EUKN - European Urban Knowledge Network - The IMAGE Project: new tools for neighbourhood regeneration

The IMAGE Project: new tools for neighbourhood regeneration

Introduction

“High-rise residential areas” – if you hear this phrase, what comes to mind? Maybe you visualise pictures of impressive buildings, multiculturalism, energy? Or perhaps the pictures in your mind are of monotonous architecture, transient communities, empty homes, segregation, stigmatisation, deprivation? There is truth in both perceptions; however, the negative aspects of high-rise residential areas often dominate people’s perceptions. The IMAGE project (funded by the European Union’s INTERREG IIIB programme) has the task of finding ways to regenerate high-rise residential areas by explicitly focusing on improving their image.

Description

The INTERREG IIIB programme supports the financing of projects that strive for a more sustainable development of Northwest Europe. The IMAGE Project was part of this programme. It brought together nine partners from five Northwest European countries, all faced with the complexity of regeneration processes.

Between 2004 and 2007, IMAGE developed an “Integrated Regeneration Process”. This approach to urban regeneration addresses physical, economic and social problems in equal measure and aims at gradually solving the complex and inter-related problems that many high-rise areas face. The fundamental idea is that image improvement must go hand-in- hand with urban regeneration so that the ‘downward spiral’ in these areas is stopped and converted into a positive, upward process of improving these neighbourhoods.

This approach of urban regeneration was developed and tested in five high-rise residential areas:

Europark, Antwerp, Belgium
Barton Hill, Bristol, United Kingdom
Poptahof, Delft, The Netherlands
Ballymun, Dublin, Ireland
Schwamendingen, Zurich, Switzerland

The actions were integrated into existing local regeneration strategies and emphasised the development of a brand for the neighbourhood by involving stakeholders and the community.

This report summarises the outcomes of the IMAGE project, explores the experiences gained in the high-rise residential areas of the partner cities, and provides a useful toolkit for integrated urban regeneration processes based on the project's experiences.

Conclusions

The IMAGE project developed a toolkit for the implementation of integrated regeneration approaches. This toolkit is called the ‘Integrated Regeneration Process’ (IRP). It integrates two other toolkits:

‘Neighbourhood Branding’: an innovative new method to improve the image of urban high-rise neighbourhoods, which the partners tested during the IMAGE project
'Self-Evaluation: an instrument to steer the regeneration process

Contact info

IMAGE Project
image@urban.nl
Michiel Dol (Senior Project Manager)

Publication date

//2004

Project finished

//2007

Links

For more information please visit the IMAGE Project website

Read the final report of the IMAGE Project (PDF, Eng, 8 MB)

Document type

research

Themes

Urban Policy > Urban environment

Keywords

Urban renewal