From where I’m sitting …

What binds a community or nation together? Shared values? Unifying principles of justice and liberty? Or perhaps just a well-developed awareness that individual rights carry with them corresponding obligations. In communities that have been isolated and often neglected over many generations, social cohesion weakens and sometimes breaks down at the community and family level.

As a housebuilder I am acutely aware of the size of the challenge we all face and of the limited contribution that our industry is able to make towards reversing this process on its own. However, as part of a co-ordinated multi-sector, multidisciplinary initiative, the development industry can play a pivotal role in helping to re-establish social cohesion in many of our most disadvantaged communities.

Although the government has instigated a number of well-meaning and in many cases, effective initiatives to promote urban regeneration, we now need to go that step further. This means applying some really joined-up thinking to ensure that the replacements to run-down inner city areas and sink estates, both in their planning and management, deliver a high quality of life, promoting stable, cohesive communities.

We know from past experience that if we put all our poorest, most vulnerable citizens together in vast estates, then proceed to neglect them, it is more than likely that the community will fail, with the degeneration of its physical structures following closely on. I see many failed estates and every time I wonder, did it all go wrong because the buildings were unsuitable, or did it fail because the community came apart at the seams? I am in nearly every instance drawn to the conclusion that, although poor quality and unsuitable buildings exacerbated the process, it was primarily the communities, rather than the structures, that failed.

Residents, deprived, excluded and isolated, found themselves in an inescapable downward spiral of family and community breakdown within a culture of under-achievement – fertile ground for those offering easy solutions, be they doctrines of hate or criminality.

So, what should our priorities be now that we have started the process of regeneration? If we simply concentrate on providing buildings to house the disadvantaged, we will surely fail. If we provide much better buildings, with all the appropriate facilities and quality public realm, this will certainly help, but it will not be enough. We need to do things differently.

We must create communities which in their social, racial and perhaps even religious composition bear some reasonable comparison with the mix in the wider community. To improve social diversity we must attract the relatively affluent back into our cities, by providing a quality of environment and estate management that has hitherto been conspicuously absent. We then need to inform and involve them in the issues that affect their lives.

In the haste to increase the provision of affordable homes, vital components of long-term community management may get left behind

Finally, we must provide all residents and other stakeholders with a real connection into the administrative and democratic management of their communities.

My principal concern is that in a well-meaning and understandable haste to increase the provision of affordable homes, vital components of long-term community management and local democracy may get left behind.

Organising and managing socially and culturally diverse communities in perpetuity is complex, financially unrewarding and time consuming.

It should only be undertaken by those with the resource, experience and dedication to deliver that service. In the housing association movement, we have a unique resource which should be developed further to bring high-quality management and pastoral care to all who live and work in these new communities. They have a pivotal role to play in any partnership which goes far beyond the physical provision of affordable housing.

The emigration of the relatively affluent from our inner cities destabilises communities socially and racially. Disaffection and socially divisive behaviour, while more prevalent in run-down estates, is by no means the monopoly of the poor or any particular minority group. It will only be reversed if we can offer a better quality of life for all. Balanced communities are able to lobby more tenaciously for better schools and decent services, and are able to rock the boat more effectively to secure a fair share of resources. Sharing common goals and sometimes defending values that cross social, racial and religious boundaries should be the glue of social cohesion.

So as we begin to rebuild and refurbish our inner cities we will all have to decide what constitutes best value. We have choices; we can invest today in quality development, funding high-quality estate management and community support. This will in time build a better, more cohesive society. Alternatively, we can go for the quick fix and leave the consequences to our children.