ABSTRACT
This chapter summarizes and integrates the overarching key themes in urban regeneration in the United Kingdom. Objectives of urban policy initiatives driven by central government have often been too broad and ill-defined. Governments have often been accused of being dictatorial about urban regeneration, as it has been conducted in a top-down fashion reducing the scope for bottom-up local solutions to local problems. Urban policy under successive governments has suffered a lack of horizontal and vertical co-ordination across departments of central and local government. The urban problem is multi-dimensional, but policy responses have often been too cautious and narrow. Neighbourhoods have often been considered as units in isolation from their wider urban context. Complexity continues to hamper the effectiveness of urban regeneration policy. Consistent with the experience of lack of community involvement in central government-funded urban policy initiatives, involvement of local communities in projects and approaches undertaken by city authorities has been equally patchy.
