Vision making and values in urban regeneration

This paper explores how ideas of value are put to work in the context of town centre regeneration. Taking a grounded theory approach, it presents a narrative account of the first post-war British New Town centre to be comprehensively renewed. More than twenty years in the making, Bracknell’s regeneration failed when commercial goals ( transactional values ) dominated. We show how the Council’s place leadership helped establish a diverse set of principle-based values that public and private project team actors subscribed to and which also generated transactional value. Vision-making processes helped harness these values and transform the project from a property (re)development to a regeneration that sought to create a culturally self-confident place. Our paper contributes to theories of (re)development and value by exploring the role value(s) play(s) in making regeneration distinctive.