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  The excellent Jonathan Meades puts it much better than I ever could:-
  
  For many years, the nomenklatura of the regeneration racket have had a ball riding the most extravagantly appointed of gravy trains. They have enthusiastically massacred language: “Incentivising initiatives, intiativising incentives.” They have greedily swallowed their own PR about big-thought canopies. They are courageously willing to coalface Armageddon decisions about what font to use on the cover of “Triggering Endeavour Drivers”. They have demonstrated a touching faith in shopping and in “piazzas” lined by chain cafés whose punters risk frostbite.
  
  They believe in “culture” – which can, and does, mean just about anything: creative hubs, iconic icons, lifestyle paradigms.
  
  Successive governments which claim to have been unencumbered by an ideological taste for dirigism have poured vast sums into municipal and regional vanity projects whose attention-seeking flash has been in inverse proportion to their capacity to...to what? What are they for? Do these arched bridges and vibrantly diverse handshake sheds have anything that might be classed as a purpose? If they do, it is not vouchsafed.
  
  The Catalan architect Ricardo Bofill said recently: “I fundamentally believe that changing the use of obsolete places within the city is one of the main activities architects should involve themselves with.” For an architect to pronounce thus is close to apostasy. But anyone who is not an architect or in the construction industry or a supplier of witless bling will simply nod in agreement. Of course this is what should be happening. Instead of gestural engineering – landmark ahoy! – and profligate new theatres, regeneration should be achieved by countless small scale interventions. And this is where the Tories should focus their energies.

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