Abstract
The chapter examines the post-war evolution of urban policy in the UK. It focuses on a series of periodic changes that reflect broader political projects and ways of thinking about cities and places. The first sections outline historical characterisations of urban policy, reflecting on where forms of intervention, usually called urban policy, have been developed and how these initiatives have worked in specific places. Continuities and discontinuities in urban policy are considered, looking at: early and more socially oriented programmes developed in the 1960s/70s and focused on inner cities, such as the Urban Programme or Community Development Projects; the shift towards an economically oriented approach operated by the Thatcher government through property-led regeneration in the late 1970s and during the 1980s; and the more nuanced socio-economic approaches of the Major and Blair eras of the 1990s and 2000s incorporating City Challenge and the Single Regeneration Budget. The last two sections are dedicated to recent shifts towards financialisation and growth-oriented development that have marked the period since the Global Financial Crisis of 2008 and propose some reflections on the future of urban policy.
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Notes
- 1.
During the 1960s a wide range of initiatives aimed at coping with poverty converged on the definition of Urban Policy thanks also to the strong commitments of Presidents such as Johnson and Nixon. In particular, policies to deal with the riots in the major cities, especially in the “black neighbourhoods” started to be read as urban crises to be faced through urban policy. Poverty was read in this case especially as marginalisation: the poor is a “stranger” in the mainstream society who has to deal with multiple problems, hence the idea of launching integrated policies.
- 2.
LSPs were thought as macro-partnerships able to involve a wide range of actors working at the local level (public authorities, service providers—schools, police, social services—local associations between entrepreneurs, third sector and community organisations), and promote a strategic vision in the context of a very fragmented reality. The promoters of LSPs were local authorities and the main critique has been related to the fact that their leading role was never challenged and led to the marginalisation of more unstructured groups. At the same time, a strategic vision was never produced and LSPs became an additional body to be activated just to get funding from the State.
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Acknowledgements
The authors would like to express thanks to Francesca Gelli and Matteo Basso for organising an earlier seminar at the University Iuav of Venice that supported the production of this chapter and for their supportive and insightful comments on an earlier draft. Research for some of the work presented here was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council UK [Grant Number: ES/S015078] under the project “WHIG? What is Governed in Cities: Residential investment landscapes and the governance and regulation of housing production”.
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Briata, P., Raco, M. (2022). The Financialisation of Urban Policy in the UK: From Area-Based Initiatives to Area-Based Value-Capture. In: Gelli, F., Basso, M. (eds) Identifying Models of National Urban Agendas . Comparative Studies of Political Agendas. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-08388-4_3
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