Why would firms engage in urban regeneration projects?

Urban regeneration that combines integrated and place-based approaches increasingly aims at including public-private partnerships and the active involvement of companies in neighbourhood revitalisation. This is expected to contribute to regeneration in various valuable and sustainable ways including alleviation of public expenditure. As such public planners' expectations to private companies are considerable and therefore the paper investigates the companies' attitude towards engagement in neighbourhood regeneration and confronts this with the aspirations of public planners. The study builds mainly on case studies in selected inner-district urban neighbourhoods. It combines a number of different data sets. Official statistical data and planning documents and analyses are used to get a general profile of businesses in selected neighbourhoods. Primary data are collected by means of individual and group interviews in private and public business firms, observations at local business or neighbourhood meetings, etc. Findings confirm that there is considerable incongruity between the views of public planners and company managers as regards what is at issue in the neighbourhood. Furthermore, corporate social responsibility is very often a matter of self-interest whereas local engagement is often considered irrelevant or a matter for public authority. Finally, there is a significant gap of knowledge of the other part between planners and local companies respectively.