I am grateful to the very wonderful Emma Bearman (@culturevultures) for sending me a link to a piece  in the YEP by Rod McPhee in which he shows just how very simple it should be for the ‘big cigars’ of Leeds to sort out the Clarence Dock Ghostown in their upcoming ‘Summit’.  Apparently, ‘we just have to give people a reason to go there’.

Step 1 in the Mcphee masterplan is to significantly reduce the cost of parking in that part of town.  So the car park owner takes a financial hit.  Or the ‘costs’ are passed onto the tax payer.

Step 2: Get an ‘anchor’ tenant.   Find a ‘Harvey Nicks’ equivalent who will take up residence in the Dock and make it a ‘destination’.  Does Mr McPhee have any idea how many such developments are chasing so few ‘anchor tenants’ who have the money, the confidence and the brand power to really animate a new development?  Anyway – wasn’t this what the Royal Armouries was meant to do?  Perhaps we could ‘persuade’ Steve Jobs to open the North’s Premier Apple Store?

Step 3: Sort out the rest of the shops:  Cunning plan.  Perhaps Borders might like to open up an outlet?  Oh! Wait a minute…no….Most retailers are struggling to hang on even in places of high footfall.  Expecting them to move into a ghost town on the hope and a prayer that it is about to spark into vibrant commercial life is, well, naive.  Some of the early adopters who moved into Clarence Dock from the start have since pulled out as the enterprise fairytale failed to materialise.

Step4: Provide an entertainment complex such as a cinema or concert venue.  Smart idea that. Perhaps we could have Leeds Arena 2 please?  And put  another nail in the coffin of the few remaining independent cinemas in Leeds by bringing in another Vue or Showcase.  Yes, lets provide more playthings for the rats who are still running.

Step 5: Provide more facilities for the residents in the 1100 apartments that are down there.  Give them more of what they need – on their doorstep to stop them having to trek a whole mile into town.  Crikey, we have built them their own private footbridge over the river!  Of all of the neighbourhoods in Leeds that don’t have access to good affordable food shops I suspect the residents of Clarence Dock would not come high on the list of priorities.  And what sense does it make to reduce footfall and spend in the City Centre just to increase it in the Dock?  This is a zero sum game in which we would be robbing Peter to pay Paul.

Step 6:Stage more events – perhaps more markets to drag people in from the suburbs.  Well Mr McPhee in case you hadn’t noticed the markets have gone to the suburbs – at least the ones with cash – with popular farmers markets now established in most of Leeds leafy suburbs.  Now if we could develop a really impressive arts based market on a scale that would attract people from much further afield.

Whatever happened to the Dark Arches market?  Oh yes – it got turned into a car park.  And soon we will have another £13.6m thrown at the Dark Arches to provide the elusive residents of Granary Wharf and the not so elusive residents of City Inn a more convenient entrance to the station than our recently refurbished (£4.6m) Neville Street provides.

Step 7: Improve the road signs and make it easier for people to get there.  Hm!  If there is something there worth visiting the SATNAV and smartphone generation are going to find it Rod.  Inadequate signage might be a symptom of sloppy planning – but we are hardly dealing with root causes here.

Step 8: Cater for the office workers.  (A point of correction Rod, I don’t think there is a Starbucks there any more.  It wasn’t profitable.)  There is so much office real estate in Leeds chasing relatively few office workers.  We can try to make the place even ‘happier and shinier’ to attract those happy shiny people – but there are simply too many such developments in the City chasing too few employers.  And if Clarence Dock did become THE office destination of choice in Leeds – it would be to the detriment of other Leeds sites.  Unless of course we do (usually very expensive) deals to lure a large employer from out of the region.  But such inward investment rarely sticks.  This strategy fuelled growth through the nineties and the early noughties as we lured in financial services, call centres and the associated industries (including the euphemistically titled Gentlemans’ Clubs) but now that times are tough we can expect many of those to move on to pastures cheaper.

Rod says that sorting out Clarence Dock is hardly breaking the enigma code.  And following a recipe that says ‘throw money at it’  is indeed hardly rocket science. We could do the same thing with Holbeck Urban Village, Temple Works, Tower Works, Granary Wharf,  The Gateway, Wellington Place, Trinity, Velocitude, Lateral, The Mint and Raptor (OK some of those don’t actually exist – but you get my point!).  And Mr McPhee, despite £200bn of quantitative easing, there is still little or no money to throw at developments that cannot wash their face.  Nor will there be any time soon.

