ABSTRACT
Visits, visual impressions and documentary sources on the social and demographic characteristics of possible areas helped in the choice of our four experimental districts; but having chosen them we had to build up a more comprehensive picture by systematic survey. This operation served several purposes: it provided the action teams with information to guide them in deciding which policies to pursue and how they should be implemented; it allowed a systematic comparison to be made between the four areas so that the effectiveness of differing strategies could be assessed in the light of differing local conditions; it gave a measure of the degree to which the selected areas satisfied the criteria proposed in the Plowden Report for the identification of EPAs; and it also suggested ways in which these criteria could be modified or supplemented.
