ABSTRACT
Before we go on to draw our final conclusions there is one further point that should be made: put simply, it is that there is nothing really new in the enterprisebased approach to inner city regeneration. Despite the sugar coating of rhetoric and the various presentational ‘spins’ that have been applied from time to time, much of what has been attempted is visibly familiar-and to that extent the outcome has been predictable. The use of the private sector of the economy for the promotion and pursuit of public ends has a long, if not very distinguished history. The 1934 Special Areas Act provided powers for ‘the initiation, organisation, prosecution and assistance of measures to facilitate the economic development and social improvement’ of the special areas (otherwise known as the depressed areas) (see Cullingworth 1985:7-8). This included the provision and improvement of services, amenity schemes and the clearing of derelict sites. But as Cullingworth notes, all this was to be complementary to the principal task of attracting new industry to the depressed areas. Apart from the use of specially designated corporations therefore, there is little difference between the aims of the 1934 Act and the purpose of current inner city policy. And the lessons from inter-war policy seem only too familiar. Attempts to exploit the social responsibility and community-mindedness of industry singularly failed. Only where inducements (in the form of the provision of trading estates) were offered did industry respond. But even then three times as many factories opened in the London area as in all the special areas combined between 1937 and 1938.
