ABSTRACT
The question of re-developing or economically regenerating the inner city is an important contemporary policy focus, particularly in Western Europe and North America (Fainstein, 1995). In addition, it is increasingly emerging as a policy issue in certain parts of the developing world (see Verma, 1993; Ward, 1993). The plight of inner cities must be understood in relation to the impact on cities of wider processes of global economic restructuring (Fainstein, 1991, 1995; Hambleton, 1991). In particular, as a result of radical restructuring in the makeup of western urban economies “the traditional specialised industrial districts that first spawned the industrial city are all but a memory” (Graham, 1995, p. 85). Amidst the turbulence of the past two decades of global economic restructuring it is clear that “the economic fortunes of individual cities cannot be divorced from wider forces in the national and international economy” (Hambleton, 1991, p. 55). Since the 1970s the cities of North America and Western Europe have experienced the full weight of processes of global economic restructuring (Graham, 1995). Few urban centres have escaped “the ravages of employment decline, inadequate investment, a worn out infrastructure and a negative public image associated with destroyed industrial wildernesses” (Crewe, 1991, p. 1).
