The Enterprise Culture and the Inner City
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The enterprise culture and the inner city Throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s, policy for inner city regeneration underwent a transformation from a reliance on central and local government activity and the use of public funds to a much heavier dependence on private sector activities and private investment. This new strategy was based on a conviction on the part of government that the ‘engine of enterprise’ could achieve in the inner cities what local government had so signally failed to do. It consisted of using public resources as incentives to attract commerce, business and industry back to designated sectors in or near to inner city areas. Regeneration would be development-led; enterprise activity would burgeon in the old wastelands; new jobs would be created; the ‘inner city economies’ would be revitalised and a dependent population energised by the culture of enterprise. The Enterprise Culture and the Inner City evaluates the effectiveness of this strategy in alleviating urban deprivation. By examining four case studies—two Urban Development Corporations, one local government—private sector, and one purely private development—the authors make detailed analyses of job creation, ‘leverage’ (the ratio of public incentive to private investment funds), impact on local residents and the ‘trickle effect’ from enterprise down to the urban deprived. The study is especially valuable as the fruit of independent scholarship, rather than funded research, in which the authors are able to offer a vigorously critical investigation of government policy. By taking into account the result of the 1992 general election and the implications of the Olympia & York Canary Wharf project, Nicholas Deakin and John Edwards present a credible prediction for the future (or lack of future) of the inner city. The Enterprise Culture and the Inner City will be essential reading for students and lecturers of social and public policy and social science, professionals and lecturers in planning, and central and local government administrators. Nicholas Deakin is Professor of Social Policy and Administration at the University of Birmingham, and John Edwards is Reader in Social Policy at the University of London. The enterprise culture and the inner city Nicholas Deakin and John Edwards London and New York First published 1993 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 © 1993 Nicholas Deakin and John Edwards All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress ISBN 0-203-99143-5 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-415-03548-1 (hbk) ISBN 0-415-03549-X (pbk) To Lucy and Bridget Contents List of illustrations vi Preface viii Acknowledgements x 1 Enterprise as policy 1 2 From public provision to private enterprise 14 3 Is inner city policy about urban deprivation? 40 4 The logic of the enterprise strategy 57 5 Trafford Park: Manchester’s economic larder 67 6 Docklands: Flagship or Titanic? 86 7 Heartlands—a different approach to partnership 117 8 Private enterprise alone 148 9 The reach of private enterprise 179 10 Social policies for the inner city 196 11 Private investment as public policy 220 References 234 Name index 243 Subject index 246 Illustrations MAPS 5.1 Trafford Park Development Corporation and Trafford Centre location 68 5.2 Trafford Park Development Corporation main programme areas 74 6.1 London Docklands Development Corporation 98 7.1 Heartlands location123 7.2 Heartlands: development proposals125 8.1 Greater Manchester Conurbation long-term unemployment, over one 165 year: 1984 8.2 Greater Manchester Conurbation long-term unemployment, over two 1 66 years 8.3 Greater Manchester Conurbation youth unemployment: 1984167 8.4 Greater Manchester Conurbation households with head unemployed or 168 sick as a percentage of all households, by ward: 1981 8.5 Greater Manchester Conurbation low-income households (households 169 with head in semi- or unskilled occupation as a percentage of all households) by ward: 1981 TABLES 2.1 Central government expenditure on inner cities: England 1992 38 5.1 Trafford Park: Achievements in four programme areas and in UDA as a 82 whole 5.2 Trafford Park: Environmental and other achievements 82 6.1 Grants-in-aid to urban development corporations, 1981–90 89 6.2 LDDC income and expenditure, 1981–90113 6.3 Employment in Docklands, 1981–90114 6.4 Social housing expenditure in Docklands, 1981–90114 7.1 Birmingham inner city partnership expenditure, 1987–8118 7.2 Heartlands’ objectives136 7.3 Heartlands: progress on industrial and housing developments, 1 January 136 1991 7.4 Heartlands’ financial investment position, 1 January 1991137 7.5 Birmingham City Council schemes in Heartlands, 1990–1137 vii 7.6 Ward-level unemployment rates for Heartlands, 1988–91140 8.1 Trafford Centre: shopping centre approximate floor areas by use151 8.2 Wards with high unemployment: Manchester, Salford and Trafford: 1987169 8.3 Trafford Centre: job generation by type173 Preface This is a book about ‘those Inner Cities’ (as Margaret Thatcher called them on the morning after the General Election of 1987). It is far from being the first and is unlikely to be the last. Previous books have addressed the complex tangle of issues comprehended under the label ‘inner cities’ in a variety of different ways and at an almost infinite number of levels. The range extends from the products of a massive research programme funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, which produced a shelf full of solid academic studies, to angry pamphlets published by community groups, sick of being the subjects of scrutiny and wishing to set their own agendas for discussion and action. Why have we added to this lengthy—at times, it seems, never ending— procession of publications? There are two reasons. The first is to do with the nature of inner city policies. During the 1980s claims began to be heard that the ‘problem’ was at last on the way to being solved. The basis for this claim lay in the activities of the Urban Development Corporations, functioning as the instruments of what had come to be called the ‘enterprise culture’. But although their activities had generated a great deal of publicity, had been celebrated in a number of glossy booklets issued by the government and were the subject of a cascade of consultants’ reports, conclusive evidence—in the form of hard proof that claims were soundly based—proved curiously hard to locate. Our objective in undertaking the study was to get beneath the surface froth and to try to establish the basis on which the ‘enterprise solution’ was being advanced and how much substance there was in the claims being made for it. In order to do so, we chose initially to undertake two case-studies in areas in which contrasting approaches had been adopted—one a straight-forward example of the ‘single minded’ development agency and the other a collaboration between the local authority and the private sector. These were the Urban Development Corporation in Trafford Park near Manchester, and the Urban Development Authority in East Birmingham, known as Heartlands. We supplemented the material we collected in these two sites by observation and interview and eventually extended the analysis in two other directions; first, by assembling and analysing some of the copious material about the earliest and best known Development Corporation in the London Docklands; and second, by ix exploring what we have chosen to call a ‘pure private’ initiative, the Trafford Centre. These case-studies form the core of our book. The second reason for undertaking this study is that both authors have in the past had direct personal experience of the operation of inner city policies— Nicholas Deakin as a local government officer and John Edwards as expert witness at a major planning inquiry. They have also previously collaborated on another study, together with Joan Higgins and Malcolm Wicks, in which they explored developments during earlier stages of inner city policy (Higgins et al. 1983). The authors now set out to build on that study and their own past involvement in an attempt to analyse the processes that have been at work in this latest (and highly distinctive) phase of inner city policy. Finally, it is important to stress that this is not an official study; we have neither applied for nor been offered funding of any kind from any agency or institution, governmental or otherwise. Our sole means of extra support has been a grant of £552 that Nicholas Deakin received from a fund maintained by the Faculty of Commerce and Social Science in the University of Birmingham to pay for incidental expenses, which he gratefully acknowledges. Apart from this we could legitimately claim that this book is an independent product of our own unaided labours. But to do so would be to overlook the very helpful (and unconditional) assistance that we have received at all stages from those working in the field, at every level. Individual acknowledgements are made separately; but we could not have undertaken the study without such cooperation, for which we are most grateful.