Falk and Martinos argue that traditional approaches have failed to address the interconnected web of unemployment, poor housing, and social malaise.
Drawing on practical examples and innovative policy ideas, the pamphlet calls for a radical shift: empowering local government to lead economic renewal, coordinate resources, and target support where it’s needed most. Essential reading for policymakers, councillors, and anyone concerned with building fairer, more resilient cities.
This pamphlet falls into five main parts. It begins by putting the arguments for getting control of the basic processes of economic decline and physical deterioration in inner city areas. It then shows how market forces and government policies and practices interact to make development work against the interests of the most disadvantaged groups, and thus how the problems of the inner city are as much the product of official policies or the economic system as they are of the faults of the inhabitants. Some strategies for arresting economic decline are then outlined to show how local initiative is both possible and necessary. But such initiatives require changes in the way that inner city areas of local authorities are managed and financed; these form the main ingredients of a new urban programme. Finally the pamphlet considers rejects some of the arguments against government taking the needed to translate such a programme into reality.
