Community economic development in urban and regional regeneration: unfolding potential or justifiable scepticism?

In this paper I explore the scale of community economic development (CED) and the barriers impacting upon its evolution within an English region -- Yorkshire and The Humber. CED has been widely perceived by a range of policymakers as one mechanism through which to moderate the scale of economic decline in more disadvantaged localities. A number of funding sources, and in particular European Structural Funds, have increasingly allocated resources to creating and sustaining CED projects. But evidence from this region points to a very limited population of community businesses which undertake trading activities. Moreover, the sector is bedevilled by a series of constraints including those revolving around finance and partnership working. A number of policy developments could enhance the status and sustainability of CED projects, including a more structured approach towards the funding and operation of intermediary agencies. Even then, CED is likely to prove only a marginal player in economic reconversion. The scale of market failure in 'CED localities' points to the need for a more interventionist and collective approach to regeneration.</p

Managing local labour markets and making up new spaces of welfare

The dissolution of the old mechanisms of state welfare has not yet led to the generation of a new welfare settlement, although the rise of neoliberalism and of what Jessop has called the Schumpeterian Competition State have highlighted some key directions of change. The importance of geographical inequality and unevenness to the process of reshaping welfare has been widely recognised, and the fragmentation and decentralisation of employment and social policies are giving rise to the production of new welfare spaces, which institutionalise the new arrangements, helping to make up neoliberalism in practice. These issues are discussed with the help of case studies of two contrasting areas: Sheffield, a city recently experiencing economic restructuring and high levels of labour-market adjustment and employment deprivation; and Milton Keynes, a city which has been a growth area within the South East since the 1960s and which is earmarked for further employment and the location of planned population and employment growth. The ways in which new welfare spaces are being produced is explored through a consideration of the configuration of partnerships around the governance of workfare, welfare, and competitiveness within these cities