The Regeneration Game

So, regeneration: is it the cure to all of Nottingham’s ills, or is there a whiff of the Emperor’s New City about it? In today’s parlance, regeneration is associated with (and seemingly necessary for) tackling deprivation, raising aspiration, preventing crime, encouraging economic activity; improving health and safety and providing opportunities for employment and training. All noble causes, you’ll agree.

But it isn’t that simple. For starters, there’s a whole swathe of agencies and bodies fighting over every bit of available space like at the end of a game of Monopoly. These include; One Nottingham, Nottingham Regeneration Limited (NRL), the East Midlands Development Agency (EMDA), the Neighbourhood Development Company, Greater Nottingham Local Improvement Finance Trust (LIFT), Experience Nottingham and the Regeneration, Infrastructure and Sustainability Standing Panel. But does their idea of what Nottingham needs correspond with yours?

So far, the game seems to be working. The old Ice Stadium was transformed into a major sports venue and somewhere to put the X-Factor Roadshow. A rather tatty Old Market Square has regained its status as the focal point of the city, a tram network is in place and the Broadway cinema became a full-on media centre, to name but a few welcome improvements. If it stopped there, we’d be more than happy. But this is just the start; apparently, an estimated 3 billion quid’s worth of investment is coming our way, with the Southside (the bit between the train station and the Meadows), Eastside (Sneinton) and Waterside (from Broadmarsh to the train station) areas being transformed into cool, modern spaces with more offices, retail outlets, public parks, housing and, for all we know, zero-G kickboxing centres.

There’s no denying that Nottingham is attempting a transition from industry to science and technology, with BioCity and GameCity starting to make their presence felt, and agencies have also identified similar potential in creative and cultural industries. This kind of activity isn’t just a local thing, of course; regeneration has been a watchword of New Labour and ties in with their many ‘community’ initiatives. Naturally, as with all political initiatives, there has been a lot of criticism from all sides; some say regeneration fails to make best use of the resources available, puts equality over enterprise and that there is a misguided emphasis on formal representation rather than on direct practical involvement.

For such proponents, regeneration projects should be led by skilled – and sometimes ruthless – leaders who get results, not by conflicted committees with competing interests. On the other hand, the public who see ‘Consultation’ as being a merely cosmetic exercise designed to elicit justification for the desired plan, and are fed up with projects that don’t really affect them or involve them. Remember Labour’s ‘Big Conversation’? Me neither.

One Nottingham tried this approach and were accused of ‘mandate-manipulation’ in 2005 when they published an online questionnaire designed to ‘ascertain the priorities of Nottingham people’ by asking them to agree or disagree with statements along the lines of ‘I would like to see a 10% reduction in crime’ and ‘Improved health services are a priority to me’. All answers defaulted to ‘strongly agree’ and there was no facility to rank your priorities or add comment (e.g. ‘I DISAGREE with a 10% reduction in crime, because I want to see a 50% reduction’). It’s right to scrutinise of course; One Nottingham have responsibility from central Government to create a strategic plan for Nottingham, in partnership with all the major players such as the Police, education institutions, health services and so on and to spend the government’s money (i.e. our taxes) to make it happen.

However, not all the money comes from this pot, which is where the problems start. There is serious money to be made from partnerships of various guises - not least due to the amazing boom in property and land prices. Therefore many schemes are sponsored, shared with or entirely backed by companies seeking to turn a profit whilst improving the lie of the land. However, the lie of the land is shifting; with the credit crunch upon us and rumblings of discontent about the actual effects of redevelopment on deprived communities and the general malaise brought about by living on a glorified building site, the locals are getting restless.

It goes without saying that any money spent on Nottingham needs to go to the right places. You don’t need to commission a raft of consultants to realise where the money should go – towards redeveloping the suburbs and inner city areas. Priorities should be better lighting, more security, community centres, affordable and safe housing, a vastly improved educational infrastructure, sports facilities and outdoor parks - not more bars and ponce-boxes. This actually makes business sense too; there’s little point trying to attract new businesses to populate these buildings if their staff refuse to uproot and re-locate here, or the locals don’t have the qualifications to get jobs there.

