Urban Policy in Practice

Tim Blackman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN:
  9780415093002
• eBook ISBN:
  9781134871537
• Topic: Physical Sciences
• Subtopic: Geography
• Index: Geography

Urban Policy and Practice is a practical and critical guide to urban policy in contemporary Britain.
The book covers a range of topics including:
* Quality and consumerism in the public sector
* Community development
* Public Health
* Environmental issues
* Local intervention in the creation of skills and jobs
Case studies are drawn from housing, planning, the social services, economic development, and local government finance.
Throughout, the concern is for a clear analysis of corporate strategies, democratic control and sustainable development.

Part I

Urban Policy and the State

1

The Scope and Purposes of Urban Policy

This book is about how urban policy in the United Kingdom is put into practice. It considers the roles of central government departments, executive agencies appointed by central government, and elected local authorities. Since the most substantial agencies in the local public sector are still local authorities, much of the book is based on local government material. However, the decline in the importance of local authorities that has occurred during the last fifteen years makes it essential to consider the new machinery of central government which has developed to implement policy in the UK’s regions and cities.

This growth of centralisation has been one of the most dominant and controversial features of urban policy in recent years. The role of local government has been strongly challenged by legislation since 1979. This has transferred functions from elected local authorities to new executive agencies, limited the powers of local authorities to spend and develop their own policies, and substituted private sector providers of services for local council workforces. The power relations between central and local government have had a potent influence on urban policy, making it an important focus for political as well as urban studies.

This chapter begins by explaining the book’s rationale and structure. This is followed by a section on the evolution of urban policy, from its origins in nineteenth-century industrialisation, through its expansionist post-war period, to the 1980s and 1990s, when public services have been under pressure to retreat back to a residualist welfare role. The next section considers how urban policy has responded to urban change. The recent reforms of public services are then introduced, particularly the strategies of privatisation and promoting competition. These have given rise to the idea of public sector agencies being ‘enablers’ which assess needs but do not necessarily provide services directly themselves. Instead, within the limits of their budgets, they purchase services from competing providers according to the needs and priorities they have established on behalf of their local populations.

The book has four parts, each comprising chapters linked to a particulartheme. The theme of Part I is urban policy and the state. This begins with the present chapter which defines urban policy, considers how it has developed over time, and introduces key aspects of the nature of urban policy in the UK today. Chapter 2 reviews urban policy as it relates to local government and Chapter 3 as it relates to central government. Chapter 4 then describes how urban services are financed, including new methods for funding local authority services introduced in April 1994, the role of local taxation, and specific aspects of the financing of schools, care in the community and social housing.

The theme of Part II is general approaches to urban policy. Three particular approaches have been chosen because of their recent growth in importance as corporate policy concerns about the quality of services, community participation and how needs are identified. Chapter 5 explains how the quality of public services is managed and how the outcomes of policies are evaluated. It includes discussion about some of the key controversies in these areas. Chapter 6 considers community development, explaining approaches to supporting people who are disempowered by poverty or discrimination to organise and act collectively to express their needs and improve conditions. Chapter 7 discusses the uses and value of applied research about the nature and distribution of social needs, the quality of services and the outcomes of policy.

Part III has major policy goals as its theme. Three key goals are considered because of their importance to any definition of urban well-being. Chapter 8 discusses goals for education, training and local economic development, linking these three areas together because of the vital significance of knowledge and skills to the UK’s economic future. Chapter 9 considers the fundamental goal of safeguarding the sustainability of urban society, discussing the role of urban policy in sustainable development and realising environmental objectives. Finally, the prevention of illness and promotion of health are essential to everyone’s quality of life; Chapter 10 considers the important role that urban policy has in public health.

Parts II and III, therefore, present a view of the major purposes of urban policy in the UK today and explain how these purposes can be realised in practice. Best practice requires a knowledge of how to assure quality in public services, how to involve local communities and pursue community development, and how to undertake and use research to improve services and policies. The key goals which the book identifies for urban policy—education, training and economic development; sustainability and environmental quality; and the safeguarding and promotion of health—are fundamental, not only to an urban policy that can have positive effects and public support but also to any vision of a modern and caring society.

