Regeneration?

What is regeneration? It came up as the subject of a debate that I took part in recently as an issue that is recognised as key to building up our local communities.

Regeneration has been defined as a vision of reduced poverty and disadvantages of all kinds, a way to improve the lives of people and heightening what they can achieve.

Currently, Banff, Macduff, Fraserburgh and Peterhead are all in the middle of regeneration studies and councillors are looking at the best way to improve their local communities.

In the past this has taken the form of town centre improvement including maps and signs, clearing gutters and upgrading street lights in Buchan last year, and the Peterhead Property Enhancement Scheme in Peterhead town centre to renovate commercial premises to improve the area and make it more attractive for businesses, as well as those who live there.

Typically regeneration of an area would mean reducing areas of poverty and helping to increase enterprising activity, boosting prosperity through education, skills and tackling inequalities. Local people should have a community where they can be healthy, safe and where they can have an interesting and active community life, which will not only attract residents, but tourists also.

But the essential component to all this positive change is people. Regeneration cannot happen without people taking an active role. If communities continue to depend on outside support, regeneration will never be what it could be, and won’t be able to self-sustain. There are inspiring people in every community and they should be encouraged.

In some cases we want a joined-up approach, but in others, we want the very opposite. If we take on the task ourselves, then we succeed or fail in small steps, and then these little movements can join together and build their successes from the community upwards. The joined-up approach is the enemy of effective community regeneration.

I want space to be left for happenstance—for accidental success. I want things to be done on a small scale, so that no failure cripples the person who failed but, instead, encourages them to go and find a new solution.

In his wonderful book on project management, “The Mythical Man-Month”, Fred P Brooks talks about the non-commutability of time and effort. What it boils down to is that, if there is a hole that it would take six hours for a man to dig and you put six men on the job, it will not get done in one hour, because they will have to collaborate and co-operate, which is an overhead. One person will often do a job far more effectively than a team.

Fred P Brooks poses a second question: how do you make a late project later? His answer is that you add staff. When staff are added, the staff on the project have to train the new staff and stop doing the job that they are supposed to be doing. The corollary is to take away the people who are causing the problem and slowing things down and let the remaining bare handful get on with it. That is the recipe for community action.

We politicians are often guilty of saying, “Think big”, but I would like to say, “Think small” – and in this case, very small. There is enormous capacity out there, and we have must allow it the space for it to grow. There is one word that the people in our communities must never hear—it is, of course, particularly relevant this year—and that word is no.