ABSTRACT
The two biggest urban, economic problems of the early 1980s in both the UK and the USA were a massive increase in unemployment and widening social polarisation. Unemployment was felt most heavily in the inner areas of older industrial cities among groups such as the young, the poorly qualified, semiskilled male workers and ethnic minorities. Opportunities were shaped by the emerging employment structure characterised by a high degree of polarisation between a small number of highly paid jobs requiring good qualifications and a larger number of very poorly paid jobs, servicing the former sector. There was no mechanism linking the two sectors and many were disengaged from the formal employment sector.
