‘Faith’ in Urban Regeneration? Engaging Faith Communities in Urban Regeneration

The importance of community involvement in urban regeneration is now received wisdom. This study, by a team from the Universities of Bradford, Coventry, East London and Sheffield Hallam, explores a neglected dimension of 'community' - the commitments, interests, organisations and social networks that relate to people's religious identities. It explores the present and potential contribution of faith communities and their members to regeneration, and the relationship of faith communities to official programmes of neighbourhood renewal. Research in Bradford, Coventry, Newham and Sheffield found that:

• Many faith communities and their individual members already make a positive and significant contribution to regeneration work. Faith communities bring important resources to urban regeneration. However, these can be over-estimated, and there are significant inequalities among faiths in their present ability to engage. 
• Faith communities often share many common features and concerns with other organisations within the community and voluntary sectors. But they can also bring to regeneration activity distinctive and strong motivations for social action, their long-term local presence, the provision of informal settings and activities, and a commitment to listening to local people.
• Faith communities are highly diverse in their theologies, values and organisation, though this often goes unrecognised. Engagement with faith communities makes demands on official agencies for 'religious literacy' and long-term encounter, for which they are often ill-equipped and ill-informed. Regeneration professionals may face difficulties in trying to relate secular, liberal values to a variety of religious values.
• Many members of faith communities are active and challenging in their approach and require to be engaged, not merely enlisted. They reported both positive and negative experiences of involvement in urban regeneration programmes.
• Urban regeneration provides opportunities for developing understanding and trust between diverse communities despite, and sometimes in the face of, the tensions and conflicts created by those local, national and international crises in which religion is implicated.