Regeneration policies and their impact on coastal areas

It is clear that national regeneration policy, as it focuses on or otherwise affects coastal settlement, needs to be examined in all its dimensions and at all levels. What are, and should be, the relationships between European funding bodies, government departments, Regional Development Authorities (RDAs), local authorities and entities such as HLF and English Heritage, the National Trust and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds? How do, and how should, relationships between the public, the private, the hybrid and the voluntary sector play out in regeneration programmes? How far should they be prescriptive, how far enabling, and what should the balance be under given sets of circumstances? How do we make national regeneration policies agile, flexible and interactive at the local level? And what, for these purposes, is special about regeneration policy at the coast? How can national policies be encouraged to take account of the difference and distinctiveness of coastal settlements and of each coastal settlement within a common framework, and how can we overcome the obstacles to recognising this distinctiveness, which still meets with resistance and even rejection at national and RDA level, as evidenced by the first response to the Coastal Towns report? What can we learn from the successes and failures of the past, perhaps especially the recent past, and how can we feed these understandings into current and future policy? And what can we learn, in positive and negative terms, from national regeneration policies (or the lack of them) in other countries?¹

This chapter cannot engage with all these issues in equal depth, and must be selective. We are fortunate to have a new overview of urban regeneration in the United Kingdom, which sets the theme in historical context and examines a wide range of issues and problems.² This is particularly useful because it charts a course through the bewildering array of initiatives that are revealed by a trawl through the literature, as layer upon layer of past proposals, approaches and agenda swim past the investigator’s gaze. This was already being described as ‘the regeneration maze’ nearly a decade ago.³ We also have a new collection of international essays, with genuinely global scope and adopting a variety of approaches, which is particularly concerned with the avoidance of inequity and the inclusion of ethnic minorities and the poor, and which will help to rescue us from insularity by encouraging comparative perspectives. It even includes an important essay on a historic coastal city, Salvador da Bahia in Brazil.⁴

This offers a reminder that we must resist the temptation to regard the regeneration of seaside towns as a uniquely British set of issues; nor, indeed, is it peculiar to so-called ‘cold water’ resorts with nineteenth-century origins. There are plenty of comparable cases on the French Channel Coast and on the ‘Jersey shore’ of the north-eastern United States, for example; but we can also find them on the Spanish Mediterranean coast, where early ‘mass tourism’ resorts have needed extensive intervention, and on Italy’s Adriatic coast, where the ‘colonie di vacanza’ of the inter-war years have left a fascinating architectural legacy that resists easy adaptation to new holiday tastes, preferences and needs. They are also evident in Florida and on the Gulf Coast. There is no room to develop this theme here, but it is worth reminding ourselves that good practice in coastal regeneration may be found outside England if we care to look for it.⁵

The focus of most work on regeneration, however, is still overwhelmingly on cities and their problems; and it is interesting to see how cities, ‘inner cities’, ‘urban neighbourhoods’ and estates have dominated the regeneration literature on Britain, whether critical, descriptive or prescriptive. A word-search of book titles in the British Library on-line catalogue, which is an indicative if imperfect approach to analysis, communicates this message very strongly, while revealing lesser preoccupations with rural regeneration, market towns and docklands. These last are the only ‘coastal’ examples, and are mainly associated with maritime cities like Liverpool, Bristol and, of course, London. ‘Coastal regeneration’, as a word-search category for books, produced not a single hit. This is a little misleading, in that local coastal regeneration initiatives have been in train for the last quarter of a century in particular places. But it is very interesting to see how recently a generic interest in coastal regeneration, as a focus for involvement and investment, has emerged.

The most visible initiatives, apart from the work of the Coastal Communities Alliance and its component organisations, have been sparked by, or coincided with, the report of the Communities and Local Government Select Committee on Coastal Towns in 2007, and the angry response to the government’s attempt to evade the consequences of its conclusions. Thus, in November 2007, we saw the establishment of the coastal regeneration fund, led by CABE, which offered £45 million up to bidders during 2008–10, and the cross-departmental working group which constituted the response of the Department for Communities and Local Government to the Coastal Towns report. Meanwhile English Heritage, whose interest in the seaside has a longer pedigree (like that of the Coastal Communities Alliance and its antecedents), produced its report on regeneration in historic coastal towns, and the Historical Environment Local Management (HELM) scheme signposted a local dimension to the initiative. Local initiatives are, indeed, proliferating, in varying relationships with outside bodies, such as the University of Brighton’s Coastal Regeneration Research Centre at Hastings, or the interventions by Roger de Haan at Folkestone. Now is clearly a propitious moment for taking matters further.

