Abstract
Introduction to the special issue
The concept of regeneration is complex and is continually being debated in and across several disciplines (see Chalkley and Essex, 1999; Edgell and Swanson, 2013; Evans, 2001; Gratton and Henry 2001; Matheson, 2010; Smith, 2012; Spirou, 2010). In the UK and around the world, regeneration is a key strategy to develop new opportunities after a period of post-industrial decline (García, 2005; Mooney, 2004; Richards and Palmer, 2010; Tallon, 2010; Waitt and Gibson, 2009). Many regeneration initiatives have attempted to utilise events based on sport and the promotion of tourism to achieve this goal (Getz, 2003; Raj and Musgrave, 2009; Smith, 2012; Weed, 2007), which has resulted in a range of new enterprise and entrepreneurial opportunities (Hall, 2006; Preuss, 2007). Latterly, the promotion of regeneration initiatives has been accompanied by public–private partnerships. In cities such as Glasgow, sport and tourism are central to contemporary regeneration efforts due to shifts in demand and consumption patterns (García, 2005; Mooney, 2004). The year 2014 represented a significant year for Glasgow and Scotland with the hosting of the Commonwealth Games, Ryder Cup and the Scottish Homecoming, in addition to a range of other cultural events. The impacts of regeneration, investments and enterprise initiatives aim to achieve lasting impacts on the social and economic legacies of Glasgow as a sporting city and Scotland as an international destination.
The purpose of this special issue is to bring together interdisciplinary approaches of regeneration in relation to enterprise, sport and tourism, independently or interdependently. The collection of papers presented here resulted from a two-day international workshop hosted by Glasgow Caledonian University, organised by Dr Nicholas Wise and Dr Geoff Whittam. Due to the already noted events occurring in Glasgow and Scotland, this international conference was timely. The two-day international workshop sought to analyse which current regeneration initiatives in the UK have proved to be ‘successful’, and to distil what lessons can be learnt from differing experiences, both in Scotland and internationally.
The interdisciplinary nature of regeneration was the focus of the workshop grounding regeneration as the anchor to debate and discuss in relation to enterprise, sporting events and tourism. While many debates concerning change, renewal and revitalisation, each framed under this notion of regeneration, there has often been a focus on economic significance and impact. While this did represent an important part of discussions and is included in this special issue, many papers deal with the evolving focus on social impact and ‘who is regeneration for’? This is an on-going debate as budgets are tightened, especially among the public sector, change and regeneration, since the 1980s, has been private sector driven often resulting in capital gains for investors, but there is a need to identify wider societal impacts (see Smith, 2012).
The first four papers in this special issue focus on some of the challenges and new directions concerning social impacts and enterprise opportunities. Linda Christie and Kenneth Gibb focus on governing legacy. The authors provide a detailed account of how strategic partnerships were developed in Glasgow through the development of a legacy plan in 2009 to the formation of the Glasgow Legacy Board. While partnerships and collaborations have been seen as ‘successful’ in Glasgow, the work by Christie and Gibb offers a conceptual understanding of legacy, partnerships and regeneration. The following two papers, the first by Gerry Mooney, Vikki McCall and Kirsteen Paton and the subsequent chapter by Julie Clark and Ade Kearns also, focus on legacy, but put more emphasis on social welfare and physical activity, respectively. Mooney et al. focus on issues of exclusion at the community level. They concentrate on the experiences of locals living and working in Glasgow’s East End throughout the duration of the 2014 Commonwealth Games to challenge the notion of ‘success’ concerning regeneration initiatives—generally and within Glasgow specifically. While this work provides a framework for those who benefit and those who are excluded, Clark and Kearns move on to look at the potential influences major sporting events can potentially have on physical activity in host communities. Clark and Kearns also look at the East End of Glasgow to understand people and place before outlining recommendations linked to four pathways: sports facilities, social infrastructure, schools and the environment. The last chapter looking at Glasgow maintains a focus on physical activity by acknowledging the fitness sector, but this time based on a local enterprise initiative. Julie C. Thomson, Lon Kilgore and Thea Ní Lionnáin address how major sporting events can lend to entrepreneurial opportunities, which ultimately have the potential to bring about both economic benefits and social change. The focus of this work is based on a yoga studio and instructor school-based in Glasgow. At a micro-level, this case study highlights how legacy and government initiatives together encourage active healthy lifestyles in Scotland—resulting in new opportunities economically and socially.