But just suppose for one moment that Mr McPhee got his way.   The big cigars decide to sell off some more of the family silver to throw good money after bad….The idiot proof answer to rebooting the Leeds economy is adopted…

More office work/more retail/more entertainment/more consumption?    A continued expansion of the rat race.  We are hardly looking at the yellow brick road to sustainability are we?  Nor are we looking at any realistic strategy for narrowing the gap in this city between the haves and have nots.  Instead we build a monetary vacuum cleaner to suck up as much money as possible from the Leeds economy and return it to institutional shareholders and investors based elsewhere.  Anyone still got a real appetite for ‘Business as Usual’?

So what is my alternative?  What would I do?

Well, I for one would do more, much more to encourage and develop enterprising people like Emma, whose work with Culture Vultures is done on a shoestring but makes a significant contribution to the cultural and economic wellbeing of the city.  And Emma is not a rare beast.  A magical entrepreneur.  She is just a (relatively) normal citizen – doing her bit, following her mojo.  There are thousands of people in the city doing remarkable projects, distinctive, creative and imaginative.

Let’s not subsidise the success of the ‘The Man’ in the big commercial (if only they were) developments.  Let’s invest in the many thousands of  wonderful residents in the city who are actively working to make things better.

Here is how. And here.

But this does approximate rocket science.  It is the enigma code.  But man HAS been to the Moon.  The Enigma Code was cracked. With care, passion, commitment and a tremendous sense of urgency.

It is not a quick, debt driven, electorally popular fix.

But it might just work.

The fortunes of Clarence Dock and Holbeck have long been intertwined.  Clarence Dock was a major transport hub in Leeds, where coal to power the heavy industry in Holbeck was brought in by canal barge from the coalfields of Yorkshire.

The decline of heavy industry in Holbeck led to the decline of Clarence Dock and most of Leeds – south of the river.

But over the last decade Clarence Dock has been ‘regenerated’.  According to one website it is

1.2 million sq.ft. of pure attraction. Clarence Dock is Leeds’ most exciting and largest mixed-use destination. Adjacent to the Royal Armouries the £250 million development has literally transforming the city’s waterfront creating a modern, vibrant and innovative urban destination.

(Glad to see that the money has gone into proper activities like planning and building rather than copy writing and proof reading!)

Holbeck too has had the benefit of massive regeneration.  In the order of £800 million of investment from the public and private sector to create Holbeck Urban Village:

Poised to become one of the most dynamic business and residential developments in the UK, Holbeck Urban Village is more than just another development.

A pioneer of urban regeneration, Holbeck Urban Village, will set new standards in sustainable development creating over 5,000 new jobs in the high value digital and creative media sector.

The language is interesting.  No ifs, no buts.  Bold, assertive and powerful.  No caveats about ‘economy permitting’.

Both developments are at the crossroads.  The websites may describe them as vibrant and dynamic but the reality is that they are in danger of becoming modern day ghost towns.  Shops going out of business and office space standing empty.  ‘Lively Piazzas’ standing lifeless.

But just imagine that all had gone to plan and that a vibrant economy had allowed these developments to soar with the eagles?  Ok we may have been looking at a sustainability nightmare and the already dreadful traffic problems might have been exacerbated.  But think of the jobs!  Think of the money!  Think of the GDP!  Think of the ever increasing value of the real estate!

And think about who would have benefited most?  Certainly not people who have for generations lived in and around the area.  Because this sort of development works (IF it works) by economic cleansing.  It works by attracting vibrant, creative and skilled people to shiny, happy places to work and live.  Our ‘gain’ is another communities loss.  It is a ‘zero sum’ game.

And as the land values are driven up, long standing local businesses are forced out.  When the cost of land south of the river was low it made good sense to brew beer on  a large scale.  It made sense to build a supermarket headquarters with low rise buildings and large car parks.  There was plenty of space and not many others looking to move in.  But this is regeneration.  We economically cleanse the area of those who cannot generate enough GDP for the space that they take up.

But economic cleansing is not just about business.  It is about housing too.  Land values and house prices are driven up on the edge of the city and justifications are made for further ‘regeneration’.   Family housing stock (low rise with gardens) are replaced by high rise designer apartment blocks.

The poorest are economically cleansed.  Driven from the valuable land even further into the margins of the city.

But the stalled economy, and the stalling developments, offer us a chance to demonstrate a different approach to economic and social development.  One that works with local communities instead of replacing them with the ‘creative classes’.  Perhaps we can challenge the basically unsustainable short cuts to economic development with sustainable long term approaches to community development.

Instead of ‘bankrupting the club’ in vain attempts at ‘Going Up A League’, perhaps we can start to seriously and strategically address the challenges of ‘Narrowing the Gap’?

My question?  Are community development professionals capable of offering a real alternative?