The cockpit and the difference between knowledge and understanding

Would you get on a plane if you knew that the pilot could only land the plane by flicking switches in the right order, without understanding what the switches are for?

When you teach a method, it makes sense to distinguish between knowledge and understanding. Knowledge consists of facts, tables and tricks that you can learn by heart. Understanding consists of experience, understanding why you do something. When a method is being taught, understanding is tanding why something happens or should happen allows project managers to use the method in different circumstances. This does not mean that knowledge is unimportant; it means that it fulfils a different function.

During a landing, pilots and co-pilots go through lists stating the sequences to follow: the switches they have to flick. This can be enough to land a plane. But if conditions change because of a single malfunction affecting one switch, the pilot can only react appropriately if he knows why that switch has to be used at that point in time. He can analyse what is going on and think of a different way of doing the same thing.

That is why this paper does not include any standard theoretical tables (even though the annex does include a few examples for the purposes of illustration), preferring practical descriptions of how project managers can establish their own lifestyle categories. (The annex is still under construction)

Thinking about lifestyles and living environments is not new. Wirth's paper (1938) discussed the issue. In 'Urbanism as a Way of Life', Wirth describes urban life as one of a wide range of lifestyles. There are numerous definitions of the concept of 'lifestyles'. The common denominator is that a lifestyle is a description of the behaviours selected by individuals on the basis of taste, preferences, motivation, and value systems .

Lifestyles differ not so much in terms of expenditure as in terms of taste. Someone's lifestyle may not tell us about their level of alcohol consumption; it may tell us what they drink.

Categorising lifestyles on a matrix

Every system for the categorisation of lifestyles includes several dimensions. Usually, a particular system will be simplified to include two or three dimensions for positioning lifestyles. One of the best-known classifications is based on the work of the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. He positions lifestyles in a matrix with an economic axis (from low to high status) and a cultural axis (from conservative to innovative).
The existence of a lifestyle is justifiable on the basis of the existence of other lifestyles. The choices people make on the basis of their lifestyle differ from the choices made by those with other lifestyles.

Behaviour = Lifestyle x Opportunities

Nas and Van der Sande (1985) suggest that people's actual behaviour is not only determined by their lifestyle, but also by their opportunities. These opportunities are largely determined by outside factors (money, time, space, etc.). Nas and Van der Sande distinguish between five dimensions:

Conclusion: a lifestyle is the expression of someone's taste. The way people actually structure their lives also depends on their opportunities.

Demand = Target group x Lifestyle

In the mid-1980s, demand-driven approaches began to gain ground among government authorities.

Before then, planning was mainly supply-driven. Industrial estates and housing were built without considering demand. This did not present a problem as long as it exceeded supply. However, in the 1980s, the economic tide turned, leaving municipal authorities with large empty industrial estates and unbuilt land on their hands which was costing them a fortune in interest. The response was the emergence of 'city marketing', a more deliberate exploration of the market, with an emphasis on target groups and an active approach to identifying combinations of supply and demand.

Despite its historical roots, thinking in terms of lifestyles has become more important in recent years. However, it would be mistaken to suggest that the lifestyle approach has replaced the targetgroup approach. The one complements the other. Target groups allow us to understand who people are . Lifestyles show us what they want .

It should be pointed out that people are better able to express their lifestyle as they acquire more economic or cultural capital. Declining income or talent raises the probability of convergence between a lifestyle and a target group. People with low incomes do differ in terms of lifestyle but they have few resources for expressing that lifestyle. The higher somebody's income, the larger the differences in lifestyle and more important it becomes to use lifestyles actively in order to appeal to those groups. That is why target groups and lifestyles often coincide in urban regeneration areas. People with low incomes tend to be forced more into relinquishing priorities and preferences in order to survive.

The ultimate aim of ReUrbA is to make urbanised areas more appealing. Of course, the question is: appealing for whom? First of all, the groups in place play an important role here. A characteristic difference between urban regeneration and building projects on farmland is that urban regeneration always has to deal with established social structures. Often, the concentration of socio-economic problems among established social groups in a city or a neighbourhood is precisely the reason why investments are made in the existing urban area. The issues that have to be addressed here are: how can get to understand the established social structures, how can we prevent selective migration of people from these groups, and how can we invest the established social structures with significance for the purposes of urban regeneration plans?

Secondly, the wish to establish a more balanced population profile often plays an important role. Towns want to retain groups with substantial incomes and levels of training but it is precisely those groups that have been leaving the towns in recent decades. The question here is what we should provide in order to keep these groups in the towns.

