The Glasgow Eastern Area Renewal (GEAR) project was portrayed at its birth in May 1976 as one of the largest urban renewal projects in Europe. In essence , the project represented an attempt to mount a coordinated comprehensive response to the problems of multiple deprivation. In recent years, however, the level of "extra" investment genuinely attributable to the GEAR project has been questioned. Orton (1982) for instance suggests that the whole project may be regarded as a "mere confidence trick". The purpose of this paper is to analyse the investment in GEAR in order that an estimate of "extra" expenditure attributable to the project may be derived