Abstract
Retail activities and cities are closely related. The practices of retail-led regeneration can thus bring real benefits to the quality of urban life and play a key role in the construction of self-organised and bottom-up initiatives. It seems essential, therefore, that there be the involvement of all the actors working within various capacities in urban areas and who have a legitimate interest in the construction of integrated and efficient urban policies. For example, the Business Improvement Districts – widely used in the US and the UK – are forms of voluntary management for the development of competitive strategies in view of the revitalisation of urban retail developments authorised by the government but promoted and managed by private operators. On the basis of international experience, Italy has also begun to introduce the idea of new instruments for territorial governance within regional trade legislation. These are promoted by the government and managed by non-state actors for the integrated management of business in relation to urban revitalisation. From this perspective, the paper describes the Italian model for the voluntary management of retail activities by outlining the importance of self-organisation and private sector for the promotion of territories and the real contribution that retail can make to local development and urban regeneration.
Keywords
Regeneration, retail and business strategies
Urban regeneration is a key issue in planning as it plays a fundamental role in the transformations on both the local and national levels. The concept of urban regeneration is very complex, constantly evolving and addressed by extensive literature (Healey et al., 1992; Percy et al., 2003; Tallon, 2010). From simple physical revitalisation, the concept of urban regeneration is the set of globally shared visions and actions, effective for solving urban difficulties and the improvement of economic, physical, social and environmental conditions of a specific area. As pointed out by Roberts (2000), strategies and objectives to solve urban problems are constantly changing. Reconstruction and expansion of the city were key policies of the 1950s. In the mid-1960s, urban regeneration became a key issue in economic development and urban renewal (Noon et al., 2000). The 1970s focused on the modernisation of neighbourhoods and on the control of suburban growth. In the 1980s, a number of major development and redevelopment projects were promoted – the flagship projects – aimed primarily at improving the economic competitiveness of the city (Loftman and Nevin, 1995).
It was only in the 1990s that urban regeneration took on a more sustainable and comprehensive approach as it focused more on integrated actions in a holistic approach. Roberts (2000) also underlines that urban regeneration is different from urban renewal, housing renewal and urban (re)development. On the one hand, urban renewal aims to achieve a purely physical change, housing renewal refers to the upgrading of domestic property to modern standards, while urban (re)development refers to the demolition of areas and the construction of new housing. In the UK context, this involved the demolition of old houses and their replacement by estates of flatted developments, particularly in London and other major cities.
In contrast, Keleş (2003) describes urban regeneration as an approach that aims to address the problems associated with economic competitiveness, social exclusion and community as well as the needs of derelict areas in terms of environmental quality and sustainable development. As Guy (2007: 214) states: Regeneration means broadly the physical (re)development or renewal of land that has already been used for urban purposes; such land is usually termed brownfield. But there is also a strong connotation of reviving the local economy and providing new jobs, through the development itself, through linkages with existing firms, and through stimulating further (re)development. Urban regeneration as a comprehensive and integrated vision and action which leads to the resolution of urban problems and which seeks to bring about a lasting change in the economic, physical, social and environmental condition of an area that has been subject to change. Urban regeneration is a strategic activity, engaged in short-term measures for immediate difficulties and long term approaches to avoid future problems. It is concerned with the totality of urban environment. It focuses on developing and achieving a clear vision of what should be done. It is concerned with setting priorities and allowing for their achievement. It is an interventionist approach, best achieved through partnership working, intending to benefit a range of organisations, agencies and communities. It can be measured, evaluated and reviewed. It is related to specific needs and potentials in an individual region, city, town or neighbourhood. Retail activities have modified urban form and spirit, but it also true that the city itself has influenced the commercial sector, transforming what used to be just and economic activity into complex social practices, having different meanings and social and cultural functions.