Part IV comprises the book’s concluding chapter. This discusses how urban policy addresses ‘needs’ and how this ideal is hindered by the pressing need for democratic reform in the UK.

Two major issues are absent from this brief summary of each chapter. The first is the question of social inequality which is at the centre of much public policy debate. The concerted attack on unemployment, poverty and social segregation necessary to achieve a more just society is largely a question for national government policy and, increasingly, action at a European and international level. It demands a strategy for full employment and a much more progressive taxation and benefits system. Holman (1993), for example, has recently pointed out that in the UK if the wealthiest 20 per cent lost a fifth of their disposable income, the incomes of the poorest 20 per cent could be doubled. Many urban local authorities target their services on areas and groups in greatest need, but their ability to tackle the causes of these problems is very limited.

The second major issue is equal opportunities and anti-discriminatory practice. This is a very important area of work for many urban local authorities. It also requires legislative action at national level, with many people now arguing that the UK should have a bill of rights to give stronger force to the protection of civil liberties and outlawing of discrimination. The specialist treatment of equal opportunities is beyond the scope of this book, but it is hoped that readers will find this principle reflected in the material that follows.

The book’s definition of urban policy is a wide one. Urban policy is essentially about the welfare of local residents in an urban society. This involves planning and delivering public services and supporting the development of the local economy. A number of agencies in the local public sector have a role in urban policy, but the most important are elected local authorities. This is not only because local authorities provide or purchase on behalf of local residents a large range of services, but also because they have a local democratic mandate to represent the interests of the local population in all contexts, regional and national. Where they do not have direct responsibilities, such as health care or income maintenance, they often seek to influence the government agencies that do.

Local authorities and other public sector agencies often pursue policies of prioritising particular groups who, because of economic disadvantage or discrimination, are exposed to poverty, unemployment or social exclusion to a much greater extent than the rest of the population. Common priorities are children in low-income families, people who are elderly and frail, people who have disabilities, are unemployed, lack skills or are educationally disadvantaged, and minority ethnic groups. Urban policy frequently seeks to prioritise in this way.

Many cities and towns in the UK have experienced a decay in traditional inner city communities and the development of large housing estates with multiple disadvantage on the urban periphery. Poverty has persisted despite periods of economic growth. It is in these areas that urban policy is most relevant, providing public services and increasing access to employment and training. Unfortunately, this is all the harder in the face of national government policies in recent years which have caused a widening of inequalities in British society. But even with less regressive policies economic growth cannot be relied upon to ‘lift all boats’ (Donnison et al, 1991). Urban policies are needed to create equal opportunities to benefit from education, employment and public services, to live in pleasant and safe environments with adequate shops and amenities, and to participate in community and civic affairs.

The planning and implementation of urban policy consumes a large proportion of public expenditure. It therefore needs to be justified in terms of positive effects that can be demonstrated and have public support. Policymaking should be a rational process which implements desired goals, such as targeting training and job creation on high unemployment areas or improving the quality of public services. Increasingly, it is expected that there are measurable targets and arrangements for monitoring and adjusting actions which are not proving to be effective. However, opinion often differs about what the goals of policy and the appropriate means for realising these goals should be. This is why, in principle, policy is under democratic control, although the reality often does not accord with this ideal.

Among the reasons for this ‘democratic deficit’ are the effects of factors beyond the control of politicians, the many defects of democratic institutions, and the fact that politicians are advised by professional officers who often have considerable influence. Indeed, the role of representative politics in determining public policies has been considerably weakened by the growth of ‘technocratic government’ and the major influence of powerful unelected corporate bodies on policy-making and implementation, especially large multinational companies (Dunleavy and O’Leary, 1987).

Although the values behind policy goals will always be issues for argument, once these goals are established the process of implementing policy needs to be as rational as possible, informed by monitoring and evaluation. There is also a growing expectation that implementation is ‘useroriented’, with consumers and the wider public actively involved in defining the quality and value of the services they receive.

