Neighbourhood has become a key spatial scale in the UK government's policies for urban regeneration and social inclusion, resuscitating the long-standing debate over the efficacy of area-based policies. The paper argues that the latter need to be sensitive to the interaction between macro-structural and local, reinforcing processes and that 'people-based' policies need to be complemented by 'people and place' ones. The complexities of `neighbourhood' definition are explored, using the distinction between `neighbourhood' and 'place-based community' to support an argument for seeing neighbourhoods as an appropriate spatial scale for understanding the operation of 'everyday life-worlds'. Drawing on research based on a specific regeneration initiative, the 'Pathways to Integration' priority of the Objective 1 Structural Funds Programme for Merseyside (1994-99), the paper goes on to explore the political and operational issues surrounding the spatial targeting of policy and some of the partnership issues surrounding `neighbourhood' and 'community'. It argues that area-based policies and spatial targeting are inherently political as well as technical exercises that need to be sensitive to the social-spatial construction of neighbourhoods and that the operational definition of policy areas should be part of an evolutionary process of community engagement.
General rightsThis document is made available in accordance with publisher policies. Please cite only the published version using the reference above. Full terms of use are available: http://www.bristol.ac.uk/pure/about/ebr-terms likely to suffer most due to the combined effect of cuts in government funding in these areas and their greater dependency on statutory funding. This paper develops this argument by exploring the sector's changing relationship with the state through an empirical analysis of the differential impact of recession and austerity on VCS organisations involved in public service delivery in the two English Core Cities of Bristol and Liverpool. This paper highlights how the scale and unevenness of public spending cuts, the levels of voluntary sector dependency on statutory funding and the rising demands for the sector's services in a period of recession and austerity are being experienced locally. It portrays a sector whose resilience is being severely tested and one that is being forced rapidly to restructure and reposition itself in an increasingly challenging funding environment.
In recent years community involvement and increasingly social capital have become central themes in debates and policies surrounding urban regeneration. This paper attempts to contribute to these debates by reviewing the role of social capital in the context of a major regeneration initiative, namely the European Union-sponsored Objective One Programme, currently underway on Merseyside. The paper argues that it is important to show how social capital is formed through the 'scaling-up' of local associational relationships, networks and institutions, to wider power structures and relations. Trust amongst participants is central to this process. Two areas on Merseyside are used as case studies to illustrate the argument. The paper concludes that the active development of trust and the social relationships surrounding it needs to be central to the process of urban regeneration.
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