Toward social regeneration

Is there now a new and sustainable model for cities and, indeed, for society as a whole? Is that what all the talk about sustainability, empowerment, stakeholders, partnership, the third sector is essentially about? Or are these terms elements of a new rhetoric that seems, but only seems, to point in that direction? We publish here further extracts from our conference1 which addressed these issues. In the first section below, ‘Toward social regeneration’, Paul Corrigan, Alain Lipietz and Will Hutton explore the nature of the problems presented by the public and private sectors and seek to clarify, in this context, the nature and potential of the third sector and of a stakeholding economy/society. In the second section, ‘Architecture and society at an impasse’, we seek to apply the above considerations to two recent stages in the development of Tower Hamlets, an area with a large Bangladeshi population in East London, through the experience of two architects, Richard MacCormac and Ian Ritchie, and of a loc...