Public opinion: Your blogs

If not now, then when? If not us, then who?

How serious are we about asking the difficult questions about our futures and grappling with the issues they raise? I thought last week's Regeneration Momentum conference might offer some pointers. What it offered was in insight into how far we have to go - and a realisation that if those of us who are starting to understand this don't act, perhaps nobody will.

First, a positive. There are some heavyweight institutions, including the three northern regional development agencies, who are prepared to invest significant time and resources in looking at the future for the north of England, and the impact the recession is having. The research documents launched at the event are testimony to that.

Now some negatives. First, the limited vision. For me this was summed up by Terry Hodgkinson, chair of Yorkshire Forward, who praised city-regional governance structures because they would 'bring trickle-down benefits to towns and cities'. I'm sorry, Terry, but people have been waiting for benefits to trickle down for decades. Reshuffling institutional structures won't make a jot of difference. I want to see benefits surging up from people who are empowered to take action for themselves.

Second, the threat. I mentioned the suggestion that Michael Heseltine is going to set an incoming Conservative government's agenda in my last post, and Simon Cooke, as a Tory councillor, has made some telling points on his blog. But that's not all. Few picked up the significance of Conservative peer Lord Michael Bates's comment on the northern economy: 'Given the north has a higher share of the public sector economy, shouldn't it bear its share of the pain?'

In other words, the public sector cuts to come will hit the north hardest, and when they do, northerners should just remember what a good deal they'd had in the past. If this thinking takes hold in a new Cabinet, expect to see northern cities hit as badly by the public spending cuts of 2010-11 as they were by deindustrialisation in the 1980s.

Third, the missed opportunity.

The star of the show was Michael Parkinson, director of the European Institute for Urban Affairs at Liverpool John Moores University. His weighty report - The credit crunch, recession and regeneration in the North - was launched at Friday's conference.

Again, there were some positives. Professor Parkinson was right to criticise the political 'race to the bottom' in terms of public investment, spotlight the likely impact of the 'public sector recession', and explain how the current downturn is hitting manufacturing areas far harder than the south of England (the banks have survived, but by cutting adrift the rest of us).

The missed opportunity was to examine carefully and honestly what needs to change and how. While he and others talked about the 'model' of regeneration being broken, this was coupled with a hope that if only we could focus on economic development and keep the investment flowing we can patch it up and all will be well. To me, that's wishful thinking.

Look at what's missing from the report. Inequality gets not one mention in 100 pages of text. Poverty is mentioned once, in a description of the 'hidden social consequences of the downturn'. A document that purports to describe 'what's next' for regeneration without addressing poverty and inequality, I'd suggest, is on the fast lane to failure.

The same goes for climate change. The single mention is a passing reference to the Department of Energy and Climate Change. There's a little more on 'low carbon' - as in 'the low carbon sustainability agenda', a set of weasel words if there ever was one if you're not going to make an effort to explain how it is to be put into practice, which this report doesn't.

Search the report for concepts like 'flourishing' and 'thriving' and you won't find them. Of the three uses of the word 'green', two refer to the 'green belt'. On the other hand, the word sustainable is used a lot - without ever being precise about what it means or how it is to be achieved.

I recounted the professor's response to questions about this in my previous post: 'It goes without saying, so I didn't say it.' But when all's said and done, what isn't said is usually not done.

So what do we do?

There are three overriding and urgent challenges for public policy: how to live within environmental limits, how to create meaningful work and life chances for a generation that won't have their predecessors' access to cheap credit or affordable housing, and how to manage under a much harsher public spending regime. The task can be summed up as creating resilience: economic, environmental and social.

Think about what that might mean for a new graduate. The job you do - whatever it is - must reduce its environmental impact with increasing rapidity to meet our existing commitments and legislation on climate change. If it's in the public sector, you can expect your earning power to reduce in real terms as salaries are squeezed. If it's in the private sector, you will still have less access to ready money through loans and mortgages than those born in the 1980s, and repayment terms are likely to be more stringent. And whoever you are, you might find the safety net offered by the state (central or local) looks somewhat threadbare. So you need new ways of coping.

If we are to enjoy our lives and create great places to live in for years to come, we have to investigate and model different ways of doing things.

Not every speaker at Friday's conference was wedded to doing more of the same. Richard Brett, co-leader of Leeds Council, spoke passionately of the need for long term support for poorer communities and the importance of recognising the impact of climate change. Tony Reeves, chief executive of Bradford Council, pointed out that a low carbon society would require a complete rethinking of spatial planning and an alternative to the current commuter economy. Ed Cox, director of ippr north, revealed how community groups in Croxteth, Liverpool, had proved resilient despite the lack of investment in the past, creating social enterprises and community organisations - in contrast to neighbourhoods like Speke that had received huge amounts of investment.

Where do we go from here?

Over recent weeks I've been hugely encouraged by conversations that I've had with people who, from varying perspectives, understand both the gravity of the challenges and the need to be brave and creative in facing them. I have met people who are open to new ideas, willing to explore, and have the foresight to see beyond patching up the policies of the last decade.

I'm interested in engaging with thinkers and doers to create a new dynamic for regeneration and sustainable communities in the UK. Some of those conversations will happen via New Start magazine and the series of features I'm writing on these issues this year; others through organisations like the Centre for Local Economic Strategies. Some might happen through social media like Twitter; others in pubs and cafés. The important thing is to start drawing this thinking together and using it to create a new narrative for our communities and the places we live in.

If you're interested in being part of this, and don't just want to push your own commercial, political, ideological or organisational agendas, please let me know so we can all share what we're doing. This is about linking people with each other, not sucking them into an institution. You can contact me via Twitter or comment below, or via New Start.