Urban Regeneration, Business Improvement Districts and Retail Revitalization

Abstract

This chapter begins by presenting some considerations about urban regeneration, through a review of the scientific literature regarding the origin of the concept while placing it in relation to other “re” phenomena and processes that have emerged as trends in the urban space: reurbanization, revitalization, restructuring, recomposition, renewal, rehabilitation, and requalification, etc. Secondly, a number of assumptions and defining traits of urban regeneration processes, principles which simultaneously guide the theory as well as the practice of these processes within urban planning - such as the need to be comprehensive, integrated, strategic, flexible, based on partnerships and promoting sustainability/resilience – are discussed in detail. Within this problematization, the evolution of the concept throughout the last five decades will also be addressed, according to various changes in the socio-economic and political-ideological context of urban space, from fordism to post-fordism, bearing in mind the main key actors and stakeholders as well as the leading strategies and concerns in urban politics. Thirdly, business improvements districts, acknowledged as privileged instruments to lever urban regeneration processes in contemporary societies, are addressed in order to better grasp how they reshape urban landscapes and the challenges they pose to the retail revitalization of urban environments.