their opinions. All of this will encourage individuals to participate and become actively involved in community affairs, diversified and resilient to forces which cause social exclusion. Hence, community development aims to strengthen the economy, equity aspects and the social ties within a community through locally based initiatives.
The main goals of community development depend on local people having the ability to express their values, satisfy their basic human needs, identify problems, find solutions and empower residents to become decision-makers over their own environment, resources, future and having greater participation and accountability in their society. It is a triple bottom-up approach of integrating the four pillars of sustainability (Duxbury, 2007, p. 5).
Community development is handed down from experts or governments which needs enhancing education, citizen participation, consensus building and access to information. This requires fostering partnerships, respect among different stakeholders, government, business and arts organizations and the capability to exchange opinions. In practice, there is a formalization of community institutions such as community co-operatives or community trusts, which allow participants to work together and apply activities towards their objectives. These collective activities will produce community facilities, certain services, information such as newsletters, and so on. It is worth-mentioning that the approach of community development strategies differs from one community to another despite having the same target which is the improvement of the quality of life of residents.
A Community based approach offers the real possibility of sustaining the regeneration areas suffering from urban deterioration. It is not focused only on the capital asset base of property markets, but also on quality of life (Deakin, 2009, p. 95). For instance, some countries emphasize environmental sustainability others such as Germany have emphasized social sustainability beside empowering local communities and introducing sustainable communities (McDonalds, Malys, & Maliene, 2009, p. 57).
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Sustainable community in the United Kingdom (2003) has been defined as:
“Places where people want to live and work, now and in the future where they meet the diverse needs of existing and future residents” (Ibid, p. 50).
Accordingly, sustainable communities seek integrative and a holistic approach to combine policies, programs and design solutions to bring about multiple objectives (Duxbury, 2007, p.
6). It fosters commitment to promote vitality, build resilience to stress, act as stewards, and forge connections beyond the community (MACED, 2011).
Referring to the previous sections, the cultural sustainability as a four dimension recognizes that community‟s vitality and quality of life are directly related to the vitality and quality of its cultural engagement, expression, dialogue, and celebration. It means that culture contributes to building sustainable communities and lively cities where people want to live, work, and visit.
Such planning strategy plays a major role in supporting social and economic health and addresses civic identity, pride, youth, multiculturalism, poverty, and other aspects of communities (Duxbury, 2007, pp. 12-13).
The strategic framework for a sustainable community is bottom-up and top-down, by getting stakeholders to partner with one another in developing strategies capable of bringing about improvements in the quality of life (Deakin, 2009, p. 98). The identification of the stakeholders and analysis of community needs, implementation, monitoring and reviewing the process are important steps in the process of regeneration. Thus, the pre-requisites for effective stakeholder engagement and involvement to approach sustainable community are:
Participate and play an effective role in the developments taken place.
Ensure that participation is sufficiently inclusive and does not alienate any group.
Participate in future workshops that build community capacity.
Ensure major commitment from civic authorities.
Acknowledge local government as being the key partner responsible to lead developments.
Ensure democratic renewal as a way for cities to gain the civic authority needed to combat deprivation and tackle poverty and social exclusion (Ibid, p.99).
2. Maximization of Community Participation and partnership
Community participation has been defined in different ways. According to Ng, Cook, & Chui (2001, p. 178) “Participation is more than consultation; it should be engagement in making choices and determining future development”. While Creighton (2005, p. 7) explains public participation as “the process by which public concerns, needs and values are incorporated into governmental and corporate decision making”.
Community participation plays a very important role in the success of regenerating historic areas as it can ensure that the interests, challenges and constraints of the affected people in both the public and private sectors are taken into account before preparing and implementing a regeneration strategy. In addition, it can reduce confrontation between decision makers, local citizens and social opposition to the regeneration strategy (Lee & Chan, 2008, pp. 159-160) &
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(Carter, 2000, p. 43). From the perspective of external agencies, the role of the community partnership is about service delivery to suit local needs. It means the coordination of services to avoid duplication and tackle problems in an integrated way (McArthur, 1995, p. 65).
