Introduction

In certain key senses, housing remains a Cinderella issue in both research and policy terms. Indicative of this is the fact that in the, otherwise excellent, report of the Runnymede Trust Commission into the future of multi-ethnic Britain (Parekh, 2000), housing was alone among the major institutional arenas in not being seen as important enough to merit a chapter. It was occasionally mentioned as a sub-theme in the context of debates about residential patterns but it nevertheless failed to assume a real material presence. This is misguided. Both spatial patterns and the built environment are crucial to an effective understanding of the nature of social relations within neighbourhoods, and of ‘quality of life’ and material wellbeing. They are therefore at the very core of debates about ‘inclusive and cohesive’ societies.

Chapter One in the current volume traced the development of New Labour thinking from the late 1990s. Core themes were the need to tackle ‘social exclusion’ and thereby promote ‘inclusion’. As with the more recent policy paradigm labelled ‘community cohesion’, these contained a multitude of quite distinct sub-themes. Arguably, the effect was that the policy agenda became fragmented and confused. The New Labour discourse surrounding the ‘exclusion/inclusion’ dualism was notable in its refusal to engage directly with all-pervasive material concerns such as poverty, inequality, racism and so on.

The ‘community cohesion’ agenda places major emphasis on what Flint (2008) terms ‘political communitarianism’. Problems evident in particular areas were to be tackled by people taking more responsibility for their lives and for the future of their neighbourhoods: a contemporary social variant of the adage ‘patient heal thyself ‘. Responsiblisation thus prioritises responsibilities over rights, and delegates a vital community renewal function to those who are often least likely to be able to fulfil it. Arguably, this represents an abrogation of duties on the part of central government, a form of reasoning countered by the latter's claim that this enhances local empowerment. Whatever view one takes on this matter, it is clear that a ‘political communitarianism’ approach sees cohesion policy and communitarianism (a) as having the potential to solve perceived social problems in particular localities and (b) as holding the key to fix the ‘broken society’.