In both cases, the important issues are the reasons why people settle in particular places and wishes relating to patterns of behaviour. In recent decades, those patterns of behaviour have become increasingly detached from the classic demographic and economic indicators.

After World War II, European cities faced such enormous shortages that the emphasis was placed on quantity: the production of housing. People forced to live in attics in their parents' homes wanted homes of their own. The question of what those homes looked like was less important. Once the most urgent quantitative demand for homes had been appeased, there was more demand for quality.

It will be clear that current housing stock and industrial estates fall short in qualitative terms. In the 1970s and 1980s, residential neighbourhoods were rebuilt because of their poor condition. These days, rebuilding is motivated by market considerations: the unbalanced approach to building in the postwar years no longer meets present-day quality demands. We have moved on from 'every man a home' to 'every man his home' .

The 1980s saw the emergence of city marketing in government circles. Although the concept was often confused with simple promotion, it was initially a serious and broad-based attempt from government to focus more deliberately on demand before providing new industrial estates and housing locations. The aim was to switch from the supply to the demand side.

At the end of the 1990s, it began to emerge that it was not enough to work with target groups on the basis of well-established indicators such as income and age. In the meantime, society had become so prosperous that large groups of individuals were in a position to make more individualised choices

based on personal preferences and taste. The increasing prosperity resulted in the rapid erosion of the 'constraints and controls' that used to be such a feature of society in general. The erosion of this 'gentle coercion' resulted in more liberty for individuals to structure their lives in accordance with

their own preferences. (This is, for example, clearly seen in the change in thinking about marriage: relationships before marriage, living as a single person or cohabitation have become socially acceptable.) As a result of this increase in opportunities for the expression of personal preferences, quality requirements have not only become stricter but also much more diverse.

Because taste has acquired a position alongside quantitative demands, a lifestyle approach has also emerged alongside a target-sector approach. Thinking in terms of lifestyles is necessary in a world where a person's origins, religion, profession, address and traditions determine behaviour less, and where individual choices determine behaviour more and more. As such, lifestyles are not new; what is new is that lifestyle as a determinant of behaviour functions much more independently of sociodemographic and socio-economic characteristics than used to be the case.

There are therefore major advantages to an approach using lifestyles:

• it allows policymakers to get to grips with preference differentiation better than if they use targetgroup classifications alone;
• it lays bare new links that are independent of target groups, and patterns of consumer behaviour in various contexts (lifestyle affects residential preferences but also leisure activities, the use of facilities, etc.; it makes possible an integral approach);
• it makes it possible to find a middle way between thinking exclusively in terms of target groups (something which is no longer adequate) and hyper-individualisation (in which every individual has a unique pattern of demands and which can no longer serve as a basis for policy).

The aim of a lifestyle approach is not to create idealised communities but to come to grips with the real patterns of behaviour of groups of clients.

Our hyper-individualised society can no longer be dealt with in terms of target groups alone; an approach using target sectors is no longer adequate to predict somebody's behaviour.

Increasing prosperity has also resulted in greater mobility for many groups of people. Since the beginning of the twentieth century, people have been prepared to structure their lives within 'an hour's journey'. But the distance they can travel in that hour has increased dramatically, with a corresponding dramatic increase in freedom of choice for the populace and business. Home and work have become disentwined. This means that towns have often been confronted, both in the past and the present, with selective migration: people move to the suburbs if they are in a position to do so.

This increase in freedom of choice for the consumer is, in principle, balanced by the freedom of choice of the supplier, the town. If this mechanism is to function properly, the town must have the right products to offer because the competition has increased considerably.

This makes it more necessary for policymakers to take an active approach to devising new combinations of supply and demand that cater to different tastes. At the same time, if they do a good job, they will establish a broader reach, allowing them to cater to new niche markets.

Lifestyles can be used to determine what specific products a town must create (i.e. lifestyles as a way of shaping the substance of the concept). And people can then be convinced to move to the town on the basis of lifestyles (i.e. lifestyles as a tool for selecting a specific look for marketing purposes in order to attract specific groups).

Now we know what lifestyles are and understand why working with lifestyles has become important, the next question is: 'how can I as a project manager work with lifestyles in my project?'

We describe below the main steps towards working with lifestyles in urban regeneration projects. On the basis of theory and experience in the field, we have set out a method that will allow project managers to establish their own lifestyle categories quickly for their own projects. We assume that they can do this without engaging in years of academic research (the time and the money are often lacking in urban regeneration projects). We also assume that establishing 70% of the truth quickly is more valuable than establishing 90% of the truth over a long period of time. The information below is therefore primarily collected through interviews with key figures, connoisseurs' of the social structures in the urban regeneration field.

