Religion and urban regeneration: a place for faith?

The British government has identified 'faith communities' as a neglected resource in urban regeneration. This article first explores the context of official support for faith involvement in urban and neighbourhood policy and identifies the assumptions underlying key policy documents. These assumptions are then critically explored by reference to the links commonly drawn between religion and 'community', 'neighbourhood' and 'social cohesion'. Attempts to enlist faith groups within this essentially consensual agenda often fail to recognise both the potential divisiveness of religion and also the more positive and radical lessons that often stem from the action, experience and critical analysis of religious organisations and their members.</p

Housing professionalism in the United Kingdom: the final curtain or a new age?

The unusually large, predominantly municipal, housing sector in the UK has provided the context for a large occupational grouping of "housing managers" that has claimed professional status. However, within the post-1945 British welfare state this professional project enjoyed limited success and social housing remained a fragile professional domain. This article explores the consequences for housing professionalism of the recent displacement of the bureau-professional "organisational settlement" by that characterising an emerging "managerial state". Managerialism constitutes a clear challenge to established forms of "professionalism", especially a weak profession such as housing management. However, professionalism is temporally and culturally plastic. Hence, the demands of managerialism, within the specific context of New Labour's quest for "community" cohesion, may be providing opportunities for a new urban network professionalism founded on claims to both generic and specific skills and also a knowledge base combining abstraction with local concreteness. The prominence in these networks of erstwhile "housing" practitioners may become the basis for a new, quite different, professional project. This argument is developed through both conceptual exploration and reference to empirical research. The latter involves reference to recent work by the authors on, first, the perception of housing employers of the changing nature and demands of "housing" work and its consequences for professionalism and, secondly, the professional project implications of the increasing prominence of neighbourhood management.</p

Housing and urban policy - Applying a sociological imagination.

The Candidate's registration form (PF1) approved by the Research Committee of Sheffield Hallam University in September 2000 included the following summary abstract of the portfolio of published work:Housing and wider urban policy constitute a complex, inter-connected and multidimensional field, marked in the last two decades by deep and pervasive change. Research here raises issues of economics and finance; law and welfare rights; architecture, design and construction; planning and management; and politics and governance. However, the candidate's particular perspective on urban processes and policy is sociological. Over a prolonged period he has drawn on sociological perspectives, concepts and methods of analysis to develop distinctive and critical analyses of housing and urban policy questions. In more recent years this general orientation has been expressed in a collection of refereed papers, a book and two major research reports that form an essentially coherent and evolving programme of study. This has involved an appraisal of the implications of the eclipse of traditional urban policies associated with post-1945 'welfarism' (especially council housing) and their supersession by new approaches that, at least formally, emphasise resident or 'community' participation in housing policy and urban 'regeneration'. Informed by various social scientific concepts and debates, therefore, this work has produced the following specific contributions to knowledge: a) a distinctive interpretation of the origins of British council housing and the consequences of this legacy for the subsequent rise and fall of social housing; b) a distinctive appraisal and interpretation of the merits and deficiencies of council housing; c) a balanced critique of social surveys in tenant involvement in housing policy, based on a critical examination of the concept of 'housing satisfaction'; d) a critical assessment of the merits of tenant training for participation, informed by an exploration of competing conceptions of 'citizenship'; e) critical assessments of the quest for 'community' involvement in urban policy (through two major research projects on tenant training and the local impact of the Church Urban Fund); f) a sociological critique of current definitions of urban 'regeneration'; and g) an assessment of the fortunes of the housing 'professional project' in a context of accelerating change

Mind the gap? The persistence of pathological discourses in urban regeneration policy