Building on the purpose of the workshop to consider cases from Glasgow and across the UK, the next three papers offer examples from Sheffield, Wales and relocation in London. Stephen Dobson’s work links to the previous two papers by framing health and fitness opportunities with entrepreneurial growth, but contributes further thought on tourism and local ecology and how this has achieved economic benefits in Sheffield. The conceptual approach used by Dobson is Actor-Network Theory, and he demonstrates how regeneration is a form of actor networking by identifying areas that lend to growth through change, designation and new investment. John Harris focuses on the hosting of mega-events, and how this impacts image and branding. He looks at how Wales has been impacted by hosting events because they present an opportunity to bring about a new exposure, an approach to regeneration that considers imaginative place making and sport-led branding that often results from media coverage. Harris frames his study around two sporting events held in Wales, the 1999 Rugby World Cup and the 2010 Ryder Cup. The focus attempts to delineate and tease out contestations of image and identity surrounding England and Wales as one synonymous entity by arguing how events hosted in Wales are an attempt to create an image and identity that is inherently Welsh. The next paper by Glyn Robbins shifts the focus from conceptual change to that of physical change through relocation. Traditionally, the identity of many football teams is linked to the grounds where home matches are played. Relocations have a huge impact on fan relations and place identity (see Potter, 2014), and Robbins utilises this evidence by critically discussing the social impacts of how experiences are significantly altered. Robbins uses the proposed move of West Ham United from their spiritual home of Upton Park to the London Olympic Stadium as a means to tease out notions of legacy in the light that many mega-event venues are underused once the events for which they were built have ended. Beyond the use of the venues, Robbins also addresses subsequent social conditions, especially housing, to show impacts of transferring spaces from public to private as pivotal to not only social impacts but also to social regeneration.
The final two papers included in this special issue are cases out with the United Kingdom. Brij Maharaj looks at the role of mega- and major-sporting events in the emerging economy countries. Maharaj presents an overview of India, Brazil and South Africa and how the rise of neoliberalism has resulted in the hosting of large scale sporting events suggests prominence as a way of promoting a country to showcase recent economic success. Again, the critical emphasis Maharaj brings forward in his paper is the high costs for venues and infrastructure, in addition to spill-over costs, that take away from social developments and result in displacement, loss of livelihoods and human rights violations. Much of the discussion offered in this study addresses the extensive public sector investment and government spending linked to private sector consultation. The final paper in this special issue looks at Croatia and the role of sports tourism. Marko Peric and Nicholas Wise are concerned with experience, and how value is delivered to consumers. In Croatia, there has been a push to develop alternative sports tourism opportunities as an approach to regenerate off-season tourism. This work utilises business models to frame value delivery before integrating the work of Pine and Gilmore’s (1998) notion of the experience economy to apply a new conceptual model to two cases in Pula and Umag in the Istrian Peninsula to analyse tennis experiences as a key focus of sports tourism opportunities. The two cases presented take two different approaches, but it was deemed that the experiences offered proved similar with a few variations in product offerings.
The Regeneration, Enterprise, Sports and Tourism international conference was the second such conference hosted in 2014 at Glasgow Caledonian University. It is intended this international conference will be a bi-annual event. Please look out for a Call for Abstracts for the 2016 conference in the coming months. The authors acknowledge the support of the Regional Studies Association, the Glasgow School for Business and Society at Glasgow Caledonian University and the editorial Board of Local Economy which made the event and this Special Issue possible.