ABSTRACT
There are several ways of viewing British urban policy; as 'planning'; as social policy; or as one of the two branches of 'spatial' policy — that is, policy designed to influence the incidence of activity through space. It has not been admitted that the aims of urban policy, nationally and often locally, are significantly political; political in the meanest sense of that word; point scoring and sweeping damaging issues under the carpet rather than seriously confronting them and resolving them. This chapter analyses British urban policy as a branch of that wider policy designed to affect the location of activity through space. There exist at least two types of such policy; regional development policy and, increasingly over the last decade, those aspects of urban policy designed to channel activity to 'inner areas' or encourage development — Enterprise Zones, Local Economic Initiatives and related policies. Regional development policy has been concerned with developing largely undeveloped agricultural or sparsely populated regions.