McArthur (1995, p. 61) explains that the central aim of urban regeneration was to renew the self-reliance and initiatives of local people and promote their capability and responsibility towards their local communities and their lives. Thereby, residents become fully involved and committed to plans to regenerate their neighborhood. Hence, the ICOMOS Charter on the conservation of historic towns and urban areas points out the concern of resident‟s participation in the conservation of historic urban centers as:
“Theparticipationandthe involvement of the residents are essential for the success of the conservation program and should be encouraged. The conservation of historic towns and urban areas concerns theirresidentsfirstofall”(ICOMOS, 1987, Article 3)
This may lead to building capacity of the community; fostering a sense of belonging and strengthening the social networks amongst the community. However, Arnstein (1969, p. 217) in her study “A Ladder of Citizen Participation” defined eight forms of public participation where at the bottom of the ladder,
“manipulation” represents the citizens of least power and at the highest level,
decision- making processes. As a result, it increases confidence in organizations, their trust and increases cooperation between parties and groups to accept decisions, dialogue, plans and work together to seek solutions to problems.
To provide people with a voice in design and decision making in order to improve plans, decisions and service delivery.
To promote a sense of community by bringing people together who share common goals (Sanoff, 2000, pp. 9-10).
Partnership in urban policy can be defined as co-operation between people or organizations in the public or private sector for mutual benefit. Harding (1990, p. 110) sets out a similar general definition of „private- public partnership‟ as:
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“Any action which relies on the agreement of actors in the public and private sectors and which also contributes in some way to improving the urban economy and the quality of life”
While, McQuaid (1998, p. 5) provides a working definition of private-public partnership in urban regeneration as:
“The mobilization of a coalition of interests drawn from more than one sector in order to prepare and oversee an agreed strategy for regeneration of a defined area”
Mackintosh (1992) develops a partnership model involving public, private and voluntary bodies that focuses upon partnerships which comprise sustained joint working rather than one scheme.
Drawing on his work, he focuses on three models of partnerships in relation to community participation, empowerment and community development for regeneration of areas. The first two are developed as a part of strategies to mobilize additional resources as well as to identify new ways of becoming more cost effective, while the third model is related to the objectives of the previous two models to stimulate continuing a development process where community sectors are transformed by their private sector partners (Mayo, 1997, p. 5). Another role of community partnership involves the development of organization structures which facilitate active resident participation in a partnership initiative and accountability between the community representatives and the wider local community (McArthur, 1995, p. 64). This means that neutral individual community activists and groups nominate or elect a group of local people to represent the community in the partnership initiative. Community involvement in regeneration can range from influencing and shaping policy development, to playing a role as implementers of regeneration programs. But such community structures can be deceptive with hidden consequences for community based organizations and might face several types of pressure from the local community, share in social decisions that determine the quality and direction of their lives. As there are a diversity of competing community groups and interests, it is best to try and create a community structure which is capable of pulling the various groups together (Ibid, p.66-67). Community organizations gain access to policy process through partnership which necessitates developing their capacity building in: skills of fund-raising and management, resources to harness potentials to achieve goals and power to exert influence over the plans and prioritized actions of local agencies (Roberts & Skyes, 2000, p. 118). There are several outcomes of the involvement of community representatives in the partnership illustrated as follows:
1. It facilitates dialogue between the local community and the other partners. As a result, it decreases the knowledge and communication gap between the local residents and the officials.
2. It broadens the strategic regeneration agenda and encompasses a greater social dimension.
3. Community involvement has an impact on shaping specific policies.
4. An umbrella community organization takes on the role of a mechanism to involve local people and provide support to community groups such as providing training for local organizations, directing provision of community care services, welfare rights advice, architectural services and diverse activities (McArthur, 1995, p. 69).
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Figure 6-5: Some relationships of urban heritage planning Source: Ashworth (1991, p. 4)
5. Each partnership is overseen by a multi-agency committee composed of, besides the community representatives, representatives from central and local government, funded agencies, voluntary sector bodies, public agencies concerned with housing, economic development, training, health and representatives from the private sector (Ibid, p.62). The involvement of communities is required in all stages of the urban policy process, from problem definition to policy appraisal (Atkinson & Cope, 1997, p. 221). For example, in the historic towns of developing countries where most of the built heritage and land plots are privately owned, conflicts may rise due to conservation attempts because of a desire to retain maximum benefits from their development. In this case, community participation may provide the opportunity of raising public awareness and solving the conflicts through compromise thus achieving the best solutions. However, public and community participation in policy level, planning level and project level in regeneration projects will promote sustainable community development in historic towns.