Introduction: urban policy and the problem of evidence

Urban policy – or policy designed to arrest the economic and socialdecline of either parts of cities, whole settlements, or even (morerecently) cities in general (Urban Task Force, 1999) – has been afeature of UK policy for more than 30 years. Its origins aregenerally traced back to the Educational Priority Area programmes ofthe late 1960s and to the launch of the Urban Programme by HaroldWilson in 1968 following Enoch Powell's ‘rivers of blood’ speech(Edwards and Batley, 1978; Laurence and Hall, 1981). It is variouslydescribed as ‘inner-city policy’, ‘urban policy’ and more recentlyas ‘urban regeneration’ (terms which will be used interchangeably inthis chapter). It is characterised by a number of features that makethe idea of an ‘evidence-based’ urban policy problematic, in thestrict sense of linking predictable outcomes with discreteinterventions, so as to say with confidence ‘what works’.

The first characteristic is that urban policy has a very strongpolitical dimension. Events that have prompted central government toaddress the ‘problem’ of our cities have often assumed a high mediaprofile (Cottle, 1993). The consequent involvement of leadingpoliticians in urban policy is, according to Mossberger and Stoker(1997), difficult to explain in rational terms. This could bebecause urban policy has commonly been grounded in strong politicalphilosophies for which supporting evidence may have been eitherabsent or extremely difficult to produce. These features have led tourban policy being described by one commentator as “political in themeanest sense of the word, point scoring and sweeping damagingissues under the carpet rather than seriously confronting andresolving them” (Cheshire, 1987, p 22). The extensive criticalliterature on urban policy includes a strong strand of such cynicismabout the extent to which it is anything other than a policy area inwhich the political imperatives of visibility dominate (Robinson andShaw, 1994; Oatley, 1998).

The second characteristic is that because urban policy involvescomplex interventions their impact or effectiveness is difficult toisolate and measure. In contrast to many other areas of policy andpractice they are designed to be effective at a community (definedin geographical terms), not individual level. Although individualsexperience the ultimate benefits (such as jobs created), theobjective of urban policy is improvement across a definedgeographical area.