But this is jumping the gun slightly. In the first place, we need to return to the question of what we might understand by ‘regeneration’. This chapter presents a particular point of view. At the core of the concept should be the idea of giving a new, fresh lease of life to something that is already there, enabling it to rejuvenate itself and grow in ways that are new, dynamic and sustainable, but recognisably drawing on existing identities, resources and vitality.

Regeneration, as a concept, is not about destroying what is already there in order to replace it with something completely different, on the model of the ‘slum clearance’ programmes of the middle decades of the twentieth century. That kind of operation may sometimes be necessary and even desirable, but the appropriate label for it would be ‘redevelopment’ or ‘replacement’, in association with rebranding and place-making on a scoured and levelled site. ‘Renewal’ is also a relevant descriptor, which in practice also tends to be associated more with demolition and rebuilding than with the idea of regeneration envisaged here. In most parts of most coastal settlements we should not be thinking in such drastic terms: these are not brown-field sites whose former identities can be swept away and buried, but, as Beatty and Fothergill have demonstrated, communities whose historic identities are still recognised and whose capacity for generating employment, attracting migrants and conjuring remembered pleasures is still powerful. So ‘regeneration’, in this sense of reviving and revitalising rather than destroying and replacing, should generally be the order of the day at the British seaside. This is not always understood by those who intervene in coastal urban settings, especially when they are not embedded in the communities in question. Neil Lee’s report for the Work Foundation on the importance of ‘distinctiveness’ reinforces the concerns of, for example, English Heritage in support of these contentions.⁶

Regeneration is also more than just an economic concept, a key point that is also often overlooked. Economic questions are at the core of it, but they are not the whole package. Local jobs and spending power need to be created and sustained, and ways of dealing with unemployment and benefit dependency, together with shortages of decent affordable housing, lack of consistent, reliable incomes, and lack of demand to sustain local businesses, are necessarily central to regeneration policy. Interventions in these fields appear to offer measurable yardsticks and outcomes, which are particularly important when central government is evaluating apparent fitness for purpose; and, in this respect and others, they are in tune with dominant values, with the result that preoccupation with the necessary economic basis for action may become exclusive and overriding, without accounting for the whole picture.

It is perhaps unfortunate that government policy on regeneration is so firmly focused on economic development and performance as an end in itself, and on benchmarking against neighbours and averages. These are useful indicators of state of play and trajectory of change, but they cannot be satisfactory as apparent ‘ends’ in themselves, especially when they are necessarily abstracted from the ways in which localities are experienced ‘on the ground’.

We also need to remember that, while it is right to regard the distinctiveness of coastal employment and demographic profiles and (for example) the related health problems as requiring attention, they are also identified with the peculiarities of the coast as a hidden ‘region’, and we should not expect to be able to iron them out: they are part and parcel of the necessary diversity of the English whole, and interventions need to aim at managing variations rather than aspiring to remove them. Related issues involving, for example, the need to tackle crime and antisocial behaviour,⁷ under-achievement and lack of opportunity, seasonality,⁸ population instability and ‘churn’, are likewise high on the agenda. National policies are available to engage with many of these interrelated sets of problems, but they need to be adjustable to take account of regional and generic distinctiveness, and especially local circumstances.

Coastal towns, and specifically coastal resorts, have generic issues that are specific to them as a ‘family’ of towns, while varying in extent and nature on different coastlines and according to the experiences of individual resorts, with their various markets, social profiles, environments and histories. Regeneration initiatives need to recognise this variety, which is expressed through a range of attributes that may need to be safeguarded, respected and nurtured when decisions that affect localities are made, at whatever level and along whatever axis of power they are taken. Such attributes are likely to include architecture (especially the architecture of enjoyment), amenity, layout, industrial history, the informal paraphernalia of established activities, traditions of festivity, entertainment and the occupation and use of space, and free access to places of shared pleasure. A good deal of ‘regeneration’ literature does indeed focus on such issues, especially architecture, art and performance; but it needs to be connected more systematically with the other components of this polymorphous concept, and especially with the dominant emphasis on economic performance and service delivery.⁹ Regeneration, as such, needs to be conceived in a holistic way. Moreover, it will be successful only if it works with the grain of existing local cultures and preferences, and sustains the positive distinctiveness of place-myth and local identity for residents, visitors and those who may be in transition between the two conditions.

