Europe’s Phoenix cities signpost ‘third urban age’
Europe’s former industrial cities can show the rest of the world’s urban giants how to survive a new age of recession, environmental pressure and social crisis, according to a new study.
Published tomorrow Phoenix Cities: the fall and rise of great industrial cities, explores how seven areas, including Sheffield, Bremen, St Etienne and Belfast, recovered from steep industrial decline through a ‘hands-on’ approach comprising strengths such as social enterprise, green technologies and civic involvement.
The text’s authors – Anne Power, Jörg Plöger and Astrid Winkler – say, having survived the ages of industrial boom and post-industrial regeneration, the same cities can now show the way forward as the world enters a third urban age of ‘financial, environmental and social crisis’.
The study, published by Policy Press for the London School of Economics and Political Science and funded by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, says the leading seven cities – which also include Bilbao, Leipzig, and Torino, recovered thanks to a number of measures:
• Reinvestment in city buildings, public spaces and public transport
• Special neighbourhood programmes and social enterprise
• Environmental reclamation and green technologies.
• Innovative enterprises and new skills development
• New-style city leadership and civic involvement
The authors champion the hands-on approach of European urban policy makers, compared with America’s more hands-off method which, they say, weakened the ability of US rust-belt cities, to ‘round the corner to recovery’.
Prof Power said of the seven European areas: ‘Their resilience offers lessons for other cities, showing how national reinvestment, grounded in local programmes, can win citizen support and turn conditions around.’
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