Urban policy under new labour: a new dawn?

Abstract

British urban policies can be collectively characterised as a series of experiments intro-duced by successive newly elected governments keen to put their own ideological twist on policy for the inner cities and peripheral. The aim of this paper is to examine whether or not, or to what extent, New Labour’s urban policy marks a change in policy direction. Fol-lowing a presentation of the legacy of urban policy left by the outgoing New Right gov-ernment, the paper will go on to outline New Labour’s ideological standpoint. This discus-sion will provide the context for an examination of the urban policies introduced by the Blair administration.