The key players ‘on the ground’ in coastal regeneration are often (and perhaps increasingly) going to be local, even when the nature of the exercise is to find the best ways of negotiating appropriate ways forward with a government whose instincts are (still) centralising, cascading policy from the top down and the centre outwards through what is in many ways the preferred (and often catastrophic) model, the line management system with prescribed targets (leading to game-playing and misdirection of effort) and (pseudo-)quantitative checks on outcomes. Even so, this is where decisions have to be made about which of the bewildering array of options will be worth pursuing, with which partners, and to what ends, not least because of the enduring lack of joined-up thinking higher up the chain of command. It is encouraging that government policy on SNR (Sub-National Economic Development and Regeneration), as reviewed in July 2007, recognises the importance of the sub-regional level of economic decision-making. The need to focus on the local level applies to coastal communities with particular force, and government’s historic reluctance to recognise the importance of this kind of settlement, the distinctive problems that the coast poses (beyond the obvious technical ones of sea defences), and the need for ‘coastal’ to become as established a category as ‘rural’ for policy purposes, were made only too clear in the initial response to the report of the Coastal Towns Commission.

The most dynamic and successful period for England’s coastal towns in general was probably the later nineteenth and early decades of the twentieth century, perhaps between about 1870 and 1939, when municipal government was at its strongest and most self-confident, accessing advice and expertise from an increasingly effective central government civil service on matters of technology and best practice, developing a proud tradition of local public service and expertise among elected representatives and officers alike, and installing a remarkable array of infrastructure to sustain the health of what was still, predominantly, a locally owned and run private sector. This period, and these processes, were not conflict-free, and nor were local authorities uniformly successful, effective or free from conflicts of interest. We should add that the key decades at the turn of the century were economically and politically propitious, especially at the seaside.¹⁰

Decline probably began to set in during the 1930s, becoming sustained and serious after the Second World War and cumulatively disastrous after 1979, as the financial autonomy of local government was eroded and central controls were steadily intensified. This has not been solely a British set of problems: it has also been apparent, for example, in the United States.¹¹

The heyday of local and municipal government cannot return, at least in its previous form. But a retrospective view offers a reminder that restoring a measure of civic pride and autonomy to municipal government requires the reconstruction of a measure of trust and prestige (which has, in its turn, to be earned), and of a cadre of experienced, competent and trustworthy civic leaders, as well as initiative and financial independence, that has been progressively and cumulatively lost over the last half century.¹²

It is therefore exciting, at precisely the point where the currently orthodox approach to recession threatens the spending power of local government, to highlight the appearance of a report (by Tom Symons and Chris Leslie) that emphasises the need for local action and empowerment through access to new sources of capital.¹³

One indicator, among many, of the likely impact of the funding crisis in urban regeneration is the projected collapse in land sales receipts for the Home and Communities Agency, the regeneration quango that replaces the Housing Corporation and English Partnerships, with a decline of around 90 per cent in prospect and a likelihood that very little money will be available to bidders in the 2010/11 round.¹⁴ Symons and Leslie emphasise the necessity for continued infrastructure investment as part of wider regeneration initiatives. They suggest that local authorities should be able to bypass the Treasury and go direct to capital markets through bond issues, while finding creative ways to access capital and manage financial reserves. Potential strategies include the generation of revenue streams through user charging, and – more positively – the taking up of new trading opportunities as ‘permissive powers of wellbeing and general competence become available’. A shift away from the notorious Private Finance Initiative is advocated, through alterations in the conventions to provide a level playing field offering greater local choice; and the establishment of a new collective fund for council reserves is advocated.

What this adds up to is the dismantling of restrictions on local authority activity and the emancipation of councils from dependence on central government. Such suggestions are all the more stimulating because they open out the possibility of a return to the heyday of local government, when it was able to innovate, trade, manage natural monopolies for the benefit of either consumers (through price controls) or ratepayers (by ploughing back profits), and invest for the future.