Urban regeneration policy has historically framed policy problems using a discourse that pathologises areas and spatial communities. Since 2001 in England, and 2002 in Scotland a structural change in policy has occurred where citywide partnerships are now meant overcome structural spatial inequalities, countering pathological explanations. This paper uses historical and discourse analysis to evaluate one of the major community regeneration strategies developed by the Scottish Executive in 2002: Better Communities in Scotland: Closing the Gap. It seeks to ask whether structural change in policy was paralleled by discursive change; what discursive path dependence is evidenced? The text is placed in the historic context of UK urban renewal policies dating back to the launch of the Urban Programme in 1968 and particularly the policy discourse created by the influential Conservative government policy of 1988 New Life for Urban Scotland and the wider discourses of poverty and neighbourhood renewal policy created by Labour governments since 1997. The close textual analysis of the text shows that Better Communities in Scotland continues to pathologise spatial communities. Although this suggests a degree of historical path dependency, the historic breadth of the analysis also problematises simple historical determinism

Religion, Resources and Representation: three narratives of engagement in British urban governance

Faith groups are increasingly regarded as important civil society participants in British urban governance. Faith engagement is linked to policies of social inclusion and “community cohesion,” particularly in the context of government concerns about radicalization along religious lines. Primary research is drawn upon in developing a critical and explicitly multifaith analysis of faith involvement. A narrative approach is used to contrast the different perspectives of national pol- icy makers, local stakeholders, and faith actors themselves. The narratives serve to illuminate not only this specific case but also the more general character of British urban governance as it takes on a more “decentered” form with greater blurring of boundaries between the public, private, and personal

Inside the eco-home: using video to understand the implications of innovative housing

As a method of qualitative research, video offers a means of looking into the world of a respondent and a means of stimulating a dialogue, both with the respondent and others. Video requires, however, the application of additional ethical procedures and may also increase refusal rates, if it is publicly disseminated. Applied to the home, the use of video reveals both practice and identity. Video records practice, showing how the spaces within a home are used at a particular time. For this reason, video is well adapted to understanding the implications of living in a home with an innovative design and technology, with all the complexities that this commonly involves. Equally, video communicates the appearance of the home and of its occupants to whoever is watching. Video is, therefore, intimately connected to identity and the home as a place

Secularism, Racism and the Politics of Belonging

This collection of papers is a reflection of an ongoing debate about the relationships between religion, the citizen and the state. It is a debate that is far from settled, and indeed one which may be unsettling, but a debate which too often generates more heat than light. It is, however, a crucial discussion since it goes to the heart of our understanding of modern citizenship, the role of the state and the struggle for equality. Runnymede was especially pleased to partner with colleagues at the Centre for Refugees, Migration and Belonging (CRMB) at the University of East London in co-hosting the two conferences from which these papers are drawn. CRMB’s serious and engaged approach to relating political theory to political action enabled academics, commentators and practitioners to share a platform where disagreements were aired and constructive debate and discussion enabled. We hope that the conferences act as a model for the deliberations which are necessary to address the thorny challenges raised by the authors. Many of these disagreements are reflected in the papers presented here. The collected papers discuss faith-based schooling, the veil, honour based violence, religious arbitration, and the delivery of public services by faith communities. All of these issues remain very much alive in contemporary public policy debates in the UK and beyond

Food Poverty and Christianity in Britain: A Theological Re-assessment

The Christian response to food poverty in Britain has generally been two-fold. Foodbanks have become synonymous with Christianity and exemplify its charitable ethos. However, Christian churches have also called for social justice so that people can buy food in the normal way. Both responses are theologically problematic. The idea of foodbank is borne of a privileged theology that celebrates charitable giving, despite the humiliation it invites on recipients. Although social justice approaches originate in human rights discourse, the location of these rights in food consumerism means that it is equally privileged. Drawing on contextual and liberation theology, as well as ideas from radical orthodoxy, I argue that food poverty is better understood when we assign epistemological privilege to the poor. This leads me to advocate an alternative Christian response to food poverty

New Labour?new renaissance

This paper explores the term ?urban renaissance? in relation to the historiography of the Renaissance of the 15th and 16th centuries in Italy. It examines the place of the Renaissance in cultural history and considers how it has, since its inception, been utilised by writers to reflect on the present. The paper situates the urban renaissance within the context of New Labour rhetoric at the time of the Millennium. It argues that the idea of renaissance can, in this instance, be connected to a kind of millenarianism that was reflected in public rhetoric regarding the city and in a number of building projects