ABSTRACT
Many of the developments described in the previous chapter are the result, not of investments in virgin sites, but of the clearance and renewal of the older parts of the urban environment. This is particularly true of the new shopping schemes built in traditional town and city centres and some of the inner residential areas of the larger conurbations. Such schemes are therefore part of a broader process of change affecting a wide mixture of land use activities which itself needs to be given careful planning consideration. There are perhaps two primary contributors to this process of change: the small, often imperceptible but ongoing rehabilitations of individual buildings and streets, which we might collectively call renovation; and the larger, more dramatic and instantaneous reconstructions of properties and sometimes whole areas that are more commonly known as redevelopment. Both these components, however, represent attempts to improve or modernise the environment and therefore take place against a background of relative decline in the physical and functional well-being of areas.