In other words, this is nothing new, whether the preferred label is ‘municipal socialism’ or ‘municipal capitalism’. An interesting pointer to changing times is Blackpool Council’s proposal, announced in December 2009, to seek national and European regeneration funding in support of a municipal takeover of the Tower, the Winter Gardens and other central amusement and entertainment facilities in the resort: this is not ‘nationalisation’, as reported in the Daily Mail, but a proposed reversion to (and extension of) older models of municipal involvement in essential aspects of resort economies.¹⁵ Whatever the label, this worked very well in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, especially at the seaside, and it could work well again now.¹⁶ In the earlier incarnation, though, we should reinforce the point that it benefited from generally expansive coastal economies, the availability of able and experienced councillors often drawn from local backgrounds in large-scale businesses, and the development of a rooted and experienced cadre of local officials with a public service ethic, while well-informed though invariably cautious advice and counsel were available from the Local Government Board.

The Symons and Leslie report also resonates with aspects of the report of the Business Panel on Future European Union Innovation Policy, which emphasises the need to extend the concept of and vehicles for innovation from business to social models, involving charities and social enterprises and looking to promote social innovation. These proposals are still under discussion, but they point the way towards alternative approaches to regeneration that go beyond the narrowly economic and technological, and bring neglected actors into play.¹⁷

Giving space, scope and encouragement to local responses to local situations, informed by ‘best practice’ and drawing on external partnerships, creativity and expertise where appropriate, should be a key theme in coastal regeneration, especially in the hard times that are arriving. But a further essential element is the nature of the political processes involved in regeneration. In many coastal settings the coastal settlement itself is part of a larger administrative entity, especially since local government reorganisation in 1974, which created amalgamations such as that of the old county and industrial city of Lancaster and the coastal resort of Morecambe, generating enduring conflict over tourism policy, or brought together resorts of contrasting character under a single umbrella, as with Thanet (Margate, Ramsgate, Broadstairs) or Scarborough, which also includes the smaller coastal resorts of Whitby and Filey. Under such circumstances all proposed developments (or withdrawals of support for established assets) are likely to become controversial, as local interest-groups complain of discrimination, neglect or lack of understanding.

A good example is the outrage that erupted in Whitstable in the summer of 2007 when proposals for ‘regenerating’ a profitable working harbour by destroying the existing ambience of the South Quay to make way for a hotel, supermarket and theme pub were published under the auspices of Canterbury City Council. The plans, submitted in competition by external developers, were rejected after a fierce and popular local campaign, and Whitstable Harbour Watch was established to keep an eye on future developments, recognising the need to preserve the distinctive and unusual character of the working harbour while sustaining its economic viability. This was one of many examples of a local authority failing to recognise the individuality of its component communities and seeking to impose a standard scheme on an enjoyably untidy area of attractive character. The politics of regeneration, especially in terms of facilitating debate and acting on its outcomes, are an essential part of the process.¹⁸

This also applies in nearby Thanet, where the efforts of the local authority to meet economic targets and promote development according to government criteria have not always been appreciated by elements of local opinion.¹⁹ This can be illustrated by the comments of Christine Tongue as part of the publicity for her ‘Thanet on Film’ exhibition, a compilation of films of holiday Thanet in past times which ‘shows what we once had and how it’s all been left to decay.’²⁰ This theme of lost assets and enjoyments – and how they might be recovered or renewed – is common to many seaside campaigners, as are probelems associated with neglect of the public realm, together with the sense that well-targeted investment and effective management could restore their attractiveness and promote regeneration without expensive wholesale redevelopment, at a time when all the signs suggest that domestic tourism is itself regenerating.

Recently, however, Thanet Council has also been supportive of the genuine regeneration of Margate’s Dreamland cinema and amusement park complex: the former closed in November 2007, in the face of competition from the new multiplex at Westwood Cross, and the latter in 2003. The Dreamland Trust’s proposals for an open-air amusement park museum on the site, which are attracting development funding and have strong support from the English Heritage Urban Panel and the Prince’s Trust, offer an authentic, locally rooted opportunity to regenerate Margate’s popular tourism industry.²¹ The plans are grounded in a historic local attraction which had been in place since 1920 and developed from earlier popular entertainment uses of the site.²² That contrasts with the proposals for redevelopment put forward by external consultants in 2004, focusing on routine housing, retail and car parking in a key coastal location. Existing amusement park operators are clear that the demand is there.