A recipe that depends on the cook

We must make an important reservation at this point. The precise method required always depends on the local conditions of the project. Every project is different: the size, the aims, the local culture, the project staff and the financial conditions. You should use what follows as a recipe and, like any good cook, you will add your own ingredients. To help you, we provide you with five questions you can ask yourself.

Why is there no standard classification?

There are already many standard classifications of lifestyles. However, they have two drawbacks. First of all, the underlying preferences mean that lifestyles are culture-based. There is, in other words, no universal lifestyle classification. Lifestyle descriptions can be country- or region-based. Secondly, standard classifications mainly work on broader scales: entire towns of 300,000 inhabitants, or entire countries. However, as soon as local projects are involved (or a series of local projects), these standard classifications are too crude as a basis for actual decisions. It will be necessary to zoom into the specific lifestyles that constitute the local context. A characteristic feature of urban regeneration is that it is also important to take into account specific lifestyles of all groups present in the area.

Incidentally, whatever the classification used for lifestyles, three main groups are always discernable:

1. pioneers (advocates of individualisation and modernisation);
2. materialistic group (hedonists who are happy with what they have got);
3. stragglers (anxious, prefer order).

The annex contains examples of existing standard classifications (the annex is still under construction).

Schematic overview

To start with, a schematic overview of the recipe. This is a concept that still requires elaboration with input from partners.

Question 1: 'Which target groups are in place at present and which ones do we want?'

Chapter 1 of this paper discussed the differences between lifestyles and target groups. Both are important components of a demand-oriented development process.

By definition, urban regeneration projects take time, and the social context changes during that time. Furthermore, urban regeneration is often driven by the ambition to make positive changes in the social context. So an important first step is to identify autonomous developments and the ambitions for target groups.

The target groups here are classified according to the following criteria:

• income;
• age;
• type of household;
• distinction between purchased housing; rented or low-income housing; private sector.

What matters are not precise numbers but, above all, the expected or desired development trends. Diagrams can be drawn for each of these criteria, showing the current situation and including arrows indicating the direction of developments. The example below is taken from the Zoning Plan for the town of Almere (an overall spatial-strategic plan for a centre of urban growth in the Netherlands with approximately 175,000 inhabitants).

Structure Plan Almere

Development of income in Almere, related to the Amsterdam region, 2001.

Left the income distribution in the Amsterdam region. The arrows show Amsterdam would like a better balance with less lower-income groups. Almere desires to get more higher-income groups, and takes it's regional responsibility by admitting lower-income groups.

The age distribution shows young people moving to Almere from Amsterdam. Almere wishes to service the younger and the older households more than it does now.

The age distribution now and in the future is based less on ambition, and more on autonomous demographic shifts. The income distribution is based more on ambitions: bonding more people with higher incomes to the town while at the same time assuming the regional responsibility to cater for people with lower incomes.

This classification can be made at (at least) two scale levels:

1. the broader vicinity of the area in which the urban regeneration project is located (for example, the borough, the city or the region);

2. the urban regeneration area itself (for example, the neighbourhood or the immediate vicinity of the project area).

Quantitative autonomous developments can be derived from demographic forecasts; their qualitative counterparts can be derived from interviews with key players, 'connoisseurs' of the area and/or important social trends.
The ambitions emerge from the wishes of the leading organisation or its sponsors (politicians, directors) and are limited to a certain degree by:

Question 2: 'Which lifestyles are in place at present?'

The established groups can be classified using not only the classic target-group indicators (income, age, type of household) but also on the basis of lifestyle.

In order to determine what the established lifestyles are, a qualitative picture is needed of the dominant groups in the neighbourhood. The focus here will be on describing emotions and motivation rather than generating numbers.

What are the features of the established socio-cultural structure? What are the main social groups in the neighbourhood? What are their characteristics, what guides their patterns of behaviour? Are they neighbourhood-minded or precisely the opposite? How do they behave when it comes to using facilities? What are their main reasons for wanting to live here? Did they come of their own free will or because they had no other choice?

Here, it is important to understand the socio-cultural problems that play a role in the neighbourhood. But it is also vitally important to understand the opportunities provided by the established groups and it is precisely in this latter area that there has been a shift in thinking in recent years: every group of people has its own potential that can be used positively; we must not focus exclusively on the problems in a neighbourhood. The ABCD method (Asset-Based Community Development) is one of the main products of this philosophy.

