Regional cities need to create their own narrative of regeneration

Ancient cartographers had a fine way of dealing with lands beyond their knowledge. They’d write ‘here be dragons’, often accompanied by an appropriate illustration.

In a world where every inch is mapped by satellite, every idea (barmy or otherwise) to be found somewhere on the internet, and more information than any of us can ever hope to assimilate, it’s strange that we default so readily to the ‘here be dragons’ mentality.

Our willingness to engage with the different and the unusual can be surprisingly low – and that feeds through into the places we live in and the way we live there. In the UK, we manage to spend billions of pounds travelling the world for leisure or business and still retain an island mentality when it comes to innovation or governance.

Yesterday I was involved in a workshop for council employees in Bradford looking at the role and development of the city centre. There’s a popular view in Bradford that the city is the poor relation of neighbouring Leeds – that the money flows into Leeds, as evidenced by speculative development, big name shops and a busy nightlife, and that to compete Bradford should become more like its rival, only cheaper. Yet Bradford has plenty of potential of its own, if only it could see beyond its disadvantages.

And why should Bradford seek to emulate Leeds anyway? As Brian Ablett, who works for Leeds City Council and spoke at our workshop, pointed out, that isn’t how they see it across the boundary. Leeds doesn’t look over its shoulder to see if Bradford is catching up. Its comparator cities aren’t even Manchester or Newcastle or Birmingham. It’s better to compare Leeds with cities like Rotterdam, Ablett suggested – cities that are modelling a distinctive approach to urbanism and economic development in a European context.

We tend to be reluctant to exchange ideas with and learn from mainland Europe, never mind the wider world. Towns like Freiburg, with its emphasis on sustainability and co-designed neighbourhoods, are seen as alien concepts that would never work in the UK. If the Germans are way ahead of us on renewable energy or the Dutch on walkable cities and effective public transport, it must be because they’re not really like us.

In England we don’t even bother trying to learn from and collaborate with the Scots and the Welsh. The old centralist, paternalistic view of society still reigns. The other day John Popham voiced the common complaint that meetings are typically held in London, with an assumption that anyone who’s serious about the issue being discussed will be there already or well-off enough to shell out for fares or accommodation.

That London-centric view of life is self-reinforcing, keeping access to power and influence confined to a tiny minority who go to the right places and see the right people.

This hasn’t changed despite the coalition government’s bluster about localism. The strongest criticisms of the local government finance settlement were that it pulled money away from the poorest places towards richer areas in and around the capital. But if cities like Bradford are finding themselves increasingly cut adrift from the centre, necessity may provide an opportunity to rethink old alignments. Why should Bradford not think of itself as a European city, looking towards Florence rather than London? (That’s not as fanciful as it sounds: Bradford City Hall was inspired by the Palazzo Vecchio.)

In an era where the government of the day has little or nothing to offer in terms of regeneration policy, regional cities need to create their own narrative of regeneration. They could and should look to European cities that have majored on livable space and effective public transport, and that value local distinctiveness and production. They need to think, too, how they can value every member of their community as a contributor to civic life, rather than seeking to sweep problems of poverty under the carpet, penalise the out-of-work and cling to the futile hope that wealth will trickle down to the poorest.

They won’t find ideas to address those issues in Westminster. But by broadening their horizons and having the courage to apply new thinking to their problems, they might set out on the road towards creating the network of distinctive, enterprising regional towns and cities Britain needs. The dragons, after all, are mainly in the mind.