Urban regeneration: from outside-in to Inside-out. A new conceptual framework for urban regeneration

Cities are widely recognized as the economic growth’s engines at regional, national and global levels (Hall & Pfeiffer, 2000). In such a scenario, urban regeneration initiatives play an essential role: on one side, they make cities more economically efficient, socially vibrant and environmentally sustainable. On the other side, urban regeneration initiatives are essential to reinforce cities’ image within a globally competitive network, in some cases to trigger the attraction of external private investments, thus contributing to cope with the public sector’s shortage of finance. However, it will be discussed how scholars and policy makers showed some concerns about such initiatives, in particular, arguing that the redistribution of benefits coming from private investments has been difficult to achieve failing to address socio-economic issues thoroughly (Turok, 1992, 1993, 2005; Peck & Tickell, 2002; Tallon, 2010; Harvey, 1989; Healey, 1991; Dixon, 2005, Bianchini et al., 2013; Catungal et al. 2009). Currently, the combination of globalization in advanced capitalist society and public finance shortage makes equitable outcomes difficult to achieve within urban regeneration initiatives, eliciting new solutions and alternative approaches. By recasting the theoretical context for urban regeneration within the paradigm of economic development, this thesis aims at suggesting a new approach to urban regeneration, constituted by several integrated initiatives which can bring to both efficient and equitable outcomes. In so doing, this research pushes the body of knowledge forward, because, since now urban regeneration initiatives have been only investigated separately. As an example, the Schumacher Center for a new Economics (http://www.centerforneweconomics.org) and the Democracy collaborative (http://democracycollaborative.org) provide policy makers with some suggestions about the potentials of some urban development tools (such as Community Development financial Institutions, Community Land Trust, local currency) without discussing their intertwined impacts. It is hereby proposed that an integrated approach can be supportive of a more effective urban economic approach, not only in the case study selected for the discussion (the US context), but also for the larger policy makers and planners community.