Urban renewal tends to create regeneration and development of older and overlooked parts of a city. This is done in order to meet the contemporary esthetics and standards. In practice, entrepreneurs use the above term to brand new housing projects located out of the cities. In most cases, these projects are built as separated neighborhoods for a specific population with high financial means, subsequently creating segregation. The social aspect of this state, results in the remaining of a weaker and poorer population inside the cities and the disappearance of the stronger and more wealthy population into the projects outside. Although, recently cities began to invest in the development of their centers and to generate projects which aspire to promote and strengthen the city and its people, the residents do not trust or cooperate with these new initiatives due to long periods of neglect. The professional aspect exhibits major gaps in the way stakeholders refer to the term “urban renewal”. This leads to the absence of common language and terminology between the city, the entrepreneurs and the residents. Thus, a gap exists in the understanding and the criteria for projects that should be beneficial for the existing inhabitants.
The urban renewal authority was identified as an intervention objective, with a prospect to influence and promote practices for locally fitting urban renewal projects.
This scheme offers a design management based model to plan and develop processes that are directly influenced by local residents. By using this scheme, the urban renewal authority will be able to create local IDs of areas or neighborhoods and develop an index to evaluate urban renewal projects through civic participation. The scheme includes gathering shared information in various methodologies to create a local identity which will lead to unification, active citizenship and continuous action of the community. Consequently, the ”Local ID” will generate the urban index for beneficial and locally targeted planning.