Aspiring for the Champions League…where does Tottenham go next?

By davidmarlow, Tuesday, 9 August 2011, 4 Comments

As a lifelong Spurs fan, I feel immensely sad about the terrible news from Tottenham over the last week. It is depressing that perhaps less has changed since the Broadwater Farm events in 1985 than we had previously believed. I must admit I have been in a minority of fans, supporting the Club’s bid to take over the Olympic Stadium. I saw a move to Stratford as a cost-effective, rapid, and deliverable solution to Spurs getting a venue with the capacity and facilities to provide the income that can underpin long-term football success. However, the events of this week have changed my mind.

I am proud when Daniel Levy, Tottenham Hotspur chairman, is reported yesterday as saying “The club is committed to supporting its community with help with both the physical clean-up of our area and the longer-term rebuilding of the community spirit.” As a development and regeneration professional with a longstanding association with the Tottenham area, I now see Spurs remaining in situ as providing a key plank of Tottenham’s crisis recovery and longer-term turnaround strategies.

Some locations really struggle to throw off both enduring and multiple deprivation, and the negative image that accompanies this. Since Broadwater Farm, Tottenham has been a recipient of most national regeneration programmes and initiatives, involving huge sums of public investment, encompassing physical, social and economic interventions. Yet in the 2010 Index of Multiple Deprivation, Haringey was ranked 13th most deprived of 326 districts in England (this itself a fall in relative performance since 2007). Within the borough, the five wards in and around Tottenham are the worst performing in Haringey (with more local areas of these wards declining relatively since 2007 than have improved).

None of this justifies or even offers a convincing explanation of the criminal activity. But one can only believe that the events this week will further diminish Tottenham’s image and profile as an area in which to live, work, invest and visit. This will make recovery and turnaround even more difficult.

Tottenham needs to find a way of making a fresh start when the current unrest subsides. A transformational physical investment, whilst not ‘sufficient’ on its own, is now clearly necessary to build a forward-looking, deeper civic pride and present a positive image of the area nationally and internationally. Examples abound – Barcelona’s Olympics, Bilbao’s Guggenheim, the renaissance of many UK city centres and district level transformations are often anchored by flagship physical investments. A major issue for Tottenham, however, in an era of highly limited public resources and with the Olympic Legacy very close by, is from where the catalyst for this transformation might come.

Spurs’ Northumberland Development Project (NDP) has been wending its way through the planning system since 2007. Its progress often appears (to the informed outsider) to be characterised by mutual public/private/community suspicion of motives, methods, and a resultant grudging and tortuously slow progress towards delivery. The project is conceived as a new +/- 55000 seat stadium, 200 homes, supermarket, 150 room hotel, and new areas of public open space. Promoted by one of Tottenham’s only major businesses with a global brand, NDP can be an anchor for a much broader and integrated public/private/community area-based investment programme. Whatever our reservations about the tool, an early Enterprise Zone (EZ) designation, together with a permissive national and London government approach to public funding, freedoms and flexibilities could propel forward a re-worked exemplary project within a broader development and regeneration strategy.

If the coalition’s approach to localism and economic rebalancing (in this case to private sector led investment) is going to deliver, I believe it has to demonstrate a relevance, coherence, credibility and urgency when addressing issues like those in Tottenham.

I suspect this is the moment to ‘declare an interest’ as a Spurs shareholder (albeit a very modest one). A Tottenham EZ, anchored by accelerated implementation of the stadium redevelopment, within a broader comprehensive approach to area regeneration, will undoubtedly benefit the club, and my experience attending matches as a supporter (almost, but not quite, regardless of results).

More importantly, though, Tottenham needs a transformational flagship investment. These flagships most often work if they build on the underlying existing assets and potential of the area and its communities – in this case Tottenham Hotspur FC. If this also delivers transformation of our future quests for Champion League status, so much the better!

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  • http://www.eca-p.com Martha Covell MRTPI

    In 1985 I was at a large school in Hornsey (neighbouring Tottenham). The Broadwater Farm Riots affected the whole school- some of my own class mates were directly involved- they were only 13 years old.

