ABSTRACT
The immediate products of economic regeneration are plain enough; they adorn nearly every page of recent government brochures on inner city policy, the new marinas, office blocks, refurbished warehouses, landscaped derelict sites and so on. But they are (it is hoped) only the visible manifestations of the essence of recovery: a more buoyant local economy and, most important for our purposes, more new jobs. (Output measures for Urban Development Corporations used in government sources are more usually square metres of land reclaimed and of office and other development space created, the gearing ratio achieved and, on occasion, numbers of dwelling units completed. See for example Department of the Environment 1988a; 1989b; 1990a. Such sources tend to be more coy about the numbers of new jobs created, for reasons that we shall subsequently discuss.)
So far as the schemes we have identified as either for investment and business promotion or for land reclamation and environmental improvement are concerned therefore, the general purposes are similar. Land reclamation and environmental improvements are carried out primarily to provide more attractive areas in which investment can locate (which is not to say that there is no domestic environmental improvement or reclamation for housing purposes). Infrastructure works are normally provided as part of the public subsidy to attract business. Relaxed planning requirements serve the same function, and the variety of loan schemes and financial help for small firms are designed either to support existing businesses in the inner cities or to help local unemployed people to start up new businesses.
