Who wins?

Our timing appears to be good. Just a week ago, we published our first issue of Regenerate as a stand-alone monthly magazine. Today, we are launching Regeneratelive.co.uk, our allied website.

In the week between those two events, the word regeneration has seldom been far from the lips of the Today radio programme’s John Humphrys. Regeneration has been making the news for many reasons, the most significant being the announcement of Manchester’s victory in the super-casino stakes.

Now I am not about to risk alienating a large chunk of my new readership before I have even won their loyalty, by declaring which location out of Manchester, Blackpool or Greenwich would have got my vote.

I just want to return to the statement made following Manchester’s triumph by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams. He said: "I’m concerned that although, indeed, this development has been greeted in Manchester as a contribution to regeneration, ... we can’t think of better ways of regenerating deprived areas than by developing within them institutions which may well contribute to the material and spiritual deprivation of the area in the long term.”

Dr Williams raises a very interesting point. The regeneration sector has come up with a host of different ways of remedying deprived areas. There have been cultural quarters, markets, universities, shopping centres, visitor attractions and more basic activities like simply doing up existing homes. But how do you judge which is better in Dr Williams’ terms? Does a shopping centre make a greater or lesser contribution to material and spiritual deprivation than a casino?