Retail then turns out to be an element that can support the project of urban regeneration, not only from a purely economic point of view but also from a social and territorial standpoint by providing jobs, services, investment and a focal point for community activities. Findlay and Sparks (2009) identify three ways of integrating retail into urban regeneration. The first is retail development where retail is a key element in the regeneration agenda but it has a positive effect on the urban environment; the second is retail component where retail is a key element of the agenda of regeneration; and the last is the retail-led regeneration in which retail is the element that leads the regeneration of an area. In brief, according to Findlay and Sparks (2009: 6), The focus on retail-led regeneration seeks to investigate the evidence on the specific contribution of retailing and what retail-led regeneration offers that other involvements of retailing does not. The focus is on town centre regeneration, though other locations are also considered. Retail-led regeneration requires a substantial capital investment and the store proposed may intend to recruit consumers from an area wider than that defined as deprived or in need of retail investment.
BIDs
BIDs are self-organised and self-funded forms of urban management, authorised by government, promoted and managed by private operators to determine the economic, social and territorial growth of an area through the promotion of retail. As Hoyt (2004: 367) states, ‘although there is no standard definition, most scholars and practitioners describe business improvement districts as self-imposed financing mechanism implemented by business and property owners for local improvements, specially the enhancement of public services’. As pointed out by Morçöl et al. (2008), there is an extensive literature on the general characterisation of BIDs and their role in promoting local communities’ economic development (Grail and Dawkins, 2008; Houstoun, 1997). Generally, these developments typically include sanitation, security, place marketing and planning efforts. Growth in BIDs and their rapid diffusion 2 may be attributed to the understanding that ‘town centres represent increasingly competitive arena that demand ever more sensitive and appropriate forms of governance, management and regulation’ (Lloyd and Peel, 2008: 72).
As outlined by Brunetta and Moroni (2012), BIDs may present opportunities for urban renewal that are today poorly understood because they overcome the ‘limited success of many urban renewal programmes, including those with high degree of participation’ (Brunetta and Moroni, 2012: 49). In this sense, the BIDs are more successful than urban regeneration processes because they are bottom-up initiatives, funded by private sector resources and with a high level of social inclusion. In this perspective, Morçöl and Wolf (2010) explain BID as a new governance framework and also Wolf (2008: 285–286) points out that BIDs have began to take ‘on the character of a downtown city government and have become established players in governance’. But the most important of these forms of retail management for the redevelopment of urban centres is certainly the relationship with the community and – more generally – with the places in which they are embedded. From this point of view: BIDs may get involved in local political controversies but seem to act as vehicles for accelerated citizen involvement and dialogue. Unlike purely economic agencies, BIDs are so localised that they are extensions of the community, and their true nature is community development. (Grossman, 2008: 292)
In these models, self-organisation and community to guide the process of retail-led regeneration is found, which is a winning approach because it relates public spaces, human behaviour and economic needs (Brunetta and Moroni, 2012; Hoyt, 2004). Self-organisation also allows these models – private self-organisers but authorised by the public – to play a role in the retail-led regeneration of established urban areas that are going through crisis.
The Italian experience: Retail policy in territorial regeneration
In contrast to international experiences, Italy only recognised the need to effectively respond to the question of improving the quality of urban life at the end of the 1990s through competitive strategies for public space with a view of retail-led regeneration. The retail sector in Italy has been mostly addressed as an economic issue until 1998, the year of approval of the national retail sector reform by the Bersani decree. The decree takes on the two main components of the foundation of the reform. The first is the modernisation of the sector, which allowed ‘the growth of conglomerates and an increasing trend of innovation among retailing groups’ (Morandi, 2011: 228). The second is a strong territorial-based argument that entails, in theory and practice, specific purposes for the organisation of a retail network that ensures the productivity of the distribution system and the quality of services offered to users, blending the retail development with the environment, respecting free competition and a balanced development of the different types of distribution. 3 According to this principle, new marketing practices are then initiated through long-term commercial operations focused more on local entrepreneurship and the strengthening of institutional capacity and flexibility in adapting to new phenomenon of the restructuring of the retail sector. With this in mind, it becomes the central objective of strategic and operational planning to transform the city centre into a large distribution and entertainment centre, with culture, shopping and leisure uses, so that it confers a high level of competition in terms of supply and variety of goods. An approach with a view to management is therefore proposed for the redevelopment of the city centre where the level of competitiveness is strengthened not only through diversified offerings but also by the ability to attract new residents and investment.