    Some would say that nothing has changed since 1985, but the area is one of the most vibrant communities in London.

    Some time around 1985, we went on a School Trip to Spurs Stadium. It was inspiring, even as an Arsenal Supporter! They clearly did community projects back then.

    In 2011, main-stream youth training budgets in Tottenham have been cut by up to 85% and this must have been a contributing factor to Saturdays riots. Spurs has a vital role to play in this community. I hope their expansion plans progress quickly and include a youth program, similar to those being delivered by football clubs throughout the UK (for example Borehamwood FC).

  • http://davidjmarlow.wordpress.com davidjmarlow

    Thanks Martha. I agree, at its positive best, Tottenham is a vibrant and exciting community; Spurs has run a strong community programme. The blog just posits the need for a transformational physical investment to enable the community to look forward with optimism and to see change happening physically ‘on the ground’

  • DBplanner

    As a Tottenham fan myself and regular match goer I agree that the stadium regeneration is necessary to help ‘lift’ the cosmetics of the area but lets not put too much emphasis on this one factor i.e a physical regen with a brand new state of the art stadium solving the deeper and more imbedded social deprivation and inequality local people in Tottenham suffer compared to the average Londoner and national living standards.

    I have worked as a planner on two large scale stadium regen projects (AFC’s Emirates and MCFC’s Eastland’s) which have both set out valiant goals of combating urban poverty and deprivation in inner urban areas and I have to say while the stadium does kick start physical regen it mostly down to huge government investment in in upgrading housing infrastructure and associated socio-econ infrastructure that turned these areas around not a sports stadium. I cant see this model happening in Tottenham in current economic conditions unfortunately.

    These two regen projects have also arguably displaced a lot of people to other areas, effectively moving deprivation some where else which big regen projects have a habit of doing. With Arsenal, Newlon Housing (financed by golden era of public spending) pumped some £50M of money into delivering up to 2,000 homes in Highbury and Islington, with a at least 30% being affordable. This has improved living standards notably. AFC also chucked in a further £30M in S106 for social and transport infrastructure like health centres, public open space etc. Eastland’s in Manchester has had to wait 10 years post Commonwealth games with drip feed regen before their sugar daddy from the Far East has come in and picked up a large infrastructure tab for delivering the original master plan vision for the area as set out by New East Manchester Regen Framework. MCC and English partnerships have done a good job in slum clearance and gradual investment in building new homes in East Manc, but again displacement is the common theme, like sweeping away a bad smell to another neighbouring area of the city. to Salford???

    I also don’t put too much faith in enterprise zones, Canary wharf claims to be a success story but while benefiting the London and UK economy as whole (or maybe not in light of the financial markets crisis) it has provided little affordable homes and instead created a bigger socio-economic divide in Tower Hamlets communities, physically splitting Poplar from the Isle of Dogs (literally an economic island) and employs largely a regional and international workforce with little benifit to local people in terms of employment. Its more to credit to the resilience of the tight knitted Bangladeshi community and the success of an accepted local black economy which employs a huge amount of people in the borough that recent rioting mostly passed over Tower Hamlets ‘content’ communities.

    Rather than grand gestures of flgaship projects I prefer the quieter softer non land use solutions, like employment enterprise intaiatives strong local social services sector and giving something for kids to do in the summer holidays, street football sponsored by THFC?!

  • http://davidjmarlow.wordpress.com davidjmarlow

    Thanks DBPlanner.

    I agree with your analysis – my point is rather the converse. Tottenham has had almost all the major regen programme support any area has had (including the ‘softer’ contributions) in recent years. So, if we want to try something new, perhaps it needs to be a flagship physical scheme. I have also worked on stadia (St Marys, Keepmoat), and accept that they are not ‘sufficient’ to kickstart regeneraiton of an area. I also have real doubts (blogged here) on EZs. But – perhaps an exemplary physical intervention in Tottenham (in tandem with other approaches) could make a difference here.

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