Introduction

This chapter examines the evidence to support a neighbourhood focus for delivering social policy. Howard Glennerster's work reveals the central importance of understanding how policy works in practice. He recognises neighbourhoods and their management as essential building blocks of applied social policy. His thinking about how we deliver social interventions on the ground has directly influenced efforts at neighbourhood renewal over the past 20 years. Here I present some findings on how neighbourhood renewal in practice addresses the problems of integration and urban recovery. The central questions are:

• 1. Why does the neighbourhood affect social conditions?

• 2. What is the evidence of progress in neighbourhood renewal?

• 3. Are more mixed urban communities likely to emerge through neighbourhood renewal?

Background – current research at CASE on neighbourhood renewal

This chapter draws on several long-run studies about low-income areas and their prospects. The Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion (CASE) at the London School of Economics and Political Science has been tracking 12 highly disadvantaged areas, covering the different representative types of deprived neighbourhoods in England for the last eight years (Lupton, 2003). The Neighbourhood Renewal Unit (NRU) is trying to help in the recovery of up to 3,000 such areas, and our work feeds directly into the lessons from this process. Our work uncovers what is happening to policy on the ground.

We have conducted a parallel eight-year study, tracking the lives of 200 families in four of the 12 areas, two in east London and two in northern cities. These families are living in some of the most difficult conditions and we are trying to establish just what impact neighbourhood conditions have on families and children and whether interventions help (Mumford and Power, 2003). Whether families survive and flourish in these neighbourhoods is a litmus test of a humane city. The chapter also draws on a study over 25 years of 20 originally highly marginalised estates (Tunstall and Coulter, 2006).

The challenge and importance of neighbourhood renewal

There has been a broad consensus on the need for neighbourhood renewal since 1974. However, policies have gone through many upheavals and it was not until 1998 with the New Labour government that a decisive stamp was put on this issue under the title of Bringing Britain Together, a landmark report by the newly formed Social Exclusion Unit (SEU, 1998).