From a regulatory standpoint, the devolution of retail competence to the regions 4 created an extremely varied landscape. Regions addressed the planning of the sector in very different ways, establishing barriers and/or quantitative constraints more or less stringent for the control of the large commercial developments (Brunetta, 2012) and in some cases providing integrated management of urban centres with a view to retail-led regeneration. In particular, there are three localities that have been able to grasp fully the relationship between retail, territory, urban regeneration and self-organised management models: the Piedmont Region, the Lombardy Region and the Autonomous Province of Trento.
Piedmont Region
Among the few regions that have attempted, in keeping with the philosophy of the reform decree, to implement the concept of territorialised retail development, the Piedmont Region is one of the first administrations, with the approval of the Regional Act of 1999, that founded its new programme arrangements on territorial criteria that intended to relate retail to the trajectory of the regional settlement through a network model. The territorial dimension thus becomes an essential element of retail policies in Piedmont, taking on the view of the regional legislative character of a virtuous example of managing the process of liberalisation of the sector.
With this perspective, the Piedmont Region began testing of distretti del commercio e del tempo libero, DCTL (districts of commerce and leisure) in 2006 in five geographical areas (Alba-Bra, Cuneo, Ivrea, Novi Ligure and Vercelli). Based on the experience of BIDs, these forms of inter-municipal management are groups of municipalities in which the region protects and promotes local commerce in all its forms in synergy with other activities specific to the territory. The DCTLs are therefore territorial contexts with different problems, but they require local retail programming that adapts to specific territorial characteristics in an attempt to trigger an organisational reaction of the traditional distribution sector, in response to the wide introduction of strong economic entities belonging to the sector of modern retail chains (Brunetta and Caldarice, 2011). 5
Lombardy Region
In 2008, the Lombardy Regional Act aimed to promote and co-fund the distretti urbani del commercio, DUC (urban commercial districts) as quite effective integrated public and private partners in a project for specific districts with their own identity, dealing with the urban and street design, enhancing public spaces, increasing accessibility and so on.
6
The Lombard model differs from the Piedmont one essentially for two reasons. Firstly, the Lombard experience embodies an urban approach, while the Piedmont model favours a territorial extension over more municipalities. Secondly, the DUCs benefit from public–private co-financing, while the DCTL are fully funded by the region. As underlined by Morandi (2011: 234), The principal innovation in comparison with similar actions in other regions is the compulsory involvement of private actors, not only retailers and small shops owners, in the funding of the various measures outlined by the revitalisation projects concerning specific retail districts or clusters, identified by means detailed multidisciplinary analysis.
The Autonomous Province of Trento
A completely different experience is that of the Autonomous Province of Trento which in 2012 began testing the unità territoriali di cooperazione, UTC (territorial units of cooperation), which are variable geometry systems capable of increasing the integration between urban policies and territory. This was to enhance the virtuous circle of the processes in place in abandoning the logic, in this case, of an alleged balance between supply and demand that has characterised the course of most of the regional planning policies of the retail sector in Italy (Brunetta, 2012). As in the case of Piedmont, the UTCs also operate on the level of a wider area and as such, from this perspective, aim to encourage a greater number of local communities to be involved, more than those that match with the administrative boundaries defined at the provincial level. The development of similar retail scenarios between different territories that share common resources and tangible assets is then strengthened by networking strategies and investments, and which do not need to match the predetermined administrative territory of the government.
The UTCs can be defined then as a system of governance based on the autonomous networking of structures, actors and retail resources and other economic activities in a given area. The UTCs are thus characterised by a strong relational territorial component, which should be seen as a resource intrinsic to each area in order to reveal an effective factor of cultural heritage in the process of development. The UTCs do not replace the administrative level but can be active on the initiative of local actors and which add effectiveness to a particular strategic development action involving multiple institutional actors of the territory. It is therefore clear that this form of institutional cooperation, as well as radically changing the established approach of planning policies in the sector, considers fully the potential of retail to trigger actions to support recovery, rehabilitation and development in the territories of the Province of Trento.