Nearby Arlington House, an early and distinctive seaside tower block of 1963 with spectacular sea views, provides another interesting Thanet example of conflicting attitudes to heritage and regeneration. Despite its bad local reputation, which arises from sustained neglect, it is a really impressive piece of post-war architecture, and in another setting it would be highly valued.²³ A similar seaside tower block in Cesenatico, on the Adriatic coast in Italy, completed in 1957, has become an emblematic element of the local tourist townscape and of the resort’s publicity.²⁴ Refurbishment rather than demolition seems to be on the agenda for this building of character, a classic example of the ‘heritage of the recent past’ which generates strong opinions for and against, but can certainly not be accused of blandness.²⁵

Buildings like those, and – more conventionally – those of Margate’s Old Town and early resort area, help to give a coastal town a sense of identity and identification. Margate has lost so much that it needs to cherish what remains, while regenerating imaginatively and ‘in character’ around and within it. The Turner Contemporary cannot stand alone, any more than Morecambe’s regenerated Midland Hotel can do so. And, as the Midland Hotel, the De La Warr Pavilion or Blackpool’s Winter Gardens complex demonstrate, there is no point in losing genuinely iconic buildings and amenities, especially if you have nothing of value to put in their place. Despite the escalating costs of restoration and refurbishment, it generally comes cheaper than demolition and new build. It also attracts a more up-market public with scope for generating local multipliers, as is beginning to happen around the Midland Hotel in Morecambe. Those local multipliers, whose importance emphasises the need to minimise ‘leakage’ from the local economy into the coffers of national and multinational business, are crucial to spreading the benefits of regeneration into local pockets.²⁶

This focus on an important case study draws attention to what Thanet in general, and Margate in particular, has to offer as an example of the tensions surrounding the articulation of regeneration policies. These emerge through the local (party and other) political dimension, the complex interactions between the locality and external organisations (county, regional and national government agencies, private developers, NGOs, hybrids, lobby groups and the media), and the relationships between economic, cultural and ‘heritage’ criteria as drivers of regeneration. Local authorities need to resist the temptation to take whatever developers are prepared to offer, and to regard all promises of increased employment as plausible and cost-free; and they need to pay genuine heed to the wishes of local residents and visitors, even when the signals are mixed and confused, as is the case with many of Thanet’s critics.

The ‘reputation for power’ of big international developers, with their ability to hire expensive legal support, to exhaust the appeals procedure and to threaten determined opponents with crippling costs, constitutes another widespread set of problems, in coastal locations as elsewhere. Pressure from higher tiers of government, especially to meet targets defined in narrow economic terms, may help to exacerbate these problems, and the tensions that can result are well illustrated in the case of Exmouth, where supermarket-led regeneration proposals in 2004 generated conflict between Devon County Council, East Devon District Council and Exmouth Town Council, and eventually gave way to a much less ambitious and intrusive set of proposals.²⁷

We seem to be moving, in the last few years, towards a broader understanding of what the coast has to offer, and how to enhance or at least ameliorate what is there rather than sweeping it away root and branch. English Heritage has been helpful and supportive here. Hastings’ efforts to market itself as a ‘cultural destination’, and its encouragement of – and financial support for – annual events that draw in visitors and become identified with the town’s image, is an example of a widespread and long-lived tendency to develop niche marketing, for events that may or may not have a clear coastal resonance (seafood but also wine, an Old Town Carnival – and an illuminated heritage trail – but also a chess congress and a morris-dancing festival).²⁸

In some respects recession may be a blessing in disguise, as it discourages disruptive large-scale projects – especially those that are founded on unrealistic expectations of the competitive attractiveness, in locations that are relatively difficult of access, of standardised development packages. In turn it may encourage local ventures that reinforce existing loyalties and identities while making them expansively available to others, but in sustainable ways.

Rachel Cooke, writing about these issues for the Observer in August 2009, showed a refreshing awareness of such resources and opportunities on the south coast, and this kind of media coverage seems to be gaining ground, hand over fist, against the older default mode of dismissive contempt (although a week earlier Cooke herself, in drawing attention to the need for seaside SMEs to cater more cheerfully and imaginatively for their customers, resorted to that very tone of authorial voice in writing about a visit to Broadstairs).

