Delivering Urban Design and Economic Growth in Peripheral Places: Design-led Regeneration in West Dunbartonshire, Scotland

Design-led regeneration has become a common policy approach to economic recovery, particularly in European and North American cities with post-industrial waterfronts. However, the familiar case studies tend to be core cities with sufficient economic activity to leverage private investment and wider political backing. The atypical case of West Dunbartonshire, a small local authority area bordering the Glasgow city-region, provides an insightful example of a constrained local authority pursuing strategic regeneration priorities through urban design. West Dunbartonshire epitomises the west of Scotland’s post-industrial legacy of multiple deprivation, derelict land, and limited development pressure. Therefore, West Dunbartonshire Council’s fear of driving investment away had previously led it to readily accept poorly designed development proposals, with the resulting fragmented built environment further entrenching the area’s socioeconomic challenges. However, spearheaded by a local politician, West Dunbartonshire Council has recently enacted an internal culture change to support a strategic policy agenda which views urban design as a route to achieving long-term economic growth. This paper presents primary research from a collaborative ESRC doctoral studentship, conducted through semi-structured interviews with local planning stakeholders, and extensive archival work using documents including planning records and policy. The paper identifies how astute political and professional ‘place leadership’, and closely integrated planning and economic development functions, have enabled West Dunbartonshire Council to proactively engage with the local development market in pursuit of long-term public regeneration and placemaking priorities. Despite some success, the Council’s powers of delivery are severely constrained by a reliance on private development capital and the impact of austerity-derived resource constraints on capacity and priorities. The case study therefore reveals the interrelationships between the agency of local leaders and structural neoliberalising tendencies within local governance, an understanding of which is crucial to achieving urban design and regeneration public policy aim