ABSTRACT
The publication of the Urban White Paper (in 2000), Our Towns and Cities: The Future – Delivering an Urban Renaissance, signifies the determination of the Labour government to continue to tackle the problems of English cities. It is more than 20 years since the last Urban White Paper (Policy for the Inner Cities, published in 1977). The 2000 Urban White Paper is based on the findings of the report Towards an Urban Renaissance (Urban Task Force, 1999) which provided a much wider vision for the development of English towns and cities. The report is also referred to as the Roger's Report, after the chair of the Urban Task Force, Lord Rogers of Riverside. The mission of the Urban Task Force was to ‘identify the causes of urban decline in England and recommend practical solutions to bring people back into our cities, towns and urban neighbourhoods’ (ibid., front page).