The Evolution of Urban Policy

In order to understand the role of urban policy in today’s society it is helpful to review the origins of state intervention in urban areas.

The unprecedented increase in population which accompanied industrialisation in nineteenth-century Britain, Western Europe generally, and in North America saw a dramatic growth of towns and cities. At the beginning of the nineteenth century only one-fifth of the British population lived in towns; by the end of the century this had increased to four-fifths. Migration to urban areas created large working-class areas very rapidly. For example, in Birmingham the working-class area of Ladywood expanded from 10,000 in 1841 to over 40,000 just thirty years later. The pattern was repeated all over the country as people sought industrial employment.

Urbanisation occurred at a pace that outstripped the ability of preindustrial political and social institutions to maintain social order. These had been based on networks of clients, kin and friends, and centred on the country residences of the aristocracy. Early attempts to manage this new urban society through ad hoc bodies undertaking specific tasks such as cleansing streets, providing watchmen and relieving destitution failed to cope with the scale of urbanisation and with growing demands for local self-government. Poverty and overcrowding were sources of ill-health, unrest and poor labour productivity. Lash and Urry comment that British cities:

grew up with very little planning, before the growth of nationally organized professional experts, of sanitary engineers, medical inspectors of health, civil engineers, social workers, town planners, and so on. Builders, interested in short-term profit maximization, constructed as many dwellings as possible on each acre of building land, which were not conducive to effective communications and other infrastructural services.

(Lash and Urry, 1987:95)

Of particular concern to the powerful and wealthy of nineteenth-century Britain was the maintenance of order and authority as traditional society broke up with urbanisation. Bauman (1987) describes how traditional football matches came to be branded as dangerous to public health and order, while in Derby the establishment of a police force in 1835 was accompanied by the instruction that, ‘Persons standing or loitering on the footway without sufficient cause, so as to prevent the free passage of such a footway …may be apprehended and taken before a magistrate’ (Delves, quoted in Bauman, 1987:65). Bauman concludes that:

The destruction of pre-modern popular culture was the main factor responsible for the new demand for expert administrators, teachers, and ‘social’ scientists.

(Bauman, 1987:67)

Concern with an unruly ‘underclass’ in the new towns and cities was met with both philanthropy and resistance to extending state assistance to the poor, which would burden the taxpayer. The themes of an urban underclass and the tax burden of providing public services survive in debate about urban policy today (Macnicol, 1987).

During the nineteenth century, various legislation was passed by the British parliament which constructed a complex patchwork of local authorities and ad hoc boards across the country with new responsibilities for public health, roads, housing, relief of the poor and education. This structurebegan to be simplified and reformed towards the end of the century. In England and Wales, a system of elected county councils and county borough councils in an upper tier of local government, and district and parish councils in a lower tier, was established by 1899. In Scotland, a two-tier structure of city councils and county councils in the upper tier, and burghs and district councils in the lower tier, was finally created in 1929.

The establishment of local government was part of a period of transition from the 1880s to the 1920s during which Britain became a mass democracy. Democracy was to see increasingly successful political action by the Liberal Party and by the emergent Labour Party to establish a welfare state in Britain. Local government was a key part of the welfare state and underwent major growth as public services expanded during the ‘post-war boom’.

The expansion of the welfare state which took place during the period of post-war economic growth up to the 1973–5 world slump saw public expenditure consume an increasingly large share of Britain’s gross domestic product (GDP). Local government spending paralleled this growth, as did health service expenditure. In 1955 local authorities spent 9 per cent of the country’s GDP; by 1975 this had increased to 15 per cent, when their expenditure was almost three times greater in real terms than in 1955. More people were employed to run and deliver services and many public buil...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• List of abbreviations
• Part I: Urban policy and the state
• Part II: Approaches to urban policy
• Part III: Key goals for urban policy
• Part IV: Issues for urban policy in the 1990s
• Appendices
• Bibliography
• Index