An understanding is required of social history in recent decades: how, when and why have groups come to live here? Who were they, what was distinctive about them? Which changes have taken place and why did that happen? Which new groups have become dominant recently compared to the groups of a few decades ago, and why have those new groups come to live here? What are the local stories, the 'narratives' of the neighbourhood?

An understanding is also required of the socio-cultural image of the area that prevails in the vicinity. Urban regeneration neighbourhoods often have a negative image, even though this may not concur with thinking in the neighbourhood itself. So it is also important to talk about the neighbourhood with key players from outside the area.

How can lifestyles be defined?

Make a study to determine which groups can be identified on the basis of behaviour.

• a) First of all, it is important to determine whether groups are neighbourhood-minded or not: how do they use the neighbourhood? Are they neighbourhood-oriented? What does the social network look like, does it overlap with the residential area or is it located on a broader scale (where do friends live, where are the facilities that people use, etc.)? This results in two groups:
  • Group 1, which sees the neighbourhood not only as the place where their homes are, but also as the place where their lives are located. They want to be active in the neighbourhood itself.
  • Group 2, which sees the neighbourhood as a base: it is where their homes are, but their lives are spent elsewhere. They are happy with the neighbourhood as long as they are not bothered by it.
• b) Check whether group 1 can really be dealt with as a single group or whether there are major differences within it. This can be determined by looking at concrete patterns of using facilities:
  • o schools, crèches and care facilities; lifestyle is just one element that may determine the use of these facilities; which type of school, type of crèche and type of care facility is chosen does depend on lifestyle;
  • o recreation, sport, catering and culture: it is in this area in particular that differences in patterns of use emerge, opening up the possibility of distinguishing between a variety of lifestyles.
  It is important here to establish a picture not only of the actual user profile but also to make use of the underlying motives.

It is possible to get to grips properly with group 1 and any underlying subgroups by means of interviews with key players from the neighbourhood. In the case of group 2, it is more difficult to recruit key players, precisely because they are less committed to their own neighbourhood and therefore tend to be less organised than the first group.

Incidentally, some target groups (which are defined on the basis of socio-demographic characteristics) may overlap completely with lifestyles (which are defined on the basis of motives, and of patterns of behaviour and housing patterns). Urban regeneration neighbourhoods, for example, are often home to a group of 'original residents' who were never either willing or able to leave and who have now grown old. These 'abandoned seniors' will have many similar preferences. As stated above, there are differences in lifestyle in lowincome groups, but these groups do not have enough resources to express them. That is why target groups and lifestyles often coincide in urban regeneration areas. People with low incomes tend to be forced more into relinquishing priorities and preferences in order to survive.

The annex provides, for the purposes of inspiration, examples of existing lifestyle classifications.

Question 3: 'Who is leaving and why?'

In order to get to grips with the existing social structure, it is very illuminating to know not only who lives somewhere now, but also who is leaving, and their main reasons for doing so.

In Newcastle, for example, there has been a study of the main reasons why people leave the city. In descending order of importance, the reasons identified were: 1) the type of housing, 2) the value of the housing and 3) the quality of primary education. If the city wants to keep people in the city, something needs to change in each of these areas.

At this stage, then, the focus is on an examination of housing mobility: who is leaving, and what are their main reasons? Are these based on facts or on perception? This can take the form of interviews with the leavers themselves but, for example, also with estate agents from the areas to which they go.

Question 4: 'Which new lifestyles will we bring into the area?'

Desired target groups known

Step 1 defines the target groups that must be attracted to the area or that one wants to attract. One ambition that emerges at this stage is to bond more 35+ families with children to the city; another is to bond more well-educated groups with higher incomes in owneroccupied dwellings, or to provide new concepts for older people.

Identification of associated lifestyle

It is then important to identify the associated lifestyle properly. The target groups can be subdivided into various lifestyle groups. Within the target groups, it is important to define precisely the lifestyle that can be recruited to the area. Particularly at this stage, it is very important to think in terms of lifestyles, and to look for products that cater to the motives of lifestyles in the desired target groups. These products then need to be created and marketed; if this were not necessary, this target group would already be present in the neighbourhood.

In part, urban regeneration is a question of tempting new groups to move or return to the city. These are usually people with higher incomes who must be prepared to buy housing in the urban area in the face of what is often fierce competition from surrounding suburban areas. The large majority of the target group will want to stay in these suburban areas.

