REGENERATION

A Critical Engagement with Regeneration Schemes

A Critical Engagement with Regeneration Schemes

Part 1

Overview of the topic

The rehabilitation and urban regeneration are called to play a role central to housing policy in the coming years, as an efficient solution sustainable future and when to meet the housing needs of the population. Compared with exclusive commitment to new residential developments, the Urban renewal means less consumption of economic and natural resources and better use of existing housing stock. It also has an impact directly at improving living conditions of housing and quality life of the inhabitants of the affected areas and neighborhoods, which are sometimes below acceptable minimum planning standards. It is important to have a critical engagement and interrelationships between the property development process, the planning system, and social/public benefits associated with regeneration schemes (Beatty, 2010, 19). Therefore, all the issues and aspects related to this topic will be discussed in detail.

Description of the Construction and Rehabilitation Sector

The construction sector in Europe in 2009 representing 9.9% of Domestic Product Gross with an overall figure of 1.173 billion euros of production, with Germany, Spain and France, the countries that occupy key positions. In terms of employment, the sector employs 7.1% of total employment with an overall figure of 15 million workers in all European countries. It is estimated that the sector has about 3,157,000 businesses. In general it is remarkable that the rehabilitation sector has expectations benefit of such nationwide measures both the European Community aimed at encourage the renovation and modernization of the housing stock and urban regeneration. Besides the purely residential, urban, environmental and social objectives, sector activity is set up in recent times as one of the ways to compensate for shrinkage of the segment of new buildings and contribute to the recovery economic and employment through support to activities that also require labor intensive (Ann & Tsenkova, 2001, 10).

Facing the dependence of new residential construction activity of the joint and economic cycles, the subsector of rehabilitation is historically less subject to changes in the general economic climate. Although there have been in some European countries a decrease in the activity of rehabilitation, as is the case of Portugal, Denmark, Spain and Italy, for most of them and rehabilitation activities maintenance is a strong subsector, which appears as the engine growth of the housing sector. In this sense, the Recovery Plan of the European Commission identified the housing as one of the sectors in which to invest massively to support the economic growth, specifically pointing investments to improve the energy efficiency of social housing and public protection. In that sense, the Commission noted that Member States should reformulate the operational programs structural funds to allocate an amount greater efficiency investments energy, including social housing. As a result, the European Parliament adopted a proposal to amend the ERDF, so that in each country up to 4% funds intended for investment in improvements in energy efficiency and the use of renewable energy in existing housing (Betts, 2011, ...