Reshaping the Urban Policy Inheritance

Abstract

A lot happened to urban initiatives during the Thatcher years. There is no easy way to divide these developments into manageable but distinct chapters. We will therefore make a basic distinction between the policies which the post-1979 Conservatives inherited and those they created. This is entirely a distinction of convenience; we recognise that there is no hard and fast distinction between the two sets of initiatives. As we shall see, even those programmes which the Conservatives inherited were often fundamentally restructured to reflect Thatcherite preoccupations. In this chapter we will examine the reshaping of the policy inheritance. We will consider five areas which each impacted, to a varying extent, on urban problems:

• Regional policy.

• The urban programme.

• Urban regeneration.

• Housing policy.

• Employment-related initiatives.