ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with some of the sustainable urban development issues that have not been fully addressed in previous examinations of the subject using the BEQUEST toolkit. It offers a critique of the market-led urban regeneration initiatives and the measures taken by the UK government to replace this with a plan led alternative, where strategic actions are based on a sufficiently ‘place-based’ knowledge of what communities must do to be sustainable. These critical insights shall be drawn from Research and Technical Development (RTD) actions taken under Framework 5 and 6 of the EC’s Environment and Climate (E&C) and Information, Society and Technology (IST) programmes (Deakin et al., 2001, 2002; Curwell and Lombardi, 2005; Curwell, et al., 2005). The projects in question relate to the BEQUEST, LUDA and IntelCities programmes, and provide a number of insights into the critical role that networks, innovation and creativity play in building the types of partnerships which are successful in offering a sufficiently place-based knowledge of ecological integrity, equity and participation; that which underlies the democratic renewal of urban villages and modernisation of their neighbourhoods as sustainable communities.