Even though the reputation of Nottingham is blown out of all proportion by the media, we all know the problems this town has. Furthermore, we all know that £3,000,000,000 spent in the right way would go a long way towards sorting them out. An office, hotel and leisure complex on a bit of wasteground near Sneinton would be good, but being able to walk home in Forest Fields without worrying about the lack of lighting would be better.

Nottingham - It’ll be nice when it’s finished, honest... But when the dust clears and the scaffolding comes down, will we like what we see? We commissioned a city-wide survey of one person - Nottingham’s ‘Mr Sex’. He told us what buildings need to be preserved, what buildings ought to be pulled down like a dirty pair of knickers, and what really impressive and outstanding erections Nottingham ought to be sporting in the near future…

BUILD THESE IN NOTTINGHAM NOW

Rebuild Nottingham Castle, and make it look like Castle Grayskull Yes, it might be a country mansion-like building, but let’s be honest; Nottingham ‘Castle’ is one of the most disappointing aspects of the city for tourists, after the ‘not being five women to every bloke’ thing. Let’s do it proper, rip it down, and replace it with a huge placcy playset thing that allows kiddies to fire polystyrene boulders at Yates.  

Install a UFC octagon in the Market Square at weekends Okay, so we’ve had ice skating, but now is the time to showcase Nottingham’s favourite weekend spectator sport; watching meatheads put the fist to the face. Imagine; no more flying glass or upturned tables in pubs, comfy ringside seats (VIP area on the Council House balcony) and the chance to see the flower of our youth settle their differences in an entertaining manner. Gee ‘im a pannin’, Terreh!

Erect the Colossus of Su Pollard over the Trent It has to be said that, for the visitor to our fair city, the initial sights that greet them on the train are most unedifying (Nottingham Not Really A Castle, Inland Revenue POW Camp, that graffiti piece that reads ‘Suck your Mum’). What we really need is something massive – I’m thinking summat bold, modern and visible from Loughborough, if not Leicester – that says “OOH! You are approaching NOTTINGHAM! MISS CATHCART!”

Build an extra dome on the Council House We may be attracting a few stag dos and hen parties these days, but - for some reason that I’ve never worked out – we’re being outperformed by less important places like Prague, Amsterdam and Barcelona. What can we do to get more pissed-up giggling imbeciles into our lovely city? Give the Council House a big renking pair of jubblies, that’s how.

 Garden gnomes of rubbish Forest managers clustered round the new Clough statue. It’s all very well paying tribute to someone who won a bit of silver last century, but what about the people who helped make Forest one of the titans of Third Division football? Ooh look – is at David Platt, pushing a wheelbarrow of rubbish Italians? And is that Gary Megson on a toadstool? Ha ha, look at Dave Beasant and Big Ron fishing in that puddle of vomit! And so on.

SAVE IT
Buildings in Notts that should be left well alone

Every Watson Fothergill building
Virtually every Victorian building in town worth a toss was down to him, including the amazing Black Boy hotel on Long Row, which was torn down and replaced by the manky Littlewoods building.

Jubilee Campus, Nottingham University
So what if they had to take all the books out to prevent it sinking into the water? Its looks mint.

The building on the corner of King Street
New home of the Clough statue and now thankfully bereft of that horrible Hard Rock Café logo.

Clock Tower, Victoria Centre
The last remnants of a lovely train station, bolted on to a minging shopping centre.

Green’s Windmill
Nuff said.

SMASH IT
Buildings in Notts that should be mashed down right now

Broadmarsh bus station
The dangling of monochromatic clag from the whiffy concrete arsehole of seventies town planning.

Pearl Assurance Building
Horribly reminiscent of the massive tombstone in the AIDS prevention adverts of the early eighties.

Maid Marion Way car park
A multi-tiered grey cake of wrongness.

Capital One building
Not so much for the architecture, but for its name – Loxley House – which is yet another attempt to link Robin Hood to a soul-raping credit monolith.