Chris Brown

Chris Brown is chief executive of Igloo Regeneration, the development manager of Aviva Investors’ Igloo Regeneration Fund.
Aviva Investors’ Igloo Regeneration Fund is the world’s first responsible real estate fund, according to the United Nations. It undertakes sustainable investment in well designed, environmentally sustainable regeneration projects on the edge of the UK’s top 20 city centres to support deprived communities and promote health happiness and well-being.
Chris is a director of Isis Waterside Regeneration, a joint venture between Igloo, British Waterways and Muse that regenerates brownfield waterside sites around the UK.
He is a director of Blueprint, Igloo’s public/private partnership with the East Midlands Development Agency and the Homes & Communities Agency, undertaking sustainable mixed-use regeneration in the East Midlands.
Chris also chairs Creative Space. Igloo Regeneration invests in Eye

The New Politics of Regeneration and Planning?

By , Tuesday, 8 May 2012, Be the first to comment

I’m not a great fan of party politics, usually taking the view ‘Don’t vote it only encourages them’. Neither am I a great fan of elections (in which the low turnouts suggest I am not alone) because the Purdah period inevitable creates disruption in the smooth running of regeneration projects.

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Planning System – Fit For Purpose?

By , Monday, 30 April 2012, 1 Comment

I’m slowly coming the conclusion that the planning system is not fit for purpose any more.

This is not because it has accreted and atrophied over the decades (though it has) or because I disagree with any of the Government’s policy choices.

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Blog – Custom Building the Big Society

By , Sunday, 22 April 2012, Be the first to comment

As the NewBuy debacle continues to embarrass Government (and the HBF), Grant Shapps staged a publicity offensive at No. 10 to try and win back the Daily Mail readers after the Conservatory Tax debacle.

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NPPF Omnishambles?

By , Wednesday, 18 April 2012, 4 Comments

Government’s apparent inability to make its big political ideas workable on the ground is a source of huge frustration for politicians and citizens alike. So why is it so difficult? Or why do omnishambles occur?

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Bored with the NPPF?

By , Sunday, 1 April 2012, Be the first to comment

It’s quite possible that everyone is now bored with the infinite number of opinions and interpretative battles that multitudinous skim readers have been firing across the virtual ether.

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Disrupting Property Markets – A Green Week

By , Monday, 26 March 2012, Be the first to comment

It’s been a Green Week this week and I feel that I have glimpsed the future, and for most existing property industry organisations the future looks pretty scary.
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Regeneration Funding – The Only Game in Town?

By , Monday, 19 March 2012, Be the first to comment

The launch of The Chrysalis Fund in Liverpool City Region this week brings to seven (if my arithmetic is working) Joint European Support for Sustainable Investment in City Areas (JESSICA) funds operational in the UK with around £500m of funds (out of about £2.5 Bn worth of funds across the EU – don’t quote me on the exact numbers, I’m in blog mode). There are a couple more in the UK trying to get in under the wire (the money needs to be spent by the end of 2015) so the final total may be around 10.

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Procuring Prosperous Place-making

By , Sunday, 11 March 2012, 1 Comment

The P word (Procurement) has entered regeneration parlance over the last three decades and created a new industry, similar to the health and safety industry, with a risk averse culture, a huge ability to say NO and virtually no capacity to innovate.

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Planning and the Major House Builder ‘Benefit Junkies’

By , Tuesday, 28 February 2012, 3 Comments

The planning systems in the UK don’t make development happen. Plans do not deliver infrastructure, or serviced sites or affordable housing subsidy (to name just a few fundamental flaws in the system). Basically plans do little more than curb the worst negative impacts of the market on the planet and society (still a really valuable contribution).

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Urban Design, Sustainability, Land Use and Transport Planning

By , Sunday, 19 February 2012, Be the first to comment

The importance of urban design compared to the value we put on it has been brought home to me again this week. In working in Tottenham, to try to maximise the impact on regeneration of the efforts to reduce carbon by 40% by 2020, urban design keeps appearing as a critical element. Haringey are wrestling, using the advice of the Haringey Carbon Commission, with questions that all local authorities to some extent are now having to think about. How, in practical terms, can places reduce the amount of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases they produce?
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