TY - JOUR
T1 - Negotiating and Securing Access: Reflections from a Study into Urban Regeneration and Community Participation in Ethnically Diverse Neighborhoods in London, England
AU - Maginn, Paul
PY - 2007
Y1 - 2007
N2 - In the United Kingdom, there have been a plethora of scholarly investigations into community participation in urban regeneration programs. The outputs from such studies have shed theoretical and empirical light on the structure, process, nature, and extent of community participation in urban regeneration partnerships. However there has been little discussion within the urban policy literature about methodological issues surrounding the study of community participation. Specifically, there has been no analysis of the process of securing access to, within, and through urban regeneration partnerships. This article sheds some light on the process of securing access by looking at the author's experiences of trying to negotiate access into three ethnically diverse neighborhoods in London to study the nature of community participation and power and the significance of race within urban regeneration partnerships. The author shows that negotiating access can be a lengthy and complex process as it involves developing relationships and earning the trust of a wide array of informants via asserting a portfolio of identities.
AB - In the United Kingdom, there have been a plethora of scholarly investigations into community participation in urban regeneration programs. The outputs from such studies have shed theoretical and empirical light on the structure, process, nature, and extent of community participation in urban regeneration partnerships. However there has been little discussion within the urban policy literature about methodological issues surrounding the study of community participation. Specifically, there has been no analysis of the process of securing access to, within, and through urban regeneration partnerships. This article sheds some light on the process of securing access by looking at the author's experiences of trying to negotiate access into three ethnically diverse neighborhoods in London to study the nature of community participation and power and the significance of race within urban regeneration partnerships. The author shows that negotiating access can be a lengthy and complex process as it involves developing relationships and earning the trust of a wide array of informants via asserting a portfolio of identities.
U2 - 10.1177/1525822X07302852
DO - 10.1177/1525822X07302852
M3 - Article
SN - 1525-822X
VL - 19
SP - 425
EP - 440
JO - Field Methods
JF - Field Methods
IS - 4
ER -