ABSTRACT
At a superficial level, the enterprise solution to the problems of the inner cities has an appealing simplicity. Once the root cause of these problems has been traced back to a degenerated economic infrastructure, logic dictates that regeneration is the answer and since this means, at its most basic, both wealth and job creation, then the most effective-indeed the only-instrument to bring it about is private enterprise. And the only role that governments need play is to help private enterprise choose the appropriate locations, which in effect means tipping the economic balance in favour of inner city locations in the competition to attract investment. After all, companies can hardly be expected to bear the economic costs of locating in a less favourable area just because there might be social benefits attached to their doing so. At its simplest therefore, and leaving aside for the moment the paraphernalia of partnership and ‘single-minded bodies’, the enterprise solution to urban deprivation is really a reverse replay of thirty years of industrial location policy (see Goddard and Champion 1983; Culling worth 1985; Balchin and Bull 1987).