However, what matters is to attract precisely that part of the target group that wants to settle in the city, for example because they will then be close to a city centre, with the cultural facilities provided by the city, or because of the cultural climate in the city, or because they actually want their children to grow up in the city.

Peeling down to the niche

The result is a form of niche thinking. In order to get through to the niche(s) which might be tempted to settle in the neighbourhood, what is required is a sort of 'peeling system' in which the selected group gradually gets smaller.

This ambition must be well matched to the opportunities actually offered by the area. To do this, links must be established with:

1. the groups which may or may not be attracted by the nature of the area (consisting, in particular, of the spatial design and atmosphere, accessibility by car, the facilities in place, the possibility of re-using existing buildings with character); this can be looked at from the point of view of the here and now, or from the perspective of the future after changes have taken place in the spatial fabric as part of the urban regeneration process;
2. the new groups which may or may not be reconcilable with the lifestyles already in place (i.e. those mapped out in question 2); it is important to take a good look at how current and new lifestyles can be reconciled, or at least to prevent the lifestyles conflicting;
3. the new groups which pay little attention to the present, often negative, image, or which can be recruited on the basis of a new image yet to be created.

It is important here to match features of the urban regeneration area with the target groups and the lifestyles. This is an iterative process.

From lifestyle to products

As soon as this peeling process has led to the definition of this last, small, group, it will be possible to decide what products are really needed if the lifestyles are going to settle in the area. This will have to emerge in:

• the facilities (city culture);
• the look and the atmosphere of the surroundings (cityscape);
• to a certain extent, the type of housing; ground-plan, size and cost are linked more to the type of target group (income, age, size of household); the look of the housing is particularly lifestyle-dependent (status, architecture, view, safety).

In combination with measures for the target groups and lifestyles already settled in the neighbourhood, the result is a programme for urban regeneration. If this programme is to cater to lifestyles, it is important not only to develop steering based on functions and types of housing, but also on status, the atmosphere of the housing and the surroundings (design of public space, overall image) and facilities for recreation, sport, catering and culture (these may not necessarily have to be present: a decision may actually be taken to recruit lifestyles in which the emphasis is on peace and quiet). In other words, the programme has to provide a picture of:

• the functions;
• the cityscape (atmosphere, look);
• the city culture (facilities, activities).

The main principle is actually thinking from the needs and desires of the consumer. "Home buyers see through different eyes than do builders and architects. They want to know how liveable a house is in terms of their own lifestyle." (Lives, Inc, 1997)

If large-scale research is out of the question, it is still possible to get a better grip on them. The picture you draw should not be too specific, because then no-one fits it anymore. On the other hand, it should not be too general either, because then it will be hard to make clear choices later on.

To get a better picture of the daytime activity patterns, different thinking steps are possible. Looking at their current housing situation is an option, if that is also the desired situation for the lifestyle group. Interviewing key-figures is possible. Or, if no representatives are available, it could help to think of a typical well-known TV-character that fits the lifestyle group. What would Bridget Jones want for a house, cityscape or city culture? And what about Hyacinth Bucket?

Transition: various new lifestyle groups in phases of urban regeneration

Urban regeneration plans often look only at the current situation, and the new image that will be in place twenty years from now. Urban regeneration processes are, however, often long and they do not result in the immediate replacement of the old image by the new one. What is often missing is an idea of how to establish the new image.

In terms of lifestyle classifications, it is therefore more important in the early stages to turn to pioneering groups rather than conservative groups. The group being recruited will want to have the feeling of being pioneers and need not necessarily want to be in the most luxurious housing straightaway. The group is also attracted to the urban area because they find something there which is not present in suburban areas. It is only when the pioneers have settled and begin to propagate a new, positive image of their area that the groups which attach less importance to innovation will follow them.

Question 5: 'Can we actually serve the target group we are looking for?'

A critical evaluation is required, at least at the end of, but preferably during, this thought process. The trap inherent in mapping out consumer groups (using target groups and lifestyles) is that wishful thinking becomes ascendant. If, when exploring the potential demand, you fail to arrive at a solution after a lot of thought, you should perhaps conclude that a different approach is required.

For example: looking for target groups other than those defined with question 1. Alternatively: you should perhaps not want to recruit new target groups, and you should base your plans solely on the people already present in the neighbourhood.

If a target group has been selected, it is crucial to remain critical about whether or not it will be possible to actually 'tempt' this group. For instance, households leaving the city for the suburbs has often been explained from the negative aspects of cities. However, Heath (2001) points out that many are not appalled by the cities, but more they just find the suburbs more attractive to live in.