Media perceptions are of vital importance. Changing the grammar of expectation and reporting about the coast in general, and about specific destinations, constitutes an essential element in making regeneration effective at the level of image promotion and, indeed, brand management. The role of Coast magazine, and its competitive awards for best seaside attractions and businesses, is potentially significant here. But the tendency of journalism to focus on individual examples, and to enjoy amplifying unpleasant experiences, reinforces a general point. Regeneration initiatives need to engage with enhancing the attitudes and expectations of local business and service providers, as well as providing infrastructure and reinforcing systems.²⁹

Finally, several other themes should be emphasised across the range of disparate but connected issues that make up the ‘regeneration question’, here as in other settings. They are: simplification; sustainability; inclusiveness; collaboration; topophilia; and above all the importance of taking a holistic approach, or looking at the problems and solutions ‘in the round’, going beyond isolated box-ticking exercises and assessing how things fit together and what the overall impact of initiatives has been. Simplification, or streamlining, is highly necessary, not least to prevent duplication of effort and unnecessary competition for shrinking resources, but also to ease information flows and workloads by reducing the sheer volume of opportunities to evaluate and information to accumulate.

It is to be hoped that the DCMS ‘single conversation’ approach may prove helpful here. Sustainability needs to engage the active and informed participation of residents and local businesses, and, in a financial environment that will be less conducive to large-scale redevelopment initiatives, it will be best pursued in ways that generate local employment in support of local economies. Labour-intensive projects for the improvement of the public realm, in the form of parks and promenades, or loans for amenities and enhancement for local SMEs (such as seaside boarding houses) to make them more attractive and competitive, should be on the agenda, as should financial support for museums and other cultural attractions that sustain distinctive facets of local identity.

All this kills two birds with one stone. It offers employment opportunities while making places more attractive. Water quality, litter removal and efficient waste disposal management are all ongoing housekeeping concerns that local people respond to positively, and that improve the local environment in ways that encourage repeat visits. Sprucing up and spicing up existing assets should be part of this process. Subsidising and supporting the public realm through affordable and flexible transport options should also be in tune with the spirit of the times, and of course it is particularly relevant to access to and travel within coastal locations, which are hard to reach and often both scattered and elongated in their development patterns.

This is regeneration through modest expenditure on good housekeeping, something that has often been neglected as big ‘iconic’ projects catch the official and political eye. An expanded local taxation base, which would be best and most equitably funded by a return to the fully graduated property taxes or ‘rates’ which were foolishly abandoned a generation ago, would make such proposals easier to fund and more accountable locally.

Such activity should also promote inclusiveness, which entails providing a welcoming and accessible environment for all who are attracted by what the coast, and particular incarnations of it, has to offer. This will not be everyone, and it need not be everyone: openness is a necessary and life-enhancing virtue, but trying to alter the character of seaside places to appeal to everyone is an illusory goal. Looking after existing residents and visitors, including the unfashionable but often lucrative older demographics, and expanding their numbers, should take priority over speculating in imagined new markets – unless there is strong evidence (especially in the larger, more diverse and cosmopolitan resorts) of demand.

Moreover, the dangers of sealing off gated communities, and setting the barriers of access and acceptance in desirable places too high, are now becoming apparent. Gentrification needs to be inflected by democracy, perhaps particularly at the seaside, where the traditions of open access to public tidal beaches and their adjacent commons is so strong and culturally pervasive. Privatise such spaces at your peril.

A related theme should be that of collaboration. As many contributors to the discussions in this Handbook have emphasised, working together with the full range of government organisations and NGOs, at all tiers of representation, is of central importance, from sharing skills and knowledge to presenting coastal regions as shared systems of assets that are more attractive than their individual components taken in isolation. That also applies to businesses within destinations. Done well, and with democratic awareness of local wishes (which are, of course, sometimes divided and contradictory), this should promote that essential concept of topophilia – emotional attachment to a place through the shared enjoyment of memory, nostalgia and the power of association – that is fundamental to successful regeneration. It defies quantification, but it is the essence of a holistic approach to local improvement, engagement and practical sustainability. Lose that and you have lost the battle. Sustain it, enhance it, transfer it to new publics who can then pass it on, and England’s coastal settlements have a future.