Those on the list who are in or near London (UK) might be interested in the following evening seminar in Stratford. 
For details, please read on...



Dear all, 
 
The next seminar will be on Wednesday, 21 May 2014 at 5.30pm at:
 
London Legacy Development Corporation
Level 10
1 Stratford Place, Montfichet Road
London
E20 1EJ
 
Please RSVP to Troy Scott - [log in to unmask] 
 
For any queries about seminar content, contact either John Lock - [log in to unmask] - or Gavin Poynter - [log in to unmask]
 

Wednesday 21 May
 
Capturing value from development
 
Speakers:  Prof Gavin Poynter, Anna Minton
 
Anna Minton is a writer, journalist and researcher. She is the author of Ground Control: Fear and Happiness in the 21st Century City', published by Penguin and she is a Reader in Architecture at the University of East London. She is a contributor to The Guardian and The Financial Times and a regular conference speaker, speaking to a variety of audiences from art biennales to the police.

Gavin Poynter is a member of London East Research Institute (LERI) and, until his recent retirement, was Professor of Social Sciences at the University of East London. He has widely published on ‘London 2012’, the economics of the service industries and urban regeneration. He published  (with Prof I. MacRury) ‘Olympic Cities and the remaking of London’ (Ashgate Press, September 2009) and ‘London After Recession’ (Ashgate Press 2013, with co-editors, Iain MacRury and Andrew Calcutt )
 
Chair: John Lock, Chair, Partnership Board, Sir Ludwig Guttman Health & Wellbeing Centre
 
 
This seminar will look at the question of ‘value capture’ and at whether policy could do more to ensure flows of benefit from Legacy go where they are needed to ensure regeneration works for all and not least the most disadvantaged. 
 
Rising land value exerts development pressure.  In east London, with large areas of developable land released close to London’s core next to excellent transport, pressure in terms of change of use - and therefore change of place and impact on community – is considerable.  That pressure is exerted not just in terms of vacant land, but under-utilised land in terms of what could be put there. 
 
Without development, formerly derelict land will not be brought back into use.  So it is a given that development is required – of some kind.  Since the 1980s there has been no significant prospect that the public sector would seek to do this mainly through direct ownership and investment of exclusively public capital.  Austerity only reinforces that.  So it is also a given that much development will be by a private sector wanting return on investment.   
 
Assuming therefore a context of development, and outcomes which will be the result of interactions between planning and other policy and the market, the key question is:  if new value is created by Legacy, who benefits?   Who gets soft assets like work and hard assets like land? 
 
Existing planning mechanisms for ‘taxing’ development (e.g. s106 and now the community infrastructure levy) do so at commencement of development.  After that, policy often goes quiet about where value is going and whether the interactions which define its allocation are ‘fair’ in a general sense and whether value stays local or is recycled elsewhere. 
 

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