The Urban Renaissance Revisited : Richard Rogers and the Idea of Planning as a Public Good

Richard Rogers’ leadership of the Urban Task Force at the invitation of Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott in 1998 and its subsequent report Towards an Urban Renaissance was heralded at the time as an opportunity to champion ‘a holistic approach to urban regeneration’. The UTF’s brief was to tackle three specific urban challenges: 1. The decline of regional inner-city areas and communities. 2. The need to provide homes for up to 4 million additional households. 3. Suburban sprawl and associated social and economic decline within inner-city areas. Supporters of the Rogers’ report point to the implementation of ‘PPG3’ which sought to direct policy away from new build development on greenfield sites towards higher density development using brownfield or urban sites. Towards an Urban Renaissance led to an Urban White Paper and an Urban Summit, as well as Michael Parkinson’s influential ‘State of The Cities’ report. The Urban Task Force also paved the way for the establishment in England of the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE) in 1999, before it was merged with the Design Council in 2010. In this paper I consider the extent to which Rogers’ ambitions in Towards an Urban Renaissance were realised in practice, what were the obstacles to success in the decades that followed and what are the prospects for planning as a public good nearly 25 years on.