Grassroots Regeneration: From Policy to the Lived Reality of Place

This was the thread running through the FLIPIM 2026 Grassroots Regeneration Conference, held in Birkenhead, which brought together people working across community-led regeneration, place, policy and practice to explore questions around regeneration more deeply.

For those concerned with strengthening the relationship between communities, evidence, and policymaking, the day prompted an important question: what do genuinely grassroots approaches to regeneration require?

Policy timescales are in tension with the need for building long-term trust

We heard throughout the day an ongoing tension between the timescales and structures of policy and the lived reality of place. Government programmes can operate through transactional and risk-conscious structures, while successful community relationships are inherently relational.

Differences in timeframes become particularly significant when programmes change, institutional responsibilities move and the people involved in one phase of an initiative are no longer present in the next. Knowledge and relationships can disappear precisely when communities are being asked to invest their own time and trust in a new programme. Local institutions may also be expected to deliver ambitious place-based policies without always having the structures or capacity required to work in genuinely community-led ways.

The tension between short-term policy structures and the long term relationships needed to build community trust raises a fundamental challenge for programmes concerned with pride in place and neighbourhood regeneration. How can long-term trust be built through short-term or changing institutional structures? And how can policy recognise relationships themselves as part of the infrastructure required for successful regeneration?

Grassroots regeneration needs an ecosystem: communities, local government, civic organisations, businesses, property owners and other institutions working in relationship rather than operating as separate interests.

Questions of trust and institutional relationships also raise an important issue about who is included in conversations about place and whose voices shape regeneration. Property owners, businesses and other private-sector actors can have considerable influence over the future of neighbourhoods and high streets, yet they may be missing from community and policy conversations. Grassroots regeneration needs an ecosystem: communities, local government, civic organisations, businesses, property owners and other institutions working in relationship rather than operating as separate interests.

From regeneration to caring regeneration

Perhaps the most compelling question emerging from the day was deceptively simple: what does caring regeneration look like?

Care changes the way we think about both places and growth by asking us to consider the ongoing attention and nurture required by buildings, relationships and communities after investment. Regeneration, viewed through this lens, becomes less about a single intervention and more about a continuous process of communication and care.

The concept of care also invites us to reconsider our assumptions about safety and resilience. Greater security does not necessarily produce a greater feeling of safety. Security can be associated with control; people may instead experience safety through support, familiarity, relationships and knowing that others are present when they are needed. Designing successful places therefore also means designing for togetherness.

The same principle applies to resilience. Communities should not have to develop an ever ‘thicker skin’ simply to withstand successive difficulties. Interdependence should not be interpreted as weakness. The ability to rely on others, to share resources, to care and to be cared for can itself be understood as a form of collective strength.

Rethinking what counts as growth

These conversations ultimately raise a larger question about how regeneration is valued. What is good for GDP is not automatically good for a community. Economic measures can tell us something important about investment and activity, but they cannot fully describe whether people feel connected, supported, able to participate or hopeful about the future of their neighbourhood.

The high street, for example, can be understood not simply as a retail environment but as civic infrastructure: a place where people encounter one another, participate in public life and develop relationships with their surroundings. Seen in this way, regeneration is about creating the conditions for living together, alongside increasing economic activity.

People act because they care about where they live… it is precisely this passion and sense of place that can make grassroots initiatives powerful.

One of the strongest impressions from the conference was the extraordinary capacity that exists within local communities. People act because they care about where they live. They draw upon personal knowledge, relationships, creativity and attachment to place in ways that institutional systems cannot easily manufacture. Some of those actions may appear unconventional when viewed through the frameworks of government or conventional investment, yet it is precisely this passion and sense of place that can make grassroots initiatives powerful.

The challenge for regeneration policy is therefore to create structures capable of recognising, supporting and working alongside what communities are already doing.

Including community knowledge as evidence

For the academic-policy community, these discussions bring into question what counts as evidence in place-based policymaking. Community knowledge is a form of situated expertise, produced through living, working, caring and building relationships within a place. Strengthening the relationship between communities, researchers and policymakers requires mechanisms that allow this knowledge to shape questions and priorities from the outset, rather than entering only after programmes have been designed such as through consultation.

Ultimately, grassroots regeneration asks us to shift the starting point: from intervention to relationship, from consultation to trust, from individual resilience to interdependence, and from regeneration as delivery to regeneration as care.

If pride in place is to have lasting meaning, it must ultimately be built with the people whose everyday relationships, knowledge and commitment make a place what it is.