Evaluating regeneration policies for rundown industrial sites in the Netherlands

To date, systematic evaluations of regeneration policies and programs for deprived and run-down urban areas which examine whether policy objectives are actually achieved and to what extent this was due to the implementation of that policy or program have been scarce. The dearth of conformance-based evaluations has also been noticed in the wider planning literature. In response to this evaluation gap in planning this paper presents a conformance-based evaluation of regeneration policies for run-down industrial sites in the Netherlands. Regeneration policies and programs for these sites usually involve public provision of infrastructure, public spaces and serviced building land by local authorities. The main objectives of these policies are to promote economic development and to stimulate private investments in buildings. One of the alleged causes of the observed lack of planning evaluations is the absence of an accepted (quantitative) methodology which enables one to attribute observed outcomes to planning activities. This issue has, however, received more attention in the literature on the impact of local economic development policies, which sometimes explicitly incorporate urban regeneration initiatives as they involve targeting incentives at small distressed areas. Although calls have been made for more rigorous evaluations in this research field as well, evaluation methods are more established. A variety of statistical techniques is proposed that could be used to assess whether observed economic outcomes can be attributed to the implementation of the policy (in the case of nonrandomized observational studies). This is normally done by comparing the outcomes in areas (or firms) that are subject to a certain policy or program (the ìtreatmentî group) with comparison groups of areas that are not targeted by this policy (the ìcomparisonîù group). This paper takes up this suggestion and compares the economic outcomes on industrial sites that have been subject to regeneration policies with sites where no regeneration policies have been put into place but which are as similar as possible. This matching is based on the assumption that the probability of regeneration is conditional given certain characteristics of the industrial site. The following indicators have been established to measure the economic outcomes: employment growth, property values and the level of private investments in buildings.