As shown in Table 1, the different experiences of instruments for the promotion of retail-led regeneration despite starting from the same need and moving towards the same goals differ in three elements that mainly concern the process of implementation:
The territorial extent: The international and Lombard models have an urban approach and the Piedmont and Trentino models operate over vast areas that include several municipalities or several areas of regional retail planning; The type and process of management: The international and Lombard models take a bottom-up approach – with an exclusively private or public/private management – while the Piedmont and the Trentino models are a top-down process with public promotion and management; and The methods of financing: The international model uses private funds through the payment of a voluntary levy by all members of the district, while the Italian models only use public funding. Business districts from an international perspective.
Despite the differences between the different district models, all of these experiences are an example of how retail can be a lever for urban regeneration if handled in a competitive way and if close to the needs of a community in social, spatial and economic terms. As outlined by Morandi (2011: 236),
Undoubtedly, therefore, district forms – despite the different features – are a useful tool for the promotion of retail-led regeneration where it is not only the specific economic peculiarities but also the relations between stakeholders that influence the physical and environmental regeneration in a specific area. In this new vision of territorial marketing, the land is no longer conceived as a mere support, but as an active space, enabling the development and implementation of a strategy for the positive external outcome arising from the changes and innovation, which modifies it and constantly renews it.
In line with the European directives on territorial competitiveness (Directive 2006/123/EC, commonly referred to as the Bolkestein Directive), the district forms are derived directly from the new model of territorial marketing, marked by a highly cooperative approach based on the needs of users where resources are combined in order to build an effective network model that allows the development and use of land and all the activities to take place thereby creating a new synergy between the economic approach and the territorial approach. From this perspective, the cooperative element is critical to the success of these new forms of coordinated management of business districts that allows the overcoming of the risk that competition leads to the transfer of activity from one region to another, a risk that arises from the possibility of a competition without winners between different territories.
Conclusion: Self-organisation as a lever for retail-led regeneration
As has been seen, self-organisation becomes the lever to institute practices in retail-led regeneration oriented towards solving the economic, social and environmental problems of a specific area. Given this perspective, the commercial districts are a new form of territorial governance as well as useful tools for the management of commercial areas. According to this view, the interactions between the different social and economic stakeholders transform territories spatially, in a mutually beneficial way (McDonald, 2014). The business districts feature three aspects that put self-organisation at the centre as leverage for the success of the retail-led regeneration:
A strong territoriality, not only seen as a nearby location but also as a pool of resources for the relational partners working in the district that the developer may thus connect its initiative with the overall system of production and trade in the area; A population of businesses, limited in size and related to a type of horizontal sectoral organisation and linked to the others by strong competition and little two-way knowledge; and A community of people with a continuous and strong exchange of information within the district where there are relations of reciprocity and trust.
As outlined by Portugali (2000), cities are complex because their constituent parts are so numerous and changing, so that it is difficult if not impossible to describe them in terms of cause and effect, or in terms of probabilities. Thus, the main property of an open and complex system is self-organisation. Finally, cities could self-organise their internal institutional structure independently of external causes. Self-organised initiatives have existed in the past but currently the phenomenon is spreading worldwide (Portugali, 2000). In this perspective, the self-organisation and cultural identity renew and strengthen the sense of community and the construction of a cultural identity on the territory of the district. Commercial districts have become new models of urban governance and spatial planning based on self-organised initiatives and interlinks with public policies, has emerged.
In effect, the value of the sense of belonging of the actors (individuals and organisations) toward the places where they live and work becomes a key catalyst for the emergence and success of the same district. The relational resources are an intangible heritage of social capital that transmits an expectation of reciprocity that goes beyond each individual creating the social networks that are based on trust and reciprocity. When a network of relationships becomes stable over time so that all members of a community benefit for the simple fact of being part of the territory, there is an advantage (or loss) for the actors of those areas. At a more operational level, the local identity is strengthened by the presence of a district and at the same time, a district can grow if it becomes an identifying element of that community. Precisely for this reason, it is necessary that the users of the instrument are able to operate in such a way that the district can become a real value-added entity, namely the situation in which there is an identification of the actors with strong local resources together with the awareness of the wealth provided by the local specificities.