Enhancing the everyday resilience of communities in the Big Society

The important role of community ‘voice’ and an array of participative geographies in regeneration practice have together emerged as a central tenet of political and policy discourse over recent years. In the current context of austerity disadvantaged communities have been particularly affected by a host of economic and social pressures. In response communities have been encouraged to develop a set of practices to help them coping with these everyday issues and become more resilient. At the same time community voice is expected to be increasingly influential within broader strategic regeneration and neighborhood planning initiatives. The focus here is upon creating resilient communities that will have the necessary skills, ambition and leadership to help build vibrant areas where people are proud to live. There is a need to better understand the nature of these practices and particularly how they tend to reinforce (or not) a sense of community belonging which could serve as baseline for an array of further bottom-led initiatives. This is particularly important as the Localism agenda as well as the principles of the Big Society which are driving the Coalition Government’s move towards new forms of governance whereby power is handed to communities to enable their development. This is based on a model of community resilience that ‘will potentially help decisions in policy making and local resource prioritisation and enable authorities to develop a better adaptive capacity to adverse events’ (Young Foundation, 2010). This research project seeks to examine; how local communities can be empowered to deliver local services and regeneration projects and what new governance configurations might be required to assist localism. A wide range of possible community regeneration projects might form the basis for study, but we would be particularly interested in proposals that have a comparative element focused upon the West Midlands, or UK context.

For further details on the proposed project, please contact the supervisor(s) directly